Recent Book Ratings and Reviews

I went into this unsure if it hold my attention enough to finish. I soon knew I would listen to the whole thing and by the end I thought every American high school student should read it.

This is a new favorite for me. So many life lessons in here. Coram does a great job of making it clear how Boyd's priorities and work ethic influenced everyone around him, especially his family. It's unforgivable even as it's obvious that he was a hero and one of the most influential thinkers of all time.

I read this sequel immediately after finishing Delta-V and liked it even more. I have been hoping Suarez would build out a world where crypto makes sense to aid my understanding and he did it here extremely well (as always) and just a sideline to the centerpiece of space tech. And while I loved all the tech here, it’s the characters that make this story.

This book has everything I can ask for from sci-fi. A fun read that felt well researched. Like the other Suarez books I've read, he did a great job of helping me think about the ways space industry will affect society and how it could work.

Not just the history of the people but the conflicts in ways of thinking across cultures and the way the book forces you to think about what a map is and who history belongs to. Loved it.

It took me a bit to get into this. There are many things I really enjoyed about it: police bureaucracy, fights for power, what it means to be a parent and partner in extremely difficult circumstances, and more.

I could not put this down, I absolutely loved it. It does not celebrate the bomb itself but it does celebrate the process. And the process was fascinating.

Rhodes does a wonderful job of explaining the science that made the bomb possible, the step by step exploration of the atom from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th. It would be worth it just for that.

The leadership examples and the risk taking of so many people involved would also make the book worthwhile.

But the story is also fantastic. The ways genius manifested and the ways so many of the smartest people of their generation worked together on an enormous project. The fears of those people and the ways they kept such a big secret. The fact that they had one test of one of the two bomb designs before Hiroshima and that the Hiroshima bomb was already on its way across the Pacific before the test was completed. And that the Nagasaki bomb was a very different design, untested.

All fascinating. Some very funny parts. Lots of deep thinking about science and morality.

I highlighted 119 sections if you want to skim. You should put this next on your list, though. One of my all time favorites.

– originally written 2021-06-30

I highly recommend this book to everyone who cares about how governments spend and collect money, which should be everyone. The explanations are clear, important, and interesting.

Right from the beginning the story about about where the first US dollar (or any fiat currency) comes from had me hooked on the book. I listened to the audiobook of this one so I don't have kindle highlights. But the gist of this one is: the government could not possibly have taxed people without first spending some dollars in the economy.

The main takeaways for me were

• We don't have to fear deficits, which are just surpluses for private industry.
• Taxes are unnecessary for government spending but serve only to create incentives and disincentives and to redistribute wealth and resources.
• Balancing the budget would limit the supply of Treasuries and, taking the argument to the extreme, eliminating the market in Treasuries is absurd. Everyone should agree that the market in Treasuries stabilizes the dollar and empowers the US.

I want Stephanie Kelton to be in charge of the OMB.

– originally written 2021-02-02

Essential reading for anyone thinking about starting a business. The idea is simple, but important: It's too easy for someone to tell you that they like your idea and would buy. So don't talk about your idea, at least not at first.

Start by finding out what their problems are and what they're doing to solve them. Are they paying for something? Have they tried to find a solution? If not, it's not that painful.

The book shows you how to have these conversations in a way where even your mom would tell you the truth.

In theory, this is perfect and while having an actual conversation with this idea in mind, I can do it. My only issue is trying to get introductions to potential customers. How do you ask someone to take time to talk to you without leading them at all? I think the answer is to only say that you want to talk about a problem and hope they agree it's a problem. Don't mention your solution. If they don't agree it's a problem, you've lost the opportunity to learn from them.

If you have a good answer to this, please let me know.

– originally written 2021-06-30

I've seen the movie a few times and had a general sense that I wanted to read this book as it was recommended in a few places. Then Chuck Yeager died and William Zinsser recommended Wolfe and The Right Stuff specifically in On Writing Well and I moved it up my list.

It's a great story about what it means to be a hero and to represent a country, covering the beginning of the space age in the face of the Cold War. It filled in a lot of gaps and history with some of the same people from Rocket Men, which is about Apollo 8.

There are lots of moments that prove Zinsser's point that Wolfe is a master of nonfiction storytelling. One thing that really stood out to me – especially after thinking that Trump ruined it – was his use of the exclamation point. The key is that he uses it throughout entire paragraphs to control the pace and get you really into someone's head. It's masterful.

