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Programmer and teacher; writes on software, learning and the web, and makes the Coding Blocks video course.

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  The Fall of Hyperion

  Their words

  Absolutely brilliant!

  rakhim.org

Swedish programmer with degrees in engineering and psychology, author of Your Code as a Crime Scene and founder of CodeScene.

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  Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming

  Their words

  Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming by Peter Norvig. Learning the AI described in this book probably won't land you a job today. But reading the code examples will transform how you think about source code. The book shines when it comes to code comments, a topic that I've never seen demonstrated well in other sources. Here we get to see how comments become valuable as a narrative that explains both intent and reasoning. Brilliant, just brilliant.

  adamtornhill.substack.com

Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.

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  The Signal and the Noise

  Their words

  And, in addition, Nate Silver’s earlier book The Signal and the Noise was, I thought, brilliant. I am forever deeply in his debt for his making me better-informed and wiser across a whole bunch of different dimensions.

  braddelong.substack.com

Engineer and teacher; wrote Kubernetes the Hard Way, was a distinguished engineer at Google Cloud, and retired from full-time work in 2023.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The hardest problem a company full of brilliant engineers has is not how to build something — it is what to build.

  Google

  Their words

  So you have a lot of smart Googlers. These people are brilliant. I mean extremely brilliant to the point where the hardest problem Google had in my opinion was what to build. Not how to build it, what to build.

  youtube.com

Science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist; writes the daily blog and newsletter Pluralistic, and coined the term enshittification.

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  Here Where We Live Is Our Country

  Their words

  Crabapple's response to this burgeoning movement is this book, a massive, heroic, brilliant, and pitiless history of the Bund that proposes its own answer to "the Jewish question."

  pluralistic.net

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  Fight Club

  Their words

  Fight Club: I liked it the first time years ago, but watching a second time when you already know the end reveal? Elevates it from good to great. So many brilliant details in the screenplay.

  x.com

Science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist; writes the daily blog and newsletter Pluralistic, and coined the term enshittification.

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  Privacy's Defender

  Their words

  This book is a beautiful capstone to a brilliant career that defined the fight for cyber rights, and a deep, accessible dive into the defining tech and human rights battles of this century.

  pluralistic.net

Uber's first Chief Technology Officer, from 2013 to 2020; later CTO of Coupang and of Faire.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Launching the hardest case first beats the cautious order of smallest-to-largest, because after the hardest one everything that follows is downhill.

  Their words

  that was the most brilliant thing because by doing the hardest thing first once you launch that everything else is downhill from there

  Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com

Founding member of OpenAI and former director of AI at Tesla; creator of nanoGPT and the term "vibe coding".

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Today's agents are a brilliant systems programmer and a ten-year-old at the same time, a combination you would never meet in a person.

  Their words

  I simultaneously feel like I'm talking to an extremely brilliant PhD student who's been like a systems programmer for their entire life and a 10-year-old.

  youtube.com

Novelist, author of twelve books including Foundry, Bandwidth and Cumulus. Sends a newsletter of monthly book recommendations.

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  Playground

  Their words

  Playground by Richard Powers is a strange and wonderful novel set (mostly) on a remote atoll in French Polynesia that follows the tangled lives of an environmental advocate, a sculptor, a tech entrepreneur, and a brilliant bookworm trying to escape the grinding poverty of Chicago's South Side. The richly drawn characters drive the story, but what I love most about the book is that it's a love letter to the ocean with prose that comes closer than anything else I've read to capturing what it feels like to, for example, dive a thriving coral reef.

  eliotpeper.substack.com

American science fiction novelist (Old Man's War, Redshirts, The Kaiju Preservation Society); has run the blog Whatever since 1998.

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  Alita: Battle Angel

  Their words

  None of this is brilliant filmmaking, even if it is efficient, and much of it isn’t even necessarily good, but damned if I can’t stop watching it.

  whatever.scalzi.com

Director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. Writes the A Wealth of Common Sense blog and co-hosts the Animal Spirits podcast with Michael Batnick.

