Recent reads (July 2025)

 I know I should call this recent listens, but I am stuck with the series name. So here it goes. These are some recent "reads" this month.

Billion Dollar Whale

Reading the Billion Dollar Whale was exhausting. I am not talking about the writing, which was well-paced and packed with a lot of detail. The problem is the  subject, Jho Low, who is a slippery and soulless character, who conned Malaysia out of billions via the 1Malaysia Development Berhad sovereign wealth fund.

Jho Low is a Wharton grad. He is a big  spender and party boy. Dropping millions of dollars a night for gambling and partying. His party buddies included Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton, and Jamie Foxx. Jho was a showoff and pretentious ass. What does Wharton teach these people? Do they actively recruit for this type of people?

Jho was aided by the complicity of Prime Minister Najib Razak and his luxury-addicted wife. We are talking entire stores shut down for private shopping and flights hauling nothing but shoes, and cash bleeding out of a developing nation. Maybe the corruption isn't that surprising if you have followed similar stories. Turkey has been going through similar deals with Qatar, Gulf royalty, and procurement grifts. What was shocking in the book was the scale, and how easily it worked. Everyone looked away, banks, regulators, and governments. 

Najib Razak is serving time at prison, but Jho Low still walks free, and probably still convinced he is legit and bright businessman. This book left me fuming throughout.

The Shepherd's Crown

The Shepherd’s Crown is Terry Pratchett’s last Discworld book, and you can feel it through the themes of death, legacy, and transition in the book.

Granny Weatherwax, the formidable witch and moral center of the series, dies early. Her death isn't dramatic but quiet and peaceful. She leaves her cottage and her responsibilities to Tiffany Aching, the young witch she mentored. (It was later revealed that Pratchett intended one last twist in the book: Granny Weatherwax had hidden her soul in a cat, delaying her meeting with Death until she could say, "I'm leaving on my own terms". But Pratchett didn't get to write that scene.)

The story seemed rushed (obviously given the circumstances), but the writing is still high quality. There were several sentences that made me laugh out loud. Even weakened by Alzheimer's, Pratchett was still sharper than most writers at their best. He also had an awesome command of the English language. Borrowing what Douglas Adams said about Wodehouse, Pratchett was one of the greatest musicians of the English language.

Stephen Briggs, the longtime narrator, does a beautiful job with the audiobook. It feels like a goodbye letter to his friend.

David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) interview

DHH, who now looks like a young Schwarzenegger with perfect curls, just did a six-hour interview with Lex Fridman. Yes, six hours and eight minutes. Here’s the link (also to the transcript), if you dare. Halfway along the interview, I noticed DHH sounds a lot like Bill Burr, especially when he is ranting, and he rants a lot. It is not just the voice, but the delivery, the takes, the contrarianism, and the angst. It's uncanny.

I remember reading DHH years ago and thinking, "This guy's basically a communist." But now he talks like a proper capitalist, maybe even a conservative. And yet, I still think DHH is authentic. He has "strong opinions, loosely held". He is loud and often smug. He is not afraid to throw elbows and get into fights. But I get the sense that he is persuadable, and if he saw he was wrong, he would change course. 

Of course the conversation spans Ruby, Rails, AI, and the philosophy of programming. DHH argues "Ruby does scale" citing that Shopify runs on Rails and handles over a million dynamic requests per second. He says Ruby is a "luxury language" that is human-friendly. Sure, it’s not the fastest. But it lets developers move fast, stay happy, and write expressive code. DHH argues the performance bottlenecks are  usually at the database. And in most businesses, developer time costs more than servers.

DHH says he uses AI daily as a tutor, a pair programmer, and a sounding board. But he draws a hard line at "vibe coding". He said vibe coding felt hollow, and  worse, it felt like his skills were evaporating. His rule is to always keep hands on the keyboard. He argues convincingly that programming is learned by doing, not by watching. Like playing guitar, the muscle memory is the knowledge. DHH sees programming not just as a job, but as a craft, something worth doing for its own sake.