On the one hand, they hated the process. It meant talking to reporters and other fruit flies who always hovered, eager for the juice … and invariably got the facts screwed up … But that wasn’t really the problem, was it! The real problem was that reporters violated the invisible walls of the fraternity. They blurted out questions and spoke boorish words about … all the unspoken things!—about fear and bravery (they would say the words!) and how you felt at such-and-such a moment! It was obscene!

I recommend both the book and the movie.

– originally written 2021-02-14

A few months after finishing The Bureau (definitely one of my favorite TV series ever), I was craving more spy stories. I kept seeing this book recommended. I don't think I even knew if it was fiction or non-fiction before starting it (it's a true story).

For the first half of the book, I thought it was going to be filled with interesting facts but lacking the intensity and drama that I wanted from it. Then I realized that nearly all of the drama was going to be saved for one story, the escape. It turned out to be worth the wait.

There are lots of important, interesting, and fun facts in this book. There are lessons about leadership and planning and trust.

Here are some of my favorite parts:

On some gadgets:

During the war, the Hanslope boffins produced an astonishing array of technical gadgets for spies, including secure radios, secret ink, and even garlic-flavored chocolate—issued to spies parachuting into occupied France to ensure their breath smelled convincingly French on landing. Had Q, the technical wizard in the James Bond series, actually existed, he would have worked at Hanslope Park.

MI6 was still using the old-fashioned Minox camera. The CIA, however, was known to have recruited a Swiss watchmaker to develop an ingenious miniature camera hidden inside an ordinary Bic cigarette lighter, which could take perfect photographs when used in conjunction with a length of thread, 11¼ inches long, and a pin. Using a piece of chewing gum, the thread was stuck to the bottom of the lighter; when the pin at the end lay flat on a document, that measured the ideal focal length, and the button on top of the lighter could be pressed to click the shutter.

On Russian paranoia and secrecy:

Officers were expected to get married, have children, and stay married. There was calculation as well as control in this: a married KGB officer was considered less likely to defect while abroad, since his wife and family could be held as hostages.

[In the embassy in London, ] even manual typewriters were discouraged in case the keystrokes gave something away; there were notices on every wall warning: DON’T SAY NAMES OR DATES OUT LOUD; the windows were all bricked up, except in Guk’s office, where miniature radio speakers pumped canned Russian music into the space between the panes of the double glazing, emitting a peculiar muffled warble that added to the surreal atmosphere.

On (bad) leadership:

In launching Operation RYAN [a search for proof that the US was planning a first strike], Andropov broke the first rule of intelligence: never ask for confirmation of something you already believe. Hitler had been certain that the D-day invasion force would land at Calais, so that is what his spies (with help from Allied double agents) told him, ensuring the success of the Normandy landings. Tony Blair and George W. Bush were convinced that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that is what their intelligence services duly concluded.

The Kremlin, however, assuming that capitalism penetrated every aspect of Western life, believed that a “blood bank” was, in fact, a bank, where blood could be bought and sold. No one in the KGB outstations dared to draw attention to this elemental misunderstanding. In a craven and hierarchical organization, the only thing more dangerous than revealing your own ignorance is to draw attention to the stupidity of the boss.

I came away with a deep appreciation for the work that the spy, Oleg Gordievsky, did and the impact it had on the West's relationship with the USSR. He helped avoid nuclear war and directly recommended the strategy which led to the USSR overextending itself financially, which I had understood (and still believe) is the primary reason for its collapse.

And the story about "the Traitor" is unbelievable.

– originally written 2021-03-29

Excellent. Like the other McCullough books I've read, it takes some time to get rolling. But once it got going, I couldn't put it down (err, couldn't stop listening).

Truman didn't go to college and seemed to fall into his political career. He was one of the last major players in the US who was backed by a "machine," like in the Tammany Hall, graft, and corruption sense. Because he didn't go to college, was raised in a small town, and knew economic hardship, he had an easy way of relating to people.

And everyone liked him. It seems like no one who ever worked with him ever said a bad thing about him.

The Truman presidency happened as a last resort: he was picked at the last minute to be FDR's VP in 1944 essentially because he would offend the fewest people. Jimmy Burns, known as "Assistant President" and handling all domestic policy during WWII after leaving the Supreme Court, had been too outspoken as a racist.

