(Part 2) Best biography & history books according to redditors

You may also want to mention the book "Fumbling The Future" as it accurately documents how and why Xerox failed to grasp the technological advances that were upending their business model. Support of SOPA is a strong indicator of corporate cluelessness.

That E3 must have been the highlight of Steve Race's career. He had left the failing Sega just about a year before over difficulties with (among other things) SOJ's refusal to allow him to do these kind of stunts.

Some other funny and silly things Race did during E3 1995 included putting PlayStation napkins on every table at the SEGA party, and releasing PlayStation balloons all over the Convention.

It really is too bad that less than a year after launching the PlayStation both him Olaf Olafsson(the guy talking) and most of the nonjapanese staff at Sony's Interactive Entertainment division got fired, despite the Play Station doing amazingly.

if your interested in more of the story the end of the book console wars covers it quite extensively. Its mostly a book about SEGA and even at that mostly about Tom Kalinske but its got a lot of good background on both Nintendo and Sony as well.

Impossible to name one. Books only had significance for me when they addressed a particular lifecycle that the business was in.

• Zero to One, when I needed the extra push to quit my job and focus on my new business full time.
  
  
• Walt Disney’s biography, when I was in the grind, feeling sorry for myself.
  
  
• Crossing the Chasm, when we needed to operationalize the business to scale.
  
  
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things, when I needed to fire our first VP.
  
  
• Only the Paranoid Survive, when I needed to learn how to disrupt myself.
  
  EDIT: Lots of requests for more books as they relate to 'business lifecycle'. Also, linked all of these on Amazon. Here ya go:
  
  
• Blue Ocean Strategy, when we realized positioning ourselves as a competitor to others was the wrong approach
  
  
• Your Strategy Needs a Strategy, when planning things out years in advance kept us committed to the wrong plan for too long.
  
  
• Accounting for Non-Accountants, when I was just getting started and needed to learn how to read a financial statement :)
  
  
• The Art of Acting, when I needed to give a convincing presentation for the first time.
  
  
• Co-Active Coaching, when I needed to learn how to actively listen to employees (this lead to me becoming an executive coach).
  
  
• Understanding Michael Porter, a master class on business strategy.

The story was also in Fire in the Valley by Paul Freiberger
and Michael Swaine. Jobs was proud of pulling that one on his best friend.

Hardly the only atrocity committed by United Fruit (Chiquita).

In 1928, workers went on strike in Columbia and United Fruit pressured the government to "deal with it" which went down in history as the Banana Massacre. Thousands were killed when the army opened fire on the strikers.

Same type of thing happened in Guatemala in the 50s. United Fruit put a president in power who gave them substantial concessions as well as used the Guatemalan military to break up strikes. That didn't go over well with the population, who replaced the politicians with a fairly extremist, Maxist regime. So United Fruit financed, and with the support of US military and CIA, eventually overthrew that government and put another corrupt group of politicians in power (which gave it about half the land in the entire country). That led to the 1960 Guatemalan civil war (which was an on-again-off-again affair for the next three decades), and generally destabilized the country, leading it to be the awful mess it is today. Thanks Chiquita!

Remember 1961? The Bay of Pigs incident in Cuba, shortly after Castro took over the country and nationalized all the United Fruit plantations? You guessed it. Because of the Bay of Pigs, Castro pressured the USSR to make Cuba a nuclear power (Mutually Assured Destruction policy seemed to be working). A year later, the USSR sent a fleet to bring Cuba the weapons they requested. That led to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. So, in short, United Fruit almost caused an all out war between the United States and the USSR.

They didn't stop there either. Much of the awful shape most of those tiny Central American and Caribbean countries are in can be traced back to United Fruit Company. There's a reason the concept of a corporate owned nation is referred to as a Banana Republic. Even after they changed their name to try to put the past behind them, they continued the same, awful policies. Chiquita went so far as to finance guerrilla militias in Central America in the 70s and 80s. It was so blatant that Colombia was able to successfully sue Chiquita for it.

There's a good book about the whole thing that came out a few years ago: "Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World"

Plot twist: They never were.
That's why they started cheating their customers, bribing the whole industry and defrauded the public in the first place.

In lights of this some age-old yet ever so up-to-the-minute quote from Andy Grove, one of Intel's former CEOs and likely the man who influenced Intel's character (as a company's profile) the most;

> “I worry about products getting screwed up¹, and I worry about products getting introduced prematurely². I worry about factories not performing well³, and I worry about having too many factories⁴. I worry about hiring the right people⁵, and I worry about morale slacking off⁶. And, of course, I worry about competitors⁷.”
^— ^Andy ^S. ^Grove ^· ^CEO ^of ^Intel ^Corp. ^from ^1987–1998 ^in ^›Only ^the ^Paranoid ^Survive‹

He was right on point – since Intel has managed to fulfil every single one of this man's worst nightmares …

• ¹ Intel managed to screw up most of their own products → Meltdown, Spectre, Foreshadow, ZombieLoad and alike
  
  
• ² Intel managed to introduce products prematurely and over-hasty → Skylake-X as the competitor against Threadripper
  
  
• ³ Intel managed their factories to not perform any well at all → 10nm™
  
  
• ⁴ Intel manages to have too much factories → Their maintaining-costs eat them up alive
  
  
• ⁵ Intel managed to fail hiring the right people on time for making the crucial impact → Like Jim Keller, way too late
  
  
• ⁶ Intel managed their company's in-house moral slacking off → Playing dirty ever since, no real intention to innovate
  
  
• ⁷ Intel managed to lose their foundry- and process-leaderchip they had for a quarter of a century, also → AMD
  
  What this man also said, was that …
  >“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”
  
  In hindsight you can safely say, he pretty much predicted Intel's way the company will go years before it actually happened.
  Intel has managed to act against every golden rule their CEO said is crucial for a company to stay competitive – as they perpetrated their utmost worse fault and with that this very cardinal error: Becoming complacent.
  
  So, while Intel's story was already taught as an prime example for incredible success in business classes ever since, their lasting complacency also will be going to be told too – as the worst prominent one for how destroying such a record-scoring successful business afterwards.
  
  One company, a single book, another decision – and how you're going to make the most of it. Or likely don't.
  
  ----
  ^Read:
  ^25IQ.com ^• ^My ^views ^on ^the ^Market, ^Tech, ^and ^Everything ^else ^– ^A ^Dozen ^Things ^I’ve ^Learned ^from ^Andy ^Grove ^about ^Business ^and ^Strategy
  
  ^Yale.edu ^• ^Yale ^School ^of ^Management ^· ^Harvard ^Business ^Review ^| ^School ^Publishing ^– ^Universal ^Lessons ^every ^Manager ^can ^learn ^from ^Andy ^Grove's ^Paranoia ^(PDF, ^2.5 ^MByte)
  
  tl;dr: Intel's executive floor mistook a healthy portion of scepticism and sound wariness (read: business' watchfulness) with paranoia.

You should read this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-Revolt-ebook/dp/B00HVJB4VM

A custom built fiber connection from NY to Chicago that was a straight line. Ripping up parking lots and such to go through to keep connection distance as little as possible.

The reason is to lower the distance as you can not really beat the speed of light.

Satellite has a big issue that makes it offer less than ideal user experience. You have to go from ground to satellite to ground to data center and then back to satellite to ground for every single packet.

Keep plugging along. I've been working professionally for about 16 years and made a concerted effort to double-down with some renewed assembly awareness the past few months. This past weekend I was able to write something using AVX2 intrinsics that took normal pointer-chasing C code that would run in hundreds of microseconds into, literally, ~20 nanoseconds.

There's a great quote in Show Stopper!, where this new guy who was incredibly talented had a bug in his assembly... Dave Cutler came in... didn't know anything about the domain (it was some low-level graphics stuff), and re-wrote the assembly with him. The guy remarked later when describing the event: "He is the best assembly programmer I've ever seen."

That's what I'd like to aspire to.

Yup, nothing shady happens at a regulated exchange!

RJR Nabisco, one of the biggest LBO's at the time. I believe there's been bigger ones since then, but I'm not an expert. However, I'd highly recommend reading Barbarians at the Gate, which is a fantastic read on the topic.

I would be careful about what you say about her. Someone might come and talk to you. Her brother founded Blackwater, the largest private army in the world. They murder with impunity, and are above the law. Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Revised and Updated] https://www.amazon.com/dp/156858394X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_yFgqyb73WAW7R

Edit: I'm not really concerned about your safety, but my point is with the rise of tyranny on American soil (and I'm not singling out trump here) your government increasingly becomes something to fear.

The educational aspects, of this emerging tyrannical phenomena of American governance, facilitates freedom of the government to use/abuse non-constitutionally granted authority/power. Because the public keeps the government in check. Unless they're too stupid to accomplish that function.

Actually, Steve and Bill had a rich and stupid neighbor, who was selling $100 bills for $1.

Steve handed the guy a wad of $1s and walked away with a wad of $100s. The people who worked for the guy, who actually made his money, were furious, but it wasn't their $$ any more.

Bill asked to borrow one of Steve's $100s, ran to a Xerox(sic) machine, and made a bundle off his copies.

Seriously, read any history of those events. My personal favorite is Fumbling the Future.

Page 209 sums up the whole problem (search for the word "demonstration"). PARC had a big coming-out party for networked workstations, in 1977(!) at a big Xerox internal expo. All of Xerox's top execs were shown the future, and were not impressed. Their wives, who given the era had probably worked as secretaries, got it.

From a great post on /r/neutralpolitics from /u/rynebrandon, I quote:

> Why I think George W. Bush is arguably one of the five worst presidents in our history and inarguably one of the ten worst is one thing: The Iraq War. The Iraq War was a massive failure of the intelligence community, intellectual honesty and transparency in our political system and good common sense. Using my method of measuring the quality of presidential candidates, the Afghanistan War likely would have happened in some form or fashion under a Gore Administration or a McCain Administration or really anyone in power at the time. However, no other politician - none in the 2000 presidential field (Edit: based on subsequent conversation it appears there's at least some possibility the Iraq War happens under McCain) - would have moved for war with Iraq which was widely considered - even at the time - a distraction from the War on Terror and it's not like the War on Terror couldn't be criticized in its own right. The various failures of the Iraq War have been recounted in numerous places: Abu Ghraib, crony contracts to companies like Halliburton, the privatization of key American military operations. But those are all somewhat narrow execution concerns in a chaotic time - war is often messy. To me, the most unforgiveable facet of the Iraq War is that it happened at all.

