Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

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Thermodynamics and Entropy

Mental models

Order is expensive and disorder is free: any organised system needs a continuous energy input or it decays. Businesses, portfolios and processes all drift toward disorder the moment maintenance stops, which is why maintenance capex and culture work are not optional. Energy flow, not accounting, is the physical constraint under every economy.

Books 7Experts 1Recommenders 10Resources 3

Start here

  1. Deep SimplicityJohn Gribbin, 2004
  2. The Second LawP. W. Atkins, 1984
  3. Energy and Civilization: A HistoryVaclav Smil, 2017
Energy and Civilization: A HistoryEnergy and Civilization: A History
T1 Energy and Civilization: A History
Vaclav Smil · 2017
Open LibraryGoodreads

History told through energy, from muscle and fire to coal, oil and electricity.

Recommended by: Balaji S. Srinivasan, Bill Gates and 1 other

Order Out of ChaosOrder Out of Chaos
T2 Order Out of Chaos
Ilya Prigogine, Isabelle Stengers · 1984
Open LibraryGoodreads
Complexity: The Emerging Science at the EdgeComplexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
T2 Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
M. Mitchell Waldrop · 1992
Open LibraryGoodreads

The founding of the Santa Fe Institute and the people who built complexity science.

Recommended by: Bill Gurley, Jamie Dimon, Michael Mauboussin and 1 other

Energy: A Beginner's GuideEnergy: A Beginner's Guide
T2 Energy: A Beginner's Guide
Vaclav Smil · 2006
Open LibraryGoodreads

A short primer on energy: its forms, units and role in nature and economies.

Recommended by: Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg

The Second LawThe Second Law
T3 The Second Law
P. W. Atkins · 1984
Open LibraryGoodreads
Deep SimplicityDeep Simplicity
T3 Deep Simplicity
John Gribbin · 2004
Open LibraryGoodreads

Recommended by: Charlie Munger

A Matter of DegreesA Matter of Degrees
T4 A Matter of Degrees
Gino Segre · 2002
Open LibraryGoodreads

Popular history of temperature and heat; entropy for the general reader

Recommended by: Charlie Munger, Mohnish Pabrai

More mental models

← The Principal-Agent ProblemTime Arbitrage →All mental models