Truman then had a huge impact on history. He decided to go ahead with using the nuclear bombs (he actually only gave approval for the first and left the second up to the military), confronting the emerging threat of the USSR, communism and McCarthyism, then Korea and more.

By far the biggest disappointment on his record is the way he handled labor and strikes. He threatened to draft strikers and generally sided with management.

On the other hand, he alone, even in the Democratic Party, pushed for universal healthcare, and almost alone pushed for civil rights.

There was some interesting overlap in the story with The Making of the Atomic Bomb. More and more, I'm loving the small overlaps across fiction and non-fiction. Truman impacted so much that this gives a lot of cross section for those connections.

– originally written 2021-06-30

Great, short read. It's not what I expected when I had seen it recommended. I thought it was going to be about how to adjust your strategy in business. It's not that at all. The point is how to be a better person, and it has some great advice.

One of the easiest pieces of advice to implement is to say "thank you" instead of getting defensive.

– originally written 2021-06-30

I saw this book recommended on Twitter and I honestly did not know what I was getting myself into. The subtitle – "on mushrooms and mourning" – is a great description. The mourning part that is hard to read if you're not in the mood for it is just at the beginning. The way out (or through) is most of the book. Litt Woon finds her new life in mushroom foraging at home in Oslo and around the world.

The book is filled with interesting facts about wild mushrooms, the culture of foraging, and her experiences going from beginner to certified expert. On a deeper level, it's about how foraging helped her create a new life for herself. That she could begin alone, when she was in no mood for company, and transition into new friendships and community built around her new interest made foraging a great fit.

I have been interested in mushrooms since my friend Jon encouraged me to watch a TED Talk by Paul Stamets (mentioned in passing in the book) in October 2013. I learned a lot about mushroom cultivation over the couple years following that as we explored starting a farm in upstate New York, including a visit to Cascadia Farm in Bellingham and two Stamets seminars.

Foraging is completely different, though. I have only gone foraging a handful of times and reading this made me want to go more often. The way I think about foraging didn't change much: I think it's great to go for a walk in the woods and if you find dinner, it's a bonus. If you can only have a good time if you find a basketful, I think you'll be disappointed unnecessarily.

My favorite passage on mourning is this one:

“If there’s anything I can do for you, just call,” people said after Eiolf died. The problem was that I didn’t know what I needed. Obviously there is no standard formula for how to be a good support to someone in mourning, but for me the map of my friends and acquaintances was redrawn after Eiolf’s death. People I had thought would be right there by my side, solid as rocks, never showed their faces, while others who had previously been more peripheral friends provided tireless and thoughtful help. They didn’t give up but followed me at the pace of my grief.

On foraging culture:

I once asked someone I thought was a friend where he had found his mushrooms. Obviously I wasn’t expecting to be given the exact location. It is generally assumed that everyone keeps their favorite sites to themselves. No one expects to be given GPS coordinates. But I did have some small hope of being provided with a little information as to the general location. Instead all I received was the useless and utterly worthless reply of “Oslo.” That earned him a big black mark in my book.

The book has lots of facts like this easy-to-overlook one:

Urban mushrooms are also a good plan B during a long dry spell, when the woods have little to offer but park lawns and grassy areas in graveyards—which are usually watered regularly by strategically placed sprinklers—more or less guarantee that there will always be some good pickings to be had.

I enjoyed it overall and recommend it if you're interested in mushrooms.

– originally written 2021-04-03

I wanted this to be great and it was... fine. There's a lot of politics and competitiveness, which is interesting. I also liked the parts about how different scientists enjoy the business side of things and, especially, how Stanford does a great job of helping their faculty and doctorate students make money. Berkeley, where Doudna is, is doing its best to keep up. Isaacson's discussion on the moral aspects of using CRISPR on humans, how different cultures may view this, and the practice in humans to date – only in China – was excellent.

– originally written 2021-06-30

This book was by far the most common answer in a thread I saw on Twitter about books on happiness. Based on Frankl's survival of Auschwitz, it's more intense than I had assumed. It's a great book, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

tl;dr: "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how.'"

– originally written 2021-06-30

Larry McMurtry died today and in tribute I'm recommending this book, my favorite novel. There are so many deep, interesting, lovable characters in this book. I was intensely sad that I could not spend more time with the characters as I approached the end, a feeling I had only experienced with The Goldfinch.

