By Cory Doctorow Summary of Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification Thesis Doctorow argues that dominant digital platforms inevitably decay—not because they were badly designed, but because the incentives of monopoly capitalism push platforms to progressively degrade the user experience. He calls this process enshittification: “First they’re good to users; then they abuse users to benefit business customers; […]

This is what ChatGPT says about it:AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can’t Do (Yet) — a book and ongoing project by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor — is a critical look at the real versus exaggerated capabilities of AI systems, especially those marketed as transformative or “intelligent.” Here are the key points and core

By Robert Cialdini This book covered familiar ground. It was similar to Predictably Irrational or Thinking Fast and Slow. There are a lot of different frames and setups that influence decision making, even when the decision maker perceives that they are making a rational decision. It’s helpful to be reminded of them to keep them

by Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, Kerry Patterson This is not a long book and it doesn’t include any crazy new ideas. However, it is a critical reminder of places where conversations go wrong. I found the examples of poorly handled crucial conversations to be very familiar. I’ve been in them and I’ve handled

By Celia C. Pérez I read this from front to back without any dictionary assistance. There are still some words and phrases that I miss, but overall, I was able to follow the story and I could infer some new words and phrases from the context. It was a fun read and I’m looking forward

By Robert Putnam Like Sapolsky’s books, I read Putnam’s work backwards. I read the recent, more complete representations of their ideas in Determined and The Upswing before back tracking to Behave and Bowling Alone. Bowling Alone was entirely about social capital and civic participation without tying more measures of societal wellness into it like The

By Robert D. Putnam Like Hope for Cynics, I chose this one because I felt like I needed it right now. It helps to be reminded that we’ve been in the bad place before and pulled out of it. The cooperation of our society hasn’t been an uninterrupted downward slide. It has actually been bad,

By Emily Ballesteros I liked the book. I think it was the most practically useful of the “Burnout” titles that I’ve read. Although it referenced Burnout by the Nagoskis, it wasn’t hostile towards men. It didn’t have the same fatalistic position as The End of Burnout by Malesic who mostly blamed society. The content around

By Cliff Stoll This was a fun read. An astronomer finds an accounting discrepancy on the lab’s computer system. He spends a year investigating the source and finds that it’s a hacker from West Germany using his system to connect to US military systems. It was interesting watching international hacking happen before the internet and

By Keith Ferrazzi Gross. I’m sure the advice is useful if you want to win the status competition at all costs, but I do not. There were occasional mentions of how it’s not about being the slimy networking guy and how it’s about providing value to other people, but the rest of the content contradicted

By Omar El Akkad This was a bummer. El Akkad shined a light on the hypocrisy of the liberal western world that is standing idle during the genocide of Palestinians. People would rather passively accept tragedy rather than stick their own neck out to stop it. However, there will be a time in the future

By R.L. Stine This is the most reading that I’ve done in Spanish. I alternated from one story to the next between using a translate app to help me with words and phrases that I didn’t know and just plowing ahead and trying to infer meaning based on context clues. While I found that there

By Simon Sinek This is closer to what I wanted when I read Start With Why. I went into that book hoping for more advice about finding a WHY. It didn’t have that, nor did it make a particularly strong case for the necessity of determining WHY. I was already a believer prior to opening

By Robert Sapolsky None of this will be easy. When contemplating the challenge to do so, it is important to remember that some, many, maybe even most of the people who were prosecuting epileptics in the fifteenth century were no different from us—sincere, cautious, and ethical, concerned about the serious problems threatening their society, hoping

By Simon Sinek The book explains how inspirational leaders and organizations achieve lasting success by starting with a clear and compelling why (their purpose, cause, or belief). Instead of focusing on what they do or how they do it, great leaders begin with why they do it. This book promotes the value of the emphasis

By Joseph Nguyen Suffering comes from thinking too much. Thoughts just appear in your head and are fine. Actively thinking is where the trouble happens. That’s pretty much the book. The author described that he studied solutions for anxiety including yoga, meditation, mindfulness, spiritual practices, etc. His big breakthrough was realizing that the practices must

By Ursula K. Le Guin This story involves an envoy representing an intergalactic trade federation landing on a cold planet and attempting to forge agreements with the word’s inhabitants to join the federation. The envoy is a male human as we are familiar, but the planet is populated with people who are gender neutral until

By Alison Wood Brooks I enjoyed this book and found it helpful. TALK is an acronym for Topics, Asking, Levity, Kindness. Topics – The book advocates planning topics in advance. She points out that people are afraid that it will make conversations less natural and fun if topics are prepared in advance, but her students

By David Grann This was another book club selection. If I wasn’t assured that this was about actual events, it would have been over the top for fiction. The crimes stacked on crimes to claim oil head rights from Osage people in the 1920s was wild. The criminals went after witnesses, jurors, investigators, and even