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why am i unsurprised that dilbert's cat bears an uncanny resemblance to von ribbentrop.

Just finishing 3 Body Problem.

It's okay. I like the somewhat unique premise and the sci-fi-ness of it all, but I usually read non-fiction so I'm not losing my load over it and probably won't read the others in the series.

general reaction in the discipline for that economics nobel was a lot of head-scratching i think. it’s generally a bad sign when economists start doing history or political economy. they end up recycling a lot very obvious and already stated material from the other fields but in that specially vatic and silly way that economists have when they’re pronouncing on things they just made up 20 minutes ago as if they’re iron laws of nature.

Last edited by uziq (2024-12-03 16:58:46)

Economists seem a weird lot - banks generate money, debt isn't real, very strange

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

From the little I've read so far, it seems like the authors are forcing their viewpoint to go through a very specific lense that i have major gripes with (that being the New Institutional Economics lense) to come to their conclusions. It sounds the same alarm bells in my head that a lot of macro-economic philosophy raises - the desire to retcon how and why institutions form, the insane idea that people are rational actors, and the clunky way a lot of economists try to tiptoe between philosophy, economic theory, and statistics.

I'll still give it a chance, but something tells me it won't be as intellectually stimulating as some of the other books I've read in this area.

i’ve just seen a video interview with the leader of the (probably definitely jihadist) rebels in syria, and he’s citing this book and talking incessantly about institutions. we live in a very strange post-postmodern time.

as a tale about the dangers of economists overreaching their ken and doing bad historical analysis, this one is a little too on the nose. bunch of people razing syria to the ground with acemoglu/robinson tucked under their arms.

because the manner of reading a book required to become radicalised is fundamentally at odds with being educated.

it puts me in mind of a phrase i'd repeatedly direct at jay: "a little learning is a dangerous thing".

genuinely well-read and educated people can integrate the 'radicalising' material they are consuming into a wider epistemic framework. they can balance and cantilever it against other things they have read, synthesise it with their own views and experiences, instead of consuming it whole cloth with the monomaniacal focus of the recent convert.

i was being facetious with the comments about the acemoglu/robinson material, which is clearly of a different kind from the jihadist literature normally in the syrian rebel leadership's must-have fashionable tote bags. but it's the same thing inasmuch as it's a 'modish' book that regular economists groan at. anybody familiar with the scholarship or widely read in that field would be able to take those books for what they are, as opposed to becoming fervent disciples. cf. mostly dim tory politicians getting excited about hayek, or american neoconservatives talking about ayn rand.

people who study theology in seminaries or divinity schools don't tend to be the ones blowing themselves up. it's always some disaffected shut-in or psychological case, or a rube taken away from working the plough. the actually educated imams and clerical class know what they're doing.

Last edited by uziq (2025-02-01 07:43:14)

in the sense that all the propaganda wants you to believe china is a bugrace, but actually they're deeply sensitive souls with a more advanced civilisation than the west, then yes.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2ptIxR8hDWM

Last edited by uziq (2025-03-31 03:42:18)

in heinlein's anal-retentive STEM nerd crypto-fascist worldview, yes.

verhoeven had the better idea, growing