Mikhail Kabakov

Informative. With actionable solutions

Revisado: 10-02-24

I was expecting a rant about what's broken in the modern Western society. And while there is information about that, but also explanation of how it happened, and what we can do to stop and reverse the trend. Also - several examples of when some woke trend emerged, but quickly hit a brick wall and was turned around.

This book also talks about what every American, young or old, rich or poor, laborer or senator, can do - and ought to do - starting today, continuing tomorrow and for years to come - to uphold the values behaviors which are beneficial, perhaps even essential - for our prosperity, and that of our children. Specific examples. No excuses.

Towards the end the book gets extremely... sobering, and action-encouraging.

Highly recommend.

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Sound advice for some women. Useless for men

Revisado: 08-01-24

"Yeah, sure - but I'm doing all that already, and more, yet still single!"

Book narrates about people having rather obvious problems, and proposes rather obvious solutions.

1) "it's like when you know you ought to save but end up splurging the next weekend"
- Good thing I never did that. Always had savings and stipl multiplying and diversifying them. Tried to teach others if they will listen at all

2) "Or wanna exercise but end up being a potato all day"
- Good thing I never done that, either! I exercise every day!

3) "Or when you've let Disney, Social Media or RomComs get you into a mindset of expecting Mr. Perfect - love is hadd, you need to get into a 'Work it out' mindset instead."
- Good thing I never watched Disney or RomComs, and been off Social Media for years! Gave up on a perfect match years ago, spent years trying to work out misunderstandings with me ex for 3 years till finally we both ended up in jail.

4) "Don't dismiss men as 'boring' for being genuinely nice"
- obviously, advice for women, but like DUH! If some woman is doing that, well no surprise she'll be single!

5) "Don't date prom kings, date for marriage"
- manifested in advice to ditch a guy who's bathroom wasn't clean and ran out of T.P. as "unfit for marriage"
Like, okay, I'll clean my bathroom spotless and stock a warehouse of T.P., but the fact this author advises women to ditch a guy based on just that is super shallow and cringe!

7) Talks about a women who met someone at Burning Man and then wondering if they are a proper family guy made me LMAO. It is's like, idk, going to a church to find a BDSM partner!

Might be useful for some very socially misguided ladies who are REALLY getting in their own way in feankly stupid ways, but as a successful, athletic 34 man - I cannot relate to any of the obvious flaws this author is describing, and the (equally obvious) solutions proposed. I've either never had the problems, or been applying the suggested solutions, and more, for years - but it ain't working.

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Informative, if details claimed be real, are such

Revisado: 07-17-24

Of course, this is a very grim fictional tale. The author reads it herself and in many places goes into vividly describing details I would rather skip over.
The only reason I listened to this is to better understand the conditions under which this might happen, timeline, technicalities of deployed countermeasures, and what procedures are likely to be put in motion in case of a one-off nuthead launching a nuke or two.

There are some details I didn't know of shared here. I suspect some of them are the author's best guess but some are claimed to be backed by official sources.

The TL;DR of this story is that two nukes launched by North Korea cause a limited launch of ~50 nuke back at NC by the USA, which get mistaken by the Russians as 100+ launched at Russia, and so Russia mistakenly launches most of it's arsenal at the USA. I stopped listening there as the rest of the story can only contain vivid descriptions of a nuclear apocalypse unfolding.

In this story - Russian officers and ministers are extremely stubborn/arrogant in refusing to call a phonecall from a U.S. minister of defense to Putin, claiming Putin will only take a phonecall from anyone less. He admits the uncertainty of the situation but would rather end the world than speak to someone less than the POTUS.

While one would hope that neither the Russians nor any other nuclear nation's leaders are so stubborn and arrogant, this story also describes a war game experiment which took place specifically to evaluate the probabilities of world leaders losing their cool and launching most of their weapons under conditions of extreme stress and uncertain information. The result of that experiment, conducted multiple times - allegedly showed that it is EXTREMELY LIKELY that at least one link, in at least one chain - will snap under the stress, and that will overwhelmingly likely escalate out of control immediately. Unfortunately, that is the nature of humankind. It appears unrealistic to expect or even hope that noone of the multiple people involved will show adamant resolve under stress and abstain from authorizing launch, even if they get very convincing-looking information suggesting their country is under WOMD attack.

Many details are classified, as they should be. However, one student of history and human nature might reasonably expect humans under the extreme stress of believed WOMD launch at their nation to behave, well - more or less like humans under extreme stress have behaved in countless others situations throughout history. The conclusions are rather pessimistic.

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Sounds legit, but has some facts wrong

Revisado: 07-12-24

Reads well. Author sounds informed. Until in a number of niche topics the author's lack of knowledge or incorrect understanding shows through.
After I've encountered this thrice - I started wondering whether the other "facts" of this books are simply guesses or fantasy?
Enjoy the book but take everything with a grain or more of salt - don't rush to too many conclusions based on this book. And if something sounds odd - it might very well be on the author.