Maybe there isn't "no way", but it would have been highly unlikely.

I've been reading a lot about Middle Eastern geopolitics, mostly from leftist perspectives

• Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004)
  
• Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (2011)
  
• Global Energy Security and American Hegemony
  
• America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (2006)
  
• Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (2011)
  
  Some books on my reading list:
  
  
• Congress and the Shaping of the Middle East (2015)
  
• The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (2014)
  
• Instruments of Statecraft: US Guerrilla Warfare, Counter-Insurgency, Counter-Terrorism, 1940-1990 (1992)
  
• Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, 2nd Ed. (1993)
  
• Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World (2009)
  
• Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe
  
  

What helped me get there was the realization that I was an addict. I was standing in line at the gas station behind two guys and a girl, each getting their cigarettes. The whole time i was silently condemning them in my head "Dont they know they are addicts, that they are killing themselves, that they are throwing their money away." etc..

It became my turn the pay and i sat my chocolate donuts and soda on the counter and paid my $4 and change and remembered that I had just said that morning that i was going to start calorie counting again, that i was going to just skip breakfast because i wasn't even that hungry. That i had specifically reminded myself to not stop by the convenience store. Yet there I was anyway getting my fix, just like the three smokers in front of me had been.

Read Salt Sugar Fat, its not a coincidence that I was an addict, the food I was gorging on was specifically and meaningfully designed to be addictive.:

https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked-ebook/dp/B00985E3UG

That knowledge gave me the fuel to fight my cravings, because fuck them. Righteous indignation became my shield and got me through those first couple of really hard weeks and unto the path to a healthier lifestyle.

http://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Gate-Fall-RJR-Nabisco/dp/0061655554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406316997&sr=1-1&keywords=rjr+nabisco

Have Wikipedia/Google by your side and research anything you come across that doesn't make complete sense or you'd like to delve into further.

Scahill's book "Blackwater: The Rise Of The World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army" is a very difficult but informative read. It focuses on exactly how Blackwater (Xe) gained so much political clout and how they actually use their resources. I could only read a chapter or two at a time because it just made me physically ill. Scahill has quite a lot to say specifically about Prince and his upbringing.

Edit: Link added

It is. Read Flash Boys.

https://www.amazon.ca/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-Revolt-ebook/dp/B00HVJB4VM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1497381150&sr=1-1&keywords=flash+boys+a+wall+street+revolt

I strongly agree that the history of mathematics and computing should be taught as an integral part of any CS / Math degree.

Two books you might want to read by way of a 'history assignment'.

1. Fumbling the Future -- How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer. I was there for part of it (late 70's) and this book pretty much gets it right.
   
   
2. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. It's about the mathematician Paul Erdos and is one of the more amazing true stories I've ever read.
   
   
3. For extra credit, try the book The Man Who Knew Infinity. There's a recent movie based on the book (I haven't seen it yet); it's gotten a mix of very-good-to-meh reviews.

Bananas - How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World is also good.

Seriously, I'm not banana obsessed...I was using this as the backdrop for a screenplay I once attempted and, like everything else in my life, almost immediately gave up on once I realized that it required actual work.

I'm assuming this film is based on the book by the same name.

Scahill's book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army is really good. It's several years old but goes into depth about Prince and his merc fetish.

I highly recommend reading Fordlandia: http://www.amazon.com/Fordlandia-Henry-Fords-Forgotten-Jungle/dp/0312429622/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396471818&sr=1-1&keywords=fordlandia

Really good historical analysis that answers exactly the question you're asking. Effectively, Ford paid higher than average wages but also demanded incredible productivity and prescribed a particular lifestyle for his workers in exchange for the pay. There was also very little job security and his factories employed various people whose job it was to keep the employees in line - whatever that took. All of this was taken to the extreme in Fordlandia and it all sort of fell apart - the employees really didn't care what Ford thought they should spend their money on or how they should live their lives.

it's cause they eat grass and graze and have not conducted genetic selection based primarily on marbling. that's what this book taught me anyways. i think it was in fastfood nation too actually.

https://www.amazon.ca/Steak-Search-Worlds-Tastiest-Piece/dp/0143119389

https://www.amazon.ca/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0547750331

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, the book Fast Food Nation addresses this topic with some good examples of why the common fast-food business model sucks (e.g., Taco Bell, McDonalds) but other fast-food business models have done well (e.g., In-and-Out). One of the core tenants of the successful model is paying workers a living wage and making their work experience a positive, viable career.

I've read a number of books about the subject so I'm summing up what I've read; but I'd recommend in particular the books Dealers Of Lightning, Fumbling The Future and Apple Confidential if you're interested to read more. Here's also an interesting article from the New Yorker about it.

To anyone who didn't know this, you might be interested in reading Console Wars. It's all about the battle between Sega and Nintendo. Informative and a good read.

Eu começava por conviver um bocado com o pessoal da cerveja para conhecer mais sobre cerveja, trocar impressões e umas dicas em pessoa.

No Porto:

• Catraio - Craft Beer Shop
  
  
• Letraria - Craft Beer Garden
  
  
• Armazém da Cerveja
  
  
  Em Lisboa:
  
  
• Zymology
  
  
• Cerveteca Lisboa
  
  
  Aposto que há mais locais no resto do país mas, assim de cabeça, vieram-me estes... Outra boa opção é visitar festivais onde podes conhecer os cervejeiros, aficionados, ouvir musica, beber cerveja e conviver!
  
  
• Caminha - Art Beer Fest (13 a 16 de Julho)
  
  
• Porto - Porto Beer Fest (14 a 18 de Junho)
  
  
• Faro - Alameda Beer Fest (7 a 9 de Julho)
  
  
• Sertã - PROVART (25 a 25 de Junho)
  
  
• Évora - Um Festival do Caneco (14 a 16 de Julho)
  
  
  Depois disso é simples. Começa por fazer cerveja de kit de extrato. Com jeitinho gastas uns €50 em equipamento (que vai servir-te anos) e €15 em ingredientes. Estes kits são mesmo simples de usar e servem bem para aprender algumas das bases da cerveja sem teres que te preocupar com os aspetos mais delicados (como a brassagem). À medida que lhe vais ganhando o gosto vais podendo investir mais ou menos dinheiro até comprares um moinho, algumas panelas e fazeres a cerveja mesmo a partir do cereal.
  
  
  
• Porto - Loja da Cerveja Artesanal (Sovina)
  
  
• Gondomar - Loja do Cervejeiro
  
  
• Lisboa - Oficina da Cerveja
  
  
  
  A partir daí o google e o youtube são amigos dependendo de quanto queres ou não gastar. Tens aqui alguns vídeos que te recomendo:
  
  
• Craft Beer - A Hopumentary
  
  
• Beer Culture - The movie
  
  Estes dois são bons para "entrar no espírito" da coisa.
  
  
  Para aprender a fazer cerveja a partir de Kit podes ver estes vídeos da BrewUk (boa loja) que mostram tudo direitinho. Lembra-te que o mais importante é a higiene e lavar bem todo o equipamento!!
  
  
  No youtube recomendo-te muito o canal Brewing TV e o The Craft Beer Channel.
  
  
  Se te começares a envolver e a gostar a sério da coisa recomendo-te que leias estes livros:
  
  
• How to Brew do John Palmer
  
  
• Tasting Beer do Randy Mosher
  
  
• Mastering Home Brew também do Randy Mosher
  
  
• Designing Great Beers do Ray Daniels
  
  
  Um livro que a mim me ajudou também imenso foi o Extreme Brewing e o Brewing Up a Business do Sam Calagione (dono da Dogfish Head) se bem que estes dois livros são menos "informativos" e de leitura mais leve. Ainda assim eu acho que o estilo mais relaxado torna-os de leitura mais fácil que os outros (que são considerados bíblias da cerveja) sobretudo para quem está a começar.
  
  
  Fora isso acredita, o importante é comer e beber cerveja! Conversa com o pessoal e divertir-te com isto tudo! Aprendes mais às vezes numa tarde a beber uns finos com o pessoal num bar de cerveja artesanal do que num dia a ler em casa!
  
  
  Espero que isto te ajude a ti ou alguém que esteja com a "pulga" atrás da orelha! Mas se tiveres perguntas ou dúvidas estás à vontade. :)
  
  
  Se alguém quiser acrescentar alguma coisa por favor que o faça! Cerveja artesanal é sobre troca de ideias! :)

Did the New Deal end the Great Depression? No. Did it make things worse? Absolutely not. Did it help millions of Americans avoid poverty and starvation? Emphatically yes. The period from 1933 to 1937 remains the fastest period of peacetime growth in American history. GDP growth averaged approximately 10% per year. You can see the full range of data here. Also, the PWA and WPA created the infrastructure the United States to grow for decades to come. The former completed projects in all but three counties of the United States such as the Triboro Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel, and the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams; the latter built 78,000 bridges, 1,000 tunnels, 6,000 schools, 67,000 miles of city streets, and 572,000 miles of rural roads (among a ridiculous number of other projects).


Additionally Roosevelt's monetary policy was probably more successful than his fiscal stimulus. First, the bank holiday restored the confidence of American savers and investors more so than probably any other action. Banks were closed on March 9, 1933 and began to reopen only after thorough auditing. When the banks opened on March 12, depositors, despite the suspension of gold convertibility, began putting their money back in the banks. Within a week, $1 billion had been put back into the banking system that had fled during the runs on banks prior to Roosevelt's inauguration. On March 15, the New York Stock Exchange opened for the first time in 10 days and the Dow jumped 15%, which was the largest single day movement in its history. By the end of the month of March, 2/3 of all banks were reopened and $1.5 billion had returned to the banks.

