Given that I’ve spent more time in my flat (hello, COVID-19) I also spent more time looking at my book shelf.. and wasn’t too happy with it: in hindsight, some of the books I’ve read are way to pretentious and the books I remember as life-changing were mostly read on my kindle anyways. Speaking of Kindles, my first kindle (must be bought around 2008 in the United States) was stored between the books.. with a quite bulging lithium ion battery.. good thing I did that cleanup.
Book Updates..
So, after some trips to a public bookshelf and ordering some great books to re-read, may I present you my “bookshelf 2.0” (the left side is the important one):
The books have changed quite a bit too: The Uninhabitable Earth as this is the (near) future we’ll have to live with. Thinking fast and Slow and Behave describe the human condition, i.e. this is what we can work with while Factfulness and Good Economics for Hard Times show that the fight is still feasible. Things are getting better, but they are still bad. The rest are beautiful motivational books by inspiring people: Victor Frankl, Edith Eger, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama
Some books that are on my re-read list are still missing: The Tao of Pooh as well as The Stormlight Archive-Series.
.. and Blog Posts
Recently I’ve delved more and more on longer blog posts, this is a bit of a departure of my normal daily life with it’s fast-paced information flow. This might be influenced by Tim Bray’s recent departure from Amazon (and thus having more time to post great-long read lists).
Recently on my browser history:
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Tim Hardford on The Race to Vaccinate the World: yeah, the recent vaccines are good news, but it will take more to get over the whole COVID-19 problem.
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How to destroy surveillance capitalism by Cory Doctorow is a great piece on the rise and fall of Tech Industry’s micro-targeted advertisement. In contrast to more “hyping” authors like Naomi Klein, I do trust Cory Doctorow to give a broader picture as well as a meaningful technical description of the problem we’re facing. This is also related to my stock portfolio: I see a bursting online-advertisement bubble (containing Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon) as potential triggers for an economic downturn.
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Tech after Trump: what will arise from the current chaos? Being part of the tech tribe this is always on-topic for me. This blog post has more covered then the usual: free vs hate speech, climate change, social fragmentation, decentralization.
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The Truth is paywalled but the lies are free: describes the problem that flame-baity and cringe-worthy news are mostly free but that their reprimands mostly behind paywalls. It’s not a solution to claim that “good journalism costs money and should be paywalled” as this will only create a “class of people” that can afford to read news and the masses that cannot and will fall to preying media outlets. When quality news is restricted to paying customers, what prevents big companies from buying those news outlets? The post then goes down the copyright rabbit hole.. read it.
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Along Russia’s ‘Road of Bones,’ Relics of Suffering and Despair about the fading horror of soviet gulags.
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An iOS zero-click radio proximity exploit odyssey by Ian Beer. This sexy exploit allowed full-take over of iPhones over the air without any user interaction. Kudos to the exploit, the explanation as well as the author’s ethical behavior.
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Politico.eu for the shit show that European politics currently is. But I am willing to branch out to other independent publications such as The Guardian (which’s layout I just somehow cannot stomach) or The Intercept.