 The Blocksize War: The battle over who controls Bitcoin’s protocol rules
By Jonathan Bier Published in March 2021 228 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 This book chronicles the history of the “blocksize wars,” an internecine conflict within the Bitcoin community over how Bitcoin should be updated. Bitcoin was designed with a 1 mb block size limit. This was suitable for a small number of transactions, where everything could be settled in minutes. As the number of transactions increased, a larger block size became necessary to settle the transactions. I remember that, around this time, I struggled to use Bitcoin because of the small block sizes. I remember needing to wait hours, or sometimes even days, to settle transactions and paying huge fees that effectively doubled the price of whatever I bought. The argument is a very strange one: on one side, the large blockers wanted to do the obvious and increase the block size. On the other side, the small blockers didn’t want to increase it or wanted to increase it slowly. Strangely, many small blockers admitted that the block size would eventually need to be increased. The arguments of the large blockers are very straightforward. Increase the block size to make Bitcoin more efficient. The arguments of the small blockers are complicated and diverse - their camp was much less unified. Some argued that Bitcoin should never be changed because it would undermine the stability of the system (future changes could lead to crazy things like hyperinflation). Others argued that Bitcoin wasn’t supposed to be a currency, and should just be a science project. Yet others agreed in principle with block size increase, but simply disagreed with every single specific proposal. Although economic self interest would predict that the big blockers should win, in the end, the small blockers won. As a result, Bitcoin is crippled and can only be practically used for large transactions today. The small blockers won by resorting to underhanded tactics. Most notably, they took control of all online Bitcoin discussion forums, and censored everyone who disagreed with them. They also worked with mainstream media journalists to write hit pieces personally attacking all large blockers on unrelated issues. The small backers enjoyed institutional, and government support. I can’t help but suspect that they enjoyed this support from people who did not want to see Bitcoin succeed. Some tech - like Segwit - functionally allowed less data to be transmitted allowing more data to be transmitted within the 1 mb, functionally increasing the maximum block size to 4 mb. However, this tech was too little too late to save Bitcoin. The book is mostly a collection of conference notes, discussions the author had, Reddit, and discord posts. The author does not seriously discuss the potential role of intelligence agencies in influencing the community in either way, or the interest that the government might have in crippling Bitcoin. This is to be expected from authors who haven’t studied intelligence agencies and psyops. However, in this case, his book is crippled by his lack of speculation. If you don’t know at least the basics of Bitcoin already, this book isn’t for you. But if you already know the basics, and want to learn about the niche topic of the blocksize wars, then this is a good book for you. The one thing that I would caution is that I think that although the author attempts to be unbiased, he is clearly a small blocker who discounts “conspiracy theories” out of hand. I wish that the author would take the time to interview ex-intelligence officers and insiders about black ops to familiarize himself with how the government operates in the shadows.
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 The Great UN-Reset
By Constantine Du Bruyn Published in March 2023 242 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 This strange little book sums up many of the conspiracy theories about the “Great Reset” as promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The book is well written, and easy to understand. The big picture is mostly correct, but it gets so many details wrong, that I cannot possibly recommend it in good faith. I am in a very good position to access many of the claims. My day to day work has led me to extensively interact with people from groups like WEF, the WTO, UNCTAD, and UNIDO. My historical work has repeatedly led me to study the history of groups such as the Jesuits, Templars, and Milner’s Kindergarten. I have many family members with deep ties to both US intelligence agencies and big tech. In many ways, I would likely be considered by many (perhaps by Du Bruyn himself) to be an insider. I want to start with a few of the things that Du Bruyn gets right. First, there is a plan to create a global centrally planned economic system. This system will have the long term goal of becoming a world government. UN SDGs are one of the most prominent tools being used to build this system. It has its evolutionary origins with the Milner group in Edwardian England, and eventually evolved into the United Nations. However, Du Bruyn gets a lot wrong. I would just like to point out two small, but very annoying mistakes that he made. None of these mistakes, on their own, would detract from the book. However, they are so frequent that they are a big problem. First, Du Bruyn incorrectly claims that Lord Alfred Milner started the Round Table Journal. The journal was started by Lionel Curtis, in 1913. Curtis was a member of the Milner Group, and was mentored by Milner. Curtis also started Chatham House. Milner only became involved in both later, although he may have supported their creation. I wish that Du Bruyn had instead written something along the lines of “Milner’s associates created the Round Table journal.” Second, Du Bruyn says that the Knights Templar established a banking system to manage the finances of the crusaders in the Holy Land. The Templars did not have any banking in the Holy Land. The Templars actually established trusts to manage the affairs of knights in