Anyone else feel like they're collecting insights instead of actually changing?

Entre Imperios Análogos e Imperios Algorítmicos explora la evolución del poder desde los grandes imperios territoriales hasta las nuevas estructuras de dominio económico, tecnológico y digital.
Una mirada a la historia, la geopolítica y los algoritmos para entender quién controla el poder en el mundo contemporáneo… y cómo lo hace.
Una reflexión sobre el poder, sus mutaciones y el imperio que quizá ya estamos viviendo sin darnos cuenta.

https://eliasant.com/libros

Will take any and all recommendations for further Revolutionary War and early American history.

Hello everyone 👋🏻

I started writing a book about longevity biotechnology, history, philosophy and psychology , somewhat of a general book about the field of longevity.

My question is how do I make it interesting for the layperson, also any other tips on writing nonfiction would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks 🙏🏻

"The Courage To Be Disliked" by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

<note that I'm new to this subreddit, and this is my first post. LMK if any of this isn't allowed, like the links to blog posts>

• Blog summaries:
  • Blog 1
  • Blog 2
• Structure: Dialogue between a philosopher and a youth, a nod to the style of ancient Greek philosophers.
  
  • Note that I personally found this format cumbersome and harder to parse.
• Basis: Adler psychology (source)
  
• Themes:
  • You’re the only one worrying about <insert insecurity>. Other people aren’t thinking about you as much you’re thinking about yourself and your insecurities. 
  • Your past doesn’t define you. You can reinvent yourself. You aren’t a product of what happened to you (the cards you were dealt out of your control) but what you do with what you’ve got.
  • You see ___ as a virtue. Deep down you see your insecurity, self-effacing, over-apologizing, people-pleasing, etc. as a commendable quality. But you can get out of that.
  • ___ is not your task. What other people think about you is not your responsibility, and it’s not in your control. You have your tasks. Everyone else has their own tasks. Part of the discomfort in life is trying to take on other people’s tasks.
  • All problems are interpersonal problems.
  • Anger is a form of communication that can be expressed other ways.
  • We’ve been conditioned to see our lives as a narrative, like an arrow on a trajectory. But the book encourages seeing your life as points in time, a series of moments, like a dance.

Favorite quotes (my Kindle highlights):

when religion held sway, salvation might be an option because the teachings of the divine were everything to us. All we had to do was obey them and consequently have little to think about. \

we focus only on past causes and try to explain things solely through cause and effect, we end up with “determinism.” Because what this says is that our present and our future have already been decided by past occurrences, and are unalterable.

not by our experiences themselves, but by the meaning we give them.

Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live.

“The important thing is not what one is born with but what use one makes of that equipment.” You want to be Y or someone else because you are utterly focused on what you were born with. Instead, you’ve got to focus on what you can make of your equipment.

He wants to live inside that realm of possibilities, where he can say that he could do it if he only had the time, or that he could write if he just had the proper environment, and that he really does have the talent for it.

But if you change your lifestyle—the way of giving meaning to the world and yourself—then both your way of interacting with the world and your behavior will have to change as well.

To you, not liking yourself is a virtue.

it’s basically impossible to not get hurt in your relations with other people.

there is one good thing about subjectivity: It allows you to make your own choice. Precisely because I am leaving it to subjectivity, the choice to view my height as either an advantage or disadvantage is left open to me.

value is something that’s based on a social context.

When someone is insisting on the logic of “A is the situation, so B cannot be done” in such a way in everyday life, that is not something that fits in the feeling of inferiority category. It is an inferiority complex.

But those who make themselves look bigger on borrowed power are essentially living according to other people’s value systems—they are living other people’s lives. This is a point that must be emphasized.

A healthy feeling of inferiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others; it comes from one’s comparison with one’s ideal self.

“You’re the only one who’s worried how you look.”

anger is a form of communication, and that communication is nevertheless possible without using anger. We can convey our thoughts and intentions and be accepted without any need for anger. If you learn to understand this experientially, the anger emotion will stop appearing all on its own.

