What are you reading right now?

[Marie Monday]

I don't think they're taking the 'fuck your pronouns' stance, fortunately, but I agree that it's poorly written in a way that creates confusion, and that the writer of this article should really realise that they're writing about something concerning actual people, sheesh.
I agree with the text to this extent: the point of the freedom to identify as we wish gender-wise is to avoid being inhibited by externally imposed gender norms. In a way, you could say that the goal is to make gender matter less in our lives. But some people who support self-identification of gender seem to consider it such a big part of our identities and lives that it just comes to matter more. But anyone criticising that should realise how hostile many people are towards gender non-conforming people. And then, is it really so bad? Gender inevitably still matters to us, and as long as we're free to identify as we want that's ok. And dragging proper pronoun use into this kind of criticism is unwarranted and unnecessary.

[jadis]

We'll agree to disagree about the quality of writing, which I find superb

But some of the points he's making can be paraphrased in everyday language: gender theory promises "liberation" yet what it delivers in actual fact is more tedious bureaucracy, HR regulations and coercive ideology.

The author, a gay guy, is a queer theorist and historian.

Engaging with gender theory means being attentive to its contradictions and blind alleys. Doesn't mean we can or should go back to the old certainties about gender roles, not at all, that's a conservative delusion no thinking person can accept. Just that we shouldn't swap one set of certainties for another.

[Toy Revolver]

I don't think they're taking the 'fuck your pronouns' stance, fortunately, but I agree that it's poorly written in a way that creates confusion, and that the writer of this article should really realise that they're writing about something concerning actual people, sheesh.
I agree with the text to this extent: the point of the freedom to identify as we wish gender-wise is to avoid being inhibited by externally imposed gender norms. In a way, you could say that the goal is to make gender matter less in our lives. But some people who support self-identification of gender seem to consider it such a big part of our identities and lives that it just comes to matter more. But anyone criticising that should realise how hostile many people are towards gender non-conforming people. And then, is it really so bad? Gender inevitably still matters to us, and as long as we're free to identify as we want that's ok. And dragging proper pronoun use into this kind of criticism is unwarranted and unnecessary.

you're right that's not what i'm saying

i think that's what the author really wants to say

Is it possible to be neutral about gender—to elude the demands that its proponents place on us rather than silently accepting or screamingly refusing them?

gee what an imposition to call people what they want to be called either silently accept or scream - how about i'm actually happy to have the opportunity to talk to you how you want to be talked to - it's just common decency

if i call someone frank and he says i prefer franklyn i'm not going to be a petulant child and be like i can call you frank you can't control my speech

i know i'm preaching to the choir but goddamn- like lexi said but for different reasons it's genuinely fucking so old it has truly become exhausting

[Lexi Darling]

I don't think gender "theory" is "promising" anything. This article is overcomplicating things and putting a lot of words in the trans community's mouth. Whatever their intentions are, they seem to be deliberately obtuse about what trans people actually fight for.

Like for real, most trans people aren't "promising liberation" or whatever, we literally just want to live our lives and have the same rights to common respect and healthcare that cis people do. It's really not that complex.

[Toy Revolver]

oh shit sorry marie, i thought you wrote "i don't think YOU'RE taking a fuck your pronouns stance"

[Toy Revolver]

now i'm thinking my reading comprehension was off

i'm in a bad mood about something else

i still say that's suck ass writing though

[Toy Revolver]

just finished:

All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw by Theodore Rosengarten

which is actually the autobiography of Ned Cobb



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Cobb

it's an oral history of a black farmer in jim crow era alabama

he was extremely industrious and clever and made a successful living despite his circumstances

he also became active in the communist party and was arrested for defending himself from a police officer thief

he spent most of his 12 year sentence in a relatively genteel southern prison and continued making money using various unique skills, like basket weaving and furniture repair, even while in prison

there's a lot of talk about mules which is a subject i find surprisingly entertaining

in some ways this book is a nice complement to the wendell berry literature i recently read

i strongly recommend this book but it's mostly very low key - of course race and social class are large players but so is how much one should feed a mule vs a horse and how to keep cotton and other crops healthy season after season -

[Toy Revolver]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-scientists-are-using-ai-to-talk-to-animals/

How Scientists Are Using AI to Talk to Animals

tools such as Google Translate can also be used to detect patterns in nonhuman communication

Bats argue over food; they distinguish between genders when they communicate with one another; they have individual names, or "signature calls." Mother bats speak to their babies in an equivalent of "motherese."

in the future, if humanity doesn't kill itself, people will be able to communicate with other animals in ways that would seem like fantasy magic today

[Toy Revolver]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-social-turmoil-has-increased-witch-hunts-throughout-history/

