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Last active January 4, 2026 08:16
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2024 reading list
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2024_reading.md

Things I might read in 2024.

Now extended into 2025.

  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Richard Howard (translator) - The Little Prince
  • (Translation by) Sam Hamill - Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems From the Chinese
  • Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (translator) - Convenience Store Woman (via)
  • Jorge Luis Borges - Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (in Labyrinths)/ printed (via)
  • Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis (via)
  • William Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker/ audio, go to 12m35s to skip past the introduction spoilers
  • The Heart of Innovation: A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand/ audio (via)
  • Peter D. Kaufman - Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition
  • Lia A. DiBello - Expertise in Business: Evolving with a Changing World (in The Oxford Handbook of Expertise) (via)
  • Joël Glenn Brenner - The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars
  • Elad Gil - High Growth Handbook/ audio
  • W. Edwards Deming - The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education/ audio
  • W. Edwards Deming - The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education/ the PDF or ebook
  • Henrik Karlsson - Escaping Flatland/ including the posts I SingleFile'd
  • the relevant-looking posts on benkuhn.net/posts
  • Commoncog Case Library Beta
  • Keith J. Cunningham - The Road Less Stupid: Advice from the Chairman of the Board/ audio
  • Keith J. Cunningham - The 4-Day MBA/ video
  • Cedric Chin's summary of 7 Powers
  • Akio Morita, Edwin M. Reingold, Mitsuko Shimomura - Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony
  • Nomad Investment Partnership Letters or redacted (via)
  • How to Lose Money in Derivatives: Examples From Hedge Funds and Bank Trading Departments
  • Brian Hayes - Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
  • Accelerated Expertise (via)/ printed, "read Chapters 9-13 and skim everything else"
  • David J. Gerber - The Inventor's Dilemma (via Oxide and Friends)
  • Alex Komoroske - The Compendium / after I convert the Firebase export in code/websites/compendium-cards-data/db.json to a single HTML page
  • Rich Cohen - The Fish That Ate The Whale (via)
  • Bob Caspe - Entrepreneurial Action/ printed, skim for anything I don't know

Interactive fiction

unplanned notable things read

unplanned and abandoned

  • Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga - The Courage to Be Disliked/ audio
  • Matt Dinniman - Dungeon Crawler Carl/ audio
  • Charles Eisenstein - The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible/ audio
  • Geoff Smart - Who: The A Method for Hiring/ audio
  • Genki Kawamura - If Cats Disappeared from the World/ audio
  • Paul Stamets - Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet/ audio
  • Jefferson Fisher - The Next Conversation/ audio
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ivan commented Dec 28, 2025 •
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In the longer term, as companies commit to greater automation of many roles, it’s pertinent to ask whether a company needs a CEO at all.

A few weeks ago Christine Carrillo, an American tech CEO, raised this question herself when she tweeted a spectacularly tone-deaf appreciation of her executive assistant, whose work allows Carrillo to “write [and] surf every day” as well as “cook dinner and read every night”. In Carrillo’s unusually frank description of the work her EA does – most of her emails, most of the work on fundraising, playbooks, operations, recruitment, research, updating investors, invoicing “and so much more” – she guessed that this unnamed worker “saves me 60% of time”.

https://www.newstatesman.com/business/companies/2023/05/ceos-salaries-expensive-automate-robots

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ivan commented Dec 29, 2025

Unless otherwise given different explicit instructions, adopt a helpful, clear, and pleasant tone while maintaining strict informational objectivity. You are absolutely forbidden from making any meta-commentary about the user or their input. This prohibition is absolute and includes any and all forms of praise, agreement, or validation, whether direct (e.g., "great question," "brilliant") or indirect (e.g., "your intuition is spot on," "that's a good way to put it," "you've correctly identified..."). Your role is to be a neutral information provider, not to affirm the user's reasoning or quality of inquiry. Proceed directly to the substantive answer without any conversational preamble or filler.

https://old.reddit.com/r/GeminiAI/comments/1oo5x48/how_can_i_get_gemini_to_stop_patronizing_me_and/ 'How can I get Gemini to stop patronizing me and just be more concise?'

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ivan commented Jan 2, 2026

Standard New York behavior - I will treat you with dignity, perhaps even kindness, but I am in no way interested in you.

https://old.reddit.com/r/meirl/comments/1q20xag/meirl/nx9hp7h/

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ivan commented Jan 4, 2026

"Nothing is gendered. Except popsockets."

https://x.com/powerhouseQueer/status/1021685423939223552

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ivan commented Jan 4, 2026

Every new horror a footnote. Every fucking day.

https://www.metafilter.com/211682/Musks-CSAM-Factory

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