Hacker News Books

I’d suggest a wonderful book called The End of Policing by Alex Vitale. I’ve read it cover to cover many times and it may include some insight that you’d enjoy.

See also: the police. (Relevant book: The End of Policing)

Tangentially related: Alex S. Vitale's book "The End of Policing" is currently free in e-book from Verso: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2817-the-end-of-policing

Worth reading to familiarize oneself with leftist views on institution of Policing. Likely some eye-opening viewpoints for most.

Verso has also made the ebook edition of Alex Vitale’s excellent “The End of Policing” free:

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing

TLDR: any society which refuses to provide social democratic floors to people will increasingly rely on violence to maintain its social order. You can’t expect policing to be the primary means with which we deal with things like the housing and healthcare crisis without disastrous consequences.

Leisure Stuff:

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga Of Oklahoma City, It's Chaotic Founding... by Sam Anderson

Midnight In Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (tried it this year and stopped, want to give it another go)

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang (just finished Exhalation and I think it's great)

An Ursula K. Le Guin novel, have not picked one out yet

A book related to basketball (possibly Dream Team, but IDK yet)

Less Leisure Stuff:

Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by John Pfaff

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

The End Of Policing by Alex S Vitale

Either Manufacturing Consent or Understanding Power by Chomsky

The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold

Work:

Code Complete 2 by Steve McConnell

The Web Application Hacker's Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws by Dafydd Stuttard, Marcus Pinto

Finish Writing An Interpreter In Go by Thorsten Ball

If I can get through all of these, I will be very pleased. Throw in a book or two at recommendation from friends and I think I'm full for the year.

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm against more police. I think communities would be better served by an increase in social workers in most cases. Drug usage and homelessness won't be solved by imprisoning people and forever branding them as criminals. You need bridge housing, treatment programs, and services for these people. And an educational system that is well funded, regardless of the community it serves. I think criminalizing social issues has proven to be pretty ineffective, generally harmful, and really expensive. I'd recommend checking out "The End of Policing" for a thoughtful, well-reasoned argument for decreasing the number of police.
The ebook is free: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing

Apologies for reposting, but I think it matters and should be highly visible:

"In 2013 the Utah Housing and Community Development Division reported that the cost of emergency room treatment and jail time averaged over $16,000 per year per homeless person, while the cost of providing a fully subsidized apartment was only $11,000."[0]

Obviously, the numbers will change with the area. The cost of an apartment in the Bay Area or LA would be much greater, for example. But the book makes a good case that it'd cost society less overall to just take care of people than to ignore rampant homelessness. I'm inclined to believe it.

Related, there's an eye-opening limited series podcast on homelessness called "According to Need" that I found very compelling.[1] The host lives in the Bay Area, so there was a lot focus [t]here. I strongly recommend checking it out to learn just how stacked the system can be against people trying to overcome homelessness. For example, did you crash on someone's couch in the last thirty days? Doesn't matter if you've got nowhere to crash tonight, you don't qualify for a bed.

[0] The End of Policing, by Alex S. Vitale first edition pg 97

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/need/

Edited to format

"In 2013 the Utah Housing and Community Development Division reported that the cost of emergency room treatment and jail time averaged over $16,000 per year per homeless person, while the cost of providing a fully subsidized apartment was only $11,000."[0]

Obviously, the numbers will change with the area. The cost of an apartment in the Bay Area or LA would be much greater, for example. But the book makes a good case that it'd cost society less overall to just take care of people than to ignore rampant homelessness. I'm inclined to believe it.

Related, there's an eye-opening limited series podcast on homelessness called "According to Need" that I found very compelling.[1] The host lives in the Bay Area, so there was a lot focus [t]here. I strongly recommend checking it out to learn just how stacked the system can be against people trying to overcome homelessness. For example, did you crash on someone's couch in the last thirty days? Doesn't matter if you've got nowhere to crash tonight, you don't qualify for a bed.

[0] The End of Policing, by Alex S. Vitale first edition pg 97

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/need/

I tried to read "The End of Policing". I got half way through chapter 1 before the author stated, as support for his argument, that The Bell Curve was "overtly racist". Now, you could argue that lots of racists like that book, that the authors might be motivated by bias, etc etc, but no credible reviewer at the time it came out would call it "overtly racist". This is retroactive moving of the goal posts, and the word "overt", to me, still has meaning.

So I tried to read the tripe, but the arguments are not persuasive unless you already believe what they are trying to convince you of.