It's a love story and a western (or anti-western). It's about friendships, fatherhood, adventure. It's about life and forgiving yourself. It does not have enough women.

One unusual thing that's stuck with me is the extent that the American West itself is a character. The rivers are almost characters. The idea of judging distance not by miles or hours but by days or weeks to the next river or the next source of water. The idea of understanding geography as anchored by the Rio Grande, the Red, the Arkansas, the Missouri.

It's the kind of writing that fires your whole brain, sharing the sensations of the characters. The sights and smells and pains and fears.

I don't think it's a book for people who love any particular genre. It's for everyone. I think you'll like it, too.

– originally written 2021-03-26

I loved it. It was no surprise that I enjoyed a winner of both the Nebula and the Hugo awards. I was surprised that I connected with the characters and the world in this story more than any fiction I've read in the last couple of years.

In this world, the history department of Oxford has access to a time machine that they use to study the past. The way the machine works, they cannot make any significant changes to the path of time or the people they interact with.

Both the "present" day timeline, in the near-future 21st century, and the 14th century timeline, experience epidemics. I didn't realize I was reading a plague book when I started. I'm not sure I would have sought it out had I known, because COVID is enough plague for right now.

I'm looking forward to continuing the series ("The Oxford Time Travel") with To Say Nothing of the Dog.

– originally written 2021-06-30

A quick, inspiring read by the founder of CD Baby on how he ran his business and why he sold. There are a lot of great stories on how he put his customers first, relentlessly.

Here are a couple favorite quotes:

A business plan should never take more than a few hours of work—hopefully no more than a few minutes. The best plans start simple. A quick glance and common sense should tell you if the numbers will work. The rest are details.

After working on dozens of business plans and models, I came to a similar conclusion. There are a lot of cases where putting in the work to figure out how key metrics and growth drivers would need to compound over time to get to certain hurdles is helpful. For most businesses, I think basic unit economics and thinking about how repeatable those units are is enough.

Make every decision—even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone—according to what’s best for your customers. If you’re ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended question, “How can I best help you now?” Then focus on satisfying those requests. ... It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.

– originally written 2021-01-31

It feels like the whole product manager experience and the first ~1/3 of the book is very focused on who should be and how to be a product manager. The rest is about what to do though each section is not very deep.

I mean really out there. It’s hard to describe this book. The title is accurate: it is a chaotic story. It starts from a conspiracy to conceal the true motive in the Charles Manson family murders and expands very far. I am pretty convinced it’s the truth.

This was my first book on degrowth and I thought it was well written and mostly well researched. There were references to works from Yuval Harari and Jared Diamond that I have read and know are popular and mostly well regarded but also debunked by historians. That was frustrating and tainted the book for me. But mostly the research and references and stories felt good and right. And that the recommendations point in a worthwhile direction, particularly on how to raise kids.

I think this was my 8th Stephenson book. It’s not the first one I’d recommend but I really liked the characters and story.

I did not know anything about it in advance and was pleased to discover that it’s about climate and solar geoengineering. I have been consuming a lot of non-fiction and fiction climate media lately and this was one of the best. It felt the most grounded in reality: self-interest driving action more than anything else.

A second Dirac, but human. An incredible life and person (and book).

This was a great follow up to The Geography of Nowhere, which I read many years ago and has influenced how I think about cities. I hope more Americans learn about roads, streets, and stroads and advocate for better infrastructure.

This is the kind of topic that deserves the prestige of a book but where the ideas can fit in a blog post without losing anything important. Here, the length and examples are worthwhile. The show the scope of the problem in a way that is both interesting and enraging.

The bomb is used halfway through this book and the rest is about the tragedy of the McCarthy era. It includes a play-by-play of terrible moments in anti-communist fear mongering. It's worthwhile history though not nearly as interesting as the complexities of Oppenheimer's success in leading scientists with competing egos under immense pressure.

Good summary of how we got to this point and how the Supreme Court is delegitimizing itself. And finishes with good solutions. There’s a seemingly infinite list of blood boiling developments these days, but this is an important one.

If you have ever been unsatisfied by the idea that we don’t know what happened before the Big Bang or that it somehow doesn’t matter, you’ll enjoy this.

It lived up to expectations. It’s the guide to kickstarting a startup’s marketing from any plateau, but especially for the first customers. The platforms referenced are getting stale the but ideas seem solid. I can see why so many recommend it.

