Fiction
Wind and Truth
This is an epic book and with everything going on in my life it took me since the release of the book in December to get through it, but it was worth the read. Here we have massive revelations to the nature of the gods of Roshar and the Cosmere along with some tying up of storylines for Shalan and Kaladin and Szeth. Some maintain the new Oathpact, some are stranded in different realms, and some are now using sprens while unbonded.
Sanderson does it again with an epic story that kept me on the edge of my seat when I could get away from family life to sit and absorb the complex and entertaining story he’s weaving.
Non-Fiction
Co-Intelligence
AI is around us, but how can we use it to effectively enhance our work? That’s the question that Ethan Mollick tries to answer in Co-Intelligence. Mollick is overall positive on AI and doesn’t really touch the theft of intellectual property by tech companies assuming that they’ll get to continue to do it and we just have to live with the theft without compensation.
In fact, Mollick doesn’t engage in any meaningful way with serious critiques of AI. He mentions briefly that we’ll never get Senior practitioners of a field if we stop hiring Junior’s because AI can do their job. With no people qualified for Sr roles, we’ll have no one that can credibly judge the output of AI anymore and we’re setup for more instability. But that discussion is confined to a few brief pages in a book that is AI boosterism.
The Big Fix
The Big Fix takes a look at the competition regulations available in Canada and how they impact the market competition that we do have, or rather once you read the book the competition we don’t have due to lax enforcement of the laws we have on the books. Denise and Vass take a good look at the rollup strategies being used by private equity to provide the illusion of competition, without any real competition. If all the veterinarians in your city are owned by the same company, is there really competition?
The also look at the practice of a single mega-brand owning many sub-brands to again give us the appearance of competition where there is none.
This book won’t be big news if you’ve read about the lack of competition in the capitalist markets today, but if you’re Canadian it will give you examples you don’t normally see in American centric books on the subject. It’s wild, and discouraging, to see how poorly our governments have protected us from being taken advantage of by huge companies that continue to jack up prices while claiming that they’re providing competition.
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