My Review of "The Tree" by Percival Everett

The Trees by Percival Everett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a fun read, it's part murder mystery part historical lesson about lynching in America, this book conveys a powerful message with a satirical tone (the joke's on the racists) that only Percival Everett can pull off.

I picked up this book on whim when I was at the bookstore, the first few pages caught my interest, and I finished it in one day. I laughed out loud, got angry, and made me a little more conscious. I'm 2 for 2 with this writer (I read James and really liked it too)


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My review of "Empire of AI" by Karen Hao

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI by Karen Hao
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a highly opinionated book that answers the following question:

- Why did Sam Altman get fired from OpenAI and then come back (long answer and not that exciting unless you're into corporate drama)
- How does OpenAI and big tech companies affect me, and how they affect the world?
- Should the power of AI and all that it entails be concentrated in the hands of very few people?

I gained a lot of insights into the way Silicon Valley tech dudes think about AI. I didn't know that there were two camps when it comes to thinking about General Artificial Intelligence (Doomers and Boomers) this was all very interesting to me. Fascinating. The chapters about power consumption and and what's going on in Chile and Uruguay are upsetting.

This book is well researched, one thing I'd say is not really focused on one thing per se, there's stuff about Altman's personal life, stuff about OpenAI and it's drama and stuff about the tech industry in general, these are all somewhat tied together, but besides all that, this is a must-read for everyone with a job that requires technical knowledge.

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My Review of "Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI" on GoodReads

Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI by Anil Ananthaswamy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book gives an overview of the math that powers Deep Learning algorithms, I was goin to say high level, but that's not quite right. It goes into great depths, describing the concepts in lay terms. This book will give you an intuition for thinking about large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and such.
I love that the author gives clear explanations to complex topics. I really enjoyed getting the history and the people behind each discovery, the book goes in chronological order.
I have been studying and following AI since it was called "Pattern Recognition" in grad school, I took courses on "Machine Learning" at the University of Washington about 10 years ago, right around the time Deep Nets were stating to gain traction. I was starting to think I was not going to get anything new from this book but the last chapter of the book covers what's been happening since 2020 and it made me change my mind about this field. I don't want to "spoil" it, but I didn't know about that fact that Neural Networks are going past the theoretical bias/variance "Goldilocks" limit. Reading about that made me take another look at the tech. Like I said, I've been skeptical about NN and the "hype" of AI, but reading about this made me want to know more.

Excellent Read


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My Review of the Sympathizer by Viet Than Nguyen on GoodReads

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This book rattled me. Not going to lie I was shaken when I finished reading this book. Our main character is a man who escaped the Vietnam War as a refuge and ally, but he's got a secret, he is leading a double life a secret agent, a spy for the communist. He lives in America, but he is not one of us, so he comments on our culture, our customs and our hypocrisy, and then he goes back to communist Vietnam.

This is an amazing story written in a style that I don't quite have a name for, it's a first person narrative that manages to be self-critical and observant. The observations the man made while in America were quite eye opening, there were some parts that seemed obvious but others were new, I love it when a book makes me challenge my assumptions and make me consider new points of view. As a person who grew up watching the Vietnam War movies of the 80s, I grew up influenced by America's reaction to the War, yet all the books I read and the few conversations I had with actual Vietnam vets did not give me a full picture of the people of Vietnam. How did they see the war? How do they see us, US?
I liked the history lessons, the tropes ridiculed, the stereotypes challenged and the usual cliches exploded. I recommend this book to anyone who likes history, specially US history.

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"Cadáver Exqusito" de Agustina Bazterrica en GoodReads (Español)

Cadáver exquisito by Agustina Bazterrica
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Este libro es brutal, espeluznante.

Se trata de un futuro distópico, donde una enfermedad deja a todos los animales incomibles y entonces se comen a la gente. Los imigrantes, los pobres, los que no podían defenderse.

El canibalismo es ley y ahora hay dos grupos de personas, los que comen y los son comidos.

