Initially, about Brexit.

The first part presents how bad is the world with neo-populists around the world and how we should not generalise and criticise politics. Not very positive.

The second part is an invitation to participate in politics, campaigning.

Bought in New York, in Forbidden Planet 2025.

Suggested by Nick Sousanis in an interview, author of Unflattening. Maybe referenced in that book.

I liked very much how the story telling flows with imagenative comic techniques. I am not sure how much of the essence of the litaray work from Paul Auster is respected or enhanced by the medium, though, so I will have to read the original work.

But I loved the craf from the authors, in some cases reminding me of Asterios Polyp, and loved too the depictions of New York and the references to philosophy of language.

I thought it could be related to Philosophy of Mind but it is fundamentally about bilology and neuroscience.

I thought it would be more about phylosophy but it was purely neurobiology and neuroscience, how parts of our body and chemicals interact in particular to generate emotions and the concept of self.

The author starts with patients who have suffered accidents and lost part of their prefrontal cortex, so that they cannot experience emotions. These people struggle in decision making and the whole argument is about somatic markers of emotions and how emotions are useful to decision making. Cold rationality is not better.

I watched an interview, or listened to it, and I bought the Audiobook.

Scary story of egos: Musk, Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Wojciech Zaremba, Andrej Karpathy, Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei.

Timnit Gebru fired from Google for wanting to publish a research paper, and justified becasue she was not using internal data. Margaret Mitchell.

I was expecting more references to water. I didn’t like that it was a man-hunt on Sam Altman, regardless of all his flaws.

It surprised me the relationship with his two brothers (working with him) and with her sister, who even accused him of sexual abuse.

References to drugs all over the place (eg. Sam using ketamine because it was prescribed for depression). Also a Polish member organising trecks with the plan to have sex. And the reference to abusive companies in Kenia and Venezuela was over-emphasised.

I liked to listen to the story, instead of reading it, and I liked the author-reader, but it was too negative, too targetted, and sometimes I felt I could not believe the author.

Currently reading.

On Engineering Experience, Developer Experience, measuring productivity and AI. From a researcher and the DX founder.

I bought it with extra credits after a subscription and I selected it because it was a best seller: their marketing was good.

I was shocked about the basics of the proposal. The author, a motivational speaker, explains the story of his youngest son preparing for the prom ball. Her daughters, already in the Uni, had prepared for the prom for months in advance, dress, dinner, and everything, and his son decided the week before, and the very day of the event it was raining. The author wanted to fix the situation and one daughter was telling her “let them, let them”.

She realised that she had to release control, posted something in social media, and it went viral. Some people started messaging her and even posting tattoos with “Let Them”. Then she decided to publish a book.

The idea of the control, “let them” and “let me” is superficial and basic, but it seems it has worked for many people. She uses the idea for neighbours, politics, career, family, and everything.

I liked listening to the author, sometimes emotional, and sharing personal stories.

Beautiful voice and beautiful narration. The beginning contains the mythology of the creation of the world and it is full humour and connections to the language. The second part is disjointed with some random stories.

But is an excellent audiobook and I would not mind having the book.

Una obra ambientada en la Barcelona de la postguerra, con una gran presencia de la contienda, pero sin rencor. Andrea, una chica de 18 años, de pueblo, se muda con su familia a Barcelona, a la calle Aribau, para ir a la universidad. Vive con abuela, sus tíos Juan (el pintor), Román (el músico casado con Gloria y con un bebé), Angustias, y la criada Antonia (que también cuida de Trueno, el perro). De la universidad conoce a Ena y otros jóvenes, algunos que van de bohemios.

Me ha gustado mucho la manera de explicar la historia y describir el ambiente, todo narrado por Andrea.

La edición también muy cuidada, con textos adicionales al final.

Ganó el primer premio Nadal y la autora tenía 23 años cuando la escribió.

I liked it very much.

It is a very old Sci-Fi novel, published in 1969, and some things may be obsolete, but the relationship between the protagonist and the idea of a human-like civilisation trying to connect markets in the galaxy, is not foreign. The Ekumen, founded by the Hainish people.

The progragonist is a black man from the earth how has travelled years to get to Winter, or Gethen for the locals, a hostile planet where the inhabitants are asexual, all alike. Every year or so the get into kemmer, a month where masculine of femenine attributes are acquired, seemingly randomly, and they have a drive to sex. When they are not in kemmer they are in somer.

“The king is pregnant” is a shocking phrase. Anyone can be pregnant and anyone can bear children. Children are brought up by the group.

It is considered the first feminist novel.