Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/04/bill-gates-give-us-his-top-fiv.html
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How many people do you think this guy’s blog employs? I’m guessing at least a dozen.
The site is so complicated - on leaving it even prompted me to take survey. No way Mr.Gates!
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Yea right. He neglected to mention that runaway bestseller, “I Got More Money Than All Y’all!”
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He’s just like all the rest of us, except not temporarily embarrassed.
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Interesting list, though.
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“He gave me a better sense of what it is like to be poor in this country than anything else I have read.” One of the richest men in the world says this.
I recall a Reagan-era political cartoon picturing Ronnie and Nancy seated by the window of a fancy restaurant. Some poor kids outside are peering in. Ronnie says, “We have to do something about this poverty! Waiter, give us a table away from the window!”
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*Except for Jeff Bezos
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Anyone else mistake the photo for Stephen Hawking? I had a moment of, “Wow, he’s looking great!”, then realized, “Oh wait, that’s not… hmmm…”
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No.
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When you said in the headline “Give us,” I thought, being Bill Gates and all, billionaire and whatnot…well, y’know, free books?
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Mr. Gates spent decades shoving aside every other operating system I enjoyed using, and forcing one ugly, buggy user interface under my eyeballs.
Now he thinks he gets to choose my reading list?
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Wait… is Bill Gates book recommendation the new Oprah book club?
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Kinda surprised and delighted (for its author) to see The Best We Could Do there. Ive read it and agree that it’s great.
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I really don’t care what Bill Gates reads.
I don’t know why he gets the praise he does. The world is a worse place for his being in it.
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And I give a fuck about about what Gates is reading because why?..
He is rich, but I could not possible care less what is going through his brain… Yay for Boing Boing thinking that rich people matter more. 
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The road to redemption from Microsoft Bob is long and hard.
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What a relentlessly shitty thing to say about someone who’s spent quite a lot of time trying to improve things for people who don’t have the resources or help that many of us take for granted. If you don’t know why he gets the praise he does in relation to philanthropic efforts, you could spent even a few minutes educating yourself about it. Our Work | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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It’s kind of interesting to watch how slowly BillG’s image moves. He was ruthless and monopolistic in charge of Microsoft, and as a long-time BeOS/BSD/Linux/etc guy, I strongly resent what MS did for the computing landscape there. On the other hand, he hasn’t been an active part of that for decades, and his (and Melinda’s) fulltime job for a long time has been plowing their (very considerable) wealth into education and disease eradication. Sure, it’s hard to know how much work on his part that takes, since having billions means even a small effort goes a long way. On the other hand, they have literally saved millions of people, which is clearly better than not saving them.
Oh, and through all of it, even the evil empire Micro$oft years, Bill himself has always seemed like a curious, well-informed, guy (albeit one happy to steamroll opposing companies). I’ll give his reading list a chance.
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His recommendations keep popping up on my LinkedIn feed.
Out of the numerous unsolicited book recommendation posts I get his consistently includes at least one book that a) sounds interesting and b) surprises me (who knew he’s an Eddie Izzard fan?).
It’s also one of the few that gives me the impression that the recommender actually read the books.
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Well, how many of the other richest men in the world would you say bother to think about what it is like to be poor or spend any effort at all to try and find out?
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