Europe while they were away crusading in the Holy Land. Once again, this might not seem like a big difference - but it's one of the many small mistakes that he makes throughout the book. A lot of the information in the book is disjointed. There is no direct line of succession in between the Templars, the Jesuits, the Freemasons, the Milner Group, and WEF. These groups are sometimes evolutionarily connected but are not centrally run. For example, Cecil Rhodes who helped found the Milner Group was a Freemason. Likewise, the Freemasons claim descent from the Templars, but this relationship is shaky. I don’t think that discussing these groups is prudent, because to a reader who doesn’t already know the history it might discredit the central arguments in the book. My lived experience contradicts many key points. I got to WEF events, and have met a handful of WEF YGLs. I don’t think that the YGLs are going to become world leaders At the end of the book, Du Bruyn covers a number of possible solutions. I really like this chapter. He does not focus on politics. Instead, he suggests using cryptocurrencies, homeschooling children, and building local communities. The book is quite well written, and easy to follow. The sentences are short, clear, and well constructed. It is a very pleasant read. The good writing makes this book even more dangerous - and makes its frequent factual mistakes more dangerous. I would not recommend this book. This book would be very off putting to someone who isn’t already aware of the issues discussed. It isn’t rigorous enough to stand up to serious historical scrutiny. The challenge that Du Bruyn has is writing a short book. I would instead make it more narrowly focused on a smaller number of issues - perhaps focusing more closely on a specific group like WEF or the UN SDGs. This book feels like a failed opportunity. It is almost really good. However, I think it is Du Bruyn’s first book. I would be very open to reading other books written by Du Bruyn in the future, to see if he can overcome these challenges.  The Ancient Celts
By Barry Cunliffe Published in 2018 496 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 Barry Cunliffe is one of my favorite historians; but I find the celts to be a boring civilization. The result was a great book that I didn’t find very interesting. Writing history is hard. You can easily slip into a number of common mistakes such as refuting other historians who the reader doesn’t know or care about; over-flavoring and accidentally writing historical fiction; including too much historiographic detail and writing a phone book; including too little historiographic detail and writing a conspiracy book; or narcissistically focusing on your own historical journey that nobody cares about. Barry Cunliffe always manages to walk the fine line. The book starts with a discussion of the broader history of celtic studies. The Celts themselves had no or little concept of being Celtic - the very term is a later historiographical error. The word comes from a Roman description of the people of what is today France and Northern Italy. Interestingly enough, the Romans wrote that the Irish and Britons were similar to the Celts but were not themselves Celts. Weirdly enough, today the word “Celtic” often refers to Britons such as Welsh or Scottish, the Irish, and a handful of continental people like the Galicians and Bretons. The Celts were a savage and noble people. Although Cunliffe tries his best to collect many Celtish accomplishments such as long distance trade, complex social organizations, and art - the picture he paints is ultimately of a savage and primitive people. They had no writing, no large scale states, no math, built no buildings that have survived, and ultimately contributed little to the intellectual progress of humanity. I was a little bit disappointed. I hoped to find some sort of secretly advanced civilization that equaled the Romans but has been neglected. Instead, I found exactly what I expected, and that made me feel a little bit sad. Many of my ancestors were French Celts, and the Romans were not. One always hopes to learn that one’s ancestors achieved civilization without the help of foreign conquerors. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the celts, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that doesn’t already have that specific niche interest.  Scotland's Hidden Sacred Past
By Freddy Silva Published in November 2021 343 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 I’m not sure what the book’s main point is. This book is a haphazard mishmash of facts, myths, and speculations about the history of ancient Scotland. The facts are not well organized, and don’t amount to anything. History books can be written in one of three ways. The first, and worst, way to write a history book is to argue for something. The second, most reliable, way to tell history is to compile a well organized chronological account of events. The third way to write history - to tell a story - is most difficult but the best if well executed. This book does neither, and is fairly chaotic. The author speculates about a wide range of possibilities concerning ancient Scotland such as that the standing stones are some sort of ancient hard drive which stores information using vibrations, that the Armenian language is directly related to Scottish, and that giants used to live on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. The historiography is sketchy. He draws a lot of radical conclusions from limited evidence, without ever providing plausible alternatives. As anyone who reads my book reviews knows, I am very open to ideas about the Younger Dryas, Atlantis, or visitations by extra-terrestrials - however, I set the bar for evidence very high. If you are making these bold claims, then you need to at least explore alternatives that are more mainstream. Finally, the book is full of melodramatic accounts about the author’s misadventures. As someone who has traveled internationally, none of these misadventurers stand out as remarkable or interesting. For example, at one point, he falls in some beachside rocks, scratches himself, and bruises his arm. He then proceeds to write about the incident as if it was a life-and-death struggle for survival. However, he doesn’t go to the hospital. Instead, he has a beer, and takes photos of his arm for Instagram, and proceeds with the adventure. Either he is a big baby and the incident itself is cringy because it wasn’t severe, or the passage is poorly written because it doesn’t do justice to the injuries the author actually sustained. I’ve read many worse books, and it definitely has its fascinating moments. Despite the positives, I would not recommend this book.  Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite
