The author of the widely praised Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how …
Review of 'Cultish' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Amanda Montell's father, Craig, grew up in the Synanon drug rehab church started by Charles Dederich. Montell's Cultish is a linguistic investigation of the dialect of cults that starts from her father's experiences and covers true cults, MLMs, culty gym culture, and social media gurus. In the fanatic cultural fabric of America, a couple of lessons on in-group language and thought terminators will vastly improve your cult radar.
Randall Munroe left NASA in 2005 to start up his hugely popular site XKCD 'a …
Review of 'What If?' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
If the general doom of the world is getting you down, you might need a pick-me-up book. I highly suggest #WhatIf by Randall Munroe, the cartoonist behind @xkcd. If you read #TheMartian by @andyweirauthor or watched @MythBusters, you may already know some version of the glorious comedy of intelligent people having fun with math and science. Answering questions that only the strange ask, Munroe tackles how high a steak would need to fall before it was cooked, what would happen if everyone in the world went to the same spot and jumped, and if you could use guns to make a jetpack. Pick this up to laugh and stretch your imagination.
I have a collapse-pilled book combo to suggest: The World Without Us by Alan Weisman and The Knowledge by Lewis Dartnell (@lewis_dartnell).
Weisman's book helps you understand just how much maintenance goes into keeping streets, buildings, subways, bridges, petro-infrastructure, and nuclear power plants functional. The depth and breath of effort that it takes to keep the human built-environment together was surprising to me.
If everything collapsed and human technology was lost, Dartnell's The Knowledge would help to bring human infrastructure back on a path without dependence on dirty-power.
After reading both, the absolutely miniscule breadth of your own knowledge will be obvious, which is undoubtedly good.
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq is a book published in …
Review of 'Overthrow' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow chronicles the US era of regime change that has continued for more than a century. In that time, Kinzer argues that the US has overthrown the governments of Hawaii, Nicaragua, Honduras, Cuba, The Philippines, Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Kinzer argues that the US abandoned these countries after overthrowing their governments. After US destabilization, life got worse for the majority of citizens and the US was less secure despite increasing profits for US corporations. In the light of events in Afghanistan in 2021, the history of the US government's overthrow of client states is vital to understand.
The American people do not know the truth of slavery and have not finished reconciling the systemic inequity and racism American slavery causes. If you want to get closer to the truth of slavery through one man's explorations of historical sites, How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) is worth your time.
Smith uses locations and beautiful prose to tell the story of American slavery, forced labor, and torture. Also, the audiobook is read by Smith.
Monticello (@TJMonticello) Black men were dressed as slaves to give tours to people visiting the Monticello forced labor camp until 1951. Monticello has been trying to tell a more truthful story, but visitors reject it.
The Whitney Plantation (@WhitPlantation) shows the contrast between a plantation reckoning with American myth and one that appropriately tells the story of American forced labor.
Angola (@angola_watchdog) Smith then visits a forced labor camp (plantation) that is …
The American people do not know the truth of slavery and have not finished reconciling the systemic inequity and racism American slavery causes. If you want to get closer to the truth of slavery through one man's explorations of historical sites, How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) is worth your time.
Smith uses locations and beautiful prose to tell the story of American slavery, forced labor, and torture. Also, the audiobook is read by Smith.
Monticello (@TJMonticello) Black men were dressed as slaves to give tours to people visiting the Monticello forced labor camp until 1951. Monticello has been trying to tell a more truthful story, but visitors reject it.
The Whitney Plantation (@WhitPlantation) shows the contrast between a plantation reckoning with American myth and one that appropriately tells the story of American forced labor.
Angola (@angola_watchdog) Smith then visits a forced labor camp (plantation) that is still a forced labor camp (prison) where slavery lives on. Smith's recounting of the execution chamber and Red Hat Cell Block are shocking.
Blanford Cemetery (https://www.petersburgva.gov/303/Blandford-Cemetery) After visiting an active forced labor camp, Smith visits Blanford Cemetery, where Confederate traitors are still celebrated.
Galveston Juneteenth In Galveston, Texas, Smith visits the root of Juneteenth (@J19Galveston) and explores the myth of Gen. Gordon Granger and General Order No. 3.
Wall Street (https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2020/07/a-virtual-walking-tour-of-slavery-in-nyc/) To help dispel the idea that slavery is a southern problem, Smith takes a walking tour of NYC's Wall Street and the many historic markers around America's second largest slave market.
Senegal House of Slaves (@MEsclaves) To conclude the journey, Smith visits Senegal to explore the root of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
The telling of history often has a pragmatic purpose. The heroic Anglo narrative of the Alamo has served many purposes over the years: rallying troops, creating Texas nationalism and exceptionalism, electing politicians, deemphasizing the slavery at the heart of the founding of Anglo Texas, and spreading white supremacy over a state with changing demographics. The hysteria in Anglo Texas over the rise of non-white Texans to a majority has far reaching effects that reach to many parts of America. In Forget the Alamo by @BryanBurrough, @cltomlinson, and @JasStanford, the heroic Anglo narrative is separated from a history supported by primary sources. Forget the Alamo is worth your time.