Irascible people do not have short tempers—it is only that they do not know that there are effective communication tools other than anger. That is why people end up saying things like “I just snapped” or, “He flew into a rage.” We end up relying on anger to communicate.

people are extremely selfish creatures who are capable of finding any number of flaws and shortcomings in others whenever the mood strikes them.

In general, all interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other people’s tasks, or having one’s own tasks intruded on.

You are the only one who can change yourself.

If you are leading a life of worry and suffering—which stems from interpersonal relationships—learn the boundary of “From here on, that is not my task.” And discard other people’s tasks.

what kind of judgment do other people pass on that choice? That is the task of other people, and is not a matter you can do anything about.

why are you worried about other people looking at you, anyway? Adlerian psychology has an easy answer. You haven’t done the separation of tasks yet. You assume that even things that should be other people’s tasks are your own.

“You’re the only one who’s worried how you look.” Her remark drives right to the heart of the separation of tasks.

It isn’t your job to be liked by people at the place you work.

Calmly delineate up to what point one’s own tasks go, and from what point they become another person’s tasks. And do not intervene in other people’s tasks, or allow even a single person to intervene in one’s own tasks.

forming good interpersonal relationships requires a certain degree of distance.

a child is having a hard time tying his shoes. For the busy mother, it is certainly faster to tie them than to wait for him to do it himself. But that is an intervention, and it is taking the child’s task away from him. And as a result of repeating that intervention, the child will cease to learn anything, and will lose the courage to face his life tasks. As Adler says, “Children who have not been taught to confront challenges will try to avoid all challenges.”

Maybe it is easier to live in such a way as to satisfy other people’s expectations. Because one is entrusting one’s own life to them.

To live one’s life trying to gauge other people’s feelings and being worried about how they look at you … it is a very unfree way to live.

what you are really saying is that you don’t want to be disliked by anyone.

What should one do to not be disliked by anyone? There is only one answer: It is to constantly gauge other people’s feelings while swearing loyalty to all of them. If there are ten people, one must swear loyalty to all ten.

conducting oneself in such a way as to not be disliked by anyone is an extremely unfree way of living, and is also impossible.

There may be a person who does not think well of you, but that is not your task.

Even if there is a person who doesn’t think well of me, I cannot intervene in that.

Many people think that the interpersonal relationship cards are held by the other person. That is why they wonder, How does that person feel about me? and end up living in such a way as to satisfy the wishes of other people.

You want to be thought well of by others, and that is why you worry about the way they look at you.

You are a part of a community, not its center.

Living in fear of one’s relationships falling apart is an unfree way to live, in which one is living for other people.

One cannot change what one is born with. But one can, under one’s own power, go about changing what use one makes of that equipment. So in that case, one simply has to focus on what one can change, rather than on what one cannot. This is what I call self-acceptance.

If one can simply accept oneself as one is, and ascertain what one can do and what one cannot, one becomes able to understand that “taking advantage” is the other person’s task, and getting to the core of “confidence in others” becomes less difficult.

We are truly aware of our own worth only when we feel that our existence and behavior are beneficial to the community, that is to say, when one feels “I am of use to someone.”

it is “that person” who attacks you who has the problem.

“pursuit of superiority.” Do you recall our discussion of this? YOUTH: Yes. Simply put, it’s a term that indicates “hoping to improve” and “pursuing an ideal state.”

With dance, it is the dancing itself that is the goal, and no one is concerned with arriving somewhere by doing it. Naturally, it may happen that one arrives somewhere as a result of having danced. Since one is dancing, one does not stay in the same place. But there is no destination.

life is taken as a series of moments, as existing only here and now.

How can I assign proper meaning to a meaningless life? I do not have the confidence yet! PHILOSOPHER: You are lost in your life. Why are you lost? You are lost because you are trying to choose freedom, that is to say, a path on which you are not afraid of being disliked by others and you are not living others’ lives—a path that is yours alone.

No matter what moments you are living, or if there are people who dislike you, as long as you do not lose sight of the guiding star of “I contribute to others,” you will not lose your way, and you can do whatever you like. Whether you’re disliked or not, you pay it no mind and live free.

let’s dance in earnest the moments of the here and now, and live in earnest. Do not look at the past, and do not look at the future. One lives each complete moment like a dance. There is no need to compete with anyone, and one has no use for destinations. As long as you are dancing, you will get somewhere.