By Jake Bernstein Published in November 2017 352 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 The Panama Papers revealed that dozens of hundreds of world leaders, criminals, politicians, businessmen, and celebrities had registered entities with a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca. This book chronicles the history of this law firm, explains how this firm helped its clients mitigate taxes, hide their assets, and eventually how it leaked data which resulted in its downfall. Mossack Fonseca was founded by the 1986 merger of two small law firms. One was founded by the son of a German WW2 refugee and the other by a Panamanian leftist revolutionary turned lawyer. This firm specialized in finding jurisdictions that had favorable taxes and secrecy laws, and helping clients register businesses there. The firm was most active in the early 2000s, when it opened dozens of law officers across the world I actually have many good friends in this very business. Many work with citizenship by investment programs, Special Economic Zones, and small countries. The industry has not changed significantly despite the revelations of the Panama Papers and Pandora Papers. The first half of the book covers the founding of the firm, its growth, and activities. It is somewhat interesting. However, the author is an obvious communist who cannot resist inserting judgmental statements about politics which can be tedious at times. Eventually, the firm’s data was leaked due to lazy opsec and cybersecurity practices. The rest of the book follows the - very boring - lives of the journalists who leaked the data. The second half of the book is excruciating because the journalists are mostly losers and complainers. I can summarize 100 pages in one sentence: going through the Panama Papers was a lot of hard work, and the journalists had to work on short deadlines. For money laundering books to be good, they must fall into one of two categories: they must either be very informative, or very exciting. This book was neither. I didn’t learn anything new (although, to be fair, I already am somewhat of an industry insider). It also wasn’t exciting - the most exciting segments detail the lives of journalists crunching through deadlines and dealing with obtrusive funding committees. Finally, the author is very judgmental. He makes many assumptions which he doesn’t adequately defend. He just assumes that measures to create financial secrecy are bad, and I have no sense that he has even considered the other side of the argument. He creates a straw man - that supporters of tax havens just care about the economic benefits they bring to countries like Liechtenstein - and then attacks that by countering that tax havens deprive money for social programs. For example, he doesn’t acknowledge that the US government is a downright evil police state which uses taxpayer money to fund genocide in Palestine, racist cops who kill black people in cold blood, finances right wing terrorists in Latin America, and irradiates Iraq using depleted uranium. He simply assumes that everyone who has money is bad, and the government is a fundamentally benign institution. My position is the polar opposite. Our world is becoming an increasingly repressive, violent, and totalitarian police state. Any steps which private citizens can take to undermine the state are welcome breaths of fresh air. The economist Ludwig von Mises once wrote that “capitalism breathes through loopholes.” I do not recommend this book. There are much better books on the world of financial secrecy.  Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
By Bill Browder Published in April 2022 336 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 This book is a fast paced action packed account of how the author, Bill Browder, exposed a massive Russian state backed money laundering network. I listened to the audiobook, which is masterfully read by Adam Grupper - one of the most pleasant audiobooks I have heard in awhile. Bill Browder is a creep with bad physiognomy. Google him, and find a picture of him. He is your stereotypical spooky fund manager. I’ve met a lot of guys who look like him at finance conferences in Zurich and Washington DC, and that kind of person is always bad juju. The truth about Bill Browder’s story depends on who you trust. These facts are uncontested: he founded Hermitage Capital Management in 1996. Hermitage went into Russia right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and participated in the privatization of Russian state assets. The investments wildly succeeded, seeing a 2500% plus return on investment. If you believe Browder, he invested in Gazprom. Russian mobsters worked with crooked cops to forge documents, and stole 10% of Hermitage’s assets. If you believe the Russians, Browder worked with corrupt officials to steal his own assets. Obviously Browder paints a good picture of himself and a very sinister picture of Russia. He describes himself as an “activist investor,” trying to stomp corruption out of the companies where he invested. I don’t know the details, but in my own career, I have seen other people describe themselves as “activist investors.” Often, they are pro-socialism and pro-imperialism investors who complain about “diversity” or “climate change,” then use those causes to bully people. Once again, I do not know the details of