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  Breakneck

  Their words

  Breakneck by Dan Wang Wong does an excellent job at objectively looking at the pros and cons of the Chinese and American societies. The engineering state versus lawyerly society as a way to explain each nation is brilliant.

  awealthofcommonsense.com

Novelist and critic, author of The Body Scout and Metallic Realms; writes the newsletter Counter Craft on fiction craft and the publishing industry.

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  Pedro Páramo

  Their words

  Some excellent short novels that fit this include Juan Rulfo's haunted and brilliant Pedro Páramo

  countercraft.substack.com

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  Metallic Realms

  Their words

  A reminder that my novel Metallic Realms is available at a bookstore near you. Reviews call it "brilliant" (Esquire), "a total blast" (Chicago Tribune), "unrelentingly smart and inventive" (Locus), and "just plain wonderful" (Booklist). Maybe the perfect holiday gift for the booklover in your life?

  countercraft.substack.com

Head of growth at Chess.com, previously growth and monetization lead at Grammarly and Duolingo and a product manager at Google.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  After a defeat people want encouragement, not a list of their mistakes — so a learning product should lead with what the user did well.

  Their words

  When you lose a game now as opposed to surfacing your blunders and your like horrible stuff that you did, we flip it on its head. And so we show you your brilliant moves, your best moves. And we have coach say something encouraging. You know, losing just part of learning like keep it up, that type of thing. That change alone was pretty dramatic for us. It grew game reviews by 25%, subscriptions by 20%

  youtube.com

Founder of the toy manufacturer Viahart; writes about manufacturing, importing and why bringing production back to America is harder than it sounds.

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  Every country that has succeeded at manufacturing set the conditions first and then moved slowly.

  Their words

  Every country that has gone on a brilliant run of manufacturing first established the right conditions and then proceeded slowly.

  molsonhart.com

Archaeologist of the Maya and the ancient Americas; directs the Maya Exploration Center and presents the ArchaeoEd podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Every paradigm-shifting idea began as heresy, so outlandish ideas have to be kept on the table.

  Their words

  But I do also try to always remind myself that every paradigm shifting idea that humans have ever had began as heresy and lunacy. That guy was crazy up to the second. He was brilliant. And so we got to keep our minds open to the things that sound outlandish, because one of them eventually is going to lead us to the big paradigm shift.

  youtube.com

Machine learning engineer working on recommender systems, personalization and information retrieval. Previously worked on LLMs and LLM infrastructure at Mozilla.ai and on ML and recsys at Duo, Tumblr, Automattic and Comcast; wrote the 'What are embeddings?' text and ran the Normconf conference.

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  The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

  Their words

  A wonderful idea for a book and brilliant execution as she lives from Medieval France to modern day.

  vickiboykis.com

Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The General Theory is a brilliant work despite numerous flaws in reasoning, exposition, and microeconomics.

  Their words

  My current view is that the General Theory is a brilliant work, marred by numerous mistakes in reasoning, exposition, and microeconomics.

  tylercowen.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  The Righteous Mind

  Their words

  Brilliant insights into human nature. Moral reasoning, inventing victims, emotional reactions, the elephant (emotions) and its rider (explanations). Intuition reacts then logic confabulates a reason. Survival of the fittest applied to groups. Understanding religion and tradition. Great from start to finish.

  sive.rs

American novelist and critic, author of Real Life, The Late Americans and Minor Black Figures; writes the newsletter sweater weather on literature and culture.

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  The Court and the Castle

  Their words

  It was in such a place that I found the book The Court and the Castle by Rebecca West. It's a strange little book but a brilliant one, provocative and cunning.

  blgtylr.substack.com

Non-fiction writer, podcaster and occasional TV host. Author of thirteen books including The Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From and Extra Life, host of the PBS series How We Got To Now, and author of the Adjacent Possible newsletter on innovation.

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  Trust Exercise

  Their words

  But what really makes it brilliant is a kind of meta-fictional twist that happens in the middle of the book

  adjacentpossible.substack.com

Co-founder of Microsoft and of the Gates Foundation. Writes Gates Notes on global health, energy and climate, and on whatever they have been reading.

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  The Remains of the Day

  Their words

  I read Remains of the Day years ago and thought it was brilliant.

  gatesnotes.com

American author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Everything Is F*cked. Writes essays and book reviews at markmanson.net.

