The book positions screen writing is a craft – and may explain why so few successful movies are actually worth your time.
Even though the art world is hermetic, myopic, elitist, and irrational there is still inherent value in art itself (whatever the definition of art is)
Bianca Bosker – Get the picture
The characters are carefully positioned as archetypes that are painfully accurate.
Military theory always seems to be focused on solving the challenges from the previous war
David Patraeus and Andrew Roberts – Conflict
Somehow, in the world of Mr. Patraeus, all people who agree with the general are the most capable, intelligent and respected leaders to ever walk the earth while the French are never any good.
Without active allies and inclusive policies, disadvantaged groups will never get the same opportunities as the privileged
Sheree Acheson – Deminding more
A refrehingly data-centric book that elegantly yet firmly addresses issues without pointing blame.
The ideas that were seriously considered in covert operations and military plots shew a new light on the term ‘Intelligence’
Vince Houghton – Nuking the moon
The overly jolly style of writing can be a bit tiresome, but one cannot help to be fascinated by the outlandish stories..
Founders are gaslighted by VCs in order to convince them that they need to take high risks that are not in their own best interest
Rand Fishkin – Lost and Founder
Juicy slightly contrarian view written with sufficient self-deprication in order not to offend anyone in the vally.
To contain AI (and synthetic biology), humanity should bet on regulation
Mustafa Suleyman – The coming wave
In the light of the message of the book, the writer’s move to join Microsoft as AI chief in early 2024 was surprising.
Use ‘validated learning’ to launch your ‘MVP’, and ‘pivot’ when your ‘value and growth hypotheses’ are falsified
A staple of startup literature, advocating a deceivingly simple concept which is hard to get right (as is proven by the examples of startups that have failed since publication).
Re-read 2024: Even though some examples are by now pretty stale, there are still many relevant insights in there.
The West has for a long time under-estimated the tenacity of Russian covert operations
Gordon Corera – Russians among us
The connection between ‘illegals’ and digital information warfare seems mostly motivated by the author’s (or publisher’s) desire to give the book more relevance, rather than the coherence of the narrative.
To disagree with Kara Swisher is not for the faint hearted
Entertaining rather than enriching, with strong emphasis on the ways in which Kara lets other people know that she is right
If power is all you want, just follow these 48 simple steps
Robert Greene – The 48 laws of power
A pile of cynical, often conflicting, recommendations presented with Machiavellian panache.
Understanding behavioral economics is quite helpful when you want to understand what works in marketing.
A smart repackaging of Khanemean for marketeers that is indeed worth a second edition nine years after initial publication
The populist far-right has been able to gain ground due to the failure of progressives to address underlying concerns across broad strands of the population
Rhetorically strong, with well chosen observations spun into a seductive narrative that is designed to give hope.
Brain variances manifest differently in women, leading to widely-held misconceptions and many living undiagnozed and untreated
Janara Nerenberg – Divergent mind
Does a great job explaining the negative impact.
A bunch of geeks figured out a better way to run a company and are now taking over the economy
The case that “data trumps opinions, provided your corporate culture doesn’t get in the way” contains little original thinking, but that – to be fair – is not the author’s objective
Most crypto currencies are Ponzi schemes funded and operated by hardened criminals and effective altruists lacking a moral compass
The author’s hard-felt frustration that the crypto market could (and in a sense still can) stay irrational as long as it did makes the story even more juicy.
Writing your tests first saves a shitload of time in debugging
Harry Percival – Test Driven Development with Python
It take quite some wasted hours of coding to appreciate the full power of the TDD approach
If you are quirky enough; people may just trust you because you seem harmless even if you have a history at a Wall Street trading firm
Michael Lewis – Going infinite
Amazing story, told with a consistent yet not so surprising perspective
To optimally solve for the UN Social Development Goals, optimize on simple metrics with good pay-off
Bjorn Lomborg – Best things first
Nice exercise that provides some nice contrarian thinking, as long as one is aware that the methodology of cost-benefit analysis (as applied here) seems to ignore systemic risks (e.g. climate change) and under-plays the difficulty of getting from theory to policy (let alone realization).
It requires a risky mix of naive optimism, grotesque bluff, and boneheaded persistence to get a scoop on a yakuza boss
The story is, appears heavily romanticized, but provides a nice insider perspective on many quirks of Japanese culture.