Now Reading

@Cryptowen nice to see someone digging Ellul, he’s underrated imo. absolutely love his crotchety vibe. 

  On 2/7/2021 at 7:01 PM, Alcofribas said:

@Cryptowen nice to see someone digging Ellul, he’s underrated imo. absolutely love his crotchety vibe. 

i've really enjoyed what i've read of his so far! "crotchety" is definitely a fitting word (there's this prevalent feeling of "oh right this was the shit that had ted kaczynski trippin" throughout), but at the same time it all feels very insightful. i remember when i was reading propaganda last spring there were several points where i had to take breaks, it was making me so uncomfortable.

  On 2/7/2021 at 7:06 PM, Cryptowen said:

i've really enjoyed what i've read of his so far! "crotchety" is definitely a fitting word (there's this prevalent feeling of "oh right this was the shit that had ted kaczynski trippin" throughout), but at the same time it all feels very insightful. i remember when i was reading propaganda last spring there were several points where i had to take breaks, it was making me so uncomfortable.

yeah he's incredibly ahead of his time in many ways. he has some tedious works (he loves to complain about marxism) but his books on technology are so good. i hadn't read his stuff in a long time but last year i picked up "the political illusion" which i'd had on my shelf for years and i was like "damn this mf could see into the future."

*book has pattern, system, or organization in the title*

my brain: bru u should go talk to her

Just finished Curzio Malaparte's "Kaputt" , in which the author alternates descriptions of lavish dinners with ambassadors, noblemen and high ranking Nazis with stories about atrocities he witnessed as a war correspondent on the Eastern front.

Not a fun read, but very good.

The sequel (sort of), "The Skin", about the American invasion of Italy in 1943, is also very good and a bit less heavy.

Started reading Oblomov but was too lazy to finish.

just cracked open some pareto, gettin real computerbrain vibes from him so far

is that dr lopez?

  On 3/6/2021 at 4:42 PM, dingformung said:

Started reading Oblomov but was too lazy to finish.

 

Too bad. You missed out.

gravity's rainbow + rereading patrick suskind's the pigeon

  On 3/6/2021 at 4:59 PM, Cryptowen said:

just cracked open some pareto, gettin real computerbrain vibes from him so far

  Reveal hidden contents

i mean just look at those machineman eyes of his

 

Expand  

Pareto is a super interesting dude who would definitely be on /b/ a lot these days.

Not /biz/?

as long as he's not posting frogs on main we cool

  On 3/7/2021 at 3:23 PM, drillkicker said:

Not /biz/?

No, he's a Classical Liberal Capitalist with a strong anti-Marxist bent, not an idiot.

Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

Crossover, Donny Cates

also- Practical Pottery, Horace Jenkins, but just in little pieces as I’m teaching my son some clay techniques and whatnot.

Rereading The Crucible, and I’m struck by the similarities of people seeing what they wanted to see, even if it was conspiracies based completely in fantasy, just like QAnon and the election lie in the US.

i hate it when i walk into a bookstore & the entire philosophy section is nothing but noam chomsky books. sociology? all chomsky as well. politics? linguistics? oh u better fuckin bet it's our boy chom. and then i go complain to the bookjockey working the cash & he just says "goh ho ho, g'd reddy ol chum, you've bin noamed" & starts dancing around with his stupid fuckin little red pointed hat. god i hate buying books from the shriner bookstore

  On 3/21/2021 at 7:06 PM, Rubin Farr said:

Rereading The Crucible

                                           funny enough i just found old pics today online of me and arthur miller when he was being honored at the william inge festival

                                                     in independence, kansas in 1995. I gave him my arm to help him up the stage steps in the bright lights.

                                                                                           Very nice person and he signed a copy of the crucible for me.

 /10 

haven't seen the film based on this book

^that's one of those books i've always wanted to read based on the title alone, not even having much familiarity with the work of DFW himself. i might read it for just that reason eventually, but i'm still feeling burned from I am a Strange Loop (that was a few years ago. dunno if I'd assess it as harshly today, i was just going through an intensely anti-computational mind phase at the time)

  On 3/24/2021 at 12:59 PM, eassae said:

 

I couldn't finish I am a Strange Loop. I had just finished Gödel, Escher, Bach when I started it, and it just seemed like a shadow of this former work. Maybe I didn't get far enough into it—I read about half.

It’s ... soppy.

GEB was fun. This, not so much. Still, nothing wrong with the basic premise, it’s just that I’d have preferred it if he had used less sentimental autobiography to support it.

I'm confused, what does that Lipsky/DFW book have to do with Hofstadter? 

Strange Loop was fun, IMO, but yes, it's autobiographical and sentimental. I walked into it kinda knowing that was the point. GEB is way more of a wild ride from an enthusiastic young man, and I do prefer it between the two, but I can't fault Hofstadter for trying to work through his wife's death via his theories on consciousness. idk. 

Gotta agree with the GEB vs. Strange Loop sentiments above. But in retrospect GEB is a bit dumb also. A good introduction to some of the concepts though.

Books read this year so far:

• Scott Frost - The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes (Finnish translation, got it for a euro)
• Sabine Hossenfelder - Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
• Ben Fogle, Michael Palin, Jonathan Scott, Hilary Bradt, Simon King, Simon Calder - Irresponsible Traveller: Tales of scrapes and narrow escapes
• Kobo Abe - The Face of Another
• Lee Smolin - The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next
• Lindsay Ellis - Axiom’s End
• Elif Shafak - Three Daughters of Eve

Weaveworld (Barker obvs)

The last book I read of his was a few years ago was The Great and Secret Show which blew my mind. And here we are off and running from the first chapter, I just love his style of writing. I should definitely read his books far more often than I do.