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  Payback

  Their words

  Brilliant for stretches but also kind of weird and rambly for stretches as well. A very uneven book, but the great moments make the others worth it

  markmanson.net

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  Why Liberalism Failed

  Their words

  Brilliant but flawed. Deneen tried to argue that the ideals of the western enlightenment are ultimately self-defeating. I think he was onto something, but I don’t think he totally got his argument straightened out.

  markmanson.net

Co-founder of Microsoft and of the Gates Foundation. Writes Gates Notes on global health, energy and climate, and on whatever they have been reading.

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  The Splendid and the Vile

  Their words

  The Splendid and the Vile is a brilliant account of another era of widespread anxiety: the years 1940 and 1941, when English citizens spent almost every night in makeshift shelters as massive bombs rained down on them.

  gatesnotes.com

Mathematician and maker of the 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel, which explains mathematics through animation. Creator of the open-source Manim animation library and founder of the Summer of Math Exposition.

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  Brilliant

  Their words

  I know a few of the people there, and I can vouch for the fact that they are extremely thoughtful about what makes for good learning. It shows in the product. Rather than putting lectures and videos front and center, problems and puzzles take precedence, all presented in a structured progression.

  3blue1brown.com

Writer and novelist. Publishes essays and book notes at nateliason.com; author of the novel Husk and of Crypto Confidential.

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  The Dialogues of Socrates

  Their words

  Socrates remains the greatest foundational influence on philosophy, and to understand his method, you have to read his dialogues. The rhetoric is brilliant, and at times, even hilarious.

  nateliason.com

Co-founder of Microsoft and of the Gates Foundation. Writes Gates Notes on global health, energy and climate, and on whatever they have been reading.

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  Growth

  Their words

  Anyone who reads the new book Growth, the newest of 39 brilliant books by one of my favorite thinkers, will come away with similar urgency.

  gatesnotes.com

Art critic, broadcaster and author; wrote on art for The Independent and The Sunday Telegraph and presents BBC art documentaries. Author of Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane.

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  Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston

  Their words

  This is a brilliant piece of social history. It's a daughter's expression of love for her father, even though it was a complicated love. I think it's a very memorable portrait of a particular painter. She relates his work to his life, to his fathering, and regrets the toll taken on him by the rather damaging macho culture of the male artists of the New York School, who seemed to have felt obliged to drink at least a bottle of whiskey and smoke five packets of Camel no-filter cigarettes every day. It's amazing that he lived as long as he did, given that he died in his mid-sixties.

  fivebooks.com

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  Turner: Imagination and Reality

  Their words

  This catalogue was published on the occasion of the first ever exhibition of a long-dead painter at the Museum of Modern Art. It's only about thirty pages, but it is utterly brilliant.

  fivebooks.com

Co-founder of AngelList. Writes and podcasts at nav.al in short, aphoristic pieces on startups, wealth and judgement rather than long essays.

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  Understand

  Their words

  “Understand” by Ted Chiang is a brilliant revisit of “Flowers for Algernon.” Drop everything and read it.

  x.com

Wine writer and Master of Wine; Financial Times wine columnist, editor of The Oxford Companion to Wine and co-author of The World Atlas of Wine.

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  Pocket Wine Book

  Their words

  I take my hat off to Hugh. This is one wine reference book that I have nothing to do with, and it is absolutely brilliant. It's very small—although, of course, it's been getting bigger and bigger as the wine world has expanded—and it does pack a heck of a lot of information.

  fivebooks.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

  Their words

  Awesomely creative think-piece. 40 very short fictional stories about what happens when you die. The framework is inspiring for anyone: coming up with 40 different answers to any one question. But they’re also just brilliant ideas and powerful little fables. I just read it a 2nd time and love it even more now.

  sive.rs

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  Happy

  Their words

  Brilliant and profound yet totally entertaining philosophy book by one of my favorite people. Gives an approachable overview of past philosophies and shows how they apply to your life today better than the harmful pop-self-help-positivity stuff. Amazing perspectives on desires, death, relationships, anger, and how being present doesn’t matter as much as the story you tell yourself afterwards. H…

  sive.rs