Marco Tejo es el encargado de un frigorifico, su esposa lo ha dejado y de repente un día recibe de regalo una mujer criada para ser consumida. Marco tiene que decidir como actuar, hacer lo conveniente o lo que le pide su conciencia.

Para mi lo horrible no es solamente el canibalismo, si no como el lenguaje es utilizado para oprimir y para evitar que la gente piense en los que están haciendo. La autora quiere que el lector comprenda como el consumerismo hace que nos devoremos entro nosotros. La alegoría es sutil y brutal a mismo tiempo.

Uno de los libros mas aterrorizantes que he leído.

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My review of "Don't Believe Everything You Think" by Joseph Nguyen on GoodReads

Don't Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I got a lot out of this book. I have been my own journey working on living life as a stoic. Putting my energy into the things I have power to control and letting go of the rest.
However, I got an insight reading this book. For me (YMMV) I tend to overthink everything and it's easy for me to get anxious. It's hard for me to let things go. The simple lesson here helped me out, Ill put it here for free. Thinking is Suffering. If you don't think, you don't suffer. Of course, this idea can be taken too far, and god knows that we need more thinking in our public discourse. But for me, a person who ruminates and thinks and overthinks and always in my head, this gave me a path to clarity. If I let go, I can find peace. The second insight, which could be considered a trite cliche, I know. Is that chasing fame, money, pleasure is a longing for something else, something that we already have: joy, love, fulfillment, inner-peace, we don't need external factors to get that, who we are and what we have is enough.
This helped people with my mindset and my personality, I'm always worried and anxious about something, about doing a good job at work, about being a good dad, good husband a good person. Worried that I'm not good enough if I don't make enough money, that I need people to like me and approve of me in order to feel good about myself. All that is in vain, you already have all the ingredients to have a life full of peace and free of suffering.
I am still a realist, an inquisitive skeptic, but this book helped me control my anxiety, because I understand that over-thinking is the root cause. After reading this book I have decided to choose inner peace, I have decided not to suffer for things that are not happening. Understanding that suffering is all in my head.
I liked this book and I recommend it to people who like me, worry a lot.

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My Review of "Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men" by Caroline Criado Pérez

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book showed me how we are failing half the world population.
Women get ignored when they should be seen and they are harassed when they should be left alone.

A lot of the stuff in this book is not new to me, but I still managed to be surprised about the ways in which we leave out women when we are testing drugs, researching the human body, writing laws, designing products, using algorithms. In short, men have by design created systems that subjugate, exploit and objectify women.

The thing is, the patriarchy hurts everyone, not just women. Current events have me convinced that if women ruled the world, (presidents, Corporation CEO's) we wouldn't have the problems we have. Men are too emotional and brittle to run countries (look at Trump, Putin, Musk) Anyway, I digress.

This book is not a feel-good read, but it has given me more awareness. Unlike other social issues, I have hope that progress is inevitable, but we have to make it happen.

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My Review of "What is ChatGPT doing and Why Does It Work" by Stephen Wolfram

What Is ChatGPT Doing... and Why Does It Work? by Stephen Wolfram
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This books aims to provide a clear, plain English layman's terms explanation of how ChatGPT works.
I am not very sure how well it achieves its goal. I heard about neural nets when I was an undergraduate studying computer engineering in the early 2000's. Back then the term "AI" was not used in engineering research unless you wanted to not get funding. In Grad School "Pattern Recognition" was the name of the class that taught neural nets as an after thought right after liner regression, and SVM's (Support Vector Machines).
Anyway, I did enjoy reading this book, I learned a few insights, and I was able to get intuitions about why it's hard to explain. I studied "Machine Learning" at the University of Washington in 2015 and I was up to date until ChatGPT. As a person who has used ChatGPT at work (made a cool prototype in a hackathon) I didn't know how they made it work so well. This book offered a good explanation.
Stephen Wolfram is a tad pompous, and sometimes I got lost in the details, but overall this is a good book for anyone with enough curiosity.