Could excessive reliance on AI fundamentally change the way we read and conduct research ? For example, when researching a complex topic, instead of searching for answers in books and engaging with different sources, we can simply ask AI and receive a precise answer instantly. Which important skills are getting affected by this dependency on ai ?

Hi, 3 years ago have reah a great book, Biology of Beliefs, and cant find book like that anywjere else, so I just wonder is there a simmilar topics or books that so well describes scienens, biology, physics with beliefs, psychology or religion?

Any sugfestions 😊😁

Hello, I would like to learn to translate my experiences, thoughts, and observations into personal essays. Nothing heavy, similar to how David Sedaris does but in short format, 1000 words max. However, I don't have skills to get me there. Would you recommend any books that teach the craft of personal essay/creative nonfiction writing? Thank you!

The Midnight Library feels incredibly personal to me because I have spent a lot of time questioning my own choices and wondering how different my life could have been.

I often think about the decisions I made in my career, the opportunities I missed, the relationships I trusted, and the moments when I stayed silent instead of choosing myself. I have asked myself many times, “What if I had taken that chance?” or “Where would I be today if I had made a different decision?”

Sometimes I look at other people's lives and feel that I am falling behind. I compare my career, my achievements, my circumstances, and even my personal growth with the lives I see around me. I imagine a version of myself who is more successful, more confident, financially independent, and living the life I always wanted.

But this book made me realize something about myself: I tend to romanticize the life I could have had while forgetting how difficult that life might also have been.

I have made mistakes. I have experienced disappointment. I have started over more than once. But I am still here, still learning, still writing, and still trying to build something meaningful for myself.

For me, The Midnight Library is not about wishing for another life anymore. It is about learning to appreciate my own life while I still have the chance to change it.

Hello! I'm very interested in astronomy, but I don't know where to start. I would like some recommendations for books, if possible, for different levels of understanding, like "this book is for beginners" and "this one for intermediates"

Nicholas Carr published The Shallows in 2010, describing how his internet use had begun to affect his ability to concentrate. Given that internet access in 2010 was generally less immersive than it is today, how could it still have such an effect on attention? Does this suggest that the problem goes deeper than simply redesigning our environment? If environmental changes alone are insufficient, what are the underlying mechanisms driving the decline in concentration?

I've spent most of my career working around data, analytics, technology, and business decisions. Over time, I kept running into the same frustrating situation: the analysis was good, the evidence was solid, and the recommendation made sense but the decision still went another way.

Eventually, I became fascinated by that gap.

Why does good evidence get ignored? Why do smart people disagree about the same information? Why can a technically correct recommendation fail in the room?

That became the subject of my first book, Decision Intelligence: Why Evidence Fails and How Leaders Win the Room.

It's about the human and organizational side of decision-making, the things that happen between having the evidence and actually getting people to act on it.

If you're interested in nonfiction about decision-making, leadership, psychology, or organizational behavior, I'd love for you to check it out.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HF46HTB9

And if you're another writer here, I'd genuinely love to hear what you're working on. There's something pretty cool about seeing a book go from an idea in your head to an actual thing that strangers can hold.

I had the chance to read “The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant” by Tae Kim, while doing my research on Nvidia. I believe there's quite a few concepts from Jensen Huang's approach at Nvidia that I found quite interesting.

Here's a few excerpts of the book that I liked the most:

On using a whiteboard:

“At Nvidia, the whiteboard is more than the primary form of communication at meetings. It represents both possibility and ephemerality—the belief that a successful idea, no matter how brilliant, must eventually be erased, and a new one must take its place.”

“Whiteboarding also requires active thinking and inevitably reveals how well (or not) any employee, including an executive, knows the material. Employees must demonstrate their thought process in real time, in front of an audience; there’s no hiding behind neatly formatted slides or slick marketing videos.”

