Here’s some stuff I’m currently feeling interested in! Recommendations of relevant books/blogs/music/other media welcome.
Nonfiction:
- genetics, population history, historical linguistics, anthropology
- China: history, politics, what are they up to
- biographies of impressive/inspiring people
- how to run a business and stuff
- wine
- any good guides/advice on writing LARPs
Fiction:
- smart/competent women who are nonetheless not the protagonist and feel Conflicted about that
- managing; doing emotional labor; getting groups of people to get along and work together
- women being really stoic and put-together
- conversely, women being completely melodramatic and ridiculous
- anything related to Hades and Persephone or Heloise and Abelard
- is there a database of fictional romances by enneagram type somewhere? that feels like something that’s got to exist
The following list cleaves along the same divisions as your own:
Genetics, pop history, etc:
- Razib Khan’s blog (dude also posts a lot about history, etc)
- Eurogenes blog
China! (it’s a tragic and horrific tale, this one; like Hitler, but the baddies/leftists won, then kept bumbling around and moving from one group to another to violate humiliate torture murder and sometimes genocide; untold, unimaginable suffering for an entire century, with no signs it’ll end any time soon - the Uighurs in concentration camps right now, the slow grinding down of Hong Kong, etc):
- Tanner Greer’s blog (not everything is about China)
- Tanner’s reading list for making sense of China and Chinese history (highly recommend this); this will perhaps give you a sense of what China before it got repeatedly and variously ravaged was like.
- The three part PBS documentary on China’s previous century - China: A Century of Revolution; post-dynastic history, essentially (spoiler: it’s just terrible - every time you think it can’t get worse, it gets much, much worse):
- Part 1 - China in Revolution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5cl0GjPjy4
- Part 2 - The Mao Years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJyoX_vrlns
- Part 3 - Born Under the Red Flag (couldn’t find the complete thing, here’s a playlist that has big chunks): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL29B2717C9EBC500B
- Dikötter’s trilogy, starting with The Tragedy of Liberation (haven’t read this one myself, but comes recommended by Tanner)
- This beautiful 3d topographic map of China, which makes it blindingly obvious how Tibet is different, what the actual Chinese core is and how their history makes sense, why the Sichuan valley and culture is a thing, and so on
Biographies of the heroic and the impressive:
- Just finished reading a biography of Boyd, called ‘Boyd’, by Coram. Somewhat hagiographic, but very interesting nonetheless.
- Sam Walton’s biography, Made in America (IDK how complete or honest this is, but again, it’s interesting anyway)
Running a business (nice coincidence, this is something I looked into recently; haven’t read all of them, but all the ones I list here have all passed a pretty high quality filter):
- Disciplined Entrepreneurship (for startups) (highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend; also has EdX Edge classes that cover the earlier parts of it, if I’m not wrong, and and online toolkit that you can use as well - it’s pretty mature and very empirical, battle-tested)
- The Science of Success, by Charles Koch (details the philosophy of what’s behind the Kochs’ consistent few precent edge over the market even in highly competitive sectors)
- How to Measure Anything (plus workbook), for metrics and their use
- How Brands Grow (two parts, first more foundational) - empirical work on branding and brand growth
- The Personal MBA - a good overview of stuff you’ll need to know in general
- Immunity to Change (not just for business - and it’s by Kegan - yes, that Kegan, the Kegan of the Stages) - useful for getting through the immunity to change that bedevils organisations and persons
- For the bare-bones foundations, I’m going through Wharton’s Business Foundations on Coursera; again, since I’m at the beginning, it’s hard to say just how good it is, but it seemed like the resource I thought worth putting time into, so I’m putting it here.
Though you didn’t ask for this, I’m going to link it here anyway, since I have a sneaking suspicion it may be relevant to your interests: the Maneuver Warfare reading list. This is how something like this spectacular military debacle for the US military can happen.
Finally, how about a smart, competent woman who won the Nobel Prize for her work in getting groups of people to work together and defy Moloch and punch him in the face? Turns out that commons problems that occur most often in reality are just… solvable, actually; and people have solved them time and again. Her work details how, when, under what conditions, and what you need to do to do this. Book’s called Governing the Commons, by Elinor Ostrom. (Makes the usual rat attitude when encountering such problems - Oh no! Everything is forever terrible, we’re doomed! Despair despair despair! - seem pretty weird.)
(Possibly more later.)
ahh great list, ty! and thanks everyone else for the recs as well! (though @ponteh2dhh1ksdiwesph2tres I think you are overestimating my linguistics ability :P)
interestingly I actually thought about putting something with warfare/the military on the list but didn’t