Billionaires thru history. The lives and propaganda of kings, empires, Pharaoh's, dictators, tech billionaires, etc. I know nothing about any of this, but I bet there's some consistent patterns
Yeah, at a certain point money kinda becomes impossible to value. What does it mean to own every horse in the country as a King? Or to more money that a small county as an individual? So "billionaire" as a class
a 2784 page treaties on Maoism as Zen meditation and it's application in revolutionary culture in Southern Idaho.
the conlang thing sounds like the language from the dispossessed by ursula le guin. she didnt get too into it but it came up a few times through the book
yeah it's a very cool idea. you should read the book anyways but if you are interested in a "leftist language" it is one of the only examples that I know of from fiction. some things i remember from it:
-all names are randomly generated and are not gendered
-personal possessives are rarely (never? been a few months since i've read it) used
-the equivalent of "hell" has evolved to refer to waste dumps rather than the theological concept; characters are surprised to find out the religious origins of the word
probably a few more neat details through there. the book isn't about the language and as far as i know le guin didn't go as crazy over it as some other authors do for their conlangs but it's a good book regardless
a marxist history of the midwest. or maybe a modern class analysis of the entire united states
sorta like “a people’s history of the united states” but more left wing, and more focused specifically on the midwest region? i imagine this would cover a lot of indigenous struggle.
people's history is fine but i would model my work after j sakai's Settlers. it would primarily be about the demon cracker white man but i would also like to talk about black and indian struggles yes
or maybe a modern class analysis of the entire united states
start at 1970s or 80s and go from there
This already exists, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890 by Richard Slotkin. It's a slog to read though. There's also The Two Faces of American Freedom. Also A Theory of Capitalist Regulation The US Experience.
I relate a lot to that second one. "Dating market" shouldn't be a thing.
fiction epstein vampire novel. i think the epstein story changes almost not at all if he's just a vampire and has kind of always existed.
- A history of republicanism and socialism, and how cold war ideology erased that history.
- A treatise on what a socialist use of computers should be, as I've found stuff like Stafford Beer not sufficient. Maybe specializing on cryptography as that's what I do research in.
- An examination of socialist science fiction, Frederic Jameson wrote one called Archaeologies of The Future but I think there's more to examine.
I'd like to explore the social dynamics and division of labor of early iron-age peoples.
Yeah he's pretty outdated, modern archeology and anthropology has come a long way in the decades since he was writing, huge changes even in the last 10 years. The tides of history podcast has been doing a short series on it, refrencing lots of modern books and papers that are pretty recent.
Also yeah, he stanned Pol Pot well into the 1980s.
Only thing I can think of would be some sort of takedown of Hannah Arendt. I took a senior level philosophy class a year or two ago as an elective to meet credit hour requirements for my scholarship (I'm a physics major btw), and our professor had us read "The Human Condition" as the first of the three main books the class was about. Overall, the book was decent, but there was this one section where Arendt talks about automation and in it she offers a critique of Marx that I thought was pretty stupid.
Now, I could be misinterpreting her (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong), but her issue with Marx and automation basically seemed to be the following: Marx thought that automation was a universally good thing in and of itself, and would solve the exploitation/alienation of the working class. She counters by saying that automation would actually further alienate the working class. The way I interpreted it she was basically offering a Marxist critique of Marx, pointing out that labor is all that workers have in a capitalist society, and that automation under capitalism would completely alienate the workers from every aspect of society, essentially making them unpersons. But this should be obviously stupid, Marx was advocating for a society in which the working class would be in control, and so automation wouldn't alienate workers because they would be in control of the terms of their own automation.
So basically in the book she seemed to have this semi-Marxist view of historical development, but with her critique of Marx, as well as her equating Nazi Germany and the USSR, she's just way too ingrained into her 1950s version of capitalist realism. Also, at the end of the class, we had to write a 10 page essay on any text we had covered in the class, so I basically wrote a 10 page version of this comment where I used Marx and Marxist ideas to solve Arendt's critique of Marx. Not a "colossal and well-researched book" and I don't really know how much more I could write on the topic, but I certainly could've gone into more depth if I wasn't constrained to 10 pages. On top of that, I would've gotten an A minus on the essay if I hadn't turned it in a day late, so it seems like the professor thought I did good, despite me only starting to work on it 2-3 days before it was due.
