Hi comrades, hope ya'll have some nice reading weather this fall/winter period.
Best regards and all my love <3
Blackshirts and Reds for theory and Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett for fun. Also jumping around some random works by Mao.
Occasionally studying statistics for career reasons.
Dragon's Egg, a sci-fi novel about life that evolves on a neutron star. Because the extreme force of gravity causes all chemistry to be nuclear in nature rather than electromagnetic, everything happens extremely quickly due to nuclear reactions occurring on much smaller time scales than chemical reactions.
Lifeforms evolve from simple cellular life to intelligent sentient creatures in just a few thousand years, and individuals live and die in minutes.
The neutron star is on a trajectory that brings it through the outer solar system around the year 2020, so humans investigate it, and hijinks ensue as two species that live on extremely different time scales attempt to make contact and communicate.
The neutron star is on a trajectory that brings it through the outer solar system around the year 2020, so humans investigate it, and hijinks ensue as two species that live on extremely different time scales attempt to make contact and communicate.
So that one episode from Voyager, but probably a lot better.
Been reading about ventilation systems mostly. Currently studying to do maintenance work.
Finished Stamped from the Beginning, which was a comprehensive history of racism in america. Taught me some stuff even i, the one true leftist, didn't know. The main one being that racism as an excuse for xenophobia has been around forever. The ancient fucking greeks were like "those africans, too dark. it means their climate baked their brains and skin. The northern barbarians with their weak pale snow skin? Also disgusting. No, what's perfect and superior is MY greek skin tone which is between dark and light and is therefore the best and most natural."
Yeah, these motherfuckers literally had some weird form of enlightened centrism climate theory as their justification for why their skin tone made them superior. what the fuck. And i thought phrenology was the most absurd race "science"
Now reading our fav Rosa Luxemburg, it's good stuff
Just finished "The Dispossessed" by Le Guin, which was pretty good. Read Simon Armitages's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight last night as a palate cleanser, and next I'm gonna try and slog through "Pach*nko" by Min Jin Lee before the end of the year
Edit - sort out the filters
Just started Chris Harman’ s A People’s History of The World, history’s always been a big blind spot for me so I’m hoping to fill in some blanks
Echoes of the Marseillaise by Hobsbaw, then Proofs and Refutations by Lakatos
I plan to finish both of those this week, then I only need one more book to complete my 2020 reading challenge/goal. It's been good to have a goal that's achievable, as last year I had a more ambitious goal, but ended up only reading like 12 books because I gave up. So while quantity isn't really the important thing, the attainable goal helps to motivate to actually read.
I also ended up reading some YA fiction this year, which I didn't love, but it helped me read stuff I would otherwise have skipped.
I picked it up because of the post you made right at the start of the site. So thanks for the rec! I plan to slowly but surely get through the curriculum there.
It depends on what you mean by epistemology. Like, hardcore philosophical epistemology re: Gettier Problems; or scientific epistemology problems like 'use a replictable methology in your study'?
Epistemology is a bit overrated. The current state of things in academic philosophy is needlessly... obtuse. I love philosophy and even I find it difficult to get into -- lots of smart people picking holes in eachother until there's practically nothing to stand on. Ironic, given the subject matter, but ultimately you just have to pick a schema that you like and go with it. Ultimately, whether you can know anything for certain or not is a bit of a meme -- you have to believe in things regardless.
Currently too caught up in university reading to read for leisure. My university reading is mainly focused around my next essays:
I’ve actually been neglecting college readings cause we are moving, but that’s an absolute mood.
I just finished The Mote in God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle. Don't read it, it's boring and stupid and the two main characters are aristocrats.
Next up in my queue is Dead Lies Dreaming by Stross. Good ol' Lovecraftian existential horror.
I'm also reading How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi for my book club full of libs. It's not bad so far, he peppers in a few Marxist terms like "primitive accumulation" here and there. When we're done with that one I'm gonna nominate some real Marxist theory for our next book, not sure what but I'm open to suggestions for something like "Marxism for Dumb Baby Libs" if that exists.
I'm starting on JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass. I haven't gotten very far to say much about it yet, though.
Algebra: Chapter 0 (if you like category theory, I recommend it), some programming books, and Deleuze when I want to read prose. I recently read the Invisible Committee books, which are pretty okay if a bit less insurrectionary than I'd have hoped.
Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk. Weird, ridiculous, absurd take on what a revolution might really look like in America. I’m only halfway through but it’s hilarious. Curious to know if anyone here has read it.
Still slowing working my way through Capital as well as a book on permaculture. Good info in the latter but I'm excited to move on from it.
