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A very counterintuitive book which every administrator must read. In an age where we try and try to standardise processes, increase monitoring using IT tools and do everything to minimise wrinkles, book provides a novel insight into how what we are doing may end up producing exact opposite, and at times, even more dangerous results.

Penguin book haul. Gosh. It‘s generally a BAD idea to step into bookstores.

Okay. No more book hauls in June. Promise. Promise. 🤭🤭🤭

“I always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” Jorge Luis Borges

Felt more like a criticism of academia. Radical, had some compelling arguments, but I felt like he contradicted himself sometimes.

For example he seemed to be proud of Steve Jobs because he built a business like an artisan - even focusing on making the inside of the iPhone beautiful - granted. Then he goes on to talk about how great products do not need advertising .

Well, the disconnect here is that, Apple has a big budget for advertising.

#garish #uncannyoctober @RealLifeReading

More barbells....Trashy gossip magazines and classics or sophisticated works; never middlebrow stuff. Talk to either undergraduate students, cab drivers, and gardeners or higher caliber scholars; never to middling-but-career-conscious academics. If you dislike someone, leave him alone or eliminate him; don't attack him verbally.

Touristification: the attempt to suck randomness out of life. Applies to soccer moms, Washington civil servants, strategic planners, social engineers, "nudge" manipulators, etc. Opposite: rational flaneur.

The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference.

People who build their strength using these modern expensive gym machines can lift extremely large weights, show great numbers and develop impressive-looking muscles, but fail to lift a stone; they get completely hammered in a street fight by someone trained in more disorderly settings. Their strength is extremely domain-specific and their domain doesn't exist outside of ludic—extremely organized—constructs.

Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.

Still our favourite book, and my favourite shit-stirrer of all time. Taleb's "Antifragile"
#ireadbooksactually #BAreads

A fascinating second glance at chaos and randomness, why 'adversity' might not be so darn bad, and an alternative way to perceive the systems that operate all around us.