Filled with dazzling prose but not in the sense that you need a dictionary, except to understand 16th century fashion. I am fascinated by the idea that the premise here is that an author can surprise and delight in plain English about that language’s most famous writer.

And pointers to what the US in particular needs to move socialism forward. It’s a nice complement to Politics is for Power, which I recommend more.

Much better than I expected. Thunberg is the editor, not the only voice in the book. It’s a lot of experts on each part of the story. It is filled with big truth bombs.

There’s a lot in here that’s terrifying and upsetting. It is also motivating. A goal of the book (and of Greta’s) is to convince people not to look away and it is working on me.

I wanted more action, less blockchain.

Weirdly timely. There are so many reasons to question capitalism. And we all “know” communism isn’t better. Can’t work. But why? Why not? I already want to reread this.

I did not know it was possible to laugh and cry at the same for so long. This book is as heavy and difficult as you think it might be. I loved it.

Excellent storytelling well categorized by Capote as “a non-fiction novel.”

This book is about how the ultrawealthy get richer at the expense of the poor and middle class. And how the Great Financial Crisis was an opportunity they were both ready for and went to extremes to take advantage of.

It makes a convincing case that we should all be paying attention and that free market ideals conflict with national security. Ultimately, I enjoyed the Acquired podcast episode about TSMC more. Maybe I would have rated this higher if I had not previously listened to that episode.

A lot to like but it didn’t live up to the hype for me.

I enjoyed the book, though some of the tangents into work done building on von Neumann’s ideas felt long-winded.

Love the rest of the series but this is not good

A spectacular story filled with wonderful prose. And if you read all the footnotes you’ll triply well read.

Worth it just for that line. Interesting study on the history of argument.

It’s incredible how much Russia has tested their cyber weapons, how much we know about it, and how little things have changed despite how obvious the dangers are.

It's very convincing and I really appreciate the ideas and perspective on religion especially. I learned long after reading it about the complete disregard for evidence and accuracy.

I understand the historian perspective on this book is very negative but I thoroughly enjoyed and was convinced by it at the time

This book is overwhelming. Not surprising but still worth saying. I mostly listened to the audio book and borrowed the ebook to save some highlights. I ended up making 123 highlights. The book is just an endless series of interesting facts. Which was good but also too much.

I learned a lot about anti-semitism and the evolution of holy wars and the influence of Islam and Scandinavia's Normans. And the interplay between monarchy and the church. And that 'gospel' means 'good news.' Here are some favorite parts.

An aspect of the virgin birth:

Matthew’s and Luke’s ancestor lists are in their present form pointless. They claim to show that Jesus could be described as the Son of David; in fact Luke goes further, taking Jesus back to Adam, the first man. Yet they do this by tracing David’s line down to Jesus’s father, Joseph. Both then defeat their purpose by implying that Joseph was not actually the father of Jesus. Matthew does it by abruptly ending the genealogical mantra ‘father of’ after the generation of ‘Jacob the father of Joseph’, continuing ‘Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born’. Luke is more directly indecorous by calling Jesus ‘the son (as was supposed) of Joseph’. These rather lame phrases cannot be other than emendations of the rival texts, designed to accommodate the rapidly growing conviction of Christians that Jesus’s mother, Mary, was a virgin in human terms and became with child by the Holy Spirit.

...

This tangle of preoccupations with Mary’s virginity centres on Matthew’s quotation from a Greek version of words of the prophet Isaiah in the Septuagint (see p. 69): ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel’. This alters or refines the meaning of Isaiah’s original Hebrew: where the prophet had talked only of ‘a young woman’ conceiving and bearing a son, the Septuagint projected ‘young woman’ into the Greek word for ‘virgin’ (parthenos).

On the blaming of Jews for killing Jesus:

Most Christians did not want to be enemies of the Roman Empire and they soon sought to play down the role of the Romans in the story. So the Passion narratives shifted the blame on to the Jewish authorities, and the local representative of Roman authority – a coarse-grained soldier called Pontius Pilate – was portrayed as inquisitive and bewildered...

The growth of Christianity in the US:

As Federal government expanded west, Christianity experienced growth as vigorous as any in the nineteenth century. At the time of the Revolution, despite all the bustle of the Great Awakenings, only around 10 per cent of the American population were formal Church members, and a majority had no significant involvement in Church activities. In 1815 active Church membership had grown to around a quarter of the population; by 1914 it was approaching half – this in a country which in the same period through immigration and natural growth had seen its numbers balloon from 8.4 million to 100 million.

