Now Reading

[Nebraska]

[Cryptowen]

an original edition of MUFON? solid

[Cryptowen]

Ivan Illich - Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health (reading this book post-2020 is a premium trashbear experience)

Brian Massumi - Parables for the Virtual (some parts are better than others, but it's cool that he predicted the far-right taking over pomo back in 2002)

Henri Bergson - The Two Sources of Morality & Religion (it good, first time reading Bergson in English)

[logakght]

Metamodernism. Historicity, Affect, and Depth After Postmodernism ed. by Robin van den Akker, Alison Gibbons, and Timotheus Vermeulen 

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/739721/pdf

[logakght]

Poems by Amparo Dávila.

Getting into poetry a lot these days. Any favorite work you like?

[viscosity]

Song of Myself, 51
Walt Whitman - 1819-1892

The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

[Nebraska]

an original edition of MUFON? solid

highly approved

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[usagi]

I recently finished The Magus by John Fowles.

I bought this book many years ago on a gamble after reading the back and thinking it'd be good, and it had just been sitting on my shelf til now. very mixed feelings about it finally, leaning more towards the negative. firstly it's like 650 pages, and if a book is going to be that length, it better be solid and consistently engaging, which this definitely wasn't. I spent the first 400-500 pages thinking "I'm going to yeet this straight into the bin as soon as I'm done", then there's a major denouement subsequently and you start to think it's come good and that all the stuff leading up to this, while patchy and not fully compelling, was worthwhile. but then it just carries on being a loose mess for another 100 pages and ends with a whimper. the protagonist is a cunt, which is part of the point, but the supposed arc of his redemption is not really driven home.

ambiguity and unreality, multiple layers of meaning etc, are meant to be the major draw of this novel and the source of its rich imagery, but it seemed to me it was overindulged and drawn too loose to pack any actual punches. some moments of brilliance but overall far too long and boring, and too much wanky prose. I kept comparing this to another English novel also set on an island which managed far better economy of expression and was also more lush in its imagery: Lord of the Flies. this one doesn't stack up.

anyway if you're into edging and cuck porn, there may be something here for you.

[Milwaukeeeee]

https://taosemko.com/male-deer-exercise/

[Cryptowen]

robot - hans moravec: this is like some kinda techno-utopian piece from 1999 by a science guy. first chapter is kinda dry as he's giving the history of robotics, but the rest looks more interesting. seems like he's going to open up into a more speculative analysis of AI development into a galactic cloud consciousness. getting some leroi-gourhan vibes

Methodology of Possession - James Ellis: @drillkicker you might like this one. dude recounts his experience of becoming disillusioned with his continental philosophy degree, encountering the work of NIck Land, and deciding to engage in home brew magic rituals that read kind of like a trip report. Halfway through, seems to be slowly moving from more literary to more theoretical territory

I've got like 100 pdfs I downloaded this summer I wanna start reading. I think the next one will be another book by Kondylis which seems to be a historical analysis of the emergence of Conservatism as a political ideology

[drillkicker]

@Cryptowenthanks for pointing that one out.  My goal at the moment is to read everything that influenced Land and everything influenced by him, both positively and negatively.  Right now I'm in The Machinic Unconscious by Felix Guattari.  It'll probably be a while until I move on from D/G.

Edited August 17, 2021 by drillkicker

[Cryptowen]

4 minutes ago, drillkicker said:

The Machinic Unconscious by Felix Guattari

been wanting to read this one specifically, thanks for the reminder

i hear logic of sense by Deleuze establishes a lot of important ideas. Some say it's on par with dif/rep

I also have a big stack of the works of Reich in paperback i wanna get started on soon. He was a clear influence on Anti-Oedipus, and imo a lot of his ideas are fairly interesting (if at times kinda outdated feeling). Freud as well is someone i wanna spend some more time on, have only read a couple of his works

[zlemflolia]

https://web.archive.org/web/20141007023855/http://alternative-right.blogspot.com/2014/10/hyper-racism.html

taking hypotheticals existing within some timeless vacuum and granting them disproportionate significance like this results in ramblings which have little relationship to any reality felt by any individual or even any coherent group.  this fascistic nonsense of the worship of an idealized past before a hypothetical future homogenization of race represents nothing more than an intellectually dressed /pol/ nazi rant yearning to justify their fascistic emotions

Edited August 18, 2021 by ilqx hermolia xpli

[chenGOD]

 

Kind of meh. Concept is a standard quest trope in post-apocalyptic US that’s been broken into corporate enclaves. Some interesting possibilities, but it feels like half of the book was written by an edgy 16 year old. 
Anyway, easy read, good brain relaxant. 

[chenGOD]

Shit I think I unpinned this by accident.

Anyways - now reading

 

Decent but only about 80 pages in. Interesting dichotomoy in the two protagonists so far.

[zero]

On 8/17/2021 at 6:36 PM, Cryptowen said:

robot - hans moravec: this is like some kinda techno-utopian piece from 1999 by a science guy. first chapter is kinda dry as he's giving the history of robotics, but the rest looks more interesting. seems like he's going to open up into a more speculative analysis of AI development into a galactic cloud consciousness. getting some leroi-gourhan vibes

ha, read that like 20 years ago. I remember it made quite an impact on me at the time. I used to go around spouting AI/futurist type nonsense back then, and would use some of the ideas he put forward in the book as points for discussion. this was back in the days not too long after The Matrix was released, and AI was having its moment in the spotlight (coincidentally, peak IDM was around then as well lol). I was also like early 20's when I read it, and truly believed a lot of that stuff. now I'm middle aged, bitter, and hate computers.

