I’m all for it and hopeful. For the first time I’m beginning to feel that there’s a real chance that even the US could move towards a General Strike before too long in response to how drastically conditions are collapsing across the board.
N & G is one I have not read by Hesse, and I can say the same for The Iron Heel in regards to London. I have really enjoyed both authors though I haven’t read them in a long time. Cheers for the recommendations.
I’ll second Long Walk to Freedom. While I think it’s a book that everyone can profit from reading, if you have interest in that subject I think it’s a no-brainer.
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell
I’ve been reading such a long list of rave reviews from authors like Kazuo Ishiguro and Alan Moore and publications like the LA Review of Books as well as hearing the same from close friends that I finally bumped this book to the top of my backlog stack.
It’s a horror book set in the early '80s in Argentina, weaving the kind of mystical conspiracy of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum or Pérez-Reverte’s The Club Dumas and Ninth Gate novels over and through the very real state terrorism of the Argentinian Junta’s Dirty War. I’m only about 75 pages into the 600 or so, and the slow-burn opening is just now starting to unfold into something more overtly disturbing, but the deceptively simple/basic prose creates a remarkably sophisticated and subtle story that is creeping into me like magic. Disturbing magic, lol.
Highly recommend.
That’s hot. Also I hadn’t realized Dylan Dog was still going. 367, wow. I feel like rewatching Cemetary Man.
As long as the Democratic Party is run by the same neoliberal establishment there will be a place for grotesque sociopaths like her and Terry McAuliffe. Thank you for remembering that she played a key part in stealing the 2016 primary from Sanders as laid out in “the emails!!!” that everyone likes to pretend didn’t contain anything horrible.
New Scientist is the name of the excellent publication that Tom Gault’s awesome comic appears in.
https://www.newscientist.com/author/tom-gauld/
New Scientist is not the name of the comic. @NewScientist is not the comic strip itself but the publication as a whole.
That should be the national flag.
What a tough question to answer, stretching all the way back to Atari 2600 for me.
I think I’ll pick No Mercy/Virtual Wrestling Pro 2 on the N64. Possibly thousands of hours both solo and competitive at a friends with some incredible round robin tournaments with up to five participants. Just amazing Create A Wrestler and one of my handful of favorite gameplay mechanics ever. Also we were paying during the exciting days of pro wrestling so we had that enthusing us as well.
I played it on a 2019 Macbook Pro about two years ago now and oof, it was unsurprisingly rough. Probably unplayable, but through stubbornness I managed to make it through that first chapter available in early access. At the time I got it on Steam, I thought I’d be able to play it via GeForce NOW but then Google went an snapped it up and made it exclusive for Stadia. So instead I downloaded it to the Mac and suffered through crap resolution and crappier frame rates.
I just got a new M2 MBP after my old one went tits up on me and downloaded the game again to see how things are different and holy moly, it plays great at full resolution with most settings maxed out. Go Apple Silicon, and especially go Larian! Thank you so much for doing a native Mac version. I’d much rather play it this way than on the PS5. We’ve already got four ready to party up in online co-op with the new classes and races when the official release happens.
Agreed. I love Discovery, despite/because/whatever the occasional cheese and the overflow of Michael’s tears. I really enjoyed the fact that they went what some people want to belittle under the term woke. To me, they went empathetic, emotionally healthy. Not using emotional immaturity to create artificial, clumsy plot suspense through the characters acting foolishly/immaturely. It’s the Federation… they 100% are woke. Empathy and understanding and patience are qualities they’d prioritize to succeed both as a civilization and at smaller scale a crew, and it’s nice to see the characters act accordingly. I get enough toxic stupidity in my daily contemporary life. It’s nice to dream about humans improving in wisdom. Thanks, Discovery.
I just started Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor.
I loved Cloud Cuckoo, I really didn’t care for Seveneves (and I actively disliked Termination Shock… it’s been a progression but I do believe my taste and Neal Stephenson have finally cleanly diverged), and Ioved The Overstory, though yeah, I agree that I think it ultimately was drawn out. I read it while on a big plant, tree, fungus and mycorrhizal kick, reading lots of books on the possibility of plant sensation/communication/cognition.
I ended up loving Ministry. The way it was written felt like it was putting together moments to evoke more of a history of events rather than developing a rich narrative around a few characters. The individual human characters were less important than the development of official and non-official policy that grew through the book, seeing how it all might happen. It really worked for me in this case.
I read it a few months after having read Stephenson’s Termination Shock, which I really didn’t care for. I feel like his dialogue and sensibilities about characters and society haven’t really moved since the early 90s, except to get progressively more weirdly monarcho-libertarian. I think I’m finally done picking up his new books out of habit.
Fair enough. The pacing was definitely unconventional.
Tchaikovsky’s output is kind of stunning, especially given just how good I find so much of his stuff, how memorable. “We’re going on an adventure!”
I started with The Player of Games and that was a great way for me. I think that was when it actually came out, so it’s been a while since I read that series but I absolutely loved it.
I wasn’t crazy about The Expanse with the first book but it just kept growing on me and ended up one of my very favorites. And the same thing happened with the tv adaption. Truly amazing.
That might be true if we lived in a world where companies behaved like that. But given that they now answer to shareholders and the admitted priority above all others is to squeeze every possible cent out for those shareholders in the short term and that ignore long-term health, I don’t think the principal really applies any longer. Public companies or companies courting IPOs are literally not permitted to behave in the way you describe.
Also the free market is a complete myth. The market is constantly manipulated and distorted by those controlling the capital via methods such as monopoly, monopsony, trusts and vastly disproportionate “influence” over law makers and potential regulatory power.
Adding my emphatic thumbs-up for this feature which I’ve also been wanting in my interactions with the kbin UI.
He was targeted and kicked out by the neolibs because they were terrified of him leading Labour to victory, buddy. “Overt and unrestrained antisemitism”? You are clearly a troll. Starmer kicked MPs out of Labour for showing up with Leftist movie director Ken Laoch. It’s ridiculous. Starmer’s anti-Leftist Labour will drive people to right-wing populists, just like Macron in France.
Fuck Corbyn? Dude’s a hero and exactly what’s needed. Peddle your trash elsewhere
Edit: Adding this link from an actual Leftist publication. Taking him down was a hatchet job pure and simple. Starmer is the devil and his only job is to keep any significant change to the economic order from occurring.
https://jacobin.com/2020/10/jeremy-corbyn-labour-party-suspension-starmer
"The report found that Labour’s processes for handling antisemitism complaints were lacking. Its structures were too weak, they were subject to political pressures, under-resourced, and lacked proper guidance. Its staff had not had access to appropriate training. The most damning finding — of harassment — related to two cases where representatives of the party, former mayor Ken Livingstone and a Lancashire councillor, had made antisemitic comments. The report criticized the Corbyn leadership for its lack of effectiveness in dealing with these matters, but it did not make sweeping claims about their complicity in antisemitism.
"Jeremy Corbyn’s response to the report was equally sober. He acknowledged the report’s criticisms, encouraged the swift implementation of its findings, and offered an apology to Jewish members whose complaints had been mishandled. “Jewish members of our party and the wider community were right to expect us to deal with it,” he said, “and I regret that it took longer to deliver that change than it should.”
“As one would expect, he also defended his record. Many of the processes criticized, Corbyn pointed out, predated his leadership — something which the report itself acknowledges — and were replaced by more robust procedures after 2018. He didn’t accept all of its findings, but that is hardly a surprise for a critical report running to 129 pages that dealt with such a controversial topic.”