This was not a fun read but definitely an interesting one.

– originally written 2021-06-30

A lot of books could have been blog posts and this one could have been a tweet

I am precisely the target audience for this book, someone who wants to be politically active and pretends that paying attention to the news and the latest polls is doing something. I haven't changed my ways yet, but knowing is half the battle... I hope.

Here is how Hersh defines 'political hobbyism':

a catchall phrase for consuming and participating in politics by obsessive news-following and online “slacktivism,” by feeling the need to offer a hot take for each daily political flare-up, by emoting and arguing and debating, almost all of this from behind screens or with earphones on.

I see myself and I don't like it. I went canvassing for the first time, for Bernie, about six months before reading this book, but it felt empty. I now understand why, and what would work better.

Here are the problems with political hobbyism.

First:

First, we are making politics worse. Our collective treatment of politics as if it were a sport affects how politicians behave. They increasingly believe they benefit from feeding the red meat of outrage to their respective bases, constantly grandstanding for the chance that a video of themselves will go viral. In treating politics like a hobby, we have demanded they act that way.

Second:

Second, hobbyism takes us away from spending time working with others to acquire power. While we sit at home, people who seek political control are out winning over voters.

He goes on to give some great examples of what it means to work with others to acquire power, and how political organizing has changed over the last ~50 years. From changes in laws around patronage to political tribalism:

In 1964, the presidential candidates were Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, who were unquestionably more extreme in their policy differences than Obama and Romney. Yet survey takers did not respond as if the stakes were as high. What changed? In part, what has changed is that Americans have started to treat political parties as they treat sports teams.

What works:

• Listening to your neighbors
• Building trust over the long term
• Community service, e.g., day care and senior care
• Bottom-up organizing

Bottom-up organizing, where the top of an organization provides resources and some guidance but doesn't micromanage each local group, feels the most important to me. The idea that a political campaign should provide canvassers and phone bankers with a script and talking points is intuitively appealing. It makes it easy to get volunteers started and does as much as possible to control the message. It also feels empty for both sides of the conversation, and it makes a real connection and persuasion impossible.

The opposite is 'deep canvassing':

[I]n deep canvassing, volunteers focus on being good listeners and on making a human connection to someone they might disagree with. They are emissaries from one party to another, looking for goodwill.

Which sounds hard, because it is.

A group of volunteers focused on a single mission is the other recommended approach. That has been working well for the right but not for the left:

Political hobbyism on the left also stands in sharp contrast to the most successful recent political movements, which have been on the right—the right-to-life movement, the gun rights movement—which were developed around chapter-based, local organizations with thousands of volunteers willing to roll up their sleeves and, slowly and steadily, achieve modest political goals: taking over political party committees, quietly seeding judicial offices, recruiting state legislative candidates—activities that seem beneath the political hobbyist who is strictly infatuated with national political drama.

I would love to see a progressive organization (and I imagine DSA and probably others are doing some or most of this already) providing emergency day care and senior care and seasonal community support, like a spring bike tune-up meetup. The message is: "We want this for everyone and we want the government to help so that these services are accessible to all. Until then, we are going to use our modest resources to provide as much as we can. And, by the way, here is who you should vote for in local, state, and federal elections so that this happens sooner."

I have a sense that the best way that progressives can create the kind of "chapter-based, local organizations" that make a real difference is through a growth in union membership.

In 2017, while trying to figure out how to get a cannabis company started and do the basics like open a bank account, we found out the UFCW in California would help all new cannabis companies get a bank account at some affiliated credit union if we signed a Neutrality and Card Check Agreement. That agreement stated that we would not oppose or interfere with any organizing effort.

I wanted to do it. I thought that we would run the kind of operation where it wouldn't be a big deal either way, a place that supported its employees regardless of the threat of a strike. I supported unions in a theoretical, political-hobbyist way. Our advisors told us that fundraising would be much more difficult and it would generally make operating the company more difficult for us.

We didn't do it. We never got to the point of operations with our own facility where it mattered (my teammates moved on to operate from within a client's site and organization while I stayed in Seattle). I regret it anyway. I want unions to gain power and am finding reasons for optimism.

– originally written 2021-04-05