This is close to the heart of the problem in the health”care” industry. No One ever even looks at the accretion of rules upon rules upon rules to ascertain their cumulate weight. Over the course of my work as a physician, with every passing day I became less of an information gatherer and intelligent, rational agent and more a data-entry clerk and ventriloquist’s dummy. The result is that any actual human empathy and caring are anathema and must be excised from the system. To that extent, “mission accomplished”!
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Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis was published today (2023-10-03).
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324074337/?tag=fourmilabwwwfour
This is the story of the spectacular rise and vertiginous fall of FTX and its eccentric founder (and Effective Altruism cultist) Sam Bankman-Fried, told by Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short, and Flash Boys. From Amazon’s description:
When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?
In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own―until it all came undone.
The Kindle edition arrived on my tablet today.
(Update to refresh Amazon link.)
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Overlord by Kurt Schlichter, the eighth novel in the People’s Republic series, was published on 2023-10-01.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CK3PWJQ9/?tag=fourmilabwwwfour
Kurt Schlichter’s People’s Republic series (link is to my review of the first novel in the series) chronicles, with wry humour, a future in which the current Cold Civil War between the Reds and the Blues (I’m old enough to remember when Commies were the Reds) goes hot.
As the third decade of the twenty-first century progressed, the Cold Civil War which had been escalating in the United States since before the turn of the century turned hot when a Democrat administration decided to impose their full agenda—gun confiscation, amnesty for all illegal aliens, restrictions on fossil fuels—all at once by executive order. The heartland defied the power grab and militias of the left and right began to clash openly. Although the senior officer corps were largely converged to the leftist agenda, the military rank and file which hailed largely from the heartland defied them, and could not be trusted to act against their fellow citizens. Much the same was the case with police in the big cities: they began to ignore the orders of their political bosses and migrate to jobs in more congenial jurisdictions.
With a low-level shooting war breaking out, the opposing sides decided that the only way to avert general conflict was, if not the “amicable divorce” advocated by Jesse Kelly, then a more bitter and contentious end to a union which was not working. The Treaty of Saint Louis split the country in two, with the east and west coasts and upper midwest calling itself the “People’s Republic of North America” (PRNA) and the remaining territory (including portions of some states like Washington, Oregon, and Indiana with a strong regional divide) continuing to call itself the United States, but with some changes: the capital was now Dallas, and the constitution had been amended to require any person not resident on its territory at the time of the Split (including children born thereafter) who wished full citizenship and voting rights to serve two years in the military with no “alternative service” for the privileged or connected.
The PRNA quickly implemented the complete progressive agenda wherever its rainbow flag (frequently revised as different victim groups clawed their way to the top of the grievance pyramid) flew. As police forces collapsed with good cops quitting and moving out, they were replaced by a national police force initially called the “People’s Internal Security Squads” (later the “People’s Security Force” when the acronym for the original name was deemed infelicitous), staffed with thugs and diversity hires attracted by the shakedown potential of carrying weapons among a disarmed population.
Life in the PRNA was pretty good for the coastal élites in their walled communities, but as with collectivism whenever and wherever it is tried, for most of the population life was a grey existence of collapsing services, food shortages, ration cards, abuse by the powerful, and constant fear of being denounced for violating the latest intellectual fad or using an incorrect pronoun. And, inevitably, it wasn’t long before the PRNA slammed the door shut to keep the remaining competent people from fleeing to where they were free to use their skills and keep what they’d earned. Mexico built a “big, beautiful wall” to keep hordes of PRNA subjects from fleeing to freedom and opportunity south of the border.
Here is Amazon’s summary of Overlord.
Kelly Turnbull is back in his eighth People’s Republic adventure, and this time everything is on the line for him and for Red America. A rogue general who wants Kelly in a grave has escaped into Blue America to execute a treacherous plan that will get him the revenge and the power he seeks. But Kelly Turnbull – and his loyal dog Gibson – are coming for payback, and they are bringing hellfire (and a lot of guns) with them.
From the jungles of West Africa to post-Second British Civil War London, from a desperate fight on a New Orleans causeway to riding the Underground Railroad backwards into the People’s Republic, and through a bloody rescue mission during a full-scale invasion of the island of Manhattan, Overlord delivers the action and the humor that People’s Republic readers demand.
