Anders H.

Could have been so much better

Revisado: 06-29-24

I really think the author is on to something important, but the different stories and overall message is a bit lost among all the things needed to be told.

I would like to see an editor remove some chunks of it. As an example at the end he claims to end the book and starts with some kind of summary, but decide to tell a rather long story about the microwave oven. That story is interesting by itself but it’s not part of an ending nor a summary… and its message has already been told when discussing the light bulb. I.e there are no one genius, only good marketing stories that obscures understanding of true development.

The important thing that is obscured by the non existing editorial work is visible in the European triple helix thinking, and is utterly wrong - universities discover something, and then they tell companies about it, companies develop products. Repeat. It just doesn’t work like that. I would really like a shorter and edited book to throw onto the politicians here in Europe :-)

Then we have the issue of woke. Universities must tell stories about female engineers to get funded, but I think it should be done in another way. How does the satellite story fit with “the engineering method”? if that’s what the book is about? Rule of thumb? To me it’s just another story about the lone genius that is not understood until after his death (like Tesla!) which is the opposite of what the book is about. I would really like an editor to go through everything and sort out these things and kill some darlings.

I would have recommended the book to a lot of people, since the message is important - science is not engineering is not science.
But now I’m beg for an edited version first…

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One of the best books at audible. Entertaining as well as interesting new facts

Revisado: 06-18-24

I got this book on recommendation and it was astonishingly good!

Very good reader!
Very good book!
Very interesting!

I never thought economics could make such an interesting read, but it is very well written and organized. I learnt tons of new information about why and how, in a history I thought I knew.

With a perspective of economics many things become logical as well as opportunistic.

There are also a lot of things that reassembles the current war in Ukraine. The basic underlying economics and time to strike before Russia no longer can… just like Nazi germany. Even the same struggle against the United States as a world power… in the minds of lunatics.

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Feels like a summary of the internets diets

Revisado: 02-20-24

The books are short, but it also says that the author has tried the diets for a year and then decided to write the book. The two different books also contradict each other, the second with recommendations to eat carbs etc, the first to just eat meat. It’s basically just a summary of several diets with no deeper knowledge than a few hours on the internet will give you.
As a short introduction they might work, but for insights… nah. You can’t bring this with you to the doctor really.

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Finally a stoic that makes sense

Revisado: 02-09-23

An interesting book to listen too. Was recommended Epictetus since I did not find the other Stoics coherent or just not well thought. Marcus Aurelius and some modern Silicon Valley types simply seems to shallow.

Here are the real explanations to thoughts like why a free person close to Nero is still not much more than a slave, and also the cases were you really should not be so strict to let everyone take advantage of you.

I did have some problems with a bit advanced English (it’s not my mother tongue) from time to time. There were also a few words that seemed quite new and maybe not used in Greece.
At some parts I lost my concentration while driving, and now I wonder if I missed something really interesting and need to go back ;-)

Anyway, the way these ideas has affect christianity is paramount and also discussed a little at the last comment chapter which was nice to have to be able to put everything into a bigger context.

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Skipped tv for the last hour

Revisado: 04-29-22

A bit long in the middle but worth the listen. And yeah I had to listen to the last hour instead of watching tv this Friday evening.

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Not what I thought but good

Revisado: 04-21-22

Makes a good commute listening as it jumps back and fourth in time.

Reading the news on Ukraine and the daily war news it is interesting to read what and how things happened back then as nothing has changed.

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The chess player

Revisado: 01-28-22

Being a huge fan of his Zero to One, I found this book interesting for other reasons.
First it gives a background to Thiels religious and conservative views from his childhood so you can start to understand him.
Then it gives a very interesting perspective for me as a European into US politics and the conservative media world of reality distortion that seems to be a fun game to do at Stanford for people that takes extreme conservative standpoints. Just to identify themselves with something else and build an identity and eventually a career out of it. I know people that are exactly like this and sort of Mensa material, but here they don’t work very well with the rest of society. In the US they seems to flourish and move into power. Very strange, but also very interesting to understand.

My understanding of Thiel after reading this is that he plays simultaneous chess with almost everything he does. Something he loved to do in his teenage years but now with real people, money, companies and politics.

The book is very critical of Thiels work, but it’s well written, almost like a detective story to uncover Thiel, and the voice reader is one of the best. Thus I finished this book in record times.

I do think the book will need an update of the later chapters in a few years as it spends a lot of time with Trump, the Pandemic and Silicon Valley that might be viewed differently in a few years.

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Probably the best book I’ve listened to

Revisado: 08-30-21

After having accepted the initial, a bit nagging voice, I looked forward to the commute and this book every time.

Really interesting topic, a lot of facts and the authors own histories about research among million year old skeletons and top athletics. The very top modern science from last year along with good historical explanation on why we have been so wrong before. It’s also filled with some dark sarcastic humor that makes it outstanding in that even though some chapters not directly covering the exact topic I’m interested in, ( energy consumption of travel by air) , it was not a dull moment to listen to.

I found myself rewinding 30 seconds many times to just get the facts right. Was it 32 million US citizens who did not have access to good food stores in food deserts? And how was that linked to obesity? As an example from the last and somewhat off topic chapter.

My wife got fed up with me, talking about the different topics the book covered, but it was so interesting! -do you know monkeys do not get fat as we do? That they hardly move during a day? And that they do not help feed each other?

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Interesting but my mind wanders off

Revisado: 10-20-20

Interesting, but I found myself thinking of completely different things and then the speaker was talking about some modern philosophers and I had missed the connection.
I’m not really sure why, but there might be a lack of pauses between important concepts. Like a constant stream of worlds.

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Context around the writing of the book

Revisado: 09-14-20

I liked that it gave a very interesting description about 600 Mecha.

It’s a series of lectures, not that long, but not too short either.

This a good introduction on what to look for and why it is written as it is.

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