A reverse chronological log of evergreen content that I’ve enjoyed and recommend.
A short story. "It is well that we are so foolish, or what little freedom we have would be wasted on us."
A short story about mind uploading told from the perspective of a Wikipedia article from the future. A clever way to tell a story, also low key horrifying.
A novel about the hope and disillusionment of scientific planning in the USSR. A unique way to tell economic history through a collection of "might as well have been true" short stories.
A modern retelling of David Copperfield. A friend recommended this to me by saying "it doesn't take a sentence off". Very true; outstanding writing throughout.
A gonzo take on San Francisco politics and poverty in the 1960s. How much of this is relevant to contemporary San Francisco is left as an exercise for the reader.
This book improved my understanding of how cities self-organize and optimize. A manifesto for market forces in urbanism. It's kind of like a mathematical foundation Jane Jacobs.
It's interesting to read this book with the context that Russell was writing it during World War Two. A time a extreme ideological conflict between fascism, communism, and liberalism; a time when it must have felt like philosophy had real stakes. Russell is not very subtle about his opinions of any philosophy he perceives as upstream from fascism or communism.
A collection of science fiction short stories. I think science fiction is at its best when it plays more like a thought experiment than a story (many of these stories don't have a "science" element at all). There is a lot to provoke thought in here, and I like that with the short story format each one can be exactly as long as it needs to be to explore the idea.
A long essay about the culture of television and the ironic mood of the 1990s. Full of incredible wit and insight, and just as relevant to today's media landscape as it was then. Seriously, read this.
Large organizations make decisions based on the data that is "legible" to them, which is often not the same as the data that is "legible" to the people on the ground. Implications for this are everywhere, especially for orgs that self-identify as data driven.
A very short story.
Instead of being rigorously philosophical about consciousness, try metaphor and storytelling instead. Yes it's long but if you suspect you're the type of person who would enjoy this kind of thing, you probably are.