Taiwan also serves the role as an unsinkable battleship right next door to Chinas mainland. Its military value extends far beyond its chip production capabilities in order for the US to check Chinas influence in SEA region.
In my case I mostly listen to audiobooks and take notes. My top 3 favourites based on the amount of notes taken for this year:
Creativity Inc:
Fun read about the conception of Pixar Studios and why having a different process amd focus than other studios have led them to create so many award winning films. Ties in to some other books on adapting the process in order to generate better/more creative outcomes that have influenced me.
Immune:
With everything going on this year it felt appropriate. Explains to a layperson how your immune system functions and who the main players are. I had to take quite a bit of notes and read up/look at quite a few pictures/train using flashcards in order to make this info stick. I'd highly recommend anyone considering this book to get the physical book rather than the audiobook.
How to avoid a climate disaster:
Bill Gates explains the key metrics a layperson should keep in mind when climate policy is discussed. I recommend creating a cheat sheet to remember it better. While it felt informative I dont really like the fact that Bill Gates is the author rather than some climate scientist. I tried to reduce my bias by reading some more climate change related books written by subject experts after this one.
I'd like to chime in with my anecdotal counter example from my big corporate workplace. A colleague recently created some graphs showing commits over time, confluence pages created/updated, tickets fixed, ticket turnaround time, code reviews given, and number of features released. All of these metrics made a sharp improvement as soon as our WFH policy came into effect and have kept its pace for the last 1.5 years. While this might not be the experience at every workplace, as far as I can tell, my workplace seems to have greatly benefitted from more remote work.