katepashevich

love to read stories from different places in the world

3344 points

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The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

15%

14%

35%

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On Grief and Reason: Essays (FSG Classics)

45%

katepashevich commented on a post

bryyzno

Thoughts from 29%

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katepashevich wrote a review...

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want

katepashevich

Apr 21, 2026

5.0

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 0.5Plot:

Just a really important and timely read. It equips you with the instruments of argumentation and resistance against the AI promoters, and people ignorant about this technology who are scared of the sudden hype and are afraid of being left behind. Really, really good work.

katepashevich finished a book

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want

Emily M. Bender

A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world. Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, is “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype looks and smells It twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con, Bender and Hanna offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms. Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype at work, as a consumer in the marketplace, as a skeptical newsreader, and as a citizen holding policymakers to account. Together, Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.

katepashevich commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

EatTheRich

Edited

I was wondering....

What's your ideal book length?

If you don't care about the above, what is your ideal chapter length?

For me, I think around 400 pages is my sweet spot, and chapters between 10 and 15 pages let's you get into a nice flow without feeling like you cant take a break.

Edit: I forgot to include: what is your ideal audiobook length?

Post from the The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want forum

katepashevich

Thoughts from 85%

The biggest problem with their advice is, unfortunately, that people just don’t care about the ethics, quality, even their own work. This makes it quite hard to reason with them.

katepashevich commented on cherepawko's review of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want

cherepawko

Jan 04, 2026

3.0

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

While I agree with the overall message of the book, for me it failed in 2 key aspects:

Mostly just preaching to the choir - assuming the reader is already on the "AI bad" side of the debate and just providing more arguments against it to add to one's toolbox. This is not a book that will change the mind of any AI hypers
Going through so many current case studies from so many different fields that it quickly dates the book - both the technology and the political climate have already moved on since the writing of this

katepashevich commented on bertritoo's review of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want

bertritoo

Dec 24, 2025

4.0

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 3.5Plot: 3.5

💻

🔪

obviously a banger. touched on most things you'd be confused about when it comes to ai - data theft, surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity. my favorite suggestion was to make fun of people using AI - YOU CAN COUNT ON ME GIRLS

katepashevich commented on thegreatgabsy's review of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want

thegreatgabsy

Oct 29, 2025

4.0

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.0Plot: 4.0

Made me feel not alone or crazy for avoiding AI, especially generative AI. I genuinely do not understand why some people have adopted it with open arms. When I see people use a synthetic image (fun new terminology for gen AI from the book) for something as stupid as a social media post, I feel deeply embarrassed for them—even more so when they try to pass it off as real. Are those likes really worth the skyrocketing electric bills we are all paying to fund tech companies? Or causing your neighbors to lose access to water? Anyway, if you’re feeling crazy every time someone waxes poetic about ai (synthetic) “art” or uses a text synthesizing tool like chat gpt to write a simple email, this is the book for you. Even covers ways to fight the hype!

Post from the The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want forum

katepashevich

Chapter 6 is a must-read

Chapter 6 in this book is so so important for everyone on Earth to learn from, I can’t stress it enough. I know we are screaming in the void, but the future of the planet is at stake here.

katepashevich commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Fennyx.Fox

HOW LONG IS THIS GOING TO TAKE!?

I hope everyone read that in King Julien’s voice as I intended.

So, Boundlings, does anyone else feel like levels 1-4 come relatively quickly and then the jump in the amount of points to 5 feels like it takes forever?

Signed, Someone longing for level 6

katepashevich commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

laras._.library

Is this a slump?

So rightnow I have 3 current reads. Two are romantasy and the third is a indie author fantasy. I love all the books and I’m what to read them, but I find myself struggling to ‘dive into the worlds’ if that makes sense?

My problem is, I’m reading Glow from the Plaited prisoner series. I’m SO bored with it, but I refuse to DNF because I’m not a quitter and I’ve never DNFed a book in my life of reading.

The second book I’m reading is rites of the starling which is the second book in the shield of sparrows series. I got through about 20% of it in one night and I’m eager to devour more but I feel guilty about not reading the other two that I’ve been at since November.

The last one is called Fog and Fireflies. It’s similar to pan’s labyrinth and it’s been a good read so far, however it reads like a high fantasy similar to the way LOTR reads, so that it has been difficult for me to intake the literature.

katepashevich is interested in reading...