How Social Turmoil Has Increased Witch Hunts throughout History

this is worth reading

i never looked at witch hunts as a class issue before but it totally makes sense

[Toy Revolver]

i recently finished Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

this is an interesting book for discussion if anyone else has read it

even though this is a sort of sociological text and sociology is considered by some to be a soft science i think it's worth pointing out this is soft sociology in the way that michio kaku is soft physics- i mean this is soft science or pop science or whatever as long as you even accept sociology as a science and i think you should

a lot of this book because repeats the mantra that hard work pays off but he avoids the typical bootstrap bullshit by meticulously pointing out how many fortunate things have to be in place that even allows you to work at one thing so monomaniacally in the first place

he didn't event the 10,000 rule but he made it a lot more famous

i think most criticisms of his use of this rule ignore that he's talking about 10,000 hours of very focused practice

people can say a lot of shitty drivers have driven that long but that's not really addressing what he's saying

he doesn't mention coltrane but it made me think of coltrane and one of the most fascinating things about coltrane as a man, to me, is how much he practiced, even when a played two shows a night he would still practice his scales eight hours on the same day - he organized and reorganized the patterns to absurd fractal like complexity and fuck i probably have 10,000 hours of listening to coltrane and it's almost like i can see the patterns - solos that novice listeners might find chaotic or random are in fact extraordinarily well organized

but anyway he does mention mozart and mozart is often spoke of like god was speaking through him and that's why he had so much innate talent- but it occurred to me before even reading this book that while he spent his youth as a professional child prodigy he was actually studying and practicing music nonstop and in fact his great compositions are from his adulthood

i've also heard about korean and japanese pilots being afraid to correct their captain even to the point of disaster

he got called racist for that but probably by people who never lived over there -

old dudes will fire up a smoke right in front of a cop and a no smoking sign and the cop won't say shit - that's a positive example in my opinion but letting a passenger jet hit a mountainside is no beuno

i believe him

he makes a lot of interesting points

but i mean i'm never going to be chess grandmaster even with a hundred thousand hours but that's not what he's saying - he's saying having to opportunity to play chess a lot opens up the doors but i still need the proclivity as well - but focused practice will make me better

i started thinking about it during the book and thought yeah i'm playing chess but am i really focusing- i started following the rule of checking all the positions checking where my opponent can move and not being lazy about it and i start winning- i suck i know that but FOCUSED practice works

he applies it to math all the way back to asian agriculture and the difference between farming rice and wheat

i think it's important to take it as pop science and i don't think it's quite a good as sapiens as far as like having mind bending insights but i definitely recommend it and will also point out it's very engaging- it draws you in - he keeps it simple (maybe to a fault but it makes for enjoyable reading) and it's fun

a good book

[Janszoon]

I read Outliers like 15 years ago. I don't remember it too well, but I remember liking it and thinking the part about the birthdays of Canadian hockey players was interesting.

[Toy Revolver]

I read Outliers like 15 years ago. I don't remember it too well, but I remember liking it and thinking the part about the birthdays of Canadian hockey players was interesting.

usually i check the original publication date but i didn't realize it was that old - i thought it was from the last two or three years - it sure seems to squeak its way into a lot of podcasts

however i'm not sure how it got on my to read list or when

[SGR]

Currently reading Itchy, Tasty: An Unofficial History of Resident Evil. For a rather die-hard Resident Evil fan like myself, it's super interesting to hear accounts of how these games were developed and why certain design decisions were made.

[Toy Revolver]

just finished endless love by scott spencer

it's a beautiful masterpiece


"She... presented herself as an authority on suicide. She had a categories of suicide: revenge suicide, accidental suicide, instructional suicide, and others that made even less immediate sense, such as lavender suicide, cheesy suicide, and astral suicide."

"Being beaten like that is so extraordinary, there's no point in describing it. Those who haven't been punished like that will never know how it feels, even if a genius describes it, and those who have, know it all too well."

[jadis]

Long a taboo subject in Soviet historiography, the Stalinist policy toward Jews is thoroughly examined in this revealing study by one of Russia's leading historians. Sifting through thousands of recently declassified documents in the formerly secret archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the KGB, Gennadi Kostyrchenko uncovers irrefutable evidence of Stalin's intentionally anti-Semitic policy. The documents describe the suppression of all free manifestations of Jewish life, forced assimilation, and the purging of Jews from most official positions. Soviet Jews fought valiantly against fascism in World War II, yet they discovered after the war that an even greater threat confronted them at home from their national leader. Kostyrchenko documents the systematic elimination of Jews from journalism, the arts, humanities, and industry. He concludes by examining hitherto secret records of the infamous "doctors' plot" launched by Stalin just prior to his death. Out of the Red Shadows is a devastating expose of state-sponsored anti-Semitism comparable in its virulence to the Nazi reign of terror.