I think her critique had to deal with automation happening before workers were in control, and that was the point afaik as then the revolution would not be organizable, and that it fundamentally bound workers to labor in a non libratory way but haven't read it in a long time. I think she does misread Marx in that a lot of her criticism seems to be thinking that Marx bounds human beings to labor, but imo Marx still wants people to escape the chains of labor on human freedom so the critique doesn't add up. She also thinks he's determinist which is a bad reading. Marx to me is fundamentally a radicalization of republican freedom, so her searches for how little tidbits of Marx hint at totalitarianism are basically illogically working backwards, in that she's presuming they exist because the USSR so widely misused Marx thus it has to be the kernels are there in his work.
Also note on her totalitarianism, the first draft of the work only was about Nazi Germany, there was no mention of the USSR at all. Why she tacked on the analysis of Stalinism at the end is unclear. Regardless her Totalitarianism is basically an update to the critique of Bonapartism.
Probably about Romani ppl & that persecution or Che guevara cause i like researching him
Haha I am a bit biased as to “why” I’m fascinated because I’m Romani myself! So you know, as someone who has lived through all that sort of stuff, I would like to really have our story out there. Like I don’t think many people realize how intense and systematic racism against us is in Europe, for example. And we are an essential part of European history (and many of their cultures), but not many of us are highly educated (for many reasons) or want to share the full view of our beliefs and traditions. I think there is just so much people don’t know about us in general that I would want to share, even if others would probably look down on me for it lol. It’s one of those things where I could probably sit down right now and write a 500 page book.
If there’s any thing in particular you (or anyone else reading this) wanna know, feel free to ask! I know quite a lot about most Gypsy groups’ traditions and history of being persecuted.
-As for the first question: It depends. Honestly, I don't think it is a slur per se. I think it can be used as a slur, but I prefer to call myself gypsy over Romani. Romani by itself isn't even grammatically correct in most dialects, so to say "I am Romani" is kind of a silly thing if you speak the language. I also think in America, it's useless cause usually people are like 'Romanian?' And "Romani" doesn't include all Roma groups (like Sinti, Kale, Domari, etc.) Like someone would call Sinti "Romani" but they don't consider themself to BE Romani (even tho... they are. That's a whole other complicated thing itself, the different subgroups lol). So honestly, yes gypsy can be used as a slur, but it's more inclusive to say Gypsy tbh or at least Romani Gypsy. "I got gypped" however is DEFINITELY a fucked up thing to say.
-I don't think I'd break it into eras. I'd break it into the 'groups.' Because some Rom stayed in Middle East, some in Central Asia, some went as slaves into Romania, some were Romanichal in Britain and then transported as slaves to Latin America, etc. And we all have similarities, but also a lot of differences. For example, my 'group' is gurbeti. I share a lot of traditions with other Balkan groups, but my traditions can be very different from the super traditional Kalderash group for example. And all the different groups are extremely complicated (because there's groups within groups within groups), so it's also a shitty way to break down the history cause it's complex as hell. But regardless, I do think breaking down our history by a timeline wouldn't work because not all of us have went through the same exact histories.
-Yes! I speak the Gurbeti dialect. It's a really complex language honestly, grammatically and spelling wise, so I have a hard time writing to this day. Like for example, if I wanted to say "kindergarten" (as in the grade), it'd be 'chavorehski edukacijski bajrori.' Overly complicated!!! Also, I can for the most part communicate with other dialects, but I will probably make fun of how they spell certain words. And we have lots of loan words from the countries the dialect grew in (so albanian, serbian, greek, etc. for gurbetka dialect')
Sorry for the long answers! This is why I said I could write 500 pages: all our shit is complicated lol.
Gogol Bordello Ironically, so many Rom I know don't like him lol. But if you like that style of music, I'd recommend Mahala Rai Banda! I love their music. Dai Duma by Arando Marquez is good too. If you like rap, Roma Sijam is good for that!
As for more traditional music: Esma Redzepova. Caje Shukarije and Djelem Djelem are classic songs, and you can find many artists who sing them.
A book on the history of bourgeois democracy and its functioning as a system to maintain the rule of capitalism and the capitalist class using different countries as case studies.
There are so many people who believe that democracy works for them, and yet it really doesn't
The consequences of neoliberal reform on education and why we are not poised to succeed in the 21st century.
This book actually exists, it's called "Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials" by Malcolm Harris, it's really excellent.
300 pages about Louis Riel, ending with a recipe for baked apples and an apology for taking so long to get to it.
Riel was Canadian (so not super well known outside of Canada), led two revolutions, fought for indigenous rights, and was hanged by Parliament for treason, so pretty based but I'd also like to do it as an extended bit about impossibly long intros to simple recipes. Baked apples are, btw, fucking incredible
Marriage and parenting under socialism, including chapters on love, dating, relationship, family, birth, child rearing, counseling, middle age, and death.