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My Review of "AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference" by Arvind Narayan

AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvind Narayanan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book showed me how to be more critical of AI hype. (Snake Oil) People seem to think that the authors are against tech or AI in general, but that's not the case. The book is aimed at debunking myths about AI, and it is very critical of those who makes misleading claims about AI when they should know better.

This book is credible because the authors have the right credentials, a PhD student and professor of Computer Science from Princeton University teamed up to study all the ways in which AI fails to do what their marketers promised it could do.

The examples are compelling enough to make the reader see that if unregulated bad algorithms can literally cost people's lives. Just like the FDA doesn't let you sell items with misleading labels, there should be regulation aimed at protecting humans from computer algorithms.


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My Review of "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H.G. Wells on GoodReads

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book has aged surprisingly well. It's no wonder H.G. Wells is considered one of the "fathers" of science fiction (along with Jules Vernes, Mary Shelley should be given more credit for starting this genre, but I digress)

The setting: 1887, an island somewhere in Pacific Ocean. The main character, is a London-educated scientist named Edward Prendick. The boat he is in gets in a shipwrecked, he gets rescued and finds himself stuck in an island with Dr. Moreu, a mad scientist performing horrible experiments.

I just learned that there was a public outrage when this book came out in 1896. I am not surprised at all. You can see how the state of science in that era influenced the story. It brings up evolution, the role of humans in nature and culture. I'm ngl, there is some racist undertones, but it's subtle enough to ignore. This classic has inspired a bunch of movies and books, but I honestly had not really heard about this book until I learned about The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia so I wanted to get the background before reading that.

Good book, if you are a fan of sci-fi.

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My Review of "Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous" edited by Gillian Anderson

Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous by Gillian Anderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reads like a Post-Secret compilation, curated by Gillian Anderson. Interesting read. This is like Nancy Friday's "My Secret Garden" but includes inputs from a more diverse group of women. WoC plus LGBQT folks. Fascinating look into the human psyche. Our brains are the sexiest organs for sure.
Interesting take aways is that is totally normal to have fantasies, and that queer people fantasize about heterosexual sex (sometimes?) Not every fantasy should be turned to reality, or in other words, fantasies are safe and the creator has complete control of what happens. That's not always the case in real life. I was going to say something about how women still feel shame about their fantasies even in today's age. The truth is, society is regressing a bit when it comes to social values and women's rights. That sucks, but in any case, there's a lot less stigma around sex in general if we compare society today to 1973 when My Secret Garden came out. It's surprising to compare what has changed and what stays the same. You'd have to read the book to know.

Good read.



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My Review of "The Siren's Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endagered Resource"

The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an informative book about Attention, what it is, how it works, and how recent changes in tech transformed attention into a commodity to be taken, traded and commodified.

This shift from survival mechanism to coveted valuable resource is making our lives less enjoyable.
Chris Hayes gives us a lot of information to think about, along with supporting data, quotes and apt metaphors.

I really enjoyed the analogies to labor (it's a monetized commodity) and food (we evolved not needing a lot, now there's too much information)

The last chapter, is the weakest, but I think it's up to the reader to judge for themselves. The question in the last chapter can be summoned as "Okay, now what do we do about this? " There isn't much new, just be intentional about what you pay attention to. There's a call to regulate tech companies as well.

The information in this book is important and the issues called out in here need to be addressed.

Good Read

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My Review of "Feeling Good Together" by Dr. David Burns on GoodReads

Feeling Good Together: The Secret of Making Troubled Relationships Work by David D. Burns
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This self-help book will give you tools for improving communication with people you care about.
I enjoyed the audible version. It was filled with amusing stories that help cement the strategies and techniques from the book. Well, written, well presented and very insightful. It's an excellent reference for being a good listener and a good communicator.

The Section of the book that explains the "Five Secrets of Effective Communication" is my personal favorite. I am doing the exercises and I am going to apply it as much as I can. The "Disarming Technique" was an eye opener.

I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to deepen their relationships.

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