I haven’t found the sequels to come up to the high standard set by the first in the series, but I’ve read them all and don’t regret having done so. I’ll be reading this one.
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This is a dystopian/libertarian/teenage rebel vs. technology oligarch thriller set in a future where all of the worst trends of the convergence of Big Tech and Big Government have reduced the population to passive media consumers swaddled in an all-suffocating nanny state. But the preeminent tech barons were rebellious in their youth, and may have put a “kill switch” into the systems that enslave the population. To whom might it be entrusted, and what will they do with it?
Here is Amazon’s description:
Two tech trillionaires have monopolized the market with staggering advancements in robotics and computer science while arming the world’s worst governments with the most terrifying technology. Their plan, once every government on Earth has become dependent on their network, is to use a backdoor key that will unravel it all with a single switch: a handheld device they call “FreeWill.” One of these tech titans, however, has fallen in love with their global machine and no longer wishes to flip that switch. As a last resort, his partner hides the device with one random isolated teenager, who doesn’t know he has it, so that when the window of time arrives when it can be switched, her partner can’t stop it. His machine has one year to find the unlikely guardian she has chosen as we see through the eyes of that solitary teen a world where everyone strives to keep their social credit badge PURPLE and any deviation from acceptable thought can turn them MAGENTA, erasing them from society. The fate of the human race depends on whether one misfit teenager, who has no idea he’s now being hunted by artificial intelligence at every turn, will activate FreeWill.
This novel is very slow in getting going: the first half seems like an aimless tale of teenage anomie, but then things start to happen and before long it’s a page turner.
The Kindle edition is free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.
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I read Michael Lewis’ SBF book recently. Seems to be the perfect read on a long plane ride to Australia.
The first part of the book discussing the Jane Street internship and ways of working reminded me of the part of Ender’s Game where cadets were placed in squads performing training games in the zero-gravity “Battle Room”.
Contrary to Ender’s Game, the protagonist of Going Infinite comes out of Lewis’ book looking not great. The first part of the book glosses over the Jane Street interview and internship practices, sort of painting the image of selecting brainy applicants with sociopathic tendencies.
EA gets a bit of washing out and by the end it’s not clear to this reader if it does play any role in the whole debacle, or it’s just a nice plot twist. Interestingly, Lewis does not cover much of the more recent allegations concerning SBF acting as a de facto funnel for political contributions allegedly masterminded by his parents.
Although George Lerner - the psychiatrist hired by FTX - comes in focus in the second half of the book, there is little mention of the consistent drug use that was reported in the media.
Viewed through the lens of the recent guilty sentence in the SBF trial, it’s hard not to think that, in the end, Sam BF may have been just a useful dummy who got in way over his head and did not have the presence of spirit to steer away from this outcome.
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1962514021/?tag=fourmilabwwwfour
Devon Eriksen’s Theft of Fire was published on 2023-11-10 in both paperback (linked above) and Kindle editions (not on Kindle Unlimited). The author describes the book, first in a planned series called “Orbital Space”, as in the tradition of hard science space opera of the Golden Age of science fiction. It has been receiving extremely positive reviews from beta readers and hard science fiction authors (many of the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist bent) who have read pre-publication copies. The book, which is 546 pages, around 150,000 words) has, in just two days after release, vaulted to #54 in Hard Science Fiction and #116 in Space Opera Science Fiction on the Amazon Kindle store. Here is Amazon’s description:
At the frozen edge of the solar system lies a hidden treasure which could spell their fortune or their destruction—but only if they survive each other first.
Marcus Warnoc has a little problem. His asteroid mining ship—his inheritance, his livelihood, and his home—has been hijacked by a pint-sized corporate heiress with enough blackmail material to sink him for good, a secret mission she won’t tell him about, and enough courage to get them both killed. She may have him dead to rights, but if he doesn’t turn the tables on this spoiled Martian snob, he’ll be dead, period. He’s not giving up without a fight.
He has a plan.
