Software engineer from #Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Opinions are my own, not those of my spouse, employer, child, or pets. In fact there are few areas in which we agree.
Interested in #FOSS and #Linux, as well as federated social nonsense like the #Fediverse and #XMPP and #Matrix
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60% complete! ssweeny has read 9 of 15 books.
Madi Preston, a veteran of Britain’s elite special operations J-Squad unit, is burnt out and up to her eyeballs in …
Madi Preston, a veteran of Britain’s elite special operations J-Squad unit, is burnt out and up to her eyeballs in …
From R.A. Salvatore, the legendary creator of Drizzt Do'Urden, comes the start of a brand …
Time for a bit of ridiculous fantasy to cleanse the palate.
It's a fact of life: birds flock, fish school, people "tribe."Every company, indeed every organization, …
Overall I think this book had some good points to make. Networking, finding "tribes" at work, and using language to influence that tribe to behave a certain way are useful ideas that are actionable and backed by data.
However like many books in this vein it feels as if the page count was padded with anecdotes that slowed down the pace and perhaps spaced the real lessons too far apart. I found myself having to turn back a few pages to remember what the point of a particular story was supposed to be.
Overall I'd recommend the book but it might be sufficient to read the summary at the end of each chapter.
It's a fact of life: birds flock, fish school, people "tribe."Every company, indeed every organization, is a tribe, or if …
In this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in …
'The Great War was over, but everyone knew another war was coming and it drove …
I guess the term for this is "dieselpunk"? The book is set between the World Wars, in a fictional Eastern European city called Lower Proszawa. It's an old city with delineated neighborhoods by class and occupation, dominated by a giant arms factory. Also there are automata called "Maras" that run around doing everything from deliveries to policing.
The setting absolutely steals the show here. It feels lived in, and you can feel the tension in the people who want to celebrate victory in the previous war but can sense that another one is coming.
Much like the last Kadrey book I read, Metrophage, this one spends just a bit too long wallowing in all the ways the main character is a pathetic loser who wishes he was something more, but this time I think the arc is more satisfying, and once the action gets going it keeps up a nice …
I guess the term for this is "dieselpunk"? The book is set between the World Wars, in a fictional Eastern European city called Lower Proszawa. It's an old city with delineated neighborhoods by class and occupation, dominated by a giant arms factory. Also there are automata called "Maras" that run around doing everything from deliveries to policing.
The setting absolutely steals the show here. It feels lived in, and you can feel the tension in the people who want to celebrate victory in the previous war but can sense that another one is coming.
Much like the last Kadrey book I read, Metrophage, this one spends just a bit too long wallowing in all the ways the main character is a pathetic loser who wishes he was something more, but this time I think the arc is more satisfying, and once the action gets going it keeps up a nice clip.
Definitely recommend a read if you like dark retrofuturistic nonsense like I do.
'The Great War was over, but everyone knew another war was coming and it drove the city a little mad' …
Everything was fun and nothing mattered because everyone knew that sooner or later the cannons would boom again and nothing would be fun and everything would matter.
— Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey (Page 36)
Every single person with whom you work has a vastly different set of needs. They are chaotic beautiful snowflakes. Fulfilling these needs is one way to make them content and productive. It is your full-time job to listen to these people and mentally document how they are built. This is your most important job. I know the senior VP of engineering is telling you that hitting the date for the project is job number one, but you are not going to write the code, test the product, or document the features. The team is going to do these things, and your job is managing the team.
— Managing Humans by Michael Lopp (Page 6)
Meetings must exist, but meetings cannot be seen as the only solution for making progress. If you must meet, start the meeting by remembering that the definition of a successful meeting is that when the meeting is done, it need never occur again.
— Managing Humans by Michael Lopp (Page 38)
This is one I try to heed every day at work.
This one was honestly tough to get through. I almost put it down several times. It felt like a tour of cyberpunk tropes as there are several factions (corporations/police, anarchists, drug lords) each trying to control a dirty and dying LA, and the main character just sort of stumbles into each one seemingly without agency and without any real stakes. About 2/3 of the way through, however, my perseverance was rewarded as some actual stakes seemed to coalesce for him, and he began to take control of his story to push through to the end.
This one was honestly tough to get through. I almost put it down several times. It felt like a tour of cyberpunk tropes as there are several factions (corporations/police, anarchists, drug lords) each trying to control a dirty and dying LA, and the main character just sort of stumbles into each one seemingly without agency and without any real stakes. About 2/3 of the way through, however, my perseverance was rewarded as some actual stakes seemed to coalesce for him, and he began to take control of his story to push through to the end.
For the first time in history, we have instantaneous access to the world’s knowledge. There …
There is some very useful advice here for how to better keep and organize bits of information, but there's also lots of filler.
"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, …
Love that Murderbot!
