For anyone with a love for 90’s hip hop the Wu-Tang Clan is at the forefront of that decade. Took the world by storm with a unique sound, unique crew off battle hardened Shaolin warriors. Each with there own unique style.
This book by the RZA is part biography, life philosophy and some music and business advice all rolled in one. It’s written from his personal perspective and talking about the various lessons in life, the highs and lows. Especially the combination of various religions, philosophical thinking, lessons learned on the streets and years of honing a craft makes for an especially interesting book.
For some the introduction might be a little too much in terms of philosophical explanations. But once the book gets started with his life story in focus all things flow together.
One of the more interesting things is the way he carved out his set of rules too live by, and ability to changes his views towards himself as he made mistakes along the way.
Its one of those books you will learn a lot from while reading and especially while not reading and digesting the content. You might not see a direct link with your own set of rules but the way of thinking and how his life progressed and lessons learned certainly will make you think about everything he has written in this book. Recommended reading, even if you never heard of the Wu tang.
Wu-tang Forever.
Tag: book
Book review – the why axis: Hidden Motives and the undiscovered economics of everyday life
Hidden motives and undiscovered economics of everyday life. Intriguing subtitle isn’t it? But it’s the way the authors discover what motivates people to do things , via field experiments. To see what works if you want to motivate people to behave a certain way.
It seems logical to try stuff out and see what works and what not. But for economy it’s always been more about reasoning and building mathematical stuff to see if it holds up. And changing some parameters and checking what this does with the outcome.
This book is about real world field experiments with control groups. It’s the just trying and seeing what works. It’s about stimulating behavior which is good for people by means of rewards.
Apart from the rewards , it’s also about who you need to motivate and seeing what else is necessary , how to formulate the proposition for instance.
The book covers experiments with discrimination, education, crime and so on. It’s easy to read and understandable for everyone. It’s a book you can read if you don’t want to read a thriller or a heavy scientific book.
It’s nicely sets the argument for more field experiments to really see what happens in real life and what works and what not. In stead of just reasoning everything to the last comma. This goes for everyone, just experiment and do stuff.
Book review – More money than god
I read quite a bit again, which helps my brain a lot. And I have always found it relaxing. I mostly read biography’s , history and finance books. And the odd novel. And some tech books , which I won’t bore you with. I recently finished reading more money than god , by Sebastian Mallaby , a book combining history and finance in one go. Two of my favorite subjects. Plus it tells the stories of all the people involved , 3 boxes ticked.
It’s not a dry book with just names dates and numbers, it’s written with stories anecdotes and the numbers just fit in naturally.
It’s about the history and evolving world of hedgefunds. For those who don’t know hedgefunds are private investment funds which in the classical term make bets on markets, and make use of diverse array of instruments in order to gain a edge in the market of choice. In the classical sense a hedge funds was always hedged against the risk they take. Neutral in a way, as far as their models go anyway. But that changed over time , and most just looked for edges in markets.
This book starts out with the first hedgefunds and goes until recent times just after the credit crunch in 2007/2008. What’s interesting it not just covered the most famous hedge funds and their bets like Soros versus the pound. But also lesser known stuff like the takeover of an Indonesian bank by a hedge fund.
Without giving away alle the stories the book tells the tales and sets out to give some insight in why hedgefunds are good for markets instead of the more common view that all hedgefunds are evil. It makes a good point. It’s also very dense and took me a while before finishing it. It’s a good for anyone interested in finance or the world of finance in general, the more numbers inclined among us will also be catered too and even the casual reader with more of a history interest will be having fun while reading it.
It’s one of the best books on the history of hedgefunds in general and has a lot of interesting tales to tell. Make sure to put it on your reading list.
Sunday reading – Moneyland
I have done some book reviews in the past and I am back with another one. Combining 2 of my favorite things economics and investigative journalism. In this excellent book by Oliver Bullough , Moneyland , the shady world of the ‘off-shore’ industry is the subject, it has created a whole new paralel world where extremely rich people can hide money, assets and change citizenship while they are at it.
It has been fueled by the collapse of the former colonies, and communism. What started with the increasing desire not too pay taxes has grown into a monster where oligarchs , dictators alongside global company’s hide their profits from country’s.
It’s painfully clear that the growing inequality , outdated concepts like nation states and their laws are outpaced by instant global money transfers, a willing and able army of lawyers, accountants and other experts ready too advise some very shady people hide everything.
It’s like trying too outrun a formula 1 car. It’s time for a global overall in the way we think and act on these sorts of fraud. Because it maybe not fraud if you look at the letter of the law , but’s it’s sailing true giant omissions in the different laws in different country’s at the least. And fraud and criminality at it’s worse.
All written in a sharp and understandable way, it’s a pageturner and one I highly recommend if you want too have some insight in how money moves around the globe.
Book – Weapons of Math destruction
In every way we live our lives today we are targeted by algorithms, and we are mostly totally oblivious of the consequences. Which is well very dangerous. In the book weapons of Math destruction , mathematician Cathy O’Neil explores the world of modeling , algorithms and their effects on us humans.
The algorithms are programmed by humans and therefore contain much of their biasses , ideas and expectations. The algorithms when they scale up , and most do, generate hugh feedback loops which amount to self fulfilling prophecies. This goes from education, finance , policing our streets and disturbing our democracy.
In a very clear way Cathy O’Neil explains the different effects of these models and their feedback loops, fueled by entire industries who ‘help’ beat the models in turn reinforcing their outcomes. The worst part ? Their is no appeal , no legislation , no regulation and no transparency. Scary ? Yes? Simply a must read for anyone.