The second major act of monetary policy was the suspension of the gold standard. That action was overwhelmingly supported by financial and consumer markets. It removed a major deflationary burden from the American economy. Keynesian bias or not. On the day the change was announced, the NYSE jumped 15%. Within three months, wholesale prices had risen 45%. This lowered the real cost of borrowing significantly and investment began to flow into the private sector—orders for heavy machinery rose 100%—and into consumer markets--auto sales doubled. Overall industrial production rose 50%. By early 1937, overall industrial production had returned to its 1929 peak. Unemployment, moreover, had been halved from 25% nationally in 1933 (with certain cities and demographic groups even worse off--75% of black women in Detroit were unemployed) to about 12%-14% in early 1937 (Unemployment statistics prior to 1940 are always best guesses as the Bureau of Labor Statistics didn't collect them until then).

In 1937, FDR faced a growing conservative coalition in Congress and had his own misgivings about spending and reduced relief funding which caused a minor recession. Unemployment jumped to around 17%. GDP fell slightly in 1938, but was above its 1937 levels in 1939. Had this small recession not happened, the US may have left the Depression before military spending for WWII began to pick up. As it is, the combination of war production and the draft is what wiped out unemployment by 1942. So the New Deal didn't end the Depression, but it most certainly did not make things worse and was responsible for helping millions of people. There's a reason why FDR was elected four times and the Democrats only lost control of Congress once between 1930 and 1952.

Here's some light reading for you.

• Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by H.W. Brands, Professor of History, University of Texas, Austin
  
  
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by Alan Brinkley, Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University
  
  
• The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume I, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., one of the most prolific historians of the 20th century
  
  
• The Coming of the New Deal, 1933-1935 The Age of Roosevelt, Volume II, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
  
  
• The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume III, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
  
  
• Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956, by Jason Scott Smith, who was a fellow and assistant professor of history at Harvard and Cornell and is now at the University of New Mexico.
  
  
• "Lessons from the Great Depression for Economic Recovery in 2009," Christina D. Romer, Council of Economic Advisers
  
  
• Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed, who worked at the World Bank and for several investment management groups. The book won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in History.
  
  
• Stayin' Alive: The 1970's and the Last Days of the Working Class, by Jefferson Cowie, assistant professor of labor history at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
  
  
• Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939, by Lizabeth Cohen, Howard Mumford Jones Professor American Studies at Harvard
  
  
• Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, by Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and a professor at Columbia
  
  
• Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (Director of the Institution for Social and Public Policy Studies at Yale and the Avice Saint Chair of Public Policy at UC Berkley, respectively)
  
  
• Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, by Esther Duflo (Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT)
  
  
• The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, by Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and a professor of economics at Princeton
  

The video description has three 1 2 3

http://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276697

Great book on the subject. Apparently Sega of Japan tried really, really hard to run Sega of America into the ground. Sonic was the result of an in house contest at SoJ to create a new character. Originally he had big fangs, spikey hair, wore a leather jacket and I shit you not, had a sexy human girlfriend called Madonna. Seeing how this would totally bomb in the US market, SoA quietly cleaned up his image and the rest is history.

At the height of the subprime boom Fannie and Freddie's business was actually shrinking, while the large private lenders (Countrywide most notably) were expanding. It wasn't uncommon for them to push borrowers who could qualify for conforming 30s into the exotic types of mortgages. The selling, packaging, slicing, insuring and purchasing of loans was an enormously profitable engagement for everyone every step of the way.

Mortgage lenders won every time they handed out a nonconforming loan, which was a lot more valuable than a vanilla 30 year fixed. They did't care about quality because the banks were all but telling them straight out 'we'll buy anything'.

Banks profited on creation and sale of the collateral debt obligations and because the CDOs allowed them to hold less money in reserve to guard against borrower default. They didn't care about quality because they'd turn right around and package the loan into a CDO.

The insurance company AIG was winning on collecting premiums on AAA-rated securities that they thought had no chance in failing. Oh, and they got to be rated AAA because the agencies handing out the grades were paid by the banks. So if Moody's won't give Countrywide the needed grade, then Standard and Poor's across the street surely will.

Hell, even the man on the street profited by using the house's rising value as a piggy bank. Or they just speculated by buying investment property, waiting not too long of a time, and flipping it for a good profit.


If anyone wants to really understand the full extent of the crisis, pick up All the Devils are Here or Michael Lewis's The Big Short. For the tl;dr version you can read this

Can I add - Beer School: Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery .. reading it right now and enjoying the story of the business start up and its growth.

Three great resources:

1. Georgia Craft Brewers Guild http://www.georgiacraftbrewersguild.org/
   
   
2. Brewer's Association https://www.brewersassociation.org/
   
   
3. Brewing Up a Business https://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Up-Business-Adventures-Founder/dp/0470942312

> whenever I bring up that he may have a viable wrongful termination suit, he scoffs at the notion.

If your father does not want to fight this, let it go. If he does want to fight it, do your research and find out the names of local reporters who cover this kind of story and contact them.

> What can I get away with without hurting my father's chance at future jobs and not violate the very ethics that I wish my father's employers would have adhered to?

Very little. Also, understand that corporations by their very nature are amoral, cf. The Corporation.

For anyone who would like to know, the following books I've read are my favorite and I'd really recommend them to anyone: The Martian by Andy Weir, Gerald's Game by Stephen King, The Panther by Nelson DeMille, Unflinching by Jodi Mitic, American Sniper by Chris Kyle, and Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

EDIT: Oh, and Blackwater - The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill.

EDDIT 2: Oh, and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card which is so much better than the movie. The movie does not do this novel justice. And Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly.

I would also highly recommend The Console Wars by Blake J Harris. It gives Sega's point of view on the whole thing, with a little bit of Nintendo and Sony interaction too.

Consumer Companies
----

• In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Live
  
  Google
  
  On Amazon
  
  
• Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
  
  RJR Nabisco
  
  On Amazon
  
  
• Dethroning the King: The Hostile Takeover of Anheuser-Busch, an American Icon
  
  Anheuser-Busch
  
  On Amazon
  
  .
  
  
  Investment companies
  -------
  
  
• King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone
  
  Blackstone Group
  
  On Amazon
  
  
• Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World
  
  Goldman Sachs
  
  On Amazon
  
  
• The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
  
  Morgan Stanley
  
  On Amazon
  
  All of these are 4+ stars and absolutely excellent reads. I recommend any of them depending on what you want to read about. Let me know if you want some more.
  

If you haven't read Beer School, go buy it now. It's one of the best craft beer industry books available, and it's an inspirational entrepreneurial book with tons of info. Plus it's written by major pioneers of the industry. Cheers, Steve and Tom

edit: The robbery scene is actually hilarious in the book.

The "Hoover cut spending and caused a depression" story is false. For a detailed look at Hoover in the Depression, read Lords of Finance, but you need not go that far to realize that your perspective on Hoover is massively untrue.

Here is government spending as a percentage of GDP from 1920 to 1940. Notice the huge increase from 1929 to 1932, during which time Hoover was in office?

"But that was because GDP fell so much!" you say to yourself, dismissively. Nope. Spending in real terms rose significantly as well.

"But in nominal terms, spending fell due to deflation!" you protest. Not really.

"But Hoover didn't deficit spend like FDR, that's his real problem!" you say. Not really, once again. The federal budget went from surplus to deficit from 1929 to 1932, rather significantly.

Hoover had his problems, but balancing the budget in a recession wasn't one of them.

Indeed. It's an absolutely shameful aspect of American foreign policy in the '50s and '60s.

Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Changed the World by Peter Chapman is a good history of the UFCO and their dealings in Central America, for those interested in this topic.

The movie is based on a book also:

Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer

https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Valley-Making-Personal-Computer/dp/0071358927

Also Fire in the Valley, for the requisite training up in basic tech lore.

http://www.amazon.ca/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Exploit-Challenge/dp/0385483821

No, the Bolshevik Revolution in the early part of the century was funded by Wall Street (ie. Rockefellers, Rothchilds, Morgans, Goldman Sachs, etc).

They have long been the controlling hand in these countries. The history you were taught in your public schools and on the teeeveee is not whats really going on. Seriously, turn off fox news for 10 seconds and educate yourself! The future of our world depends on it.

Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World. Really great book.

Here ya go.

• The idea that "startups" and "startup founders" are in a continuous state is bullshit. So some of the time you may be in a learning stage, trying to devour all the content available about a topic, and sometimes you may be in an executing stage, where your focus is on getting things done. I think it is OK to go with this flow and enjoy it. E.g. sometimes I read 3 books in a week, sometimes zero. Yes I am sure people read more /r/iamverysmart
  
  
• Creating interesting and successful businesses requires intelligence. In general, intelligent founders will be attracted to books, because [in whatever form] they still contain the bulk of our civilization's intelligence. Yes, more photos are uploaded to Facebook every microsecond (or whatever) than the data in the entire Library of Congress, but really, the knowledge that has stood the test of time is that which is still contained within books.
  
  
• Reading news and business publications creates an emphasis on "the latest cool thing" or "the latest opposite thing". Open plan offices are bad. Open plan offices are the future! In the grand march of time, this opinion and argument is trash. One of the reasons Bill Gates always recommends Business Adventures is that the lessons are timeless, and repeat themselves every cycle. This kind of information is mainly contained in books. There is something about the "pay-to-read" format (currently) that still holds.
  
  
• Obviously, reading-with-an-intent-to-learn specifically about your chosen subject area is very close to "work", and while that's not "bad", it does mean you are not "switching off" or allowing your brain to branch out, be creative, relax, be inspired, take a few hours off-duty. So there is plenty of value in reading things that are completely unrelated. E.g. You may get more inspiration and value and love from Moby Dick than From Zero to One.

Microsoft and IBM started out developing OS/2 together but Microsoft hired Dave Cutler to design their own OS which became Windows NT. Lots of backstabbing political stuff between IBM and Microsoft. If anything Windows NT is based on DEC's VMS OS which Cutler also helped design. There is more about the history in this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717

I think this is exactly what you're looking for! Great read.

Read the book. You will not regret it.

It doesn't really apply to "being a sysadmin", but as a history buff and someone who just likes to understand what led up to where we are now, I highly recommend reading Fire in the Valley.


