Ian

I am in love.

Revisado: 06-07-24

I want to live in such a way that if I meet Judith while they are still with us in this life, they will think I'm cool.

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Forget critical race theory

Revisado: 01-08-23

This is the theory of race - and subsequently, of queerness and gender - which will burn the eyes and ears off not only the conservatives, but the liberals. This is the raw truth, and it manages to make sense of Deluze and Lyotard in plain language at the same time as exposing the death and sorrow necessary for nations like the USA and the EU to exist. Everyone should read this book.

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This lecture series made me start reading Lyotard

Revisado: 12-11-22

I will never forgive it for that. How can I be using phrases like "I will never forgive" in such a positive review? Jesus Christ, if you'd read Libidinal Economy, you'd regret it too. But, like me, you'd be glad you regret it. Anger and regret are part of the text.

Just like hope and earnest desire to connect with it are part of the text of becoming part of this lecture series through these recordings. To listen to this is to become part of the future, and see yourself and others that way.

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It was, after all, a little nice.

Revisado: 10-13-22

I didn't know going into this series it would be SCP adjacent, but here we are. SCP-055, the self keeping secret, at the heart of the story.

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Discworld says Trans Rights

Revisado: 03-04-22

Trans rights are, in this case, not just human rights, but also troll, vampire, and Igor rights. The reasons someone might live as a gender other than that assigned at birth can be anything or nothing, but this story has the heart to say: judge people for what they do, and call them lads, lasses, or otherwise as they choose. Because that choice and their actions define them. Like all of Sir Terry's stories, this one is hilarious and also seriously human and humane.

Sam Vimes is the only cop I'll give a thumbs up to. He is still a bastard, but he does give away power instead of hoarding it as much as he can, especially in the later stories. Violent thuggery is an acceptable flaw for a hero.

Sgt Jackram's last stand is truly the stuff of Legends.

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This book is revolutionary

Revisado: 11-17-21

Everyone needs to hear this book. The nature of human society is not what we've been conditioned to believe. Historical evidence shows that we've been sold a bill of goods, and all our freedoms are already strictly curtailed. we could have a more free, more humane society - it's been done in the past in more than one part of the world. We just need to look at the evidence, pay attention to history other than Europe, and make a conscious choice together.

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Shallow and Euro-centric

Revisado: 06-02-21

Carney is trapped in a dogmatic devotion to the idea that capitalism can be good. He brings up a metaphor of wine vs distilled spirits to compare what he says are good vs. bad capitalist practices. His conception of what an economy could look like is inextricable from markets.

He imagines a past where there was some kind of fairness and equality of outcome, but that never was true. The systemic violence was simply exported to foreign lands. Though Carney is able to recognize the idea that trade is value extraction more than creation, he can't seem to recognize how inextricable capitalism is from empire, conquest, and the creation of the modern idea of "race" as justification for exploitation.

Skip this book. Get Debt: the First 5000 years instead.

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Sharing power leads to better results

Revisado: 05-30-21

In my mind, the key here is not only the memory aiding power of checklists as a tool - it's the culture change required to use them effectively. So many parts of our lives are run by autocracy in whatever job we do - but everyone doing the job has a brain and ought to be encouraged to use it and share in the successes of doing so.

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I wasn't in the mood for gory tragedy.

Revisado: 05-06-21

An excellent narrator and strong character writing carried me through this story, which otherwise might have lost me early on, and at many points along the way. I was confused by the world building, and felt like the book was written to spitefully punish coming to identify with or like any of the characters. Misery porn, as the genre is sometimes called in fanfiction. No amount of redemption will make me happy to be forced into identifying with Harrowhark.

There's well written emotion here. The protagonist uses simple and crass language to be the audience surrogate, mostly effectively, and that leads into some strong emotional scenes.

I didn't enjoy that almost all of those strong emotions were gut punches. I wasn't in the mood for gory misery porn with a tragic ending and a note of "but this was necessary to fight a nebulous other" that smacks of the worst real life nationalistic gaslighting. Even if the next book shows the folly of the eternal necromantic crusade, I don't think I care about anything the first book left alive at the end enough to find out.

This cleared the "get to the end" bar, which is more than I can say for Game of Thrones. It won't be going in my favorites to read over and over again file. It has a plot that hung together even if it made me unhappy, which is more than I can say for Ready Player One. I never could figure out why humans are able to lose pints of blood and then get back up in 5 minutes with no ill effects in this story, but at least it's consistent with its mechanics of magic and basically only killing characters if their vital organs directly fail or are destroyed. Structurally, the book is sound.

I just didn't enjoy it very much. It wasn't for me. It might be for you.

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It's not just our jobs

Revisado: 01-16-21

Our whole way of life is twisted around to serve our masters. We in America and her hegemonic sphere of influence are slaves, owned by capital, and they have indoctrinated us with a pernicious lie: that we are lazy.

This book is a full throated argument that laziness is never the reality. That doing less is higher quality, and the quality is for the self, regardless of whether anything is produced. You need this book. This is the good news you need to hear.

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