Topic
Books read as instruments rather than retold as summaries: what holds up, what does not, and where it bites at work.
13 articles
Wittgenstein's Tractatus ends by telling you to throw it away. Before that it takes apart the question everyone asks wrongly: not how much you know, but which side the answer could even be on. It is not the side made of facts. With three drawn scenes that run as you scroll.
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An unread book is not a failed read. It is a purchased option on a question you do not have yet. Why a shelf does something no folder, no store account and no chat window can do. With two drawn scenes to scroll through.
Enron didn't die of fraud. It died of a company that had trained itself out of hearing the word no. A reading note on Jeff Skilling as Achilles. And on what that has to do with Nvidia's $42 billion and the memo nobody wants to write.
In 1896 George Santayana wrote the most uncomfortable definition of beauty: it isn't in the thing. It's your pleasure, which you pin on the thing. A reading note from someone who builds exactly that for a living. With an interactive test.
Wilde's only novel argues with itself: 'There is no such thing as an immoral book.' Then it damns its hero anyway. A reading note on beauty without a conscience, from someone who builds surfaces that never age for a living.
The book isn’t the subject. A question is: why do people fall hardest right after they’ve made it? On wealth that eats itself, from the lone speculator to family businesses to Fukuyama’s “End of History.”
Re-read with a tech lens. Why 1984 is less a prediction than a tool. And where the parallels to today hold up, and where they don't.
A former Tesla President distills Musk’s five-step algorithm. Compelling. But how much of it actually transfers to a normal company, without Musk’s budget and risk appetite?
An archaeogeneticist tells human history from ancient bones: constant migration, constant mixing, and a sober warning about “Homo hybris.”
Eilenberger tells the decade 1919–1929 through Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer and Heidegger. Why Wittgenstein’s line about language is the one that won’t let me go.
Nietzsche’s polemic on the origin of good and evil, guilt and bad conscience. An uncomfortable, often-abused book, and why its method still matters.
Hesse’s last great work about a perfect intellectual game, and why its master walks away from it in the end. A reading note for anyone who builds elegant systems.
Huxley’s dystopia threatens you not with the boot but with comfort. A reading note from someone who removes friction for a living, and realizes he’s on the wrong side of the book.