12h

The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

A fresh, charming, socially conscious tour of the mysteries of space-time, from the award-winning author of The Disordered CosmosIn her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle physicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shed light on the entrenched injustices plaguing her field, while at the same time sharing with her audience her abiding sense of wonder at the cosmos from a Black feminist perspective. Now, in The Edge of Space-Time, she leans into that wonder, taking readers on a mind-altering journey to the boundaries of the universe, inviting us to spend time at the edge of what we know about space-time and about ourselves.Guided by her conviction that science is for everybody, Prescod-Weinstein renders accessible some of the most abstract concepts of theoretical physics and draws on poetry and popular culture—from Queen Latifah to Lewis Carroll to Big K.R.I.T. to Sun Ra and Star Trek— to tell fascinating stories about the fundamental quantum nature of space-time and everything inside of it. Here we meet the quantum cat that is both dead and alive, learn the difference between dark matter and dark energy, explore the inner workings of black holes, investigate the possibility of a unified theory of quantum gravity, and map out the meeting place of the unimaginably vast with the confoundingly small, following our guide out to the far reaches of the particle horizon and down to the tiniest (and queerest) neutrino. Prescod-Weinstein shows us how spending time with the cosmos is a vital human activity that enriches all our lives. Along the way, she calls on us to resist colonial approaches to space exploration and instead imagine a better path forward in our pursuit of humanity’s undeniable connection with the stars.Through Prescod-Weinstein’s clear-eyed and unique perspective, and informed by her deep knowledge of post-colonial history and Black feminist thought, The Edge of Space-Time argues that physics is an essential way for everyone to look at the universe and presents a compelling case that “the edge” is a powerful vantage point from which to see the big picture.

katepashevich TBR'd a book

12h

The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)

Katie Mack

From one of the most dynamic rising stars in astrophysics, an accessible and eye-opening look—in the bestselling tradition of Sean Carroll and Carlo Rovelli—at the five different ways the universe could end, and the mind-blowing lessons each scenario reveals about the most important concepts in physics. We know the universe had a beginning. With the Big Bang, it went from a state of unimaginable density to an all-encompassing cosmic fireball to a simmering fluid of matter and energy, laying down the seeds for everything from dark matter to black holes to one rocky planet orbiting a star near the edge of a spiral galaxy that happened to develop life. But what happens at the end of the story? In billions of years, humanity could still exist in some unrecognizable form, venturing out to distant space, finding new homes and building new civilizations. But the death of the universe is final. What might such a cataclysm look like? And what does it mean for us? Dr. Katie Mack has been contemplating these questions since she was eighteen, when her astronomy professor first informed her the universe could end at any moment, setting her on the path toward theoretical astrophysics. Now, with lively wit and humor, she unpacks them in The End of Everything, taking us on a mind-bending tour through each of the cosmos’ possible finales: the Big Crunch; the Heat Death; Vacuum Decay; the Big Rip; and the Bounce. In the tradition of Neil DeGrasse’s bestseller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Mack guides us through major concepts in quantum mechanics, cosmology, string theory, and much more, in a wildly fun, surprisingly upbeat ride to the farthest reaches of everything we know.

katepashevich TBR'd a book

15h

Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History

Moudhy Al-Rashid

Ancient Mesopotamia, a land between two rivers, is known as the 'cradle of civilisation'. At the height of its influence, this region saw the birth of the world's first cities, the first writing system, the first historical records, as well as myths, medicine, literature, astronomy and religion that went on to revolutionise societies around the world. In Between Two Rivers , historian Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid brings us closer to this ancient past and the lives of the people who lived in this extraordinary society. The hundreds of thousands of clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia tell wonderfully relatable stories - from a parent desperately trying to soothe a baby, or a bored teenager doodling during class, to a brewer collecting ingredients to make beer and a slave trying to negotiate their freedom. Through the contents of a 2,500-year-old museum, collected together by a princess from the 6th century BC, Al-Rashid introduces us to different periods of Mesopotamia's history, revealing aspects of society and culture that resonate with us today, from war to education and language, and from women's rights to religion and the divine. These artefacts not only bring this region to life, but also show us that people we think of as 'ancient' in fact had a highly developed sense of their own history. Breathing life and colour into a complex and surprisingly modern society, Between Two Rivers investigates what history meant back then, what it means today, and what we can learn from the distant past.

katepashevich commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

16h

katepashevich

Wonderful lack of recommender systems on PB

It’s a very small thing, but I’ve noticed how healing it is to explore this platform for my anxiety regarding algorithmic recommender systems. It’s just so nice to click on book titles, discussions, people’s profiles without having to think about the influence of each click on the content I will see from now on. I haven’t realized how much of my daily social media use was dictated by being cautious of the algorithm. I wasn’t “liking” things because I liked them but because I thought it was important that more people see them. Same with the use emojis. So nice not to be a slave of an algorithm here and to engage in genuine conversations. Just wanted to share this observation of my own use of the platform. Maybe some of you noticed this as well?

111

Post from the Pagebound Club forum

23h

katepashevich

Wonderful lack of recommender systems on PB

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