Review of 'Beyond the Sand and Sea' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I just took a job teaching English to speakers of other languages as a bumbling mid-western American man who went to a school at night for two years. I don't really know what a refugee camp is. I don't know what it means to immigrate. I don't know what it means to live in the US as a non-native speaker or immigrant.
On my quest to become less ignorant, I read across Beyond the Sand and Sea by Ty McCormick (@TyMcCormick).
What started as a journalistic study of the Dadaab Somali Refugee Camp in Kenya for McCormick turned into a close relationship with young Asad Hussein (@asadhussein_).
Asad Hussein's resilience in the face of crushing bureaucracy, grift, and xenophobia while pursuing his education and supporting his family is astonishing.
The story of one determined survivor of Dadaab seems to be just pinprick of light in the darkness of my ignorance. …
I just took a job teaching English to speakers of other languages as a bumbling mid-western American man who went to a school at night for two years. I don't really know what a refugee camp is. I don't know what it means to immigrate. I don't know what it means to live in the US as a non-native speaker or immigrant.
On my quest to become less ignorant, I read across Beyond the Sand and Sea by Ty McCormick (@TyMcCormick).
What started as a journalistic study of the Dadaab Somali Refugee Camp in Kenya for McCormick turned into a close relationship with young Asad Hussein (@asadhussein_).
Asad Hussein's resilience in the face of crushing bureaucracy, grift, and xenophobia while pursuing his education and supporting his family is astonishing.
The story of one determined survivor of Dadaab seems to be just pinprick of light in the darkness of my ignorance. If you know of other related books, I'd love to read them.
Review of 'Peaceful parent, happy kids' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
After looking through a large swath of teaching and parenting books it is clear that behaviorism was really big in the 50s and many people thought it was the solution to dealing with children. Obviously, that didn't really work unless you wanted a child that only responded to you when you offered carrots or sticks.
In Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids by Dr. Markham, many of the nonviolent strategies found in non-violent communication are combined with the knowledge we have of developing brains.
Dr. Markham delivers her strategies for raising thinking, feeling, compassionate humans with a combination of easy to digest science, anecdotes, and testimonials. As a father and a teacher, I'm going to start using the useful ideas in this book.
The Power of Myth launched an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Joseph Campbell and his …
Review of 'The power of myth' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
BILL MOYERS: And then there is that final passage through the dark gate?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, that’s no problem at all. The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to lose it, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. And when you can do that, and this is something learned from my myths, What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle? And this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this thing go, like an old car there goes the fender, there goes this. But it’s expectable, you know, and then gradually the whole thing drops off and consciousness rejoins consciousness. I …
BILL MOYERS: And then there is that final passage through the dark gate?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, that’s no problem at all. The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to lose it, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. And when you can do that, and this is something learned from my myths, What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle? And this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this thing go, like an old car there goes the fender, there goes this. But it’s expectable, you know, and then gradually the whole thing drops off and consciousness rejoins consciousness. I mean, that’s it’s no longer in this particular environment.
Joseph Campbell - Prodigious expanse of space is sublime. This is a thing that the Buddhists know how to achieve in their temples. Particularly when I was in Kyoto, I was there for seven glorious months.
BILL MOYERS: In Japan.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah, visiting some of the temple gardens. They are so designed that you’re experiencing something here, and then you break past a screen and a whole new horizon opens out. And somehow with the diminishment of your own ego, the consciousness expands. This is the experience of the sublime. Another experience of the sublime is not of tremendous space, but of tremendous energy and power.
While rehashing the horrors of the last four years, Masha Gessen urges readers to realize that Trump's regime cannot be described by the language of liberal democracy, but by Bálint Magyar's new vocabulary for post-soviet states. Without the language, we will not see the reality:
Mafia State: a state system where the government is tied with organized crime to the degree when government officials, the police, and/or military became a part of the criminal enterprise.
Kakistocracy: government run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens
Totalitarian Ideology: An entirely encapsulated ideology; it’s impervious to any input from outside reality.
Gessen's reframing of the last four years into the realities of post-soviet states is more painful than remaining ignorant, but also more useful and the key to fighting authoritarianism. You should read Surviving Autocracy.
Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist Dalton …
Review of 'Johnny Got His Gun' on 'Goodreads'
No rating
At the risk of being indicted by the inevitable reiteration of the House Un-American Activities Committee, I read and I'm now reviewing Johnny Got his Gun by Dalton Trumbo.
