Techops @eff. Also dumb music, bad ideas, the yoozh, etc.
Reads: "literary" fiction, skiffy, general non-fiction, tech management, comix, your recs
Masto: infosec.exchange/@starchy
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Getting Things Done (GTD) is a personal productivity system developed by David Allen and published …
Genuinely good organizational advice wrapped in an obnoxious self-helpy presentation, all explicitly written to a target audience of cishet white male executives with assistants and maids and summer houses. Useful if you can grit your teeth and push through it, totally understandable if you can't.
In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a …
There's so much in here. It bears another read, and I'm very curious how they managed the film adaptation.
A lot of Engineering Managers and leaders studied for years and years to become the …
I appreciated Sarah's general outlook on management, and I'm sure there's plenty of good advice in the book, but it needed an editor. Or a different editor. Or a different writer and editor.
Too much of the first few chapters were like trying read a marketing blog or an HR email, not a book I wanted to study or curl up with. I gave up as soon as I got to to this sentence:
"A larger action item: try to change any processes or patch any misalignments that exist around the person that might alleviate the disconnects."
The layout is really nice, though.
Margaret Killjoy’s stories have appeared for years in science fiction and fantasy magazines both major …
Great collection of genre stories, all with a strong transfeminist anarchist bent. Lots of horror, some dark fantasy, some cyberpunk, some just, I don't know... metal? A couple misses for me but I love her overall outlook and approach and all her protagonists feel like they could be real people in my friend circle without being too same-y, either.
Remind me not to climb Sagarmatha (Everest) no matter how much it's there.
Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always …
What a lovely tale of identity, family, acceptance, and binge-watching Pirate Exiles under a blanket fort.
This follows the Imperial Radch Trilogy much more directly than Provenance did - I would definitely read those books first. But do. And then read this one.
How games are being harnessed as instruments of exploitation—and what we can do about it …
I appreciated Hon's willingness to avoid oversimplification in favor of accepting nuance throughout the book, which otherwise could have come across as an extended TED talk. I found the chapters on workplace and educational gamification particularly relevant and galling, and thought the exploration of ARGs as an insight into Qanon was fascinating.
One minor source of eye-rolling is Hon comes back a bit too often to his own small business as a counterexample for how gamification can be resisted or done well. His bona fides were established early in the book, so it could have gone a long way to have some more variety in the "Do" column.
Still Alice is a 2007 novel by Lisa Genova, a neuroscientist and author. The novel …
Still Alice provides a believable and insightful view into what it's like to live with Alzheimer's Disease, specifically early-onset, or for someone in your family to come down with it, but it's hard to recommend without some big caveats.
First, the prose is often just... bad. Clumsy, forced metaphors, cliches everywhere, leaving nothing to the reader -- you name it. Second, the protagonist and her family are dripping with unexamined privilege, making them much harder to sympathize with even as their lives collapse. Finally, I kept spotting some uncomfortable expressions of ableism in the way things like addiction, mental illness, and intelligence were discussed, even as the book strives so hard to generate empathy for those with AD.
And yet, it's very successful, even powerful in this mission. Just don't go in expecting much more.
One other side note: the scientific consensus has changed a lot (and if anything, become …
Still Alice provides a believable and insightful view into what it's like to live with Alzheimer's Disease, specifically early-onset, or for someone in your family to come down with it, but it's hard to recommend without some big caveats.
First, the prose is often just... bad. Clumsy, forced metaphors, cliches everywhere, leaving nothing to the reader -- you name it. Second, the protagonist and her family are dripping with unexamined privilege, making them much harder to sympathize with even as their lives collapse. Finally, I kept spotting some uncomfortable expressions of ableism in the way things like addiction, mental illness, and intelligence were discussed, even as the book strives so hard to generate empathy for those with AD.
And yet, it's very successful, even powerful in this mission. Just don't go in expecting much more.
One other side note: the scientific consensus has changed a lot (and if anything, become less clear) in the years since Still Alice was published, so be sure to read the otherwise well informed discussion of AD mechanisms with a grain of salt.
"How the police endanger us and why we need to find an alternative. Recent years …
If you're already in that camp much of the book will read like preaching to the choir, and it's not exactly a fun read, but it's extremely well researched and provides a ton of insightful background.