Books

I've been jumping around between a bunch of books because ADHD is a vibe, but here's the list:

Bullshit Jobs

Pretty cool book but way less data dense than I expected. Graeber has some random anarchist moments in there but it doesn't negatively impact the thesis.

Move Fast and Break Things, Taplin

Documents the rise of the big techs (specially Amazon, Google, Meta and PayPal) through a critical lense, from the active recruitment of people who actively disregard the law (Napster) to intentionally targeting markets that are easy to consolidate while using every resource on earth to avoid even paying basic taxes their competitors had to deal with. For example, Amazon had a lot of success specifically because during its formative years it had to pay zero sales taxes due to loopholes about selling out of state.

Author really likes copyright, and really hates piracy.

Chokepoint Capitalism, Doctorow

Haven't got too far into this one but so far it's really good at documenting the active and intentional anti-competitive practices and smoke and mirrors, specially of Google, and demystifying some self-important myths of theirs. Worthy of note is how they show how, in many cases, Google's ad business has basically no effect on new costumers, and how it's built on a mountain of fraud.

Author really could use a read of Imperialism.

Vidas Secas, Grasciliano Ramos

Fictional story about a small poor family living in the Sertão region of Brazil in the 1930s through the long dry seasons. It's incredibly melancholic and introspective, and the author has a very good way with words. Since it uses a lot of the local dialect, even most Brazilians would probably have a hard time reading it, so I doubt a translation would do it justice.

It was partially written while the author was in jail after a failed communist revolution against the fascistic government.

Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, Eduardo Galeano

I'm actually re-reading (listening) in Spanish this time.

It is a broad socio-economic history review of Latin America, beginning from the colonisation by Spain and Portugal, and following it through to the insertion of British and then Estadunidense capital. It goes into a lot of depth about the extractive economies, from minerals to sugar, oil, cotton or wood, and the impacts of colonisation and imperialism on both the original people, the settlers and the enslaved Africans and their descendants.

It is a must read if you want to understand Latin America through a Marxist perspective, and also makes for great Spanish practice while you're at it. The audiobook on the audiobookbay is pretty good too.

I was also reading Assassination of Julius Caesar by Parenti, which is very good, but decided to put that one on hold until I get the other ones (and my life) under control.