#newbook They began as makers of electronic organs and pianos. Then they made the natural leap into building exact simulacra of famous people, made to order. To befriend and utilise for any purpose someone wanted… What could go wrong? Surprisingly it’s something to do with colonising the moon. #books #scifi #bookstodon
Music is my lifeline. That's one big reason I make playlists to accompany some of my books...
#music #playlist #books #reading
https://donutsdesires.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-tragic-coolness-playlist.html
SECRET. He has been let into the secret: he has been cheated at gaming or horse-racing. He or she is in the grand secret, i.e. dead.
A selection from Francis Grose’s “Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue” (1785)
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#books #literature #dictionaries #history #society #language #slang @histodons
New evidence that #BookBans backfire.
https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mksc.2024.0716
"We find that the circulations of banned books increased by 12%, on average, compared with comparable nonbanned titles after the ban. We also find that banning a book in a state leads to increased circulation in states without bans…Books with higher visibility on social media following the ban see an increase in consumption."
PS: It's not clear how much book bans would backfire without protests and publicity. But it's now clear that protests and publicity help them backfire. Keep it up.
A book review that says: "The end of capitalism – or the end of civilization? The choice could be that stark."
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Herrmann argues that there is no choice other than radical and seemingly unimaginable change if we are to survive in anything like a civilized condition: “There is no alternative for the industrialized countries. Either they end growth voluntarily, or the era of growth will end violently, when everything that forms the basis of our way of life has been destroyed.”
There is no doubt that unmitigated climate change and environmental degradation will transform our lives and the political systems that circumscribe them. By the time they do, it may be too late to do anything useful, other than keep a lid on social breakdown. It won’t necessarily be the end of the world, but it may be the end of any human civilization worthy of the name.
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FULL REVIEW -- https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-capitalism-or-the-end-of-civilisation-the-choice-could-be-that-stark-250922
GET THE BOOK -- https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-end-of-capitalism-why-growth-and-climate-protection-are-incompatible-and-how-we-will-live-in-the-future/7f61983f99d22db3
Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Why She Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”
From the Penguin Classics Collection “Twelve Stories by American Women”
https://lithub.com/charlotte-perkins-gilman-on-why-she-wrote-the-yellow-wallpaper/
The Yellow Wallpaper at PG
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1952
#OTD in 1885.
Bolesław Prus's, The Outpost, begins serialization in the Polish illustrated weekly, Wędrowiec.
Its specificity was influenced by two trends: naturalism and realism. The main themes of the work are German colonization in Polish lands, a study of the life of the peasant in the 2nd half of the 19th century and his struggle to keep the land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outpost_(Prus_novel)
Bolesław Prus at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/25958
A city at peace in a world at war. ‘The Stockholm Run’ is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland and Sweden during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.
Cairnpapple Hill offers one of the best viewpoints in central Scotland. It was excavated in 1947/8 and looked very different to this modern photograph when visited by the book’s two central characters in 1943.
Find out more on our website:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-tsr/index.html
The Streisand Effect is in full force now with "Careless People," Sarah Wynn Williams' memoir about her time as director of global public policy at Facebook — the book is now at No. 3 on Amazon's bestsellers list. Former colleague Katie Harbath, who was Facebook's public policy director for global elections, recalls things differently to Wynn Williams, and says the book is "riddled with factual inaccuracies and exaggerations." Here's her post, "Careless People is Careless," on her Anchor Change Substack. "For those who didn’t work at the company or with Sarah, this book is a page-turner," she says. "Meta choosing to seek arbitration to block Sarah’s ability to promote it helps feed the intrigue for what is in it. (It is also ironic for Meta to be complaining about her not fact-checking the book when they just got rid of their fact-checking program.)"
#Books #Bookstodon @bookstodon #CarelessPeople #SarahWynnWilliams #StreisandEffect #Meta #Facebook
"Fukuyama says over and over in the duology that nothing in his #books should indicate that societies are condemned by #history. But reading his work, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how this could not be the case." https://www.liberalcurrents.com/fukuyama-fails-to-answer-the-basic-questions-of-liberal-political-theory/
The Age of Wonder Meets the Age of Information
What can past eras of information overload teach students about critically consuming content in the present?
By: Whitney Barlow Robles
https://daily.jstor.org/the-age-of-wonder-meets-the-age-of-information/
The Chris Hedges Report: ‘Perfect Victims’
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/03/15/the-chris-hedges-report-perfect-victims/
“Obfuscating the killer” — Mohammed El-Kurd on his new book and the kind of journalism that transforms Palestinians into humanitarian subjects, avoiding a critical discussion of Zionism as the root of the occupation and the suffering. By Chris Hedges ScheerPost…
#Politics #Books #CivilRights #Commentary #Israel #Media #Palestine #Propaganda #Racism #ChrisHedgesReport #IsraeliSettlers #MohammedElKurd #RefaatAlareer #SheikhJarrah #ShireenAbuAkleh
'A library is more than a place with books, it is a lifeline' https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg117gdky1o #Libraries #Books
