Intro I follow the news about AI not as much as I should, but enough to stay well-informed. When I say “news,” I’m not talking so much about new tools and techniques but about emerging use cases, implications, misuse, and broader impact. Most of the articles I come across focus on AI’s influence on business or, more recently, on psychology. However, I rarely, if ever, see articles discussing how AI could influence our political system. ...
Direct democracy feels empowering in a broken system. But unless we fix the trust and accountability mechanisms within a representative democracy, we’ll just keep repeating the same cycle. In Serbia, we’re witnessing the largest anti-government protest in the last 25 years, possibly the largest ever, despite ongoing population decline. The immediate trigger was the collapse of a canopy that killed 16 people. But I don’t want to focus on why the protest started or speculate about the movement’s future. ...
Quick note: This is just the first post in a series; think of it as a short introduction. I’m a social scientist, and unlike many in my field, I genuinely enjoy math and statistics. My friend Petar jokes that statistics isn’t real math, but I’ll leave that debate for another time. What matters is that social science has long struggled to explain society’s complexity. We rely heavily on methods like surveys, interviews, and content analysis. These are useful but often fall short when predicting or uncovering causal relationships. Society is messy, and humans are unpredictable. ...
Person/Audience: Their prejudices, foreknowledge, expectations, interests, and needs. Context: Time: How much time I have and when it happens. Space: Online, room, props. Bigger Picture: How this performance fits into the larger context. Goal/Outcome: NOT what I will talk about, but the explicit and implicit goals (internal, external, open, and hidden), including the minimum, optimal, and maximum outcomes (pessimistic, medium, and optimistic). Content: What I am saying/asking and in what order, and the key points.
Of course, this isn’t a complete list. 1. Classical & Stoic Wisdom Marcus Aurelius – Meditations Seneca – On Anger Miyamoto Musashi – The Book of Five Rings Jonas Salzgeber – The Little Book of Stoicism Donald J. Robertson – How to Think Like a Roman Emperor Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning 2. Psychology, Habits & Decision-Making Dale Carnegie – How to Win Friends and Influence People James Clear – Atomic Habits Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga – The Courage to Be Disliked Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony & Cass Sunstein – Noise Morgan Housel – The Psychology of Money Spencer Johnson – Who Moved My Cheese? Mark Manson – The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Mark Manson – Everything Is F*cked 3. Modern Productivity, Purpose & Minimalism Tiago Forte – Building a Second Brain Cal Newport – Digital Minimalism Simon Sinek – Start with Why Simon Sinek – Find Your Why Simon Sinek – Leaders Eat Last Simon Sinek – The Infinite Game 4. Risk, Uncertainty & Complex Systems Nassim Nicholas Taleb – The Black Swan Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Antifragile Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Skin in the Game George S. Clason – The Richest Man in Babylon Robert Greene – The 48 Laws of Power Robert Greene – The 33 Strategies of War Robert Greene & 50 Cent – The 50th Law Sun Tzu – The Art of War 5. Society, History & Economics Yuval Noah Harari – 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs, and Steel Mary Beard – SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Peter L. Berger – The Capitalist Revolution Srdja Popovic & Matthew Miller – Blueprint for Revolution Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson Frédéric Bastiat – The Law 6. Science & Technology Bill Bryson – A Short History of Nearly Everything Carlo Rovelli – The Order of Time Hannah Fry – Hello World Max Tegmark – Life 3.0 Hans Rosling et al. – Factfulness Vaclav Smil – Numbers Don’t Lie Alan Sokal & Jean Bricmont – Fashionable Nonsense Aurélien Géron – Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow Hadley Wickham & Garrett Grolemund – R for Data Science 7. Memoirs, Biographies & Personal Stories David Goggins – Can’t Hurt Me Edward Snowden – Permanent Record Mihajlo Pupin – From Immigrant to Inventor Dean Nicholson – Nala’s World Fredrik Backman – Anxious People Marc-Uwe Kling – Qualityland Phil Knight – Shoe Dog
Whenever I install a new operating system, these are the programs I always set up first: Program Anaconda Bitwarden BleachBit Brave Calibre Chrome Jamovi Lunatask Mullvad VPN Obsidian Okular OnlyOffice Python qBittorrent R RStudio Signal Spotify Steam VLC VSCodium Zenbrowser
When I first embarked on my journey into the field of sociology, I was driven by a single burning question: Why do some societies thrive and prosper while others, like Serbia, struggle? The answer seemed straightforward: prosperity was linked to the presence of individual freedom. Societies with citizens free to make their own choices tended to flourish, while those burdened by government control and restrictions on personal liberties often suffered. After realizing that sociology wasn’t fun anymore, I decided to change my career to something more meaningful. Changing one’s career might seem like a daring move, but the beauty of life is that you can always make changes and pursue what you love. ...
Once, a student asked Margaret Mead (a well-known anthropologist) where civilization began. The student expected answers like the wheel, clay pottery shards, fish hooks, or other ancient tools. But Mead’s answer was surprising: “In a cave where a healed and mended femur was found,” she replied with a smile. To the question: Why? She explained: Because in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You can’t hunt, you can’t escape from predators — you simply can’t survive. But a healed femur means someone stayed. Someone helped. Someone cared enough to protect you, feed you, and wait with you. Someone was patient. The first sign of civilization is not an invention, my dear ones, she told them — it is compassion and patience. The heart. ...