Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“But what I’m seeing is that the more comfortable he gets, the less he cares. As his importance compounds, his regard diminishes.”

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

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CBR17Bingo: “Citizen” – Using my “Free” square for the Citizen square I had no knowledge of Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (2025) by Sarah Wynn-Williams when my book club decided it would be our next book. I’m usually a fan of listening to memoirs on audiobook, especially when they’re read by the author, so I downloaded the audiobook. Sarah Wynn-Williams (Williams) is a New Zealander who had idealistic aspirations of changing the world. She began at the United Nations and then […]

None of the senior leaders…thought about this enough to put in place the kinds of systems we’d need, in Myanmar or other countries. They apparently didn’t care. These were sins of omission. It wasn’t the things they did; it was the things they didn’t do.”

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

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BINGO: white hot take what an infuriating book–a real choice for the main read of my peaceful cabin-and-lake-and-forest vacation–and just a solid entry in “tech people are the worst sort of rich/powerful people” genre Sarah Wynn-Williams joined Facebook in 2011, after working for the New Zealand embassy in DC for a number of years. She’s painfully, painfully earnest about her motivations–the zealot convert’s belief that Facebook would completely change the paradigm of the global geopolitical landscape–so much so that she basically whinges her way into […]

It Was Capitalism All Along

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

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I read these two books practically back to back (well, with Jakob Kerr’s Dead Money sandwiched in between, for a fictional version of the profit-at-all-costs mentality), and combined with the current political climate, I’m ready to wheel out the guillotine. PRK’s Empire of Pain is, predictably, a well-researched and thorough discussion of three generations of the Sackler family, who manage to become more feckless the more distant they are from Purdue Pharma’s founding three brothers Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond. However, the “entrepreneurial spirit” that seizes these brothers, particularly […]

Careless? A Charming Understatement

Careless People: A cautionary Take of Power Greed and Lost Idealism? by Sarah Wynn-Williams

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Well, well, well, if it isn’t the worst people in the world. I don’t think I’ve been so infuriated since I read John Carreyrou’s ‘Bad Blood.’ I don’t believe there’s much left to redeem Silicon Valley at this point. Stick it all into the insinkerator and set the whole kitchen on fire for all I care. The funny thing is, I would probably have never heard of Careless People, let alone read it, if it weren’t for the suppression efforts. In a brilliant display of the […]

We All Know Facebook Is Not Good, Right?

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

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Best for: Anyone who is still wavering on giving up Facebook and Instagram (and Threads, though does anyone use that?). In a nutshell: Corporations with this much power SUCK. Worth quoting: “It’s so ugly. What a thing to be responsible for.” Said in reference to Facebook helping elect Trump in 2016, but I think is a great statement describing the whole of Meta. Why I chose it: My sister-in-law mentioned she was reading it and it was interesting so I thought I’d check it out, […]



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