Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

19 hours ago

The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity Like many Protestants, I have not experienced an in-depth introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy in my life. I've driven by its churches, sure, I've met its churchgoers, and in religion classes, I've read about its history. However, I never have taken a deep-dive into its culture on my own, mediated only be an advocate for its faith expression. Therefore, I read Timothy Ware's classic work, now in a third edition, on the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith with the hope of better appreciating this church.

The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

A classic introduction to the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith, including history, theology & practice.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

1 day ago

From Breakthrough to Blockbuster: The Business of Biotechnology Biotechnology is a hot topic in today's global economy. It promises to help humanity, so it often receives startup funding from governments. Success stories show the strong financial potential of the right investments. Big pharmaceutical companies ("big pharma") can purchase entire companies for large amounts of profits. Yet the risks are great, with an estimated 90% of ventures ending in non-successful outcomes.

From Breakthrough to Blockbuster: The Business of Biotechnology

A COVID-era assessment of the biotech industry, particularly focusing on drug discovery and the knowledge necessary for businesspeople.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

5 days ago

An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence In the West, so many histories of Africa only focus on a depressing narrative that conveniently neglects many inspiring parts. Omitted are the triumphs of empires and heights of humanity shown in the African people; instead, only colonialist attitudes are amplified to disparage the Africans as an inferior continent. Many of us intuit that these negative narratives are lacking somehow, but we don't have any new information to replace it.

An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence

An optimistic history of Africa told by a Sudanese-African in stark contrast to one-sided European histories of Africa

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

1 month ago

The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi & the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever By the end of the Victorian age, men had dominated medical practice for centuries, but women were beginning to make inroads into the profession. A few, Mary Putnam Jacobi being the first, made inroads in European training centers and returned to the US to integrate women into American medicine. In this book, Lydia Reeder narrates their struggle and eventual victory that depathologized being a woman.

The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi & the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever

How women's healthcare moved from quackery to a scientific base by the force of one woman - Mary Putnam Jacobi.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

1 month ago

Superteams: The Science & Secrets of High-Performing Teams In today's workplace, teams represent the instrument of enacting change. Yet anyone who's served on a team realizes that team dynamics are key to maintaining a healthy atmosphere to make those contributions. Many books suggest ways to improve teams, but relatively few of them are based on critical studies to discern if their ideas actually work. Ron Friedman's book, in contrast, begins as a study.

Superteams: The Science & Secrets of High-Performing Teams

This upcoming release investigates the social psychology of what's different about top-performing teams compared to normal teams. It's filled with actionable tips and inspiration - all based on evidence.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

1 month ago

The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us & Divides Us Sometimes, it seems all we do on the Internet and social media is argue about whose activities are most superior and most important. We all want to "matter," but we can develop elaborate defensive arguments about who gets there the best. Many times, our own need to matter gets in the way of recognizing what matters to other people. And yet needing to matter at something is one of the deepest human longings.

The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us & Divides Us

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

1 month ago

The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise & the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers Organizational silos occur when groups of people in the same organization do not rely on each others' insights because of various cultural reasons. While the division of labor that silos create is essential for any business, silos can inhibit an organization's creativity and innovation. They have been weak points in or even downfalls of many great business empires. Through case studies across many organizations and industries, anthropologist Gillian Tett describes negative results silos can create and ways to combat them.

The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise & the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers

An anthropological look at how business silos, while fostering efficiency, can inhibit creativity & innovation. It also offers some examples of what to do to combat excess silos.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

1 month ago

The Standard for Program Management, Fifth Edition Books from the Project Management Institute (PMI) provide standards for the entire industry of project management and program management. ANSI, an American body supervising industry-wide standards, has approved this text as true wherever program management is practiced. Therefore, studying this book can provide a lot of value for your current position as well as any jobs you might attain throughout your career.

The Standard for Program Management, Fifth Edition

A comprehensive look at the discipline of program management that identifies areas of necessary polish for professionals.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

2 months ago

Practical Generative AI with ChatGPT: Unleash Your Prompt Engineering Potential with OpenAI Technologies for Productivity and Creativity Most of us are impressed with how well Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently advanced, but we’re still struggling to use it to improve our personal productivity. We’ve heard of the promises but fear the shortcomings, too. Books like Valentina Alto’s Practical Generative AI with ChatGPT can point the way to us capitalizing on the promise in our personal work. Alto briefly covers the topic of Prompt Engineering that’s key to making the most out of AI.

Practical Generative AI with ChatGPT: Unleash Your Prompt Engineering Potential with OpenAI Technologies for Productivity and Creativity

Practical tips on using #AI to be more productive & creative at work, with in-depth examples. Helpful for a general audience.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

2 months ago

Superforecasting: The Art & Science of Prediction In a multi-year research study, authors Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner identified volunteers, only paid $250 per year, to regularly try to predict questions about current events in a competition. A certain number of them have achieved the level of a "superforecaster" where they outperform even the federal intelligence community in their predictions. Obviously, these individuals demand further examination so that we all can learn from their "secret sauce."