I have read several classics of anti-war literature, but Johnny Got his Gun is the most pointed, unveiled, and unapologetic piece I have read so far. Joe Bonham is a calculated average American man of the 1930s who is hit by an artillery shell. The rest of the book follows the limbless, deaf, blind, and dumb soldier as he drags the reader through his pain only to tie it up as a reason to oppose all war.
After it was published in 1938 but "Trumbo and his publisher decided to suspend reprinting Johnny Got His Gun until the end of the war. During the war, Trumbo received letters from individuals "denouncing Jews" and using Johnny to support their arguments for "an …
At the risk of being indicted by the inevitable reiteration of the House Un-American Activities Committee, I read and I'm now reviewing Johnny Got his Gun by Dalton Trumbo.
I have read several classics of anti-war literature, but Johnny Got his Gun is the most pointed, unveiled, and unapologetic piece I have read so far. Joe Bonham is a calculated average American man of the 1930s who is hit by an artillery shell. The rest of the book follows the limbless, deaf, blind, and dumb soldier as he drags the reader through his pain only to tie it up as a reason to oppose all war.
After it was published in 1938 but "Trumbo and his publisher decided to suspend reprinting Johnny Got His Gun until the end of the war. During the war, Trumbo received letters from individuals "denouncing Jews" and using Johnny to support their arguments for "an immediate negotiated peace" with Nazi Germany; Trumbo reported these correspondents to the FBI. Trumbo regretted this decision, which he called "foolish". After two FBI agents showed up at his home, he understood that "their interest lay not in the letters but in me."[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Trumbo]
Johnny's Got His Gun has been unearthed over and over during the endless wars that America profited from by parents of maimed soldiers.
While Johnny Got His Gun is extremely blunt, so are the horrors of war.
Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. …
Review of 'Paper Towns' on 'Goodreads'
No rating
“Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else...But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills fascists.”
Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up …
Review of 'The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1)' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
If you want a kitschy mashup of #JamesBond, #Lovecraft, and the IT Crowd (@ITCrowdSupport) , look no further than Charles Stross' (@cstross) #AtrocityArchives. It is glorious nerd popcorn.
Sarah Schulman's (@sarahschulman3) Conflict is not Abuse's thesis is in its title: those that overstate harm miss the benefits that can be gained from verbal conflict, negotiation, and empathy.
Schulman's argument starts with the self, moves to the relational, discusses conflict and abuse at the hands of the state, and concludes with the Israeli genocide upon the Palestinian people.
She defines abuse as someone inappropriately using the power they have over a victim and conflict in explicitly verbal terms and almost as debate or negotiation.
In the personal arena, Schulman starts an incredibly useful idea: negative fantasy. Schulman outlines the anxiety that causes individuals to assume they know the intent of another without asking them. The anxious individual then spins into negative fantasy or a daymare that causes them to make additional unfounded assumptions.
In interpersonal relationships, she discusses a mismatch of motivation. Individuals learn that the dichotomy of victim …
Sarah Schulman's (@sarahschulman3) Conflict is not Abuse's thesis is in its title: those that overstate harm miss the benefits that can be gained from verbal conflict, negotiation, and empathy.
Schulman's argument starts with the self, moves to the relational, discusses conflict and abuse at the hands of the state, and concludes with the Israeli genocide upon the Palestinian people.
She defines abuse as someone inappropriately using the power they have over a victim and conflict in explicitly verbal terms and almost as debate or negotiation.
In the personal arena, Schulman starts an incredibly useful idea: negative fantasy. Schulman outlines the anxiety that causes individuals to assume they know the intent of another without asking them. The anxious individual then spins into negative fantasy or a daymare that causes them to make additional unfounded assumptions.
In interpersonal relationships, she discusses a mismatch of motivation. Individuals learn that the dichotomy of victim and perpetrator gives compassion to the victim and shunning to the perpetrator. Schulman suggests that individuals in a non-violent disagreement will take the role of victim to get the compassion that the role attracts. She concludes that a system of conflict mediation that provides compassion and understanding to both parties in a conflict would heal the individuals and the community involved.
Schulman argues that when individuals ask the state (police) to intervene in a conflict, they dole out punishment to the perpetrator that does little to help the victim. She also argues that individuals in a conflict will involve the state to enforce their will and the power of the state. She argues that a community around individuals in conflict is essential to produce real healing around conflicted individuals.
One of Schulman's most interesting points is that people who are victims of trauma and those who create trauma use the same tactic: claiming victimhood to avoid negotiation. Police will claim fear to justify the use of deadly force as traumatized people feel fear and claim victimhood to avoid pain.
Schulman's Conflict is not Abuse is an anti-authoritarian text that should help you understand the value of conflict negotiation so you can build it within yourself to avoid negative fantasy and within your community to strengthen it.
