What I’m reading:
Crash Early, Crash Often by Venkatesh Rao (Ribbonfarm.com, 2017). The guiding force behind the blog community Ribbonfarm and the series Breaking Smart distills a philosophy of midlife reflection from Douglas Adams, James Carse, agile software development, and other sources, in a collection of blog essays. I read Rao as a consulting practitioner who seamlessly blends John Boyd’s OODA Loop with Silicon Valley innovation.
Poor Richard’s Retirement: Retirement for Everyday Americans by Aaron Clarey (Aaron Clarey, 2017). Clarey is an unaffiliated economist who saw the 2007-08 global financial crisis as a bank credit analyst, achieved online notoriety as the blogger and ebook author Captain Capitalism, and who then attracted a new audience in the alt.right ‘manosphere’. I read Clarey for his libertarian economic insights. His Trump era rhetoric is a different reality tunnel to my life experience as a working class background, liberal arts major who he would probably despise (Worthless). To sum up Clarey’s advice in this ebook: consume less and avoid over-consumption.