[Cryptowen]

1 hour ago, zero said:

read that like 20 years ago. I remember it made quite an impact on me at the time.

i'm definitely enjoying it more now that he's getting into the real speculative territory. His timeline for 21st century tech development felt fairly level-headed, but as with most things of this nature the timing feels way off in some regards (like a lot of what he's predicted regarding AI & 3d printing feels pretty on track, but he also predicted that by 2020 all-purpose helper robots would be a common feature in every household). the stuff that looks further into the distance is more interesting to me - when he starts talking about post-biological cyborg organism colonizing deep space & undergoing their own evolutionary process.

the one part where he seems to have been pretty far off the mark is wrt legislation & resource distribution. The picture he paints of the (then upcoming) 21th century is one in which corporations are kept in check by national governments, and the world peacefully moves to a kind of fully automated luxury communism. Seems he completely ignores the possibility of environmental catastrophe or resource depletion hampering the process, or of the 1990s neolibeal global village falling into ideological decay. At one point he even (quite literally) describes neofeudalism, only to immediately dismiss it with "that's clearly the absolute worst case scenario, and probably won't happen". I am open to the possibility that the rest of the century will actually balance out & things like UBI/effective environmentalism will be implemented, but at present that really doesn't seem to be the direction things are going

There's also the deeper philosophical question i get when reading material like this - should we be moving to a society based entirely around luxury & comfort? I'm not sure if I'm totally onboard with the idea of humans being able to freely control the weather, take pills to be fit, download extra intelligence etc etc. I'm not saying I'm neccessarily against these things either, just that my inner luddite comes out whenever I encounter techies promoting WALL-E futurism as the ultimate goal of humanity

Edited August 20, 2021 by Cryptowen

[chenGOD]

"Fall, or Dodge in Hell" - Neal Stephenson.

20 or so pages in, and while I still love how detailed Stephenson is in his approach, there are occasionally times when I wish he would get to the point a bit more quickly. Still, a very enjoyable read.

[dcom]

59 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

"Fall, or Dodge in Hell" - Neal Stephenson.

20 or so pages in, and while I still love how detailed Stephenson is in his approach, there are occasionally times when I wish he would get to the point a bit more quickly. Still, a very enjoyable read.

I'm a huge Stephenson fan, but I have to admit that Fall was circumlocutious trudging through story molasses at times. The Baroque Cycle is way lengthier, but it's oodles more fun than Fall. I did get through eventually, but I read a handful of other books in the interim.

Edited August 23, 2021 by dcom

[dcom]

On 8/18/2021 at 2:36 AM, Cryptowen said:

robot - hans moravec: this is like some kinda techno-utopian piece from 1999 by a science guy. first chapter is kinda dry as he's giving the history of robotics, but the rest looks more interesting. seems like he's going to open up into a more speculative analysis of AI development into a galactic cloud consciousness. getting some leroi-gourhan vibes

For a more modern take on those issues I'd suggest Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, and Max Tegmark's Life 3.0.

[droid]

44 minutes ago, dcom said:

I'm a huge Stephenson fan, but I have to admit that Fall was circumlocutious trudging through story molasses at times. The Baroque Cycle is way lengthier, but it's oodles more fun than Fall. I did get through eventually, but I read a handful of other books in the interim.

I liked it, the 'fantasy' section was a bit long winded, but I think it paid off, and the chutzpah required to try and create a fantasy epic/genesis myth within the realms of simulation theory was impressive. It was almost like a reverse of anathem. Sci fi segueing into fantasy, reality cohereing instead of decohering.

[baph]

Re: Stephnson’s Fall:
 

Spoiler

I found the “genesis” portion to be a huge slog to get through; and disappointingly conservative in its Abrahamic rehashing.  Could have been so much more interesting, and weird, rather than the billionth literary resurrection of Milton’s ghost, but whatever.  I guess the title should have tipped me off enough. 

Still, some nice ideas in the book. The social media/augmented reality/hoax stuff in the first third could have been enough to sustain a novel on its own, probably.

I liked it, but it’s my least favorite thing from him.

It looks like Neal’s next book might be another “rich guy with big idea” thing and I sort of hoped he’d move on from that narrative obsession after writing another book about Dodge.  In hindsight I’m starting to wonder how he managed to write all of Anathem without needing to fixate on the supplier of capital.  

Edited August 24, 2021 by baph

[prdctvsm]

[chenGOD]

On 8/23/2021 at 1:50 PM, droid said:

I liked it, the 'fantasy' section was a bit long winded, but I think it paid off, and the chutzpah required to try and create a fantasy epic/genesis myth within the realms of simulation theory was impressive. It was almost like a reverse of anathem. Sci fi segueing into fantasy, reality cohereing instead of decohering.

 

On 8/24/2021 at 1:41 AM, baph said:

Re: Stephnson’s Fall:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

I found the “genesis” portion to be a huge slog to get through; and disappointingly conservative in its Abrahamic rehashing.  Could have been so much more interesting, and weird, rather than the billionth literary resurrection of Milton’s ghost, but whatever.  I guess the title should have tipped me off enough. 

Still, some nice ideas in the book. The social media/augmented reality/hoax stuff in the first third could have been enough to sustain a novel on its own, probably.

I liked it, but it’s my least favorite thing from him.

It looks like Neal’s next book might be another “rich guy with big idea” thing and I sort of hoped he’d move on from that narrative obsession after writing another book about Dodge.  In hindsight I’m starting to wonder how he managed to write all of Anathem without needing to fixate on the supplier of capital.  

Starting to get more into it, the social media feeds and Ameristan don’t feel totally unreal. 
His obsession with capital and uber-rich is a little weird for sure. 

[KovalainenFanBoy]

On 8/29/2021 at 12:19 AM, prdctvsm said:

for a book that was only like 30% finished, this was a pretty good read