Superforecasting: The Art & Science of Prediction

An research project exploring how normal players can outperform the federal intelligence community at predicting news events.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

2 months ago

Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction Global health is a field known, in the past, as international health and colonial health. It has recently sought to center itself around health equity - that every person deserves decent healthcare to have a decent life. Thus, it has tried to remove any shackles of Western imperialism from its conceptualization. Also recently, Paul Farmer and Partners in Health have brought attention to the field, especially in Haiti and Rwanda.

Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction

An inspiring introduction to contemporary issues in global health presented in a new way to push health equity forward

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

2 months ago

The Wedding People: A Novel Phoebe Stone, an English professor from St. Louis, wants to kill herself at a lovely oceanfront hotel in Rhode Island. However, upon arrival, she encounters a hotel full of people ready for a six-day vacation wedding. Like most suicidal people, Phoebe tells someone about her agony - the bride-to-be. They end up engaging in honest conversation, and the bride-to-be begs Phoebe not to ruin her wedding week.

The Wedding People: A Novel

A drama-filled novel told from a woman wanting to kill herself at a hotel only to find a renewed meaning in life in a wedding party.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

2 months ago

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results Have you ever watched people whose careers and lives seem to be driven by one central passion and wondered how they do it? In The One Thing, entrepreneur Gary Keller explains how to make that happen in your life – if you’re willing to take the journey. The first step is to identify what your “one thing” is. Are you a writer?

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

Turn a passion into productive results by learning how to structure your life around mastering your "one thing"

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

2 months ago

Trust & Betrayal in the Workplace: Building Effective Relationships in Your Organization This book confronts us with bad news first: Betrayals happen in the workplace, and unfortunately, they will continue to happen. They cause slowdowns; they cause mistrust; they disrupt a customer- or client-centered focus and create infighting. The good news is that quickly recentering your trust, though not blind trust, can overcome these shortcomings. This book can help readers to become more trustful employees in the workplace.

Trust & Betrayal in the Workplace: Building Effective Relationships in Your Organization

The best resource for working through a lack of trust in your workplace.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

2 months ago

Designing Machine Learning Systems: An Iterative Process for Production-Ready Applications Machine learning (ML) is a hot yet daunting topic. It's perhaps the most important technological advancement supporting the revolution in artificial intelligence (AI), and most leading IT companies have been extracting value from it for some time. Almost every time predictions are made by a computer, like when a product or really anything is recommended, ML is at work. This book explains in technical detail how to get ML projects out of theory and into production.

Designing Machine Learning Systems: An Iterative Process for Production-Ready Applications

A thorough yet accessible introduction to machine learning, a technology that undergirds much of #AI.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

2 months ago

Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia There are many angles to motivate reading this book, and mine is from a deep interest in HIV. The supermodel known simply as "Gia" was one of the first prominent women to die of AIDS-related complications, and she remains one of the best-explored IV drug users who died from AIDS. Of course, most of the world knows her as a model who quickly rose to the front pages of the world's leading fashion magazines in the 1970s.

Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia

A biography of a supermodel who quickly rose to Vogue covers only to recess just as quickly, ultimately to an untimely death from AIDS.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

3 months ago

How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women Most of us think of witchcraft as a relic of a hyper-religious past. Most of us also don't have detailed beliefs about the practice of killing witches in the name of beating the devil - other than it's wrong. However, the authors make a compelling case that the persecution of "witches" in prior centuries was just patriarchy rearing its ugly head.

How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

A provocative look at the practice of executing witches in Scottish, British & American history - and its relevance to today's culture. It reminds that the past has never fully passed.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

3 months ago

Abundance Many contend that American politics is in a transition time from an old paradigm into something new, but few can divine what the future might hold. One of the social tensions is rhetoric between scarcity and abundance, and Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson wholeheartedly want to focus on ways that America can lead to abundance. They lay out an agenda for the political left, their natural conversational home, to reform itself so that they can advocate for a better future.

Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson

A call for reform on the political left to embrace a new agenda of more effective government and social flourishing.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

3 months ago

Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss & Addiction If you're looking to cry in empathy with an author's grief and hardships yet sense an undercurrent of hope, this memoir might be the book for you. Jonathan Tepper grew up as a missionary kid in Madrid, Spain. His parents tried to "save" people for heaven in a new church, but failed. Then they pivoted their ministry to help people overcome heroin addiction, and they slowly grew a church and social service.

Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss & Addiction

A moving memoir of a missionary kid whose parents started a heroin recovery center in Madrid. They experienced the AIDS crisis and family heartache. The author had to learn resourcefulness & resilience.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

3 months ago

What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions We know enough about the physics of earth and the universe to be able to predict what'd happen in absurd situations, like a neuron star hitting the earth, flying a plane on Uranus, or experiencing a Richter magnitude -2 earthquake. Of course, we don't talk about it because most of us aren't physics geeks. Fortunately, Randall Munroe is, and he has a great sense of humor dealing with the absurd.

What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Dive into absurdly humorous scenarios handled by physics. Great for a gift for a science geek or a student learning science!