(If you've ever seen Pirates of Silicon Valley, this is the book that it's somewhat based on)

I haven't seen anyone else link (may have misssed) but the book is well worth the read

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle

There's a pretty good book about it: https://www.amazon.com/Fordlandia-Henry-Fords-Forgotten-Jungle/dp/0312429622 I definitely agree this could be an episode.

gratitude for what is rather than what one desires is on the money.

one of the insights articulated by JP--although a bare-bones observation from a clinical perspective--is the formidable extent to which we're hard-wired, from top to bottom, to ignore 95% of what's going spectacularly well & focus on the 5% that's not so hot & happening.

everything from perception structures to interpretive cognition to motivational states kicks our ass toward general dis-satisfaction--this is amply explored in part 14 of the personality series.

from an evolutionary perspective, this makes all the sense in the world. fixation with what's "not right," or what might be "not right," or what could potentially be a threat, makes for a constantly re-adjusting, re-formulating, agile piece of biology. in an environment where starvation, predation, social conflict & generally speaking, death lurk just around the corner, it's ideal. pace andy grove, in a tooth & claw theater of endless competition, only the paranoid survive.

but it's a manic, utterly insane default in our contemporary setting of comfort & safety where starvation, predation & conflict are no longer significant factors. it used to be that biology drove us into anxiety about being alive, now we're anxious about LTE signal strength & if the color of our shoes sends the right social cues on a first date. it's absolutely fucking debilitating.

so i find /u/LimbicLogic's note on "centering" to be spot on. there's a tremendous benefit to actively managing the default, frenzied ratio of 95% discontent/5% satiated to something that more accurately describes the actual reality of our condition.

practically, this can take place in a way that doesn't resemble formal prayer. it takes practice & discipline, but one can learn to note when a negative emotion intrudes--frustration, sadness, anger--and parse it in a way that expands awareness of what's happening into a balanced, "centered, if you will, manner.

a trivial example:

i'm frustrated by a co-worker's incompetence tinged with malice. why am i frustrated? because my workload has increased, having to make up for their carelessness or refusal to complete certain tasks. but wait: is my job something that's objectively difficult to contend with?

let's enumerate the facts: i'm gainfully employed for almost 5 years with a fortune 100 company. my compensation rates well for people my age, i have a great degree of flexibility in scheduling & great benefits. an overwhelming proportion of the work i do is not cognitively demanding to the point of stress. an overwhelming majority of my co-workers are supportive & fun to be around. there are significant career track opportunities.

so: should i be frustrated by an insular & peripheral event, if it's an act of incompetence tinged with malice, which it may not even be, a fraction of a fraction of my complete experience with my job? or should i snap back to a sense of tremendous gratitude for desirable, rewarding, flexible employment?

First off, I really loved your book about starting the company. It was an incredibly informative and insightful read.

My Question: What important bit of advice would you offer to smaller breweries/brewpubs just getting started in this quickly evolving market?

This is my full list of books from /r/homebrewing but it includes pro level books:

New Brewers:

• How to Brew - John Palmer
  
• Brewing classic styles- Jamil Zainasheff
  
• Designing Great Beers - Ray Daniels
  
• The Complete Joy of Homebrewing - Charlie Papazian
  
  Continued Learning:
  
  
• Water - Palmer and Kaminsky
  
• Yeast - Zainicheff and White
  
• Malt - Mallet
  
• Hops - Hieronymous
  
• Experimental Brewing - Drew Beechum and Denny Conn
  
• Radical Brewing - Randy Mosher
  
• Brewing Better Beer - Gordon Strong
  
  Specialty/Advanced/Other:
  
  
• American Sour Beers - Michael Tonsmeire (/u/oldsock)
  
• Brewing with Wheat - Stan Hieronymus
  
• IPA: Brewing Techniques - Mitch Steele
  
• Farmhouse Ales - Phil Markowski
  
• Brew Like a Monk - Stan Hieronymus
  
• New Brewing Lager Beers - Gregory J. Noonan
  
• Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers- Stephen Harrod Buhner
  
• Drink: a cultural history of alcohol - Iain gately
  
• Principals of Brewing Science - George Fix
  
  Business Books:
  
  
• Brewing Up a Business - Sam Calagione
  
• Brewers association Guide to Starting Your Own Brewery - Cantwell, among others
  
• SO you want to start a brewery - Tony magee
  
• Beyond the Pale: The Story of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co - Ken Grossman
  
• Beer School: Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery Paperback –Steve Hindy & Tom Potter
  
  Technical Readings (Textbooks might be expensive):
  
  
• Brewery Operations Manual - Tom Hennessy
  
• Beer Packaging - Master Brewers Association
  
• Technology Brewing and Malting - W. Kunze, 5th Edition
  
• Malting and Brewing Science, Volume 1 - Many Authors
  
• Malting and Brewing Science, Volume 2 - Many Authors
  
• Brewing yeast and fermentation - Boulton and Quain

Food/Beer pairing: The Brewmaster's Table
Business: Brewing Up a Business
General Beer Listings: 1001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die
Beer Info: Oxford Companion to Beer

www.amazon.com/Blackwater-Powerful-Mercenary-Revised-Updated/dp/156858394X

The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill wrote a good book on Blackwater.

Here's a good Primer video, and yes, it's literally sponsored by Call of Duty.

As a whole we can't blanket say "Banks are greedy", but there is evidence that there was a systemic problem with the banks leading up to and since the subprime mortgage fiasco. The Devil's are All Here outlines this very well.

I really liked "All the Devils are Here"

If you want unbiased, stay away from Michael Lewis. I love him, but the man loves to spin a good tale.

In no particular order, here are several non-textbooks that were either required or recommended for higher level economics courses that I have taken:

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
by Bethany McLean

Fool's Gold: The Inside Story of J.P. Morgan and How Wall St. Greed Corrupted Its Bold Dream and Created a Financial Catastrophe by Gillian Tett

Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us by John Quiggin

ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism by Yves Smith

You might also have success looking through the "Customers also bought" sections for these books.

/r/history has a great wiki - https://www.reddit.com/r/history/wiki/recommendedlist

but, it doesn't look like a lot of Great Depression stuff there.

The only entry I saw in a quick glance was:

• *Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed. It's about the Great Depression in Europe. (Also available on audio and MP3 format.) Review of it from the NY Times Book Review.
  
  (and I assume you are looking for US Great Depression)
  
  ​
  
  Here's a link to some photographers, you can search their names for more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-photographers-charged-documenting-depression-era-america-farm-security-administration-180964123/
  
  ​

I'd like to point out something, that you may not have considered.

Not everyone is predisposed to be addicted to anything. In 2002, I was hospitalized for 2 weeks or so, hooked up to a Dilaudid (synthetic morphine) pump. I was on a fairly high dosage, for at least 12 days of that. During the last 2 days, I was offered assistance in "coming off" the medication. At the time, I didn't understand why I would need it, and refused it. They unhooked the pump, set me up with a plain IV drip. For the next few days, there was a nurse, aide or doctor in my room every hour, "just checking" on me.

I found out later, dilaudid has a fairly high addiction rate, and people generally are addicted within a few days, especially at a higher dosage. They were offering me assistance because the odds were that I was going to be addicted, and would be going through withdrawl. I didn't. I was given a lower dose prescription for it as well. I think I took 3, total, over the 2 years that I was dealing with the injury.

Does this mean that the data is wrong, that dilaudid is not addictive? Or that all the people that are addicted to it are "weaker" than I am because they can't just stop taking it?

Or is a more reasonable assumption that I was a bit of an anomaly, that, for whatever reason, I did not become addicted to it because of something in my genetic makeup that just made me resist it?

I'm also not saying that it's an excuse. Just as someone can choose to "get clean" from narcotics, tobacco or alcohol, if they are addicted to sugar (or caffeine or whatever else) they, and they alone, choose to stay addicted or seek help.

Also, I recommend the book "Salt Sugar Fat" by Michael Moss. It's about how and why prepackaged foods have so much of those 3 ingredients, and why they're fighting the FDA to keep adding so much to the food supply.

TL;DR: Just because some people aren't addicted, doesn't mean all people aren't. Even if it is addictive it's still not an excuse to stay fat.

Oh wow, it's written by the same guy who authored Console Wars!

No problem. I recommend taking several days/weeks to just soak up information before you buy anything.

Also watch an economic calendar and you can begin to see what effect different events/information releases have on the market.

(Ex. Janet Yellen speaks at the FOMC meeting and decides not to raise interest rates and her speech is very dovish; Gold will go up on speculation that the next rate hike wont be for a long time.)

Edit- Another good book on how the stock market has evolved with technological changes

You probably all know it, but there's an interesting book on the history of NT development:

Show Stopper!

http://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219747784&sr=8-7

I was reading Show Stopper over the weekend. One of the chapters was getting into NTFS (the file system). The reason for "saving all this stuff" was that things were intended to save files twice. That way if there were a crash or power outage (or something that didn't involve damage to the hard drive), the data could be restored to the last known good state.

Previously, in DOS, to save time deleting files, they just changed the first character in the file allocation table (roughly a dictionary that told where the files were). Deleting a file didn't delete the file, just changed one character and the operating system used that as "space is now available". Deleting a large file might take minutes if you have to zero out every block on the hard drive. Changing the first character to the special "I'm deleted" character takes milliseconds. In court cases, the forensic folks are going to use these quirks to see when files were created, or deleted and maybe what was in the file.

Many programs are also sloppy in how they store temporary data on the hard drive, and many don't properly delete those temp files when you exit the program. These temp files can also be used to testify against you in court.

Not Brent here. If I had the inclination to keep an office library the book Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft would be in it. A very interesting read even today.

Cutler start working on NT 3.1 in 1988 from scratch. Years before Win95 was even on the radar.

Here a book for you. http://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717

I strongly suggest you to read Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft


Then you might get a glimpse of what represents to make a new OS.

Yeah, the gameplay is modeled after the older games but the style and tone is still of the post-Adventure Sonic. I like the little pudgy Sonic of the 1990's who fought a villain named Dr. Robotnik.

I think what it comes down to is that I like Sega of America's vision of Sonic the Hedgehog. The book Console Wars talks about the conflicting views between Sega of Japan and Sega of America's localization and marketing team. Sonic was a corporate marketing maneuver to compete with Nintendo's Mario from the get-go and SoA's marketing team had a lot of sway in the design process to make the character friendly to a western audience. Sonic's original Japanese design was edgy, he had fangs and a human girl friend, but SoA fought to dial the character's weirdness back and make him cuter to be more appealing to a young western demographic. They also changed names like Dr. Eggman to Dr. Robotnik and Miles Prower to Tails.