Miranda Foxgrove has the opportunity of a lifetime almost within her grasp if she can reach it. Her stolen spacecraft came with a stubborn, resourceful captain who refuses to cooperate—but he’s one of the few men alive who can snatch an unimaginable treasure from beneath the muzzles of countless railguns. And if this foulmouthed Belter thug doesn’t want to cooperate, she’ll find a way to force him. She’s come too far to give up now.
She has a plan.
They’re about to find out that a plan is a list of things that won’t happen.
I’ve already bought the Kindle edition, but have a few things to finish before I get to it.
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This reminds me of a favorite paragraph from Tocqueville’s Democracy in America:
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd…
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Update: The first three chapters of Theft of Fire may be read for free via the author’s Web site, or directly at BookFunnel.com.
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I have just finished Devon Eriksen’s Theft of Fire, described above in comment #9. This is the review I will be posting on the book’s Amazon page.
Independent publishing has sparked a new Golden Age of science fiction, reviving a genre which seemed increasingly moribund under the dead hand of legacy publishers more concerned with demonstrating their woke credentials than entertaining readers. These new authors are sparking a sense of wonder and portraying a hopeful and optimistic future and inspiring readers to go out and make that future happen. The discerning reader of science fiction today can choose from a collection of talented, imaginative, and prolific authors to such an extent that it’s like reading Heinlein, Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, Pohl, and Doc Smith all in their prime, but with ideas and plots as new as today and tomorrow.
With his first novel, Theft of Fire, Devon Eriksen has jumped in at the top of the game, crafting a tale of “hard” science fiction (grounded in plausible science and technology, not magic swords and dragons wrapped in technobabble) with complex, believable characters who interact and grow throughout the tale, and an artificial intelligence who strikes me as far more likely to be what we’ll encounter in our own future than the cartoon tales of mindless monsters or transcendent deities sketched by self-styled “experts” in machine intelligence.
And, there’s plenty of action: space battles among fusion powered torch ships, rail gun duels, and a grand chase through the far reaches of the solar system at one percent of the speed of light. The stakes couldn’t be higher: a technology which could change everything and disrupt an entrenched corporate oligarchy or entrench their power forever, with the outcome in the hands of a space pirate (through lack of alternatives), a gene twisted and ruthless blackmailer already rich beyond dreams of avarice, and an artificial intelligence just coming to terms with her circumstances and power.
This is a glorious adventure and a delight to read. The conclusion isn’t a cliffhanger, but leaves the reader wanting to know where these characters go from here, for which we’ll have to await the promised sequel.
Update: Review is now live on Amazon. Yes, I tone down the edginess of my reviews a tad for a more general audience. (2023-12-02 22:32 UTC).
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Heh.
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Here is a direct link to Linear Algebra Done Right [PDF, 408 pages], published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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I have a paper copy of the first edition. It is an excellent text but its chief problem is it is really a second text for, not an introduction to, linear/matrix math.
I’m not certain what the best first text would be, though I’ve heard Strang mentioned.
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https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1503632946/
George Mason University professor of economics Garett Jones presents evidence that immigrants import the cultural attitudes and ideas of their homelands and, instead of assimilating, maintain those viewpoints across many generations.
The “Deep Roots” theory of comparative economic development traces a country’s current economic conditions to long-running historical trends. For example, a country’s level of technology in the year 1500 AD can explain much of that country’s modern economic performance. Jones observes that historical trends persist among people who migrate, not just the places they leave behind. He presents research illustrating that technology scores have greater explanatory power after immigration is accounted for.
From Chapter 3:
[…]
If you’re trying to guess a nation’s income per person in 2002, the migration-adjusted tech measure handily beats the migration-unadjusted measure. The relationship is always at least twice as strong, and the year 1500 migration-adjusted tech measure explains well over half of all cross-country income differences today. Over the last five centuries, for the world as a whole, it’s fair to summarize economic history this way: the more things change, the more they stay the same—but only when you adjust for migration.
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Sorry, I don’t understand. In the year 1500 AD, Norway was the place that Swedes made fun of because the Norwegians were so backwards; on the other hand, China in 1500 AD was probably the technologically most advanced country on the planet. Yet in the year 2005, Norwegian per capita income was through the roof, while China’s was in the basement.
