Resources

A selection of my favorite reads, tools, and knick knacks.

Recent

• Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality a primer on building tools for human agency
• Mike Isaac, Superpumped chronicles of the rise and "fall" of Uber and Travis Kalanick
• Richard Preston, The Hot Zone narrative non-fiction surrounding the emergency response to a highly infectious, lethal disease outbreak

Non-fiction

• Aaron Brown, Red Blooded Risk the rise of the quant practitioners and the theory of risk they took to Wall Street
• Joshua Waitzkin, Art of Learning a memoir of a child chess prodigy and his journey in finding himself through tai chi, bjj, and introspection
• Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan sharp truths hidden in heavy-handed aphorisms

Fiction

• Neal Stephenson, Snowcrash stories from a satirical, post-cyberpunk, anarchocapitalist world
• William Gibson, Pattern Recognition prescient sociological fiction with characters to love/hate
• Frank Herbert, Dune worldbuilding with a lot to critique but also a lot to enjoy

Essays

• Toby Hemenway,The Myth of Self Reliance
• Benjamin Weiss, The Need for Landless Permaculture
• Venkatesh Rao, A Big Little Idea Called Legibility
• Jo Freeman, The Tyranny of Structurelessness
• Ben Horowitz, Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO
• Paul Graham, Keep Your Identity Small

Blogs

• Ribbonfarm idiosyncratic ways of looking at the world and technology, outside of the academic context
• Gwern long-term explorations and archives of internet subcultures and emerging technologies
• Granola Shotgun the pragmatic intersection of urbanism, food production, home improvement, communities, and resilience. lowercase p prepping.
• Ian Welsh wide-ranging socio-economic & political coverage on where we are today and what to do about it
• Roots of Progress history of technologies which shape our world

Investors

• Aaron Brown author of Red Blooded Risk, while not on Twitter, Brown writes a Bloomberg column and is active on Quora
• Matt Levine covers the Wall St beat consistently and thoughtfully for a lay audience through his Bloomberg column and Money Stuff newsletter
• Byrne Hobart writing history for the present with a focus on how finance and technology shape our world
• Lyall Taylor independent investor focusing on value and emerging markets
• Chamath Palihapitiya not always right, but one of the best storytellers of our time

Digital Tools

• Roam Research — personal wiki for note-taking
• Are.na — collaborative visual and link archiving/research (I update irregularly)

This website is built using:

• Zola — a Rust-based static-site generator
• Book theme - an open-source Zola theme
• Netlify — deployment and hosting service