After the Genesis a lot of that SoA group left the company. That, along with the failed Saturn Sonic game, I think were the catalysts for a rebranding of Sonic more in-line with the original Japanese vision. Sonic was made older and more edgy, Dr. Robotnik became Dr. Eggman, and Sonic got his human girl friend. I just never felt comfortable in the rebranded universe and stopped playing Sonic games.

Generations is the closest thing I have to a modern Sonic, but I was still forced to wade through the new Sonic universe and cast of characters in order to play the game.

The book was called Console Wars and it was actually very enjoyable.

amazon

Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer (Second Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071358927/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_F7xIAbQCHRPST

I'm wondering, though, if this is just the beginning of a bubble. Right now, people are paying high prices for these out of nostalgia; the machine they had (or couldn't afford, but desperately wanted) when these were new. Now they have the cash to buy them, and are hitting mid-life crisis time, so they're snatching these up.

This is me right now. When I was young I wanted all these machines and now I can. I write off all the expenses as cheaper than therapy. But at the same time it has fueled my passion for Computer History. I now find myself buying and reading books like The Home Computer Wars or Fire in the Valley.

Yeah....considering the history of Apple. I'm not sure they're exactly a bastion of so called 'American Values'....or maybe they are considering American History.

PS: I suggest reading Fire in the Valley

http://www.amazon.com/Fordlandia-Henry-Fords-Forgotten-Jungle/dp/0312429622

http://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Up-Business-Adventures-Founder/dp/0470942312/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309892619&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Beer-School-Bottling-Success-Brooklyn/dp/0470068671/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309892701&sr=1-1

1. I recommend reading this list of things pros wish they'd do differently
   
   
2. Starting a brewery is not as simple as starting a restaurant. I recommend Beer School by the founders of Brooklyn Brewery. It outlines every step of the process and their personal experience. After reading that you should have a pretty good idea - what's needed, what are the major steps etc. Pro tip: this is an older book so your local libraries could have it to borrow for free.
   
   
3. Just to save you some time, here are some things to consider
   
   > like a food truck but for beer
   
   This is not legal in any US state AFAIK. Maybe it's possible with a permit at festivals, but definitely not freely on the street.
   
   > Is a 1 bbl system worth it in your opinion
   
   1bbl = 2x 15.5 gal kegs. That's not a lot of beer for your time from a business stand point. Pros can chime in and tell you that to brew 50bbl or 1bbl takes the same steps and not much more time for 50bbl. Probably not even 2x the time. You can do the math how brewing 1bbl is not a good financial decision.
   
   > the difference in competition
   
   Keep in mind the more competition there is, the more you need to stand out. You can assume that in highly competitive markets such as Portland, breweries with bad products/management/marketing will not survive. Thus you need a really really great plan for your products/management/marketing (or all) to get people in the door. Having good beers is a given and not a competitive advantage.

There's a famous line "If You Have to Ask the Price, You Can't Afford It" but when it comes to breweries that extends to blood, sweat and tears. The factors vary so much that you're going to hear a range of answers based on: market, legal bullshit, owners & experience. In Minneapolis most breweries open four to six months behind schedule and I'm guessing it's a 500k-1m investment.

If I were in your shoes I would do two things. First, read every book out there on the brewing industry (start here and here). Then I would talk to your local brewers guild and breweries to answer these questions. If you were doing this in MN everyone would be fairly honest and supportive plus you'd get better answers than reddit (no offense). Cheers!

For home brewing check out Charlie Papazian's books:

https://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Papazian/e/B000APNS36/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

For more recent history of ABInBev buy-outs, there is a new book about the history of Goose Island and the AB Buyout: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075TGFCLB/?coliid=I2LXZVBPAKF3PP&colid=2YSL69HF0HW9V&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

For the history of Sierra Nevada: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118007360/?coliid=I112DGOG2QCE0S&colid=2YSL69HF0HW9V&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Brooklyn Brewery: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470068671/?coliid=IGH5AQOEB9RBE&colid=2YSL69HF0HW9V&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Brewing up a Business by Dogfish Head Founder Sam Calagione

> than they do with Dogfish Head

Sam Calagione is very business-savvy, always had been. Hell, he wrote a book about how to run a successful business.

The "arty" image is in part truth and in part PR. He has famously lobbied lawmakers to change laws in his favor when he launched the brewery (and still does), secured investors to help grow his business, learned the art of contract negotiation, gets into trademark disputes to protect his business (he says that DFH spent more enforcing their trademark in 2013 than they spent launching the business in 1995), and more.

Anyone who think he's not just as in tune with how to run a business as any other savvy businessman is fooling themselves. That man knows his stuff. He wouldn't be where he is if he didn't.

I could spend hours listing all the fun ways that the agricultural industry abuses its workers. While it's a very depressing story, I'm not sure it's much different than what has generally happened to the American economy - basically, big corporations have worked to systematically suppress unions and deregulate labor standards. Here are some of the fun things that regularly happen right here in the United States:

1. Beef production hasn't changed much over the last few decades. Unlike the poultry industry, it's notoriously difficult to standardize cattle size and shape, which means that most of the work can't be reliably done by machines. So, essentially, most slaughterhouses operate by having people stand right next to each other on an assembly line with giant knives, hacking away at quickly moving hunks of cow. Naturally, the work is quite dangerous, and the faster the plant moves, the more likely workers will get injured from knives or pulled muscles. Unfortunately, the industry has been increasing the speed of the production line for decades in order to maximize profits. When a worker does get injured, an entire system is in place to discourage the person from heading to the doctor - very often, they are given clearance by a nurse and thrown right back into the assembly line until they are too injured to work, after which they are quietly (or not so quietly) pushed out. The fatality rate in meat packing plants is one of the highest in any industry.
   
   
2. Even worse are the cleanup crews that must completely sanitize an entire building of dangerous equipment before work resumes the next day. These people walk around slaughterhouses with high-powered hoses filled with steaming hot dangerous chemicals, which creates a fog so dense that it's difficult to see. In order for the machines to get properly clean, they often must be turned on, meaning that you have people running around spinning blades practically blind. I don't have to really spell out what sometimes happens.
   
   
3. The poultry industry is largely controlled these days by a handful of huge companies. For ranchers to sell chicken in the market, they therefore have to agree to their rules. Nowadays, that usually requires buying special eggs at an exorbitant price directly from the company, raising them, and selling them for a meager profit. My mom remembers when she was younger that farmers were often the best dressed people in school. Today, because of the way big companies have rigged the system, farmers are often struggling in poverty.
   
   This is just a sample. The agriculture industry is on my "shit list" of horrible institutions, right up there with the big banks and the oil companies. Unfortunately, much less people care about the conditions of these workers, largely because they are "poor" and not "middle class" folk. We are all affected by the big banks offering cheap housing loans to basically gamble on the securities market. But who gives a shit if an illegal immigrant loses an arm in a slaughterhouse? Or some poor guy is essentially disabled for the rest of his life because a factory didn't want to report his injury to the government authorities? Or some rural chicken farmer can barely scrape by because Tyson will only buy chickens from their own specially produced eggs rather than the ones that naturally come out of a chicken's ass? The whole agriculture industry is shit. I haven't even gotten into how Monsanto uses genetically engineered crops to basically control the industry. It's not that mass-produced food is bad; it's that our country is currently run by out of control greedy assholes. And it needs to stop.
   
   You can read about all this stuff in Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, although it's mostly common knowledge among people with an understanding of the industry.
   
   EDIT: I just want to add that this is why I get infuriated by discussions of the "healthiness" of mass-produced food. Personally, I'm highly skeptical that the trace residue of pesticides on your tomatoes is going to eventually cause cancer, or that there is any harm to eating a little cellulose gum in your foods, or that sucralose is going to cause you to grow tumors on your testicles, or any of the other silly things people believe about food products. And I think all this discussion misses the point. Why are you so worried that you might maybe have a 5% increased chance of getting cancer at 64, when people are living shitty lives right now directly in front of your noses? It just feels selfish to mention the health risks of mass-produced foods when the bigger problem is how the industry is crapping down the throats of workers.
   
   TL;DR The agriculture industry sucks because it treats its workers like shit, not because it puts cellulose gum in your granola bars.

Thanks!

• Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Cronon, William.
  
  
• Selling 'Em by the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food. Hogan, David Gerard.
  
  
• Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet. Levenstein, Harvey.
  
  
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Pollan, Michael.
  
  
• Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed. Shiva, Vandana et al.
  
  
• The Jungle. Sinclair, Upton.
  
  
• Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras & the United States. Soluri, John.
  
  
• The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California. Stoll, Steven.
  
  
• Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance. Warman, Arturo.
  
  Very cool to see the actual course listing information. I'd forgotten what it was like to flip through an actual paper course catalog with that kind of stuff in it. Thank god for the internet.
  
  Also, you helped me figure out what book I was trying to remember in this comment! It was The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. IIRC, it was an awesome concept and 75% of it was an absolutely fantastic read, but one of the sections (maybe the third one?) was bit uninspired. Still overall worth the read, for sure, just be prepared to slog through one section. (And don't skip it, because what it discusses is still relevant to the final section, even if it's not as entertaining as the rest of the book.) It's worth it in particular for anybody living in an industrialized "modern" nation; it provides some of the come-to-Jesus moments that we all need to hear periodically. It's not on the level of Fast Food Nation in that regard (which is required reading for every American and Canadian, as far as I'm concerned), but still.
  
  EDIT: And that helped me remember another book I've heard recommended, also by Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.
  
  You're on a roll, friend.

Not that we need a book to inform us that corporations have too much power and control over the government, but I recommend "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power" by Joel Bakan.

http://www.amazon.com/Corporation-Pathological-Pursuit-Profit-Power/dp/0743247469/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253291293&sr=1-1

If you can see past the lefty bent (bias), The Corporation based on book of the same name does provide a decent beginner history of the legal construct otherwise known as the limited liability corporation.

I just started to read The Corporation. Highly recommended. The author is a professor of law and basically tries to argue that corporations are pathological institutions.

There's also a documentary by the same name if anyone doesn't feel like reading the book. Highly recommended as well. It's hilarious that it came out years before the financial crisis.

