Books and some interesting stuff I read in September 2026 Non-fiction The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021) 704 pages 5 stars There is no doubt that something has gone terribly wrong with the world. A very small percentage of its population do control the fates of almost everyone else, and they are doing it in an increasingly disastrous fashion. How did we find ourselves stuck in just one form of social reality, and how did relations based ultimately on violence and domination come to be normalized within it? In search for the origins of social inequality, the authors take us on a journey through human history. Based on modern insights and new evidence, they shatter many beliefs about past human societies on the different continents. The book is around 700 pages. Every chapter ends with a list of references, and the book ends in a 63-page biography. Montaigne by Stefan Zweig (1941) 128 pages - 5 stars Zweig wrote this biography before his death. According to the introduction, it was not finished. F.e., some chapters don't have a title. Zweig emphasizes in this short book Montaigne's fight to stay free, to live life as he wanted, not how others thought one should live. Short but good. Fiction Momo by Michael Ende (1974) 240 pages 5 stars Momo is a little child with a gift for listening. Men in gray infiltrate the city and sell the idea of time saving to the inhabitants. They are told that their saved time is deposited at the Timesavings Bank and will be returned with interest. This has a very bad effect and Momo tries to to stop them. A charming and marvelous book and absolute a must-read. Short stories Asleep in Armageddon by Rad Bradbury (1948) Short story about a spaceman marooned on a planetoid. https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/onlinereader/asleep-in-armageddon Interesting internet reads Some noteworthy internet reads: The joy of maintenance In this essay, But she's a girl... writes about the joy of running your own blog and doing the maintenance work actually by your self. Not being puppeteered by some LLM, but solving the problems on your own. A wonderful must-read, even if you don't run your own blog. https://www.rousette.org.uk/archives/the-joy-of-maintenance/ "I'm Not Dead Yet!" Reverse Polish Notation Calculators You Can Still Buy Mainly mention this page here for the photo's :) It brings back many memories. At the time I really would be helped with a Reverse Polish Notation Calculator (around 1976), I didn't have the money, and bought a Texas Instruments SR-50A instead. Many years later, I finally bought a HP-10C, and got my first RPN calculator. The HP-10C has the same style as the HP- 12C shown in this webpage. It was more for still wanting a RPN calculator than really needing one. I still have the HP calculator laying around in a drawer, with the batteries removed, to prevent damage by leakage. But nowadays I just use `dc on my FreeBSD laptop, which is a command line RPN calculator. https://hackaday.com/2026/09/02/im-not-dead-yet-reverse-polish-notation-calculators-you-can-still-buy/ Why you should try living without free will for two weeks A great essay by Tara-Lyn Camilleri, an evolutionary biologist. Many people assume we have a free will. There could be fear behind this assumption: without free will, what is the point? Yet scientists see that our behavior emerges from factors like genetics, development, stress, trauma, resources, norms and history. Looking at events from the perspective that people have full free will, or from the perspective that people don't, completely changes your judgment. It changes the kind of questions you ask. This essay proposes to live without free will for two weeks, and see how and what changes. https://psyche.co/ideas/why-you-should-try-living-without-free-will-for-two-weeks My last six months at Evernote, after Bending Spoons took over Testimony of how enshittification destroyed a once popular product. A wonderful recap by Alex. https://alexkras.com/my-last-six-months-at-evernote-after-bending-spoons-took-over/ From Git to Fossil Lucio describes how to migrate from Git to Fossil. Lucio states that the motivation comes from the fact that Git wants to make Rust mandatory. The blog post gives several reasons why that is not a positive development. Some stuff to think about, and a helpful description how to migrate. https://lucio.albenga.es/web-en/posts/2025/from-git-to-fossil.html Jabber/XMPP: How Do We Gain Traction? Communication should not be controlled by a single company. In this post, Daniel Gultsch describes that when it comes to instant messages, there are only two features people actually care about: reliable message delivery and the ability to reach their friends. It is the latter part constitutes the problem: the so-called network-effect. When all your friends are on Signal, and you are on a different platform, you're basically out of the group. The best thing we can do to beat the network effect, is increasing the visibility. One of the things Daniel proposes, is to put a "share via XMPP" link on your blog posts. Just look below :) https://gultsch.de/posts/how-do-we-gain-traction/ The AI extinction narrative is winning out In this essay, Brian Merchant explains how the AI extinction narrative strategy is aimed at maximizing profits and a path-way to self-regulation. “I invented the term artificial intelligence,” the Stanford computer scientist John McCarthy said in 1973, “and I invented it because we had to do something when we were trying to get money for a summer study in 1956.” The narrative helps the companies to be seen as a significant investor value. The timing is no coincidence, the companies are on the brink of holding IPOs that will make their executives unfathomably rich. The narrative also helps to let the industry write their own regulations, audits, safety standards, and so on. This way they can set their own terms and raise a barrier to new entries into this market. By slowing the pace, they can stop racing against each other and milk more money out of the current products. It's all about the money. Also Brain explains how workers can beat the tech oligarch. https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-the-stories-about-all-powerful Your Body Of Work Thinks Back At You This blogpost from cedric with some lovely photographs is interesting from several viewpoints. The first is, how people can have different hobbies. The second is, that doing something long enough, and it gives unexpected insights. The third is, how our world is getting more hostile. https://photoni.st/index.php/2026/09/25/your-body-of-work-thinks-back-at-you/