I was disappointed by "Xeelee: Vengeance". Not that many interesting concepts. No huge scale. Bizarre decision making. Hence I am very happy with XeelI was disappointed by "Xeelee: Vengeance". Not that many interesting concepts. No huge scale. Bizarre decision making. Hence I am very happy with Xeelee: Redemption, which has all the Hard SF goodness I was expecting from Vengeance.
(view spoiler)[The lack of Xeelee at the galactic core is perplexing. Where are all the Xeelee the Exultant generation fought? Where is the net around the black hole? Did the Xeelee decide to bugger of out of the Galaxy entirely except for a single nighfighter? Why would they do that?! (hide spoiler)]...more
I did not enjoy this second book as much as the first, which I read a bit under a year ago. And a lot less than the original trilNot impressed at all.
I did not enjoy this second book as much as the first, which I read a bit under a year ago. And a lot less than the original trilogy, though then that was long ago, and undoubtedly my tastes and expectations have changed since.
Things I did not like:
* Suspension of disbelief broken due to lone ambassador (view spoiler)[ turning into a secret operative infiltrating an enemy base alone (hide spoiler)] * The dynamic between Vader and Thrawn gets really old. They have the same conversation a dozen times. Is that supposed to be exciting every time? >_> * A lot of the problems and solutions feel really artificial to me. Same goes for Thrawn his conclusions. Lazy shallow and dumb are all adjectives that come to mind for this type of writing * The plot always seems small scale and in the moment
If you, like me, are a hard SF fan, and like large scale and intricate plots, this is not the book for you....more
**spoiler alert** Luckily for the Bob, there is no capable probe going with a good military strategy.
You get in the system and start by making some co**spoiler alert** Luckily for the Bob, there is no capable probe going with a good military strategy.
You get in the system and start by making some copies. This gives you both defence and production.
Then you scale production until you have a serious industrial base. With this you make defences. Once these are deployed the copies go to other systems. Then you resume scaling production. Slowly (depending on total system resources) you switch to producing more probes. Likely you will have many types of probes and send small fleets to likely contested systems. Once system resources near depletion th switch to pure research. With a million minds, not one or two.
Plus there is the upgrade-intellect route.
I suppose that might be a less interesting story though, or perhaps one more difficult to pull of interestingly....more
Cons: - Lots of time spend on convincing you that managing money is important - Torn between 2 and 3 stars.
Pros: - Decent info - Understandable - Little BS
Cons: - Lots of time spend on convincing you that managing money is important - Lots of US specific info - Information density not that high - The last chapter on happiness or whatever is out of place and the topic is better left to more comprehensive material by people with more expertise - The name dropping of friends and promotion of specific businesses gets old quickly...more
If you do not need convincing that money and financial education are important you can skip the foreword and first two chapters (20% of the b2.5 stars
If you do not need convincing that money and financial education are important you can skip the foreword and first two chapters (20% of the book). The information density is low. Many words are used to say a single thing and there is lots of repetition. I listened to the audiobook at 200% speed (though in part that number is due to slow but clear narrator).
Main takeaways for me: * Investments can be classified as capital gains or as income source (dividends, rental income, etc). The later tends to have advantages * Some investment classes offer (partial) control over outcomes (ie owning a building) while others do not (ie stocks)
Author recommends storing wealth in silver rather than fiat. He goes on to motivate why precious metals are better than fiat and why silver will do better than gold. Funnily enough silver lost half its value compared to gold since the book was published and if you had traded your fiat for silver you'd be rekt now.
Author shitting on stocks is also dubious to me. As he mentions a dozen times, Buffet says index funds are protection against ignorance. In other words, they are a good option for almost everyone.
I'm also not a fan of the author saying "socialism is bad, capitalism is good". Why would I want overly simplistic political opinions in a finance book?...more
This book tell the story of how the Culture comes into contact with the war-like Idirans. Caught off balance, the ship minds quickly ramp up military This book tell the story of how the Culture comes into contact with the war-like Idirans. Caught off balance, the ship minds quickly ramp up military production while fighting a retreating and delaying action. Wait... I meant Polity, Prador and ship AIs. Not sure how I got those mixed up :)...more
After the first few chapters I was very surprised. This is not what I was expecting from a book with a 4.15 rating on Goodreads. Starting with chapterAfter the first few chapters I was very surprised. This is not what I was expecting from a book with a 4.15 rating on Goodreads. Starting with chapter 2 I listened to the book at 170% speed. If I had been reading it rather than listening, I likely would have put the book onto the "never-finished" pile.
Things I did not like in this book:
* The information density is low ** A huge amount of time is spend explaining on why you should care about the books contents. I hate it when books do this. I am already reading it, so why waste my time with this shit? ** Quite some time is also spend on promotion of the authors courses. Sure, some self promotion is nice but I don't want to hear the same thing 50 times. ** A lot of time is spend on what boils down to "growth mindset". This is important, though a disclaimer you can skip the first half of the book if you are already familiar with it would be nice. * Some of the explanations are plain wrong (as in, they contradict current scientific understanding). Example: author claims thoughts lead to feelings (which then lead to actions and results) while it is intuitions that lead to conscious thought. * Ridiculous spiritual bullshit. Things like "make sure you align the vibrations in your cells and speak to the universe so the universe sends opportunities your way". The saving grace here is that while the author recommends such BS, the also recommends other things that do work, even if the context or motivation behind them is foobar. * Circular reasoning. Author makes claims and then goes on to define terms in those claims in such a way the claim can only be true. I had to actually laugh out loud when I came across the first. * Appeal to authority (the logical fallacy). Lots of "Think you are right and I am wrong? Well I have money and you don't." This is a particular low-blow form of appeal to authority. * Stupid advice such as picking up pennies when you are a millionaire and shouting out loud "thank you universe for sending money to me. I am a money magnet". I'm not being hyperbole here, this is literally what the author recommends. This is partly spiritual BS and partly poor time management. It goes completely against the solid advice of figuring out how much your time is worth to you and not spend it on activities that net you less (unless there is some non-financial benefit).
This is just what I remember out of the top of my head.
2 stars since the book does contain some actual good points, including some of which I got a slightly new perspective on. Those could just be listed in a blog post you can read in 5 minutes though.
Perhaps this book is written in such a way that is sensible for those that are completely new to personal growth, those that are not so bright, and those who do not have a financial plan beyond "play the lotto till I get rich some day".
Notes to self: * Books with high rating mean they are popular, not that they are good * 2 out of 3 self improvement books with "mind" in the title fell into this category * Don't ignore the "title contains 'secrets'" or similar charlatan world red flag...more
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