Read like, the first page of each of these books.

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Elite-C-Wright-Mills/dp/0195133544/

http://www.amazon.com/Corporation-Pathological-Pursuit-Profit-Power/dp/0743247469/

http://www.amazon.com/Realm-Hungry-Ghosts-Encounters-Addiction/dp/155643880X/

http://www.amazon.com/Globalization-Addiction-Study-Poverty-Spirit/dp/0199588716/

Look at how many people voted in 2014.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-turnout-in-72-years.html?_r=0

http://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/2012-voter-turnout/

"Some 93 million eligible citizens did not vote."

http://www.nonprofitvote.org/documents/2013/09/america-goes-to-the-polls-2012-voter-participation-gaps-in-the-2012-presidential-election.pdf

Look at dem numbers.

You are the next generation. Great tv series, btw. You are part of the hope that casts a light upon the world.


https://openlibrary.org/

Also, sorry, skimmed through your post history to perhaps glean what ails you, but perhaps your anxiety/stress stemming from these surrounding issues are increasing the occurrence of a lack of proper airflow/air intake during sleep, and disrupting the process of healing that's supposed to occur during the night, leading to long-term damage to your heart?

Your parents love you for a reason, and you shouldn't feel that resources or money are even a factor in their considerations. They love you, period, and you'll have plenty of time to repay your family/society/whoever you want just through the act of living well.\

Also, there's a lot of technology coming around the corner where organ fabrication/replacement/etc. is going to be a very common/real thing, but that's not to say that you can't still work with your doctor to mitigate symptoms/risks for now.

Take care, friend. Life is a strange journey indeed, but it can be rewarding if you let it be.

Edit: I would say that it's a nice poem, but I cannot agree that the best way to get back at those you feel have slighted you is to cease one's own existence. That would be tantamount to a full surrender. You still have some fight left in you, don't you? Fighting back is the best way to give the bird to all the turds.

well put!

and for those interested in a peek down the rabbit hole:

http://www.amazon.com/Street-Bolshevik-Revolution-Antony-Sutton/dp/089968324X

There is also a book about Blackwater (published in 2008). https://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-Powerful-Mercenary-Revised-Updated/dp/156858394X/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486529706&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=blackkwater

Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill is a great look into OIF which is the most significant event to happen in the region in the 21st century.

His book Dirty Wars is also excellent.

Also, Legacy of Ashes

This is all super American centric, but there's a reason for that.

I would highly recommend reading this book. It details the onset of the Great Depression and the behind the scenes financial decisions that allowed it to happen. You probably won't be convinced but the TL;DR is an active Fed that could have prevented the Depression and instead just sat back and thought it would all work out.

I'd add Salt Sugar Fat, which doesn't pull its punches when it comes to exposing the political and marketing power that the food industry has. Also, I recommend the excellent Marion Nestle's (the last name is ironic, yes) blog Food Politics as well...

Read Salt, sugar, fat by Michel moss. It's on audible.

Here's link if you want to read reviews.

it's about how companies hook us on food. There's something called the 'bliss point' It's the perfect ratios of salt sugar and fat. So much more.

>Many people manage to eat the western diet and still look great. For me the problem lies with the mindset of being a mindless eater.

But the fact remains that this was never an issue for humanity until the last couple of decades. Obesity was barely a thing for millennia and now we have to create new obesity categories every few years or so as people get larger and larger. In other parts of the world, it only becomes an issue when a Western diet is introduced (source 1, source 2 deals more with immunity and western diets, but I think is still relevant).

While it's easy to say that it's just the fault of people, I think it's more complicated than that. It's just strange to me that something that is relatively simple (CICO) is so hard for so many people. Not just for so many people, but for so many people that are incredibly successful at so many other aspects of their lives. The types of mindless eating that you reference only can happen with junk food.

Again, I'm not saying that people aren't capable of being healthy with a western diet or that people can't lose weight, but this type of obesity only seems possible when you have a western diet. Food companies specifically create foods that hit the "bliss point" and bypass our brain's natural mechanisms for regulating intake (source, this book is awesome). Now, I wouldn't be willing to give up french fries, but I think that acknowledging that weight is harder given this type of food is critical to being able to be successful at losing weight.

Hahahah, after readying the actual book Console Wars, I wouldn't be surprised :) The business behind our favorite childhood consoles is pretty interesting. I highly recommend it: https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation-ebook/dp/B00FJ379XE

not only you can read it on kindle, but it's super cheap these days too. It's a fantastic book, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

This was a really interesting read:

https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation-ebook/dp/B00FJ379XE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504704657&sr=8-1&keywords=nintendo+sega+wars

Michael Lewis knocks it out of the park. Again.

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt -- a great book on the issue if you're interested.

Not a how-to, but Flash Boys by Michael Lewis is a great.

There's a lot of generally good information in there, both about investing and life. When i read them i tend to skip past the more boring number stuff and look for his folksy knowledge -- back in 2006 I was in my final year of college, and an Econ class had us compare Warren's "weapons of mass financial destruction" in 2003 to Alan Greenspan's "Frothy markets" --

the difference helped me decide to sell the condo my parents had bought in 2004 (i was paying them rent, but they said they'd split any profit with me or i could assume the mortgage and eventually pay them back) -- we made a small profit and were lucky to sell near the top. I then later saw the FED was pumping money into the market with QE; and also, Warren's advice from (i believe 2010 letters) "if there were a way i could buy several hundred thousand homes and cheaply manage them, it would be the best investment i could make" -- the $170K condo i bought is now worth about $300k 6 years later.

more generally - he's a contrarian who pushes to be cautious when others are greedy, and greedy when others are cautious. his frame of mind greatly influenced my mom's investing style and mine, and she went from not graduating college to being a multi-millionare through both cheapness and a lazy portfolio that managed to beat the market. I'm a bit more active than her but have been doing well myself, i've got the real estate bets doing well and also, am an early-ish bitcoin investor. and macro-economically, after the markets crashed in 2008 i knew to get fully invested and ignore any fear till the markets went back to where they were before (based on what i saw the FED doing). -- so since markets re-aligned in ~2014, my stock market returns have been just in line with the market instead of outperforming, but if you look at my portfolio as a whole i've been killing it.

here's a good books that (imo) works well to replace the older shareholder letters -- http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118503252,subjectCd-FI00.html

or, another book i just read that Gates calls the best book on business; warren also likes -- https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-Street-ebook/dp/B00L1TPCKW

many similar points of timeless advice that work. I would say though, try to get through his more recent letters, or if it's too dry, they are heavily covered by media and it's worth reviewing what you can. also, Charlie Munger seems to be the more "high IQ" person, he's worth reading anything you can find on. I'd start with page 39 here, it's pretty readable -- http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2014ltr.pdf

Let me know if there's anything else I can help with!

I just bought it on Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-Street-ebook/dp/B00L1TPCKW

On Amazon it says “Business Adventures remains the best business book I’ve ever read.” —Bill Gates, The Wall Street Journal

That is not an affiliate link lol -.-;

There is an excellent book titled Showstopper about the creation of Windows NT. Obviously it's quite dated now however the work is very revealing documenting the enormous task of crafting a new OS.

Showstoppers by Pascal Zachary

https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0029356717/codihorr-20

A book about the personalities that created Windows NT. I thought it would be a dry read but I found it a fascinating peek under the covers of early Microsoft.

Amazon description

Showstopper! is a vivid account of the creation of Microsoft Windows NT, perhaps the most complex software project ever undertaken. It is also a portrait of David Cutler, NT's brilliant and, at times, brutally aggressive chief architect.

Not to one up it, but there's an amazing story of one of the creators of the first "serious" version of Microsoft Windows.

At that time, whenever a programmer solved a tough problem, they were allowed to go work on whatever they wanted for awhile. This programmer created a Windows game (can't remember the name, I think it was about tiles or something?) and became deeply immersed in his own game. At the same time, Microsoft employees were becoming millionaires through the stock value so he lost motivation and just did the game 24x7. Even though he was a brilliant part of creating Windows, they had to sack him... but kept the game.

Here's the book where you can read about this an many other riveting stories.

Here is the desktop version of your link

/r/SecurityAnalysis maintain a decent reading list.

The following is taken from it:

History

• A History of Financial Speculation - Edward Chancellor
  
  
• A Short History of Financial Euphoria - Kenneth Galbraith
  
  
• Barbarians at The Gate - Bryan Burruough
  
  
• Irrational Exuberance - Robert Shiller
  
  
• Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis
  
  
• Manias, Panics and Crashes - Charles Kindleberger
  
  
• Money of the Mind - James Grant
  
  
• Oil 101 - Morgan Downey
  
  
• The Box - Marc Levinson
  
  
• The Prize - Daniel Yergin
  
  
• The Big Short - Michael Lewis
  
  
• The Great Crash of 1929 - Kenneth Galbraith
  
  
• The Panic of 1907 - Robert Brunner
  
  
• The Predators Ball - Connie Bruck
  
  
• This Time Is Different - Rogoff & Reinhart
  
  
• Too Big to Fail - Andrew Ross Sorkin
  
  
• US Bank Deregulation in A Historical Perspective - Charles Calomiris
  
  
• When Genius Failed - Roger Lowenstein
  

For those of you old enough to remember (like me), Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco is an excellent account of what happened during the leveraged buy out of RJR Nabisco.

Thanks to Pooh_Bear for posting the article originally in /r/Nintendo.

Blake J. Harris, the author of this article, also wrote the following excerpt from his book Console Wars:

• The Rise of Nintendo: A Story in 8 Bits

Another thing to think about is that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo need retail partners to move hardware and accessories - or become a retailer themselves (which outside a few flagship stores in large cities and theme parks, they don't want to do this). If they undercut retailers by offering digital at a cheaper price than the physical copy, the retailers will retaliate and promote the product less, give it less shelf space, or just stop selling the console altogether. If a major retailer - like Best Buy, Target, or Walmart, stopped selling a console brand, it would most likely spell doom for that console.

The book console wars tells the story about the lengths Sega went to in order to get Walmart to carry Sega Genesis. It was an interesting anecdote and shows just how important retailers are to the companies that produce consoles.

