We Are Not Saved

In which I decide that I am not going to read "Wind and Truth". And also that 63 hours on audio is just ridiculous.

The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea  by: M. David Litwa Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power  by: Carolyn Elliott The Ballad of the White Horse  by: G. K. Chesterton American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology  by: D.W. Pasulka Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences  by: D.W. Pasulka Undreaming Wetiko: Breaking the Spell of the Nightmare Mind-Vi...

A method for making better decisions should you ever find yourself in Kathmandu, or paying for SEO, or hoping to see the Supreme Court.

Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine: Essays on Living Better  by: Bryan Caplan Anaximander: And the Birth of Science  by: Carlo Rovelli The Social Conquest of Earth by: Edward O. Wilson The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class by: David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will L...

You have probably heard about Rotherham, and the child sex abuse rings that existed there (and may still be operating ). As with so many things these days, this story entered the public discussion when Musk tweeted about it. For many people I've talked to, this was the first they'd heard of it. I actually spoke about about it in 2018 . At the time I felt I was late to the game, but apparently I wa...

Exactly five years ago, China identified a "novel coronavirus" and the world was introduced to the term " wet market ". In the time since then arguments continue to rage about the source of the virus, the measures that were taken, and the vaccines that were created. In the midst of all these arguments, everyone seems to agree on one thing: extended school closures were a bad idea. It's very easy t...

A Gentleman in Moscow  by: Amor Towles The Humans  by: Matt Haig Super-Cannes: A Novel  by: J. G. Ballard Monster Hunter: International  by: Larry Correia Monster Hunter: Vendetta  by: Larry Correia

Three things converged for me recently and at the point of their convergence was the issue of placing women in frontline combat roles. The first leg of the convergence was the election of Donald Trump. We're still debating the reasons why he won, but certainly a reassertion of gender differences are near the top of everyone's list. For example, allowing natal men into women's sports. The second wa...

Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict  by: Ara Norenzayan A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains  by: Max Bennett The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump  by: Max Blumenthal What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by: Jim Paul and Brendan Moyn...

AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference by: Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory  by: Peter Hessler On Grand Strategy  by: John Lewis Gaddis Leisure: The Basis of Culture  by: Josef Pieper Anatomy of the State  by: Murray Rothbard The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind...

He talks about the Village, and the River, but what we really need is a Redoubt. On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything   By: Nate Silver Published: 2024 576 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? There are two different ways of approaching the world: the River, which thinks in terms of numbers, expected values, and quantification and the Village, which is the paternalistic expert class which...

One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, Volumes 1 & 2  By: Whitney Alyse Webb Briefly, what are these books about? The alleged connections between organized crime and national intelligence agencies which led to the numerous illicit operations including Watergate , Iran-Contra , the JFK Assassination, and of course the entire Je...

The Ocean at the End of the Lane  by: Neil Gaiman There Is No Antimemetics Division by: qntm The Man Who Had All the Luck  by: Arthur Miller How Green Was My Valley  by: Richard Llewellyn Theft of Fire: Orbital Space #1  by: Devon Eriksen Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 1) by: Robin Hobb Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 2) by: Robin Hobb

With the enormous increase in the power of AI (specifically LLMs) people are using them for all sorts of things, hoping to find areas where they're better, or at least cheaper than humans. FiveThirtyNine (get it?) is one such attempt, and they claim that AI can do forecasting better than humans.  Scott Alexander, of Astral Codex Ten,  reviewed the service  and concluded that they still have a long...

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by: Michael A. Singer Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It  by: Ethan Kross The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World by: John Mark Comer Dumb Money: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Str...

Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos by: Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by: James C. Scott This post represents a new feature (experiment?) I plan to occasionally write posts which take advantage of one or more books I read recently, but which aren't actually reviews of those books. See, for example, my last post:  Superminds, State...

How durable is the state? How resistant is it to being overthrown? How closely does it reflect our desires? Is it possible it has its own desires? But maybe more importantly how does all this affect the possibility of a very close election in November?

A narcissistic dialogue around ideas that are either annoyingly fractured or wholly unrealistic.  DON'T DIE: Dialogues   By:  Bryan Johnson Published: 2023 247 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? How best to extend the lifespan of humans and the lifetime of humanity presented in the form of a fictional dialogue between various aspects of the author's personality.  What's the author's angle? Br...

  Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940  by: George Chauncey The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised  by: James Pethokoukis Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by: Nellie Bowles Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir by: Werner Herzog The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Ta...

Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/divine-disappointment-and-mortal Is God Disappointed in Me?: Removing Shame from a Gospel of Grace  By: Kurt Francom Published: 2024 190 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? Our parents expect that we will do certain things—perhaps it's cleaning our rooms, perhaps it's becoming a doctor—when we don't, they're disappointed. We have a tendency to view G...

A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?  by: Kelly and Zach Weinersmith Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe  by: Judith Herrin The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century  by: Paul Collins Missing: The Need for Closure After the Great War by: Richard van Emden In My Time of Dy...

My submission to the Astral Codex Ten Book Review Contest. It was not a finalist. Comments are appreciated. (Especially ones pointing out how much better it is than the actual finalists.)  Links to transcript sections: I- Prologue II- The Core Observation III- The Realm of the Potentially Traumatic IV- "Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children!?" V- A Continuum of Parenting, With Sundry Bad Exa...

If Trump can brazen is way through all of his various scandals why can't Biden brazen his way through this?

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work  by: Matthew B. Crawford Nuclear War: A Scenario by: Annie Jacobson The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships: Ruthlessly Optimized Strategies for Dating, Sex, and Marriage by: Malcolm and Simone Collins Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder  by: Salman Rushdie Arkham: (The Weird of Hali #7)  by: John Michael Greer Robert E. Howard's...

Just look at the episode picture . The episode picture explains all...