Mixed media artist, writer of essays, science/tech nerd obsessed with books and the intersection of ideas. I read mostly nonfiction with a dash of graphic novels.
Location:Kansas City
Goal
27/60 booksRead 60 books by Jan 1, 2025. You're 6 books ahead of schedule. 🙌
Goal
65/50 booksRead 50 books by Dec 31, 2023. You're 15 books ahead of schedule. 🙌
Fascinating journey of a journalist trying to find the smoking gun of the crypto stablecoin Tether. He reveals a lot about the industry as a whole: crypto bros, NFTs, lost savings, scammers, and the real-world harms caused by crypto (evidently Tether is the money dispenser of choice for scammers in Cambodia who entrap then enslave people… if you get one of those “accidental” texts turned crypto-scam, it could be someone being held against their will). You also learn about a crypto-earning phone game that went viral in the Philippines and made money for people… for a while, many of whom lost their savings when it crashed.
Well-written, with quite a few satisfying turns of phrase. There’s a nagging feeling the narrative wasn’t tight enough, and I think that’s because he began with a friend bragging about money he’d made, while the author’s hunch was SCAM ALERT… and yet people are making money. He set it out to prove the hunch right. The collapse might have done that for him, except that it had little impact on the primary target of his investigation: Tether. So there isn’t any closure about what they’re actually doing. Time will tell, but I became invested in his search for transparency.
A good read for anyone curious/uninformed about crypto brotopia as it touches on so many different aspects of it.
I've been bullet journaling for 4 years, but I figured I should at least speed read this book. I ended up skimming most of it.
I didn't expect all the self-help motivational stuff. I read a lot of that, but it was irritating here because I've already heard every anecdote, study and scientist's name like 6 times. It felt like productivity 101. That being said, I don't think I'm the target market for this book. I neither want nor need hand-holding. I stumbled onto bullet journaling, just started doing it and made it up as I went along (which is kind of the point). I'm very utilitarian about it and I already have my own systems for goal setting and such.
The type of person I see inclined to pick this book up: (30+ woman with kids, busy and overwhelmed, not great at scheduling, spends time on Pinterest, likes the idea of journaling, does not read business or pop science books for fun). So the short, here's-a-helpful-productivity-fact chapters are probably great. But if you're more my type, just read Part 2 - The System and Part 4 - The Art. The rest is just fluff.
Overall I don't think I learned anything particularly groundbreaking about the method, but my goal was just to get a better grasp of the official system. Ironically, I've never much used the bullet system of bullet journaling (rapid logging), so I wanted to see more of that in practice.
I highly recommend bullet journaling in general, but if you're a self starter you can pick up the method from bulletjournal.com. If you prefer more elaborate explanation and like the idea of motivational goal setting exercises, check out the book, which does a good job of showing how the system works together as a whole.
Be warned that this is a bona fide ghost story; not the ridiculous fantastical characters and escapades in the other books. As such I feel it's a bit too scary for younger children.
List
8 booksWhen I think back on everything I read in 2023, these books were the most impactful/I can’t stop thinking about, I would re-read right now, and I would happily add to my personal library.
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