Browder’s investments - but am suspicious of people who use that language. Russia responds to Browder’s investments violently. They first expelled Browder from Russia. Then they slowly start jailing, arresting, and intimidating his associates. Sergei Magnitsky is imprisoned, then tortured to death. Boris Nemtsov is murdered. One of Browder’s friends was poisoned, and survived with life changing injuries. Another was thrown off a roof by mobsters or spies posing as construction workers, and slowly and painfully died from his injuries. I personally know people who have been tortured by the Russian government. I know people who participated in anti-Putin protests, and had to endure absolutely horrible treatment at the hands of police. I also know people associated with the band Pussy Riot, who also had horrible things happen to them. I have no doubts that the mistreatment by Russian officials that Browder describes are completely real, and unexaggerated. The Russians also harass Browder in many other ways. They put out false interpol arrest warrants, which get him detained at the Geneva airport and later in a hotel in Spain. They hired the corrupt American lawyer John Moscow to gain Browder’s trust, obtain secret information, then betray him. They hired private investigators to disrupt him while he was skiing in Colorado with his family. Browder also admits to using dirty tricks, although his dirty tricks are far less dirty. He dodges subpoena servers, which is illegal in the United States. He also uses defamation lawyers to censor his opponent’s movie, and prevent it from getting screened. Browder denies that he is a US intelligence asset. I am sure that he is, but do not have any proof or evidence. You rarely can get into the mind of the hedge fund managers pillaging countries on behalf of US intelligence agencies. This autobiography is absolutely fascinating, and I recommend it highly. Finally, I want to end on a final note. Many people have a retarded “our team” versus “their team” worldview. I know people who correctly mistrust the US government, which has a very bad recent track record of truth telling, but instead blindly believe Russian propaganda that they see on RT and Telegram. I also know people, including many Russian exiles, who distrust Putin’s government, but believe everything that they see on CNN and in the New York Times. The reality is that we live in a world where good and moral governments are rare - usually confined to places like Singapore and Switzerland. Most governments are imperial states, which collude with private finance, to violently crush all opposition. The reader should see this as not just a cautionary tale about Russia, but a cautionary tale about what happens to enemies of the state in general. This is a fantastic book, and I recommend it highly.  In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy
By Frédéric Martel Published in February 2019 576 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 Like everyone, I had heard vaguely about the Vatican sex abuse problems. I expected this book to be about that. To my surprise, the problem goes way beyond sex abuse - this book alleges that roughly half of the leadership of the Catholic church is homosexual. Homosexuality has a long, and strange history in the Vatican. On one hand, the Catholic Church is very politically opposed to homosexuality. On the other hand, many high level Catholic priests have been found to be secretly gay. A lot of things surprised me. First, I didn’t know that the Catholic church was openly homophobic. In fact, my personal experience has been the complete opposite - that Catholics are a bunch of obnoxious homosexual social justice warriors who never shut up about LGBT rights. However, my experience mostly involved dealing with Catholics in the San Francisco and Washington DC areas. I was very surprised to hear that, in fact, the Catholic church isn’t predominantly leftist. The author is a lot older than I am. It might boil down to a generational difference - he grew up in a world with a very different Catholic church than I did. The other thing that surprised me was likely the thing that surprised just about everyone who read this book: that the entire leadership of the Catholic church is openly gay. In many cases, the evidence is direct - court cases, admissions, interviews with gay priests, etc… In other cases, the admission is anecdotal - interviews with gay prostitutes in Rome, rumors, the presence of homosexual paraphernalia, etc… The authors even used gay dating apps in the Vatican, and through data engineering, found many clergymen on the apps. Attempts by the Catholic church to reduce the presence of homosexuality in the church have dramatically backfired. This has only succeeded in attracting self-hating homosexuals. The presence of large amounts of celibate and closeted homosexuals contributes to pedophilia. The author argues that the solution is, instead, to allow priests to marry people of either gender. That will make it easier for the church to attract people with normal sexual tendencies, rather than people desperately attempting to restrain themselves. One example really stood out to me. For awhile, some Catholic churches offered gay conversion therapy - a therapeutic treatment designed to help homosexuals become heterosexual. This gay conversion therapy was usually targeted towards teenagers. The priest administering the therapy would undress the boys, and masturbate them. Obviously, the gay conversion therapy was just a ploy for pedophilic abuse with vulnerable teenagers. I’ve never liked Catholicism for the following reason - it is a religion entirely predicated on earthly authority - the authority of a Medieval corporation. Most Catholics I have met are very uninformed, and can’t even tell you who the most prominent medieval popes were and what they did. They cannot explain, in historical terms, why the papacy exists and should exist. They are both ignorant and loud. I have many Catholic friends who happen to be homosexual. Immediately after publishing this book review, I will suggest that they read it. I look forwards to hearing their thoughts.  The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