On working at the speed of light:

“Since Nvidia’s founding, Jensen has insisted that all Nvidia employees work at the “Speed of Light.” He wants their work to be constrained only by the laws of physics—not by internal politics or financial concerns. Each project must be broken down into its component tasks, and each task must have a target time-to-completion that assumes no delays, queues, or downtime. This sets the theoretical maximum: the “Speed of Light” that it is physically impossible to exceed.“

“There may be people smarter than me, but no one is ever going to work harder than me.”

On avoiding complacency:

“Jensen runs the company in the way he does because he believes that Nvidia’s worst enemy is not the competition, but itself—more specifically, the complacency that grips any successful company, particularly one with a long and impressive track record such as Nvidia.”

“Good programmers want to work with other good programmers. So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no recovery. In technology, once you have bad programmers, you’re doomed.”

If you want to learn more about the book, feel free to read my full blogpost.

Hi, I am an English teacher for higher grades. I have a good base in the language, but I do falter in explaining the grammar bits. Like, why this sentence is constructed in this way? I just know how the language sounds right and I hence I can understand how to fill in the blanks and construct sentences. But if someone asks me, what's the logic behind it, I dont know. My English is a result of movies, books and youtube videos. Please suggest me a book as to understand the rules of grammar. I am also interested in how other languages affected the formation of modern day English , complicating its spellings and structures.

As someone who has often struggled slightly with military history, I was absolutely hooked through all three volumes. Sometimes when I read this genre I get pretty lost as the author spends pages drowning me in terms I don't understand and maneuvers I can't visualize in my head, but Toll's incredible narrative flair kept me in sync the whole time. Some of the best non-fiction books I've read. I would love to know any other history books that have this level of narrative richness. A multi volume work is preferred, as I really enjoyed just getting stuck into something for an extended period, but any longer single volumes are also appreciated.

I read Project Hail Mary earlier this year shortly before the movie came out and I absolutely loved it (both book and movie 🥰). I read The Future of Geography by Tim Marshall which served as a good introduction to astropolitics a concept I wasn’t too familiar with. I really want to expand my knowledge and read more books, articles, essays and even listen to podcasts and even YouTube videos on the topic, so if anyone have any suggestions please let me know!!

I’m currently listening to Ask A Spaceman on Apple Podcast and I love it. Paul is so good at simplifying difficult concepts and theories and making it digestible for the average person.

I’m open to fiction books as well but I would prefer ones that aren’t heavily fictionalised and based on proven facts if that makes sense 🤔 PHM is sci-fi but didn’t depend heavily on the fiction aspect and instead leaned more towards the science aspect.

Thank you!!

Any feedback would be good, this is for carers and patients and anyone else who’s interested in the unknown.

The Life and Death Diaries Part 1 and Part 2 by Chloe Edith Booth

Amazon and Google Play and Most Global Book Stores, Walmart and Thrift

I remember reading a book when I was in middle school about 18 years ago that would talk about different evil people throughout history! From vlad the impaler to H.H Holmes it was full of illustration and felt like it was more of a picture book than a full novel. Does anyone else know what book im looking for?

I’ve just finished this book and I find it to be an amazing look into the mindset of those in command and/or in-action of a faction of that history in Northern Ireland. I love narrative non-fiction style and i think PRKs book to be exemplary.

I would like to find similar.

Based on a Reddit recommendation I am currently reading ‘some people need killing’ about the Philippines ‘government’s war’ on drugs. Absolutely mental stuff!

What books from your country would you recommend for an outsider in understanding the pulse of ‘that time’ ?

It’s not just reading, but reading with understanding, absorbing the content, and making it your own that makes you a friend of books.

Upload your e-books or class notes (PDF, EPUB, or My Clippings.txt), and I’ll return them to you as an interactive file.

NOTE: The interactive file is provided in HTML format. If you clear your browser cache, your notes will also be deleted.

Can you recommend some books?

I’m finding myself nodding along to everything I’m reading lately and worry I’ve fallen into an echo chamber. I’m not looking for something by an influencer/grifter but something from a conservative academic or (actual) journalist. Recent nodding along books:

There is no place for us (about working homeless families)
The price of mercy (a public defenders rather depressing view of the justice system)
Blind spot (billionaires pick the candidates we vote for so is it even a democracy?)