Reviews and Comments

Quoted in "Is It a Bubble?" www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/memo/is-it-a-bubble

(Which I thought was a pretty thorough mainstream financial analysis of the current AI frothiness. Albeit a bit off on some technical details and - as per mainstream finance - totally ignoring most externalities, or that there could be better ways to develop technologies than unchecked free market exuberance.)

The near-future of Venomous Lumpsucker is not super grim, but it is worryingly believable. I felt it tried to take things to slightly absurd and darkly comedic places, but so much of what it describes still seems possible (or potentially more sympathetic than what could truly come to pass). That it isn't the book's fault, but it certainly made for depressing reading at times.

Lumpsucker also lampoons amoral corporate culture in a pitch-perfect way, another one of those things that I'd find more entertaining if it felt less realistic. Some English authors seem to have a knack for this, Ministry of Time excelled at it.

The book is interesting enough that despite the deflating "much of this could probably happen" aspect I didn't put it down, and guiltily enjoyed some of its little barbs.

One of the other reviews called this "a little hug for the soul", and it is - masquerading as a self help book. Going to keep it around to read when feeling stuck or unmotivated.

Reading Peripathetic added a lot of books to my "want to read" list...

Added after reading @edent@mastodon.social's review shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/03/book-review-machine-readable-me-by-zara-rahman/

Wanting to read a number of the books from @caitelatte@cloudisland.nz's really good talk "tips to build and repair empathy at other teams" at #EverythingOpen 2025

Slides/lists at docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fEugeFGxT7u6nl69FiUmYApezeaBETt2uEuzj4Jp2VA/mobilepresent#slide=id.g3277e8b9ec6_0_30

This book is well crafted, to the point I had to remind myself several times that its first person accounts weren't real. Labatut turns these historical figures into believable and distinct characters with individual voices.

I learned several things about John von Neumann that I didn't know, and became interested enough to probably read more deeply in the future.

Apart from a few short quotes we don't hear from von Neumann himself in the book, and that choice really helps underscore how impossibly unique he was. Not to mention how strongly others would react to him.

Given some of the marketing around this book, I was a little disappointed to realise that (as far I know) the fiction doesn't venture far beyond historical fact. Based on how it was presented I was expecting the final act to be somehow speculative, based on more of von Neumann's ideas coming to fruition, but that's not what it actually is.

I didn't quite get the Prologue chapters about Go and AI. These are written in a more journalistic style and I couldn't connect them that strongly to the main book. A good piece on its own, but I don't quite understand why it got included here instead of becoming a longform magazine feature or something.

Still, a good read that provides much personal illumination of "the alien" while also reminding us how much of the twentieth century he contributed to.

Mentioned in @chrisjrn's talk at this year's Monktoberfest: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf_6EVTlZOY

Have put this one down after a few chapters. I don't remember why I added it to my reading list, but it's too grim for me.

I think I might have been hoping for something a bit more satirical or surreal, perhaps I saw it recommended in connection to Ling Ma's novel Severance (which I really appreciated).

Of course it's unfair to complain that this book isn't like a different book. The writing seems good and the subject is very relevant, but it's pretty clear where the story is headed and it's both too real and too grim for me at the moment.

Came across here: structuregeek.social/@structuregeek/112998471916127189

Want to read (despite Agile in title) because I've been thinking about the context of that post a lot these past few days, its spot on for me.