By David W. Anthony Published in 2007 568 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 Almost all currently spoken European languages descend from a single original root language - Indo-European. This language was spoken by an East Ukrainian steppe people. Around 4000 BC, this people fragmented into various warring tribes, who then conquered adjacent lands to the west in western Ukraine and Russia; and to the east in the Caucasian and Aral mountains. These fragments themselves spread and fragmented. Over thousands of years, the descendants of the Indo-Europeans spread from Spain in the West to India in the east. Most modern languages spoken across this vast expanse of territory are evolutionary descendants of the original Indo-European language. This book covers the science, archeology, genetics, and linguistics behind the discovery of the Indo-Europeans. It does a great job of exploring the Indo-Europeans themselves, the history and evolution of the scientific theory, and the methods used. However, it can be a little bit niche at times. I would only recommend it to someone who is already interested in the topic; not to a layperson.  The Giants of Stonehenge and Ancient Britain
By Hugh Newman and Jim Vieira Published in October 2021 404 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 Across Eurasia, but especially in the British isles, there are countless ancient legends about giants. This book is a compilation of various legends, customs, and traditions about giants from across the British islands. There have also been a number of giant bone finds over the last 500 years, although few of the alleged artifacts survive into the present. The book is divided by geographical section. Each geographical section is divided by very short subsections that each cover a specific myth. For example, one legend concerns a group of rocks which locals once believed were used as a table by giants. In the first two chapters, the authors cannot help but wonder to what extent these legends may hold some truth. What I like about this book is that the authors freely speculate, and are unafraid of putting out a wild - and likely wrong - hypothesis. That takes a lot of guts. What I like even more is that for the majority of the book - maybe 350+ pages - they then just collect the evidence and legends, and don’t worry about interpreting it. They then revisit the hypothesis at the end of the book. I got the physical book. It is very easy to read, because it can just be picked up, flipped to any random section, read for 5 minutes, and put down for a year. It is the perfect book to keep in a library, and never both reading cover to cover. I recommend it highly.  The Emperor's New Road: China and the Project of the Century
By Jonathan E. Hillman Published in September 2020 304 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 This book covers the state of China’s Belt and Road initiative as of September 2020. Somehow, in 2024, it already feels dated. Global geopolitics have shifted so much in the last four years in favor of China that many of the questions that the author asks have much less ambiguous answers. The author traveled to a dozen projects along the Silk Road in locations such as Sri Lanka, Djibouti, and Kazakhstan. He reports on the progress of various projects. The most memorable aspect of the book are the many lessons he draws from the European history of colonialism in each location. In many ways, China’s projects reflect similar past projects that Europeans attempted a century earlier. For example, I found his description of Qing Dynasty China’s reluctance to accept the railroad fascinating. Qing officials were concerned about the power that railroads would give to foreigners. They cloaked their reluctance in superstition. The British accepted magical and superstitious reasons for opposition to the railroad literally. This reflect’s modern China’s struggles with convincing countries in Africa and elsewhere to accept their technology. There is something very annoying about the academic writing style. Academics lack the balls and courage to make any bold observations. They cloak all of their remarks in “this may happen” and questions. They worry that speculation will make them look unscientific. The author asks many blandly framed questions, and doesn’t venture to guess at the answer. This is because modern academia has been taken over by nitwits who think that a piece of paper is equivalent to learning and intelligence.. On one hand, the nitwits love to criticize each other when their speculation turns out wrong. On the other hand, they refuse to speculate out of fear of judgement. The result is that works published by the likes of Yale University Press alway ask questions such as “what effects could this have on Kenya? Only time may tell…” without ever venturing an educated and well framed guess at an answer. The other problem with academic writing, especially when it comes to economic and geopolitical issues, is the technocratic framing of everything. The human spirit is discounted, and crushed under the mass of policy. Considerations such as freedom are not valued as intrinsic goods, and are weighted by their pros and cons in terms of material factors such as equity and equity. This book suffers from the technocratic framing that many other books in the genre suffer from. I think that if Jonathan E. Hillman had taken some LSD before writing this, and had not been afraid to speculate (as long as he lets the readers know he’s speculating) he could have written a masterpiece. However, the academic publisher - Yale University Press - should have been the only clue that anyone needed in order to instantly be able to tell that this book would just be another technocratic treatise on the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. I learned a lot, but didn’t have very much fun on the way. I will not recommend this book. |
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