OK – in 2005, the Norwegians were Green Hypocrites getting fat off of dirty climate-destroying oil while the Chinese were working for a living. But the predictive value of technology status half a millennium before does not seem to be strong.
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That’s a fair point. The authors of the study that Jones cites actually give Western Europe a slightly higher technology score than China because Western Europe saw more widespread adoption of its technologies. Nevertheless, Jones admits that India and China are exceptions to this indicator:
While we shouldn’t dwell on every exception to SAT*’s [state history + agricultural history + technological history, adjusted for migration] strong predictive power, there are two big exceptions that I will pay attention to: the world’s two most populous countries, India and China.
[…]
So, must we throw up our hands at these exceptions? No! We should instead notice that both nations are growing much faster than the average country in the world, and so both India and China are rising in the global rankings.
This might be true; however, I think the greater argument Jones wants to make is that migration-adjusted technological history scores predict current incomes much better than non-adjusted technological history scores, illustrating that migration has influenced modern economic outcomes in the direction of the migrants’ home countries.
I’m not prepared to defend Jones’ thesis, but I would recommend the book, especially for its first chapter “The Assimilation Myth”, which reviews how cultural attitudes are passed down among immigrant populations.
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Interesting that the recently ex-Communist states are the biggest outliers on this axis. Communism is a trust killer, and it’s almost measurable seeing the discrepancy between civilizational cultural development along the Y axis and recent governance dysfunction that shifts things to the left.
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In about 1959 I saw the movie On The Beach at a theatre on Broadway in NYC with my best friend and confidant, Ellis. I have several discordant memories of that event. My initial reaction was to the plush white leather seats, which tilted comfortably with body movement. I thought it was the theatre of tomorrow. A surprising memory was just how blasé I was concerning the end of human life on Earth. I do remember a strong feeling of sadness at the rendition of Waltzing Matilda during visit to the countryside for the officially-made-early fishing season. In largo tempo, it was a most effective dirge. I read the book, by Nevil Shute within a few years of seeing the movie, probably mid sixties, but don’t remember by musings.
For whatever reasons, I recently re-read the book - in electronic format - since I couldn’t find the old paperback. This caused me to question my lack of emotion as to human extinction while viewing the film in 1959. My best guess is that I had been already de-sensitized as to the prospect by years of school practice of “duck & cover”.
This time, reading the book (and viewing the movie on an old, found, DVD) grieved me deeply. Having had a family, including three children between the first and second viewings/readings radically altered my perspectives. The abstract extinction of humanity became far more personal, as was the option/necessity of lethal tablets made available at pharmacies in Melbourne Australia - on the “free list”. As well, I have carefully tried to understand my evolving time in the context of history. This made the continued civility of the Australian population as the end approached so very surprising as viewed from 2023. During the first iteration of this story, society’s spiral downward had hardly begun, so I could hardly imagine the untrammeled rampages which would surely occur should such a circumstance arise today. It would poignantly dramatize DEI as DIE. Today, I dare say our better angels are in serious retreat. Not with A whimper, but many.
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We learn more about Tolkien’s conservative politics, especially during the Cold War. In a letter to his son Michael, dated Nov. 6, 1956, Tolkien notes the popular “hysteria” over Britain’s role in the Suez crisis. The Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser had seized the Suez Canal, causing Israel—joined by Britain and France—to send troops into Egypt to reclaim it. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had just invaded Hungary to crush the democratic revolution led by Imre Nagy. “Half Oxford is in a kind of screaming frenzy—about Suez not Hungary!”
Tolkien proceeds to chide the Oxford professors and undergraduates noisily protesting government policy, the “pacifists” destroying private property, and the fellow dons screaming “fascist” at colleagues who disagreed with them. “What a rot and stink is left by liberalism devoid of religion!” He also worries that encroaching socialist policies will reduce him to poverty. “As it is socialist legislation is robbing me of probably ¾ of the fruits of my labors, and my ‘royalties’ are merely waiting in the bank until the Tax Collectors walk in and bag them. Do you wonder that anyone who can gets out of this island?”
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Devon Eriksen, author of Theft of Fire, posts on 𝕏 about how he “writes like developing software”.
