Miha Rekar

After being so enthralled by Blueprint For Revolution I wanted to read another book by Srđa. Unfortunately this one is a very short and somehow watered-down version of Blueprint's highlights. It focuses only on dilemma actions: what they are and why they work. Then there's some extra talk about laughtivism, but again, nothing that Blueprint doesn't cover.

The only new datapoint for me was a link to a BBC article which claims that nonviolent protests engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.

So yeah, feel free to skip this one. But do read Blueprint For Revolution. Please.

I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but when I do, it's by strong recommendations. This one came from many people and I enjoyed it a lot. There were way too many Finnish town names and names in general, but outside of that I had a lot of fun.

Hustle porn, competitiveness, there can only be one mentality, americanisms. Feel free to skip this one.

Not as good as the A Charming Mass Suicide, in places quite predictable. Enjoyable nonetheless.

Prebral v manj kot dnevu, toplo priporočam. Ni vrhunec literature, tudi dodaten lektorski pregled ne bi škodil, ampak vsebina je vrhunska. Komaj čakam dopolnitve z nadaljnimi Matejevimi zgodbami.

Amazing book. Audio version suffers from poor recording quality, but still. I don't consider myself spiritual yet this book was very thought provoking. There are a bit of mumbo-jumbo-knows-everything-guru parts but if you can look past that - can not recommend it enough.

Absolutely fantastic book. It should be a required reading for everyone. Mongols were so far ahead of their time it's hard to believe. Equality and coexistence of religions, nationalities, races,...everything was standard under Genghis and even more under Kublai. European image of them could not be more wrong. While we were burning witches they had an open debates (with lots of alcohol) amongst Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists. Mind blowing.

It's amazing how well a book written in the year I was born holds up to this day. I read the second edition in which some things are updated and it sure feels like the author is trying to predict the future to stay relevant. But I don't think he has to.

Anyway, great book, everyone who makes stuff should read it.

I found ‘The Art of Learning' to be a pretty interesting read, especially getting into the head of someone who went from being a chess whiz kid to a martial arts champ. The book's got some cool stories about his life in both arenas. But if you're looking for a step-by-step guide to self-improvement or something, this might not hit the mark. The author's super competitive, and that's just not me, so I couldn't really connect with a lot of his advice. That said, as a story, it's well-written and engaging. Plus, there's this neat bit about his Slovenian girlfriend, which added a personal touch to his story.

Everything we know about wolves, from the viewpoint of science, biology, mythology, fairytales, and personal experience. The book is very well written and offers many details and all aspects of wolves and their relationship with people. In the past couple of years, there's been a change in public opinion about wolves and how not bad they are.

The first time I remember being mindblown about wolves was seeing the TEDx talk by Miha Krofel: Living with wolves. And I can still recommend it as a great starting point. If you enjoy that video, then I can wholeheartedly recommend this book. If not, well, then not.

A very interesting insight in history of humanity and trade. How we go between periods of credit based and debit based societies. Money didn't just start existing - the whole history as dirty, convoluted, and crazy.

The book gets a bit long and boring at times but still an interesting read.

Odlična knjiga, ki nas popelje v pandemično leto 2020 skozi Mazzinijeve oči. Avtobiografski roman v kratkih poglavjih skače skozi obdobja Mihovega življenja in pripoveduje prepletajoče se zgodbe. Vse od strašnega otroštva, ki sta ga s svojimi domišljijami in sanjami definirali njegova mama in stara mama, do partnerskega odnosa, ki se je kar šestkrat prekinil, ter vse vmes.

Avtor se odloči spopasti s svojimi travmami s “čudežnimi rešitvami” od hoje po žerjavici, DMT-ja, 10-dnevne Vipassane, do in šamanskih ritualov do hoje po Caminu. Vseh se loti v klasičnem skeptičnem in kritičnem Mazzinijevem slogu, a iz vsake potegne neke nove zaključke.

Prek vseh teh zgodb pa knjiga komunicira samo eno: medčloveške odnose. Vsak bralec se bo najbrž spominjal svojih zgodb, ki so paralele avtorjevim in tako poleg zabavnega branja dobil tudi precej materiala za premišljevanje o lastnih odnosih.

Še obvezen citat:
>Nagrada avtorju kolumn je, ko ga hkrati zmerjajo levi in desni, pohvala razumu, da ga žalijo svečenice novodobnosti, kompliment znanstveniku, da ne naseda ideološkim frazam in čast pisatelju, da ga policijski minister imenuje državna sramota. Kot piše v Bibliji: Bog izpljune mlačne.

