Critiques et Commentaires

Written after Occupy and before 2016 with deep appreciation for the economic inequality and carceral injustice pushing the US towards internal conflict, this reflects a non-violent realism about rebellion, repression, and vigilante-fascist state outcomes with historical analysis interviews - many from prison - with Black Panther, ANC, Nazi resistance, US whistleblowers, and Occupy activists.

The fast-paced intrigue and backstabbing continues grippingly. While the first book stood alone well enough, this is missing the arc and focus making its success hang much more on what may be to come.

A positive and caring transformation of safety and crime, focusing on minimizing harms (from capitalism, patriarchy, trauma too) over sensationalizing crime and "bad guys", moving to care from fear, and restorative justice' shift from punishment to accountability, all illustrated with personal and complicating stories.

Young farmhand accounts of rural hard work, near poverty in that solo youthful maybe it's still a choice way, animal life and death, and appreciation for visceral connections between plants, weeds, markets, seasons, and guts spilled on the ground.

From an era of toy-model connectionist AI 20 years ago, a set of critiques that still hold some weight in pointing to basic symbolic structure and relationships our thinking exhibits that spicy autocomplete may categorically still be struggling with. What's lovely about this book (which probably isn't relevant overall and anymore) is the generosity and curiosity the author gives to the other side, in exploring and expanding on the models he's critiquing he's also bridging language and concepts between subfields rather than jumping precipitously to disagreement.

Two fascinating books smooshed together, neither what I was expecting, both earnest enough. First, a very readable light explanation that "green growth" and any ecological turn that leaves capitalism in place will be insufficient to avoid extractive exploitation beyond ecological limits we're facing. Second, a niche academic journey through Marx' years after Capital Vol 1 arguing from thin circumstance that he too realized some of the ecological necessities of degrowth rather than unerring progress. If that's what you needed to hear to slow down, well ok!

Look, I know I've got too many fiction in flight but a bookclub beckons, alright?

Restless story telling swirling around a Thai monk recounting a long life. I found the first half's turbidity of time and perspective most engaging as a way of revealing memory and history of a place transforming from magical mysterious jungle, flowing into a more direct and unceasing narrative of human conflict with the powerful animals of the encroached forest.

A beautiful collection of childhood writings to remember and witness a girl becoming an active resister for a more just world. Corrie's story moved me at the time of her death (in Gaza in 2003) as we are close in age and point of origin in Washington State, and this revisiting was made more poignant by the current war and by my now perspective as a parent considering the family's decision to put this together. For content, this is a varied set of childhood poems and journals and sketches, school essays and early college writing on relationships and local crisis care, and accelerating global anger with capitalism and involvement in the 2001-era anti-war movement.

I did not enjoy this as much as the subsequent The Light Pirate; similar themes of aging in disaster, the tenuousness of our ability to stay in communication and relation, and evocative desolate scenery, but with more convoluted and ultimately unnecessary and shaky setting and plot complications.

Eagerly giving this a re-read by audiobook for the first time, which is the fullest-cast full-cast production.

A delightful heist buddy crew against the odds space marines aliens in all configurations inscrutable galactic menace histories of oppression misunderstanding and hope. Also, a bit light and scattered.

Personally revealing comic essays, uninhibited philosophical reflection and genitalia and cat butts, with a sophisticated depth of introspection on perception, action, and the complexity of the modern world.

Each element is pristine and sun-baked here, like the setting: reluctant detective on the murder case, wealthy aesthetic recluse, mundanely dystopian AI. And as spare translucent noir, I enjoyed it.

Compelled to return to the frontlines of madness, clawing for oblivion in the face of evils and devils, a glint of compassion and sanity from another human sharing the experience. Deftly haunting storytelling.