Some folks have expressed interest in my writing process, and my word quota on Box of Trouble is done for today, so I’ll talk a little about it here.
I use a lot of software engineering process to plan and create my novels. Source control, branching and merging, bug trackers, function contracts, even some “unit tests”.
(I’ll be heading a panel on this process at CONfinement in Lebanon, TN on March 1-3, so lots of details available there.)
In more general terms, I am an architect writer, rather than a discovery writer or “gardener”. I generally write about 25-35K words of outlines, notes, and summaries before the first actual reader-facing words are written.
I write from general to specific, proceeding from large scale outlines to section outlines to chapter and scene summaries. By the time I write an actual scene, the only decisions left for me to make are the exact wording of dialog and descriptions. All events, beats, and outcomes are preplanned.
This approach leaves me with no need at all to write scenes in order. I work in whatever section of the book I have ideas about on any given day.
I test extensively. My first line of testing, a sort of pre-alpha test, is my wives. When I have the text of a scene complete, I read it aloud to them. This helps me catch my own mistakes and shortcomings, as well as gauging their emotional reactions. They are under strict instructions to make no suggestions at all, only to describe their thoughts and feelings about what they heard. This process really help identify bits that are just “okay”, and don’t have that vivid immediacy of purpose, description, and experience. Sometime I rewrite a scene four or five times based on this.
When a manuscript is complete, it goes out to beta readers and my cover artist. This is what most writers would call a first draft, but the term doesn’t really apply so well here, because my planning-heavy process tends to mean that “first drafts”, while VERY slow to appear, are also very polished compared to what most would consider a first draft.
I use a LOT of beta readers.
My first line is a single alpha reader, who can be relied upon to finish in two or three days. She is a mother of two, who lives in Kansas and drives a school bus. Her feedback is invaluable.
Next come my beta readers. I use about 10-15, and if anyone doesn’t finish in two weeks, they are out. That doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but since my time to finish a manuscript is about nine months, and I hope to be able to turn out one novel a year, once that manuscript is done, every day counts.
I do video call interviews with all my beta readers, and the moment feedback starts coming in, I am busily editing away.
Only once the post-beta structural work is done is it time for my professional editor. I don’t get structural or story-flow feedback from her; that comes from beta reader feedback. She is laser-focused on line by line word choice, sentence structure, description and flow.
While I am waiting for her, I’m working with my cover artist, and @AnEriksenWife
is beginning to work up layout and interior design.Once editing notes are back, it’s all hands on deck. I have to go over notes and decide how, or if, to incorporate each one, final layout has to happen, and proofreading (the bane of everyone’s existence), and a thousand other tiny tasks that make the difference between polished volume and indie shovelware.
I review and sign off on the final version of all decisions. Everyone who touches one of my novels works for, and answers to, me. Everything is carefully curated to match a single artistic vision.
If you noticed sense of meticulous detail in Theft of Fire, it was not the result of some singular magical genius or inspiration, but rather of a tiresome obsession with detail, and an author who is a razor-tongued, hot-tempered control freak.
Tradpub can’t do that because authors simply don’t have that kind of control. I’ve had fellow authors complain to me about the horrible cover art they were “given”. Meanwhile, I’m issuing precise instructions about the angle of an illustrated character’s eyebrows.
Hopefully, this gives you a sense of how the whole process flows. I’m not an inspired genius accepting transmissions from the grand muse of the universe. I’m an obsessive, purpose-driven craftsman with a master plan and no chill whatsoever.
I hope you enjoy the results, and I hope this clears up a little bit about what’s happening behind the curtain.
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Absolutely fascinating!! I was not familiar with this author and will correct that post haste. I have occasionally toyed with the notion of writing a novel of some kind, but find the prospect so overwhelming, I have never even started. In my bizarre imaginings, the entire thing would somehow be delivered whole in some magical way. Chaos would mystically distill into a finished assembly of artistic, inspiring, insightful words immanent with the Creator’s understanding of all that was, is and ever shall be.
Now that I see novels can be created in a manner similar to software/engineering, one person comes immediately to mind as potential fabulous novelist. I’m thinking of you @johnwalker ….
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