Edina kritika, ki jo lahko dam knjigi je spremna beseda. Avtorica je bolj zainteresirana v komuniciranju lastne razgledanosti in vsevednosti, kot pa nameniti besedo knjigi, ki naj bi jo pospremila. Ker je postavljena na konec knjige tako pusti grenak priokus fantastičnemu zaključku Mazzinijevih besed.

I heard good things about this book from an activism perspective. So I went into it hoping I'll learn something about that. And while there certainly are some good ideas, it's very outdated (internet and social media only mentioned in passing), focusing primarily on pamphlets and showing VCR tapes (yes, really) on a TV and educating people who pass by.

The vast, vast majority of the book is about why we should stop eating animals. And while there's nothing wrong with that, and I agree that in the future we'll look back at this period of factory farming with horror, it is not why I picked up this book or what I hoped to get out of it.

So if you need convincing to go vegetarian/vegan, and/or are interested in spreading that word, give this book a go. It's great. But if you're not in the subsection of that Venn diagram, feel free to skip it.

The book has come highly recommended by many, and while I'm a fan of Rick Rubin in general, I must admit that this book left me quite underwhelmed.

The book was line after line after line of superficial inspirational quotes that were interspersed with inspirational quotes written by others. While these are undoubtedly profound teachings, their representation in this book felt like a repackaging rather than a fresh perspective.

I know where he's coming from, but the focus on musicians seemed limiting, sidelining other forms of creativity.

Also what the hell was up with the audiobook version? Chiming bell at the end of each chapter is something you expect in a cultist book, not a serious read.

Unbelievable read. How this kind of stories are happening in our timeline inside a 1st world country is beyond my understanding. It goes to show how incredibly dangerous it is to have no/poor education, how susceptible you are to lies and conspiracies, and mostly how hard it is for children to escape that. Great book, great story, greatly written. Highly recommended!

There's nothing really ground-breaking in this book. Certainly nothing “Unorthodox”. There's a ton of Americanisms and US work mentality: work as much as you can, sleep as little as you can, and when you dream - dream about work. Which are not the views I agree with. At all.

However, the book is interesting as a memoir - a look behind the curtains at General Magic, Philips, Apple, Nest, and Google. Especially the parts about iPod and iPhone development and extremely tight deadlines.

A nice overall view of what it means to be a founder, a CEO, and a leader in a successful or less successful startup.

Much better than the title would have you believe. I really enjoyed all the stories in the book. It was much less about the weird subtitle of company losing soul, but all about Jony Ive, Tim, Cook, and Steve Jobs and the differences between the way these people work, think, and manage other people. It's one of the best history books on Apple I've read so far with tremendous amount of detail.

I was already a big fan of Michael Schur and his work. Everything from The Office, to Parks and Recreations, but most of all The Good Place. If you enjoyed the philosophy from the latter show, as I did, you'll eat this book up. I can especially recommend the audiobook version since it's narrated by the author and the cast of The Good Place. Yes, that includes Kristen Bell and Ted Danson.

In the book, Michael tries to explain the most important moral philosophies in his view: virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism, contractualism, ubuntu, and existentialism. And if your eyes glazed over just now, this book is for you. Because he does it in such an entertaining way that you'll almost forget you're reading about moral philosophy. And that's the highest praise anyone can give.

And don't be deceived by the title. There's a whole chapter on making a case for why “moral perfection” is both impossible to attain and a bad idea to even attempt. This book simply tries to convey ideas by which you could live your life in ways that'll make you a better person. Or, to paraphrase Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

So (re)watch The Good Place and then tackle this book. Again, I strongly recommend the audio version.

I was always a big fan of Dyson products and this book pretty much solidified my views about the company. They really care about engineerins details and will go against the grain if it means they might create a better product. They believe in family ownership of the company which I could not agree more. I see Dyson's values as a sort of hybrid between Apple and Patagonia.

Though there are many things I disagree with James - mainly patents. He thinks they should be easier to get and longer lasting to increase competitive advantage of companies / patent owners. I think this would increase patent trolls and be a huge net negative. He claims no one would invest time and money into producing things if patents would be less protected. But we only need to look at open source software or Wikipedia to see that is clearly not the case.

He's also a proponent for Brexit since he claims European countries always want to get their own way and since there is so much lobbying going on in EU that ends up hurting Dyson. While I agree that there's way too much lobbying and it being detrimental to EU citizens, it's naïve to believe same thing does and will not happen in UK alone. Also, precisely because UK always wants things their own way, is why we all ended up in this mess.

But all in all it is a good autobiography and I can certainly recommend a read.

I'm a huge fan of Apocalypse Never so I was quite interested by the premise of this book as well. It goes against the popular believes, yet somehow makes perfect sense.