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

3 months ago

Mastering JIRA for Agile Projects: A Practical Guide with Real-World Examples (Confluence Included) Jira is becoming a leading tool for project management at larger businesses, and using it is a skill required for many jobs. This book teaches you how to master Jira processes to manage projects under Agile or Scrum paradigms. Half of this book focuses on Confluence software, which my workplace does not use. Therefore, half of the book was irrelevant to me.

Mastering JIRA for Agile Projects: A Practical Guide with Real-World Examples (Confluence Included)

A decent introduction to using Jira project management software, now a trending platform. Includes a lot of material about Confluence, too!

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

3 months ago

A Simple Guide to Retrieval Augmented Generation Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a process in artificial intelligence (AI) where specific documents can be consulted to provide an answer. It provides a way for individual groups to customize a bot for their internal uses. For example, a company can provide business policies specific to their own organization. Or healthcare firms can provide literature up to date with their own fields, not just the latest AI build of the foundation model.

A Simple Guide to Retrieval Augmented Generation

The clearest theoretical explanation I've read to date on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), a part of #AI. Great explanatory graphics!

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

3 months ago

The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder through Science & Poetry Poetry and science are often placed opposite each other because they describe different things. One describes the human soul; the other describes nature. That's unfortunate because they can complement each other vividly. The natural world and the vast universe are sources of unending wonder. It's a shame that too many people are put off by science as intimidating. In truth, it's awe-inducing and humbling.

The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder through Science & Poetry

An anthology of poems about humanity's place in the natural world and the broader universe.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

3 months ago

Prompt Engineering for Generative AI: Future-Proof Inputs for Reliable AI Outputs Prompt engineering is the art and science of finding the right words to generate the right responses from artificial intelligence (AI). It's becoming a skill in-demand in today's workplaces. It's also becoming an essential skill for life. To understand prompt engineering, you must understand how AI tools understand their inputs. This book explains that to you in many forms. It covers prompting as it intersects all the major AI disciplines, like general prompts (as in a ChatBot), fine-tuning, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

Prompt Engineering for Generative AI: Future-Proof Inputs for Reliable AI Outputs

An in-depth look at prompt engineering in #AI, including text-to-text and text-to-image. For those who want to understand how things work, not just what works.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

3 months ago

When the Cranes Fly South: A Novel Some people adore books that leave them with a warm feeling, but I adore books that leave me with tears streaming on my face. This book is one of the latter. Originally a bestseller in Sweden, it's now translated into English (and other languages) for the world to contemplate. In the story, Bo is facing aging as his own body is breaking down.

When the Cranes Fly South: A Novel

Translated from Swedish, this book examines the art of aging, dying, and coming to terms with our own mortality.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

4 months ago

Developing Apps with GPT-4 and ChatGPT: Build Intelligent Chatbots, Content Generators & More Everyone today seems to want to do something with artificial intelligence (AI), but few seem to know how to do it well. We've started to see how AI bots can induce horrors, and business leaders plead to avoid those risks. ChatGPT, packaged from OpenAI, remains the dominant, most trusted AI tool even though many other versions exist. It'd be nice if we software folks could stop and get a masters degree in AI, but life goes on.

Developing Apps with GPT-4 and ChatGPT: Build Intelligent Chatbots, Content Generators & More

A how-to that applies #AI into practical applications like web applications. Covers fine-tuning, RAG, and prompt engineering. In Python but truly language agnostic.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

4 months ago

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell The Spanish Civil War was a historical precursor to World War II. Franco's fascism for a time united disparate opposing groups like anarchists and communists. The opposition attracted volunteers from across Europe. However, these groups began infighting among each other, and the opposition ultimately failed. As with most failures, the blame game ran deep among groups. The great English writer George Orwell's first-hand account provides as much light as can be shown upon the whole affair.

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

An account of the Spanish Civil War's struggle against fascism, including the costs of disunity.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

4 months ago

The Political Determinants of Health In scientific circles, the "social determinants of health" is a common phrase used to describe how one's zip code can have more impact on health outcomes than one's personal health. This book plays off that title by describing how America's political situation - whether one is part of a favored class or note - can influence health outcomes. It takes particular aim at health inequities in American history.

The Political Determinants of Health

A look at American politics surrounding healthcare, leading up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act and its aftermath.

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

4 months ago

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems Ever wonder what it takes to land a plane on top of a train? Or what's the best way to send nuclear waste to the sun? Or how to take a selfie with yourself and the moon? Well, Randall Munroe has answers, filled in a humorous tone. The beauty of how science generalizes - particularly, physics - is how it applies to all sorts of absurd situations.

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems

Excellent science humor that'd make a great holiday gift for intellectually precocious kids

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Scott J. Pearson

@scottjpearson.bsky.social

4 months ago

Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness When observing the world, many see that true leadership does not reflect positions of power; rather, it reflects a quality of personal character. Robert Greenleaf looked at 1970s America and the 1970s world and observed a lack of leadership. We had educated talent out the wazoo, but lacked people able to usher in lasting, good change. He wrote this book to cultivate such leadership qualities in its readers.

Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness

An inspirational book, relevant almost 50 years later, about the nature of true servant leadership.

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