The communist roots of Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors referred to herself and cofounder Alicia Garza as “trained Marxists” in a recorded interview. [1] The third cofounder, Opal Tometi, wrote an article praising the socialist dictatorship of Venezuela, saying “We stand with the Venezuelan people as they build a revolutionary and popular democracy based on communal power”. [2] […]
Read more from the Philosophy category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS from your site.
Seeing Like a State
This book goes deep into a discussion of how states operate and why their central planning schemes are often very destructive. The first part of the book talks about how states attempt to make their citizens and resources more “legible”, meaning easier to measure and administrate. The second part is about “high modernism”, the naive […]
Read more from the History category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS from your site.
Smart and SeXy
This book is one of the most information dense books I’ve read, it felt like almost every sentence was providing a new fact and there are a ton of citations. Also one of the least politically correct books I’ve read. The first half of the book goes pretty deep into genetics related to sex chromosomes […]
Read more from the Psychology category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS from your site.
The Illusion of the Self
The Buddhist concept of non-self says that the self is an illusion, but the meaning of this is subtle and requires some elaboration. First we need to distinguish what I’ll call the “concept of self” and the “sense of self”. The concept of self is what you cognitively think of yourself as. The sense of […]
Read more from the Philosophy of Mind category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS from your site.
We need to stop the lockdowns
The CDC says “In the coming months, most of the U.S. population will be exposed to this virus” (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summary.html). “A panel of experts at the University of California, San Francisco, predicted that between 40 and 70% of Americans could become infected within the next 18 months” (https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-150-million-americans-may-get-infected-2020-3?op=1). The lockdowns are not going to stop or […]
Read more from the Ethics category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS from your site.
The Coddling of the American Mind
I didn’t really learn much new from reading this book; just reading the summary online covered most of the points, and I expected this, but I decided to read it anyways because I became more interested in the topic and wanted to use the book as a way to help me ponder it a bit […]
Read more from the Psychology category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS from your site.
Against the Grain
Somewhat dry but really interesting thesis that grain agriculture was uniquely suited to taxation which enabled the formation of early states. Emphasized that early states may have been worse places to live than the surrounding areas outside of state control and how states were effectively farms for domesticating, breeding, and enslaving humans.
Read more from the Anthropology category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS from your site.
Pro Git
This book is a good introduction to Git and also covers some of how Git works internally. There were a few useful things that I learned from the book, but for the most part I either already knew it from using Git or it wasn’t something I would need.
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The Dark Forest
I think this sequel was better than its predecessor, The Three Body Problem. It’s very well thought out and interesting, but at the same time somewhat slower-paced.
Read more from the Science Fiction category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS from your site.
Mastering Bitcoin
Mastering Bitcoin provides a solid and fairly comprehensive explanation of how Bitcoin works. It started out by going into a bit too much detail on very specific topics before explaining the bigger picture. For example it was talking about vanity addresses and HD wallets before explaining anything about transactions or the blockchain. I prefer to […]
Read more from the Computers and Technology category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS from your site.