Light in the dark, stillness in the waves

An annotated reading of the books I finished in February 2026.

Books Read in February 2026

  1. The New Empire of AI
  2. Strong Ground
  3. The Power of Now
  4. Slaughterhouse-Five

Charting new territory

The New Empire of AI analyzes the past, present, and future of AI’s impact on societies of first, second, and third world orders. The author, Rachel Adams, posits that emerging issues of AI deployment, including its associated energy consumption, governance, and distribution of data centers and training infrastructure, will be most pronounced for third world nations. In short, first world countries may have the benefit of first-mover’s advantage in the race towards generalized AI for the neat term, while long term outcomes are still up to the influence of the global AI community (towards a more or less equitable AI-driven future).

Deep roots require vision of what and how to grow

Brene Brown’s latest book, Strong Ground, shares with readers several new lessons Brene and her team have learned from coaching leadership teams in some of the world’s largest companies. One is that we need to be more adaptive to change than before, being willing to challenge our prior assumptions about what the future will (or should) look like. We need to be more aware of the biases that can creep up in our daily decision making, including confirmation bias, desirability bias, and cognitive priming (thanks Kahneman and Tversky!). Moreover, it’s important that we become aware of our increasing need for digital intentionality around time blocking and context switching. These are just a few of the lessons presented in this book, if you are interested.

Mindfulness isn’t just for spare time

A while back, someone recommended I read Eckhart Tolle’s renowned work, The Power of Now. At the time, I was curious about the ideas this person hinted at, but it took me a while to circulate the book into my reading list. Now, after reading it, I can say its central thesis ties in nicely with what mystics such as Richard Rohr have been writing about for decades. Namely, mindfulness begets absolute presence, and vice versa. Without being fully in the present, suffering begins to take hold of oneself (or one’s parts, to use IFS nomenclature). The mystic branches of most religions affirm this notion, yet Tolle’s messaging for this idea seems to have found the strongest footing in the West. With modern neuroscience studying the impact of mindfulness practices on the level of gamma waves present in one’s brain, it’s becoming more widely accepted that how one approaches the present moment can shape both their mind and body (as if the two could be Cartesianally compartmentalized).

Grim tales of past woes

There’s something charmingly disconcerting about the Vonnegut style of writing, from Kurt’s Slaughterhouse-Five to Mark’s The Eden Express. Both Vonneguts write with a unswayed tenor of bleakness mixed with dark humor, to make their favorite topics (war, insanity, study of humanity) more palatable. Slaughterhouse-Five is particularly adept at balancing humor and candor in its portrayal of enlisting children in war efforts, with all the absurdity this entails (e.g., lack of fully-developed prefrontal cortices).

Alex