PC software distribution doesn't have to worry about this - and that's why PC software isn't sold in retail stores anymore (with very few exceptions).

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

set, of course, in Disneyland. Link is to a free download.

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge, set in San Diego.

but, if you prefer to live in the past, consider Fire In The Valley, set near Stanford University.

I could have a fun time arguing that.

On both sides of the issue. :-)

But Internet-based newness -- or let's say innovation, since doing something better is more important than newness -- was driven by venture capital, which means things like marketing plans and presentation skills. The early years of the microcomputer, as described so well in Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer, were driven by geeks working in the garages without much in the way of adult supervision. For good and ill.

I read a book several years ago about Fordlandia, and it was a pretty awesome read. Trying to create an American town in the middle of the Amazon - so bizarre and obviously destined to fail (for a multitude of reasons).

'Fordlandia' is a really interesting book about Ford's failed rubber plantation in South America but it also talks about his anti-Semetism and anti-unionism.

http://www.amazon.com/Fordlandia-Henry-Fords-Forgotten-Jungle/dp/0312429622/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346235887&sr=8-1&keywords=fordlandia

He wrote a book called "Only the paranoid survive" about Intel and the pc industry in its early days. It's a very good read if you want to know more about pc history.

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385483821/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_X3m8wb9J53T30

https://www.amazon.com/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Exploit-Challenge/dp/0385483821

Not directly related, but have you read Beer School? It's about the Brooklyn Brewery and how they managed to get started. It's a really good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Beer-School-Bottling-Success-Brooklyn/dp/0470068671

I'd attend this 20 week program: https://www.siebelinstitute.com/education/certificate-studies/master-brewer-program/

and then work for a craft brewery of the size you are interested in emulating and learn from the best until you can earn the capital to start on your own. Also read http://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Up-Business-Adventures-Founder/dp/0470942312/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 by the founder of Dogfish Head Brewery

If brewing is something you really love just ask yourself it you'll get the same enjoyment from it when you have to do it. If so, go for it.
I read something recently that might resonate - "In a years time would you wish you started today".

What sort of size are you looking at?
The 200l Braumeister pilot system may be an option but it is €10k+

Have you read any books on the subject e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Up-Business-Adventures-Founder/dp/0470942312

You should watch this and also consider reading Sam Calagione's book Brewing Up a Business.

Perhaps you should read [The Jungle by Upton Sinclair] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Jungle-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486419231) or the more contemporary [Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser] (http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0547750331) for some insight in to the labor force that keeps this food system working. Unfortunately, I think most of us would ignore animal welfare and safety if it was what we had to do to feed and cloth our own families.

Here's all my favorites! For books:

Fast Food Nation.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.

Food Rules: An Eater's Manifesto.

Salt Sugar Fat.

"Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal".

For movies/documentaries:

Fed Up,

Fast Food Nation,

That Sugar Film,

Food Fight,

Forks Over Knives,

The Future of Food,

Sugar-Coated.

I believe all of these are on Netflix!

Not that I know of, although you can look at the labels and find out, but if you want to avoid perfume you have to avoid everything in the frozen section of the supermarket other than plain frozen vegetables. Also, tons of baked goods, chips, lots of things in bottles and cans.

Look on the labels of your food. The phrases "Natural flavors," "Artificial flavors," or "Natural and Artificial flavors" all mean perfume.

If you want to avoid it, you pretty much have to buy unprocessed food.

If you want more information, the book "Fast Food Nation" goes into tons of detail.

I know my comments are going to get buried under all the other ones. I think that's a good sign because you have obviously tapped into a very real and significant issue.

I was a picky eater, by most standards I still am. I didn't try a green pepper until I was 26 because my mom worked a full time job and I was alone at home with nothing but a microwave. When I met my gf/wife I lived on Domino's (they had a special named after me :( ) and bagged salad.

15 years later I now eat a lot more variety and make sure to include veggies with every dinner/breakfast for a more balanced diet. I can eat most anything raw but cooked veggies send me heading for the hills (there is a video of my trying cooked broccoli trying not to wretch).

Here's my point...I came around because as I read and learned more I knew I was basically poisoning myself with crap processed food that was high in fat and salt (BLISS POINTS!) I eat a lot better now and if my wife who is a SAHM puts food in front of me I damn well eat it. ;)

In reference to kids try this. Go out and catch a possum then strap it into a high chair and try to feed it mushed peas for a while. Kids are already hard enough to feed without a united front (not to mention the concerns with in utero...crap in crap out). My kids will eat anything because we don't make faces or act up in front of them if we don't like it. Hell my wife is Vegan but still makes meat for all of us and she doesn't say jack shit about it.

My point is I think your concern is valid. I think if she at least showed signs of being open to change you'd probably feel differently. I too had a great metabolism at 25...not so much now at 40. Plus again all that processed food is basically a death sentence.

These books are good reading IMHO:
http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421072518&sr=8-1&keywords=sugar+salt+fat

http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421072547&sr=8-1&keywords=omnivores+dilemma

http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0547750331/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421072565&sr=8-1&keywords=fast+food+nation

You could watch this some what biased canadian documentary, this will give you an understanding why people hate corporations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y888wVY5hzw

Based on the book of the same name, http://www.amazon.com/The-Corporation-Pathological-Pursuit-Profit/dp/0743247469

The Corporation by Joel Bakan is a good (brief) read on this topic.

The CIA has been happy to see 'revolutionary' groups stir things up for decades. See Anthony Sutton https://www.amazon.com/Street-Bolshevik-Revolution-Antony-Sutton/dp/089968324X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1484589079&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Street-Bolshevik-Revolution-Antony-Sutton/dp/089968324X

Eustice Mullins

http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=427

http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Federal-Reserve-Eustace-Mullins/dp/0965649210


Anthony Sutton

http://www.amazon.com/Street-Bolshevik-Revolution-Antony-Sutton/dp/089968324X

Wrongfully Accused: Jews and Bolshevism
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/12/wrongfully_accused_jews_and_bo.html

Irony...

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army


http://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-Powerful-Mercenary-Revised-Updated/dp/156858394X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255383316&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Fumbling-Future-Invented-Personal-Computer/dp/1583482660

There's a fascinating book called "Fumbling the Future" I read recently that explores some of the internal struggles Xerox had when they arguably invented the home computer.

If anyone's interested, it's pretty cheap!

Also Fumbling the Future:
How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer

It's such cringe material.

>It's a well documented fact that tons of "AAA" securities were in fact backed by shitty mortgages.

Jesus christ, are you literally brain dead?

Yes, you are right. unfortunately, it was not realized that this was happening until after the crisis was over, meaning that at the time, nobody knew the AAA's weren't actually AAA.

For someone that wants to send people back to school, you seriously lack even the most basic critical thinking skills that are acquired just by living.

>The whole point of the act was to prevent banks from investing deposits in securities.

No, it wasn't. Try actually reading the paper.

the seperation of investment banking and commercial banking by the glass steagall act would have done literally nothing to prevent investment banks from investing in mortgage backed securities.

Tell me, in 2008, when you found out about the crisis, were you still able to go to your bank and retreive your funds? Of course you were, because there was no bank run, thanks to the fed. Guess what the glass steagall act was originally intended for? Preventing bank runs. This clearly wasn't the problem, and thus, the act would do literally nothing to prevent it.

>This was the cause of the first great depression and reason the act was put in place.

Wrong again. Check out the first 2 paragraphs of the wiki entry. They have more knowledge than you do about economics at large, it seems.

Main stream economists widely believe it was due to under consumption, the exact opposite of what caused the 2008 depression, which was over utilization of appreciating home values to refinance, and thus, pay down mortgages.

Furthermore, your link actually doesn't agree with you either. The main cause of ratings agencies slapping AAA on things that didn't deserve it, was the deterioration of underwriting. Guess who created the model for underwriting a MBS? That's right, Goldman Sachs.

>In their book on the crisis — All the Devils Are Here — journalists Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera criticized rating agencies for continuing "to slap their triple-A [ratings]s on subprime securities even as the underwriting deteriorated -- and as the housing boom turned into an outright bubble" in 2005, 2006, 2007.

The big short movie is heavily biased against ratings agencies, and does a very poor job of showing the complete picture. "The devils are here," the book mentioned in your link, does a fantastic job of explaining why the final fault shouldn't lie with them, if you are picking only one player for wrong doing (there were several parties, in reality).

My degree is in financial economics, minor in behavioral studies.

You truly don't understand the 2008 financial crisis, and because you also don't understand 1929 or 1873, you are compounding even more wrong information on top of what you already don't know, and then questioning others education? That's scary.

>Go do some research on the subject matter.

Watching a movie, and reading a wiki article, is not doing research. If you want to do actual research, so you can start spreading information that is actually correct, here are some sources for you to read (NOTE: read, don't use cliffnotes or wiki)

Understanding the 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis:Lessons for Scholars of International Political Economy

The economist

Themotleyfool (Best public returns on stock market in recent history)

All the Devils Are Here

The big Short (please actually read the book. It's very different from the movie)

Start with All The Devils are Here, Amazon will probably recommend you two other books, The Big Short and Too Big to Fail. TBS is obviously what the movie is based on. Then if you want to go even deeper, you can look up the bibliography in all of those books to get an even deeper understanding of the subject matter.

Would you mind throwing a few links up if you get a chance? I'm slowing working through All the Devils Are Here and would like to get as broad of a picture as possible of the root causes. Thanks either way for the info.

I'm still very new to the world of finance. I'm learning about all of the derivatives and how money is made off of them, but it's crazy to me that everyone involved neglected the risk aspect of this. In hindsight, it's so easy to explain what was happening. I guess when everyone is making money hand over fist, it's easy to look the other way. Even the federal gov't played a tremendous role in the crash. Looking at that FRED graph is probably the easiest way to explain the ramifications of the crash.

I'm reading All the Devils Are Here right now that was recommended to me by my GF's father. It gives context to the crash in a digestible way, but isn't too dumbed down. I highly recommend it.

The man played for the USA on the "Miracle" team and then went on to become a successful bonds trader. I've learned more from my conversations with him than I think I'll ever learn in school. Dude is brilliant and can go for hours on anything finance related.

