Mark Danielson > Recent Status Updates

Slotting this in right after The Fall of Wisconsin was kind of a self-own. Not sure a book has made me this angry before. It’s a violently amoral piece of literature.

But, it’s also a borderline reading assignment—can’t say more than that—so I’ll keep at it. For now.

Needed something to clear the brain for a bit. So far, this is doing nicely.

Not science fiction as much as translation fiction.

Assigned reading, essentially. MBA flashbacks.

“I finally started reading that book your mom recommended.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“One of the main characters is named “[redacted].”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I may pause on this one.”

Some interesting moments, but too focused on being academic.

Needed something distracting for a change.

Can already tell there’ll be a lot of intersection with Chip War on this one.

We’ve gone from insightful to chapters where Klein firmly plants herself up her own ass. There’s a lot of truth here, but also a massive amount of overreach and a lot in the way of unsubstantiated claims.

Holocaust-level events happened outside of WWII. It’s not an exclusively European thing. And it might as well go back to the extermination of the Neanderthals. The question should maybe be, how do we stop?

Reading this after finishing Kashmir Hill’s “Your Face Belongs to Us” is certainly proving to be a choice.

Shakier than the first volume. But things are happening.

Discarding. I was too “there” for much of this to find it interesting. And I was on the far periphery. Maybe it’s good background for Gen Z wondering how the hell we got here.

Not sure I’ll finish this. I like Lorenz’s reporting, but I was “there” as a spectator for too much of this book’s topic to find it interesting. May work better as a history for the TikTok generation.

It all goes back to slavery, of course. It always does with this country.

Starting to get the feeling nothing actually happens in this book.