The World As It Is

What Hacker News says

1. jen729wOct 2019
   Let’s try to make this more constructive than the Herald Sun letters page, shall we?

   For instance, I read a profile of Jacqui Lambie [0] in The Saturday Paper [1] the other week. I’m a Green-voting Fitzroy-dwelling hipster, literally, but I found it gave me a real appreciation of someone who I would have dismissed out of hand the week before [3].

   Being a politician is probably a thankless task. I’ve no doubt it’s difficult. They really don’t get paid that much. I wouldn’t want to do it.

   If you’re generally cynical of politicians as a people, I can’t recommend Ben Rhodes’ book The World as It Is [4] enough. It might not make you any less cynical — spoiler: politics is a shit-fight — but it might give you a little more appreciation for the fact that the people doing this job are just that. They’re mostly just regular people, who thought they could do good. (Rhodes was Obama’s adviser: if anyone has similar recommendations for Australian politics, I’d love to hear them.)

   [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Lambie.

   [1]: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2019/09/21...

   [3]: Actually, a few weeks prior, Jacqui sat beside us in the Qantas lounge at Devonport. We moved — mostly because of the annoying kids clambering all over the furniture and the toxic hellstew that is Sky News blaring from the TV, but we joked that we didn’t want to sit next to her. Now I wish I’d said hello.

   [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_It_Is_(book)

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2. baybal2Oct 2019
   > If you’re generally cynical of politicians as a people, I can’t recommend Ben Rhodes’ book The World as It Is [4] enough.

   I think this goes well for politics in the West. Politicians there "go with the flow" and almost never against.

   I used to socialise with Cristy Clark social circles when I lived in Vancouver. On my naive questions about why things a, b, and c not got discussed, I almost always got a hushed response like "It would've been a political suicide to this and that camp."

   Politics is very hard to enter, and very easy to be ejected out.

   It is those who have the power to direct that "flow" of bigger social trends in which all mainstream politics happens that truly direct the nation, but such people are very, very rare, few times a century occurrences for a nation.

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3. jen729wDec 2018
   Breaking news : the remaking of journalism and why it matters now – Rusbridger, Alan

   From the editor of The Guardian for the last 20 years, a fascinating look at the move from traditional print to online news.

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   The perfect weapon : war, sabotage, and fear in the cyber age – Sanger, David E.

   The subtitle says it all. From that I’m now reading ‘Click Here to Kill Everybody’ by Schneier. Enjoying it so far.

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   The world as it is : a memoir of the Obama White House — Rhodes, Benjamin J.

   Another obvious one based on the title.

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   As a side note, join your local library, people. None of this cost me a penny. I hope you still have a library wherever you live. Ours (Melbourne City Library Service) is just magnificent.

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4. calabinAug 2018
   What book, article, paper, etc. are you reading right now?

   I just finished Ben Rhodes' book The World As It Is, about his eight years in the Obama administration as the U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications. I have always found the scale of a U.S. president's duties pretty awe-inspiring so I found the book fascinating. If you share that interest, I would also recommend Days of Fire about the Bush administration.

   I've also recently finished up Into the Black, the true story of Space Shuttle Columbia's first mission, and the coming together of the shuttle program as a whole. It was filled with interesting details, though I did feel like it jumped around a bit.

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