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Just a personal story, not a guide.

Revisado: 06-11-24

The author simply tells her life story, with lots of personal details, which could perhaps to some extent be said to be typical for gen-Z, but a lot of them are personally unique and not generalizeable.
2.5 hrs in - I haven't heard anything that could be actionable to my situation.

Perhaps it can be entertaining for people who enjoy reality stories, but this is not a "guide" in any way.

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A narrative, without specific advice for commoners

Revisado: 11-27-23

While I enjoyed this book, and can confirm many of the things mentioned with personal observations and analysis - I was hoping it would contain more specific advice on ways a common american working- or middle-class citizen can push back on this.

Alas, this book only mentions a callout for rich conservatives to buy media companies and steer them into creating more pro-american, conservative media.

Also in this book, the author claims that Ray Dalio affirmed China's dominance as unavoidable and imminent. I've read Ray Dalio myself and disagree with such a claim: Ray Dalio describes a pattern of how history turned out in the past, and points out evidence of the cycle repeating itself with the US-China in the 21-st century, however Dalio specifically avoided making any assertions about fate being sealed. Quite the contrary - he urges people to do everything in our ability to break the pattern. History rhymes, but it doesn't necessarily need to repeat itself. But that's another story.

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Idolising the concept

Revisado: 09-08-23

Idolising the concept of a "Sigma", as "very rare" and "what 99.9% of women want".
Of course not. Of course waay more than a 0.1% of women would prefer a compliant Beta to someone whom "they cannot compete with intellectually".
Of course Sigmas cannot be better than "Alphas" as leaders because leadership requires, yes, being socially adapted and fitting into the hierarchy Sigmas love to hate and avoid.
The book might make a lot of men think they are Sigmas, because it lists so many different things, including mutually contradicting ones.

But what do I know? I'm just an introverted, reclusive Beta.

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Dystopian - despite promising contrary

Revisado: 09-04-23

Most stories here are picturing a future rather dystopian. The author calls himself an experienced AI expert, and seems to not see the storiea as such. But pretty much all of them depict a future I would rathet not live in. And I'm also a software engineer, game developer turned aerospace engineer. I've an M.S. in Computer Science and have programmed simple neural networks, but that doesn't mean I in any shape or form wish to accelerate a future in which robots are the main actors in society, and humans are kind if glorified pets/passengers at best.

I believe that AI as it's being developed, and as rather realistically shown in this picture - will decrease more people's qualitu of life than increase.

The author talks about manual car driving, and car ownership - becoming outlawed as if it's an inevitable and good thing - but I say F that!

His last story I skipped because it's prologue mentions the setting of "by 2041, most if not all people's basic needs will be met, so people will seek ways to redifine happiness" - this is no longer "scientific fiction", not evem science fiction I'd say, this is high fantasy land. Ditto for conventions about "wars where no humans are killed, only robots destroy each other" - lacks fundamental understanding of how and when REAL wars are fought. Not the practice wars fought by the U.S. military which writes its own rules if war.

At this point as an engineer somewhat knowledgeable in AI I wish the people in power make a FULL STOP - giving up dreams of robotic servants/weapons, in favor of the majotity's way of living. But it's impossible to have everyone do it simultaneously. And if some do and others don't - the latter are at a loss. So the race to the bottom will continue.

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Doesn't explain the hottest issues

Revisado: 07-26-23

This book tells a lot about how Soros has messed with plenty of foreign governments, often speaking clearly negative about what they are doing. Blames plenty of people as corrupt while admitting his own lies and trechery from years ago.
Doesn't exactly shed much light on what exactly this "Open Society" is, it's foundation, and how his activity is supposed to improve anyone's lives.

What he does speak of in great detail - are economics. He is certainly competent in that as evidenced by both his wealth and this book. Perhaps he did foresee the 2008 crysis and was right about most or even everything his says in those chapters. Sure did better than most.

The philantropy part - remains largely him patting himself on the back.

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Good read for liberals.

Revisado: 07-10-23

I'd say this book is a good read for liberals because they might learn something about the party they support and they might, just might, rethink their views after reading this. Unfortunately, those are the people least likely to read this.

For Conservatives - this book is not particularly useful since it's giving plenty of reasons "why", but few answers to "how". I was only told about the problems I'm already painfully aware of. Okay I've learned a few details about what democrats did or tried to do, which I didn't know before - but they only reinforce my views. It's not really offering actionable solutions, unfortunately.

Also, Dick Morris has a speech quirk, possibly due to tongue cancer removal which he mentioned at one point, which makes his voice not the best for a narrator, but that's just aesthetics.

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