We Are Not Saved

Three translations of a classic, high brow literary fiction, a great book from a friend of and mine then a whole lot of pulp. Also something that might be the beginnings of a book by Neal Stephenson.

Audio for the keystone chapter (Chapter Zero) of the book I'm working on.

If integration is straightforward how is it that the former East Germany is so different ideologically from the former West Germany?

Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification by: Timur Kuran Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism by: Scott Horton The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1 by: Alexander Solzhenitsyn Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet by: Gernot Wagner & Martin L. Weitzman The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 by: Philipp Blom The Lion's Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War by: Steven Pressfield

Things are changing. Hopefully in good ways.

In which I decide that I am not going to read "Wind and Truth". And also that 63 hours on audio is just ridiculous.

The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea by: M. David Litwa Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power by: Carolyn Elliott The Ballad of the White Horse by: G. K. Chesterton American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology by: D.W. Pasulka Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences by: D.W. Pasulka Undreaming Wetiko: Breaking the Spell of the Nightmare Mind-Virus by: Paul Levy

A method for making better decisions should you ever find yourself in Kathmandu, or paying for SEO, or hoping to see the Supreme Court.

Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine: Essays on Living Better by: Bryan Caplan Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by: Carlo Rovelli The Social Conquest of Earth by: Edward O. Wilson The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class by: David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by: Donald Miller The Power of Having Fun: How Meaningful Breaks Help You Get More Done by: Dave Crenshaw The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change by: Yoram Bauman and Grady Klein The Little Book of Aliens by: Adam Frank

You have probably heard about Rotherham, and the child sex abuse rings that existed there (and may still be operating). As with so many things these days, this story entered the public discussion when Musk tweeted about it. For many people I’ve talked to, this was the first they’d heard of it. I actually spoke about about it in 2018. At the time I felt I was late to the game, but apparently I was six years ahead of most people. Given the story's re-emergence I thought it might be worth dusting off that old piece. I think it holds up pretty well, particularly the part about the woeful lack of reporting on the topic. I have lightly edited it, smoothing things out in a few places, adding commas, that sort of thing. Temporal references have not been updated, so when I say “a week ago” I’m referring to 2018. Even if you’ve already read a lot about these horrific crimes, there are a few takes in here that I haven’t seen elsewhere  

Exactly five years ago, China identified a “novel coronavirus” and the world was introduced to the term “wet market”. In the time since then arguments continue to rage about the source of the virus, the measures that were taken, and the vaccines that were created. In the midst of all these arguments, everyone seems to agree on one thing: extended school closures were a bad idea. It’s very easy to continue on from that to assume the harms of such closures were obvious from the very beginning—that they happened only because we were blinded by fear. Some people don’t go quite so far, but nevertheless argue that such closures were implemented hastily and without much consideration. But consider this quote from the Michael Lewis book Premonition on the role of disease modeling: The graph illustrated the effects on a disease of various crude strategies: isolating the ill; quarantining entire households when they had a sick person in them; socially distancing adults; giving people antiviral drugs; and so on. Each o

A Gentleman in Moscow by: Amor Towles The Humans by: Matt Haig Super-Cannes: A Novel by: J. G. Ballard Monster Hunter: International by: Larry Correia Monster Hunter: Vendetta by: Larry Correia

Three things converged for me recently and at the point of their convergence was the issue of placing women in frontline combat roles. The first leg of the convergence was the election of Donald Trump. We’re still debating the reasons why he won, but certainly a reassertion of gender differences are near the top of everyone’s list. For example, allowing natal men into women’s sports. The second was Trump’s nomination of Pete Hesgeth for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth’s nomination is controversial for a lot of reasons, but one of the controversies is his opinion that women should not be allowed into front line combat roles.  Finally, I just got done watching the miniseries Band of Brothers, while at the same time re-reading the Stephen E. Ambrose book it’s based on. I would highly recommend the exercise (see my review of the book here.) In addition to being enjoyable it reminded me of how physical, grimy, and desperate combat can be. And of course the theme of both the book and the series is that Easy Company

Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict by: Ara Norenzayan A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by: Max Bennett The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump by: Max Blumenthal What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by: Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan The Laws of Trading: A Trader's Guide to Better Decision-Making for Everyone by: Agustin Lebron Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by: Oliver Burkeman Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest by: Stephen E. Ambrose The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by: Sharon McMahon

AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by: Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory by: Peter Hessler On Grand Strategy by: John Lewis Gaddis Leisure: The Basis of Culture by: Josef Pieper Anatomy of the State by: Murray Rothbard The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration by: David Roberts The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War by: Michael Shaara

He talks about the Village, and the River, but what we really need is a Redoubt. On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything  By: Nate Silver Published: 2024 576 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? There are two different ways of approaching the world: the River, which thinks in terms of numbers, expected values, and quantification and the Village, which is the paternalistic expert class which manifests as the vast bureaucracy.  What's the author's angle? I got the impression that Silver just wanted to write about things that interested him. Because of this, his thesis was kind of tacked on. That said, he is a fairly passionate advocate for things that interest him.  Who should read this book? Silver is worried that people will skip the first half of the book which is about gambling, but in reality that was the best part, or at least the part I found to be novel. The second part is about Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), AI, and all the stuff you’ve already heard too much about if you spend much time online. With t

One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, Volumes 1 & 2  By: Whitney Alyse Webb Briefly, what are these books about? The alleged connections between organized crime and national intelligence agencies which led to the numerous illicit operations including Watergate, Iran-Contra, the JFK Assassination, and of course the entire Jeffrey Epstein mess.  A key component of these operations was the tactic of collecting blackmail and using it to convince people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. What's the author's angle? Charitably, Webb is an autodidact with an enormous command of facts and connections. Uncharitably, she’s someone with a weak evidentiary filter making conspiratorial mountains out of tenuously connected molehills. Who should read these books? No one should just read them. You should either ignore them or study them intently as part of an “Intro to Conspiracy Theories” curriculum. Of the two I would recommend the former. Read

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by: Neil Gaiman There Is No Antimemetics Division by: qntm The Man Who Had All the Luck by: Arthur Miller How Green Was My Valley by: Richard Llewellyn Theft of Fire: Orbital Space #1 by: Devon Eriksen Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 1) by: Robin Hobb Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 2) by: Robin Hobb

With the enormous increase in the power of AI (specifically LLMs) people are using them for all sorts of things, hoping to find areas where they’re better, or at least cheaper than humans. FiveThirtyNine (get it?) is one such attempt, and they claim that AI can do forecasting better than humans.  Scott Alexander, of Astral Codex Ten, reviewed the service and concluded that they still have a long way to go. I have no doubt that this is the case, but one can imagine that this will not always be the case. What then? My assertion would be that at the point when AI forecasting does “work” (should that ever happen) it will make the problems of superforecasting even worse.2  I- The problems of superforecasting What are the problems of superforecasting? ...

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by: Michael A. Singer Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It by: Ethan Kross The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World by: John Mark Comer Dumb Money: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees by: Ben Mezrich Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results by: Shane Parrish