After the financial crisis I read as much as I could about the subject, I read "All the Devils are here", The Big Short, Too big to fail, Crash of the Titans, The Chicken Shit club and many others. So I'm well aware of the culpability of the ratings agencies. But that doesn't excuse the big banks or their actions like you seem to be implying. The banks knew that the MBSs were stuffed with dog shit subprime loans, yet they also knew by getting a CDO from AIG they could get a Triple A rating. They deliberately gamed the system so individual bankers could make huge short term profits selling MBSs. Yeah, Moody's, Fitch, and Standard and Poor's were incredibly corrupt, but who was corrupting them? The big banks that were paying them. The Big Banks were not innocent players, who naively saw a short term advantage that they could use. They were an active participant, they gamed the system, then paid off the referees.

On your second point, I agree, the financial recession wasn't caused by bankers being malicious or evil, but I do think it was caused by short term greed, and willful ignorance. A see no evil, hear no evil, let's not rock the boat, while a good thing lasts greed.

I can heartily recommend Lords of Finance (http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/159420182X)

From wp: "Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World is a 2009 nonfiction book about events leading up to and culminating in the Great Depression as told through the personal histories of the heads of the Central Banks of the world's four major economies at the time: Benjamin Strong Jr. of the New York Federal Reserve, Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, and Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank. The book was generally well received by critics, and won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History."

The book is surprisingly easy to read and understand (I have basically no background in economics), and I certainly learned a lot.

Lords of Finance

I was trying to think up a name for my account, looked over on my bookshelf, and went "ahhh...." :) Purely coincidental.

Another great read.

This doesn't answer your question, but you may find Lords of Finance interesting in this context. It's an economic history of the events from the end of WW I up to the Great Depression. Although it was not written with recent events in mind, there are interesting comparisons to be drawn.

well he's a story about how america is "sorry" http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39456324/ns/health-sexual_health/t/us-apologizes-guatemala-std-experiments/#.XZV7DkZKhPY

but there's alot history about what america did to latin america. there was even instances of the govt hiring white supremacist paramilitary mercenaries CMA to fight in latin america

One recent book that was published is on how bananas led to the genocide of Guatemalans at the hands of people supported by the US govt and other violence in latin America

Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World

https://www.amazon.com/Bananas-United-Fruit-Company-Shaped/dp/1847671942/ref=asc_df_1847671942/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312174369544&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11924861066787226214&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9014969&hvtargid=aud-801738734305:pla-316480504217&psc=1



edit: Sorry forgot to add links

You are actually not far off. Bananas haven't evolved in a long time, so they are very susceptible to a lot of diseases. To combat this they use loads and loads of pesticides, making the banana one of the most chemically treated crops.
Source: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1847671942/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=1410632839&sr=8-5&pi=SL75

Item

"I took a sip of something poison, but I'll hold on tight"

> The whole thing rustles my jimmies.

Do you want to raise your blood pressure?

Go pick up a copy of Salt, Sugar, Fat; How the Food Giants Hooked Us.

It talks about how the food industry basically owns the FDA, and despite research, uses it's lobbying power to twist words and intentions so the consumer is fed misinformation.

Then there's the story about Lunchables. Holy shit. I'm lucky that I read when I travel by plane, because if I was reading at home, I might have gotten in my car and driven to the grocery store and set fire to all the Lunchables.

After reading this book, my jimmies were so rustled.

> As opposed to the use of force by the communist? Is it okay your book that communists murder millions

I know of no one who advocates for the democratic workers control of the economy to murder anyone.



>There is no elimination of poverty, and if it it were it would be because all people would be at an equal level of poverty.

Do you even know what poverty is? Do you even know what suffering is?

>When you remove the incentive to improve by equalizing all people, you take away the incentive for mankind to improve. Marxism is a sort of "mandate of mediocrity".


Capitalism takes away all incentives except one maladaptive one: personal profit. This desire for greed and selfishness lets the capitalist to forget what an economy is for: to produce and distribute goods and services to the consumer, so they can solve their needs, and then desires. The capitalist will do anything to get you to buy their crap. Read this book. You might get an idea.


As opposed to socialists: the workers are the consumers, these worker/consumers decide what is produced, why would we choose to sicken each other? Externalities - the state is required to mitigate these in capitalism - don't exist in socialism, there are no third parties.


No, what motivates people to improve is autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And there is no better economy than an economy of peers to allow for us to achieve these motives. Certainly your boss tells you what to do, you have to pay through the nose to achieve any mastery, and purpose - well, enriching the capitalist is not my choice.

Now, the socialist gets to choose what s/he wants do - there are no bosses, no monetary barriers to education. And what better purpose is there to create an unoppressive society with no poverty, for everyone.


If that doesn't motivate you, I say the capitalist has killed your individuality.

>you take away the incentive for mankind to improve.

No scientist, engineer, geek is motivated by material crap. Empty people who work mostly in the finance industry can only live with themselves by measuring their self esteem by wealth. Is that you?


>And your answer about your life was disingenuous.

Because you have abdicated your humanity, you cannot even comprehend those who care about anyone they aren't related to. I'm not even sure you care about your family either - you don't even know what that means.

I am so sorry, I pity you so much that you have eliminated your empathy and compassion. That only children can care about others.


>The common theme I see with Marxists is a huge disconnect in understanding about how people work, how social hierarchies work,

You have no clue, not one single infinitesimal clue how healthy people work, how healthy social interactions work.

You have given up being human.


>what results actually better the most people.

Machines. You are a machine. You only care about maximizing production - to no end. You are too selfish and inhumane to cooperate with anyone. You have 0 qualms about who you hurt.

Grow up. Please.

Read Sugar, Salt, Fat and you'll understand why.

It may be http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00985E3UG?btkr=1 I don't remember talk about McDonalds specifically in regards to this, but just to any "junk food" in general.

Have a read of "Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation", it is very enlightening on this sort of stuff.

Massive cross-cultural problems happening between US sales teams and Japanese decision makers, there are a lot of cases where the Japanese head office makes a decision and passes it down to the rest of the company as law, while the US and European sales teams are telling them that it's a crazy idea and just why it will cause problems outside of Japan.

It's basically impossible to emulate that system. It had like, 8 or 9 "processors", but not in the same sense of modern multi-core processors. Just a bunch of specific task handlers. Sega had 0 respect for making game development easy (it used to be that the console makers limited the number of releases every year, so from a biz perspective Sega didn't care about ease of developers, they just cared about making a bad-ass console. Well, that strategy bit them on the ass when Sony jumped in and made a (for the time) developer-friendly set of tools and documentation for the PlayStation. You can read more about this period of console gaming in this book: Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation Pretty Sega-heavy, since all the execs have moved on and were willing to dish on-the-record about all of it. Nintendo and Sony are a little more buttoned-up.

If you haven't read this book, you need to:

https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation-ebook/dp/B00FJ379XE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492493298&sr=8-1&keywords=console+wars

they aren't moderating prices, they are manipulating them. They have faster connections than standard users, their algorithms can anticipate and then execute from the time you request your order to the time it fulfills, hopping in the middle of your order and making a very small amount of money in the process.

The Book "Flash Boys" is a great read about it.

Some good ones:

• The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing
  
• Dark Pools: The Rise of the Machine Traders and the Rigging of the U.S. Stock Market
  
• Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

>I really like learning about cases like Enron.

Check out the book: Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

I read the chapter and enjoyed it, just bought the Kindle version. Can't wait to dive in.

Here's the link for the Kindle version for anyone that's interested

Amazon is offering the republished version in late 2014. It can be pre-ordered now! Amazon Link

I don't have a particular view on the effect of the rise of passive on vol, but it's a popular theory that it's lowered it. However, it's not obviously true to me. Back in the 60s the theory was that the rise of mutual funds would lead to increased vol as everyone was forced to rush for the exits at once in a downturn. That turned out to not be true.

I think it inevitable that one day there will be another recession, the market will fall, and vol will rise. I think the interesting question from a theoretical perspective is whether the current low vol is a structural change as well as a cyclical change. IE: we could be in a low vol period and also the world has permanently become less volatile, or we could be in an incredibly low vol period for some reason, but things will eventually return to the long term average. I suspect there's been a structural change but like I said I don't know why.

Barbarians at the Gate

The Box

And obviously The Big Short

Fast Food Nation - I quit eating fast food for about 2 years after that read. After a while though I fell out of my ivory, non-greasy tower and now I eat fast food in moderation, maybe once a month.

You need to consider the context of the posts before trying to connect anything.

The question about water intoxication was a discussion relating to overdosing on the very common drug caffeine. Please re-read the thread taking into account the context.

The thread on McDonald's food isn't about overdosing. It's about thinking a junk food is a real (i.e. nutritious) food. It's great youve managed to have a sixpack when living on junk food, but is that really the best way to develop and maintain muscle definition?

I understand you like eating what you do. Many people do enjoy junk food. All I'm saying is we should stop pretending mcdonald's products replace healthy eating. I strongly recommend Supersize Me, a documentary about a guy who did nothing but eat fast food every meal for a month. Additional follow-up documentaries & books relavent to the topic include Food Inc or the book Fast Food Nation. I'll be you a dollar you won't be defending a junk food diet after you've read/watched these titles.

> Sure, but technological progress happens regardless of what economic system is in place.

Except Communism.

Lords of Finance. Worth checking out if you're interested in the above link.

For those interested in this, Michael Lewis' "Flash Boys" deals with this topic exclusively. It's sickening...

http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Michael-Lewis-ebook/dp/B00HVJB4VM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409330355&sr=8-1&keywords=flash+boys

Read Showstopper, about Windows NT's creation. I guarantee you MS never worked that hard after that. https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717

You have yet to establish that I'm a conspiracy theorist, but good attempt to establish an ad hominem :)

Regardless, for business purposes, it would serve you well to be paranoid. Go read this book.

Greed, by many parties both governmental and financial.

http://www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial/dp/159184438X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348083276&sr=8-1&keywords=all+the+devils+are+here

> I'm honestly having trouble trying to determine what you are even arguing here.

I was curious why you was curious. Because you will hardly get the real breakdown on expenses because its clearly the corporate secret thing that only CEO stuff fully aware of etc. Whatever.

PS. You could be intrested in this book. Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company

Very nice and light read on the relative topic. I enjoyed reading it.