Main idea of the book is that we should focus on treating mental illness, building as many shelters as possible, and cleaning up open-air drug markets. De-institutionalisation of mental illness and housing-first initiatives are the root of homelessness. There's also the problem of misaligned incentives where the homelessness nonprofits whole intention is to keep more people in this cycle, because they're getting money for it.

And now a long quote:
How and why do progressives ruin cities?
They divert funding from homeless shelters to permanent supportive housing, resulting in insufficient shelter space. They defend the right of people they characterize as Victims to camp on sidewalks, in parks, and along highways, as well as to break other laws, including against public drug use and defecation. They intimidate experts, policy makers, and journalists by attacking them as being motivated by a hatred of the poor, people of color, and the sick, and as causing violence against them. They reduce penalties for shoplifting, drug dealing, and public drug use. They prefer homelessness and incarceration to involuntary hospitalization for the mentally ill and addicted. And their ideology blinds them to the harms of harm reduction, Housing First, and camp-anywhere policies, leading them to misattribute the addiction, untreated mental illness, and homeless crisis to poverty and to policies and politicians dating back to the 1980s.

It could be about half the size, since I find many chapters repetitive. But all in all a very good book and I can truly recommend it.

Genuinely surprised by this book. Very straight-forward, no bullshit, some practical examples, and overall lessons that just make sense. I'm currently single and the book made it very clear why the last relationship ended. Makes perfect sense. Highly recommend it.

I “read” the audiobook version which is prefaced with a nice interview so that's an extra plus.

Most likely the book that had the biggest effect on my life in the past several years. It explained the stoic philosophy in simple terms. It made a valid point that one should have a philosophy of life. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as you have a set of values. Otherwise you're just wandering around, living day-to-day, and then wake up one day with that scary thought: what the hell am I doing with my life?

After reading this I read a lot of books from Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and the bunch. It's, at the same time, insane and awesome how so little has changed in over 2400 years. They had the same problems we have and they developed several practices on how to navigate them. Many of the them resonate with me and I'm trying to live a better life by following them.

And it works. I'm happier, less stressed, have a more positive outlook on life, problems disturb me less,... I'm not saying you have to follow stoic philosophy. But you should have a life philosophy you follow. And this book is as good of an intro as any.

First, the title Cultish should be read as in English, Swedish, not as cult-like. Amanda explores the languages cults use - everything from Jonestown, Heaven's Gate, and Scientology to SoulCycle, Peloton, Amway, and QAnon. If you're into cults or communication, you'll enjoy this book.

What was most profound to me was the term “thought-terminating cliché.” Coined in 1961 by the psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton, this term refers to catchphrases aimed at halting an argument from moving forward by discouraging critical thought. Cultish leaders often call on thought-terminating clichés, also known as semantic stop signs, to hastily dismiss dissent or rationalize flawed reasoning.

Before you think, “I wouldn't fall for that,” ask yourself about the language used in all of the groups you are a part of in your daily life. Mantras, jargon, acronyms, and group-specific phrases, all inspire a sense of intrigue, so potential recruits will want to know more; then, once they're in, it creates camaraderie, such that they start to look down on people who aren't privy to this exclusive code.” Some psychologists call this “loaded language.” It is present far beyond the groups that many would quickly label as a cult.

Other than language, the biggest lure is being a part of a group or filling a need for a sense of belonging. It's also, on some level, a desire to better oneself – spiritually, intellectually, and physically.

So yeah, a fascinating book, and certainly a topic I want to explore more.

Is it entertaining? Sure! Is it hilarious? No.
Did I learn anything new? Sure! Is it knowledge I can ever use? No.

It's an OK book. You won't regret reading it, but, really, your time is probably better spent reading something else.

For all you Chernobyl fans out there: 3.6.

The book offers a good overview of the history of transportation and some prediction about where we're going. It's filled with tons of interesting information, so I've highlighted it all over.

For example, did you know that the oldest actual wheel ever found was discovered in Ljubljana Marshes in Slovenia? Or that wheels were not widely used for thousands of years after their invention.

There are a bunch of fun anecdotes from the history and stories of how various technologies were competing for dominance and why petrol-powered ICE won.

There's even some managerial advice from Ford himself: “the payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made.” It turns out that paying higher wages was a way of cutting costs and improving efficiency: it reduced employee turnover and hence the amount of time needed for training.

It also talks about suburban America, how that made them completely car-dependent, and how car drivers “won” over pedestrians over street ownership. In the closing chapters, he also talks about how this trend is reverting in many cities and how a varied slew of public transportation options are better for health and climate.

The book really is all over the place, so it's hard to give it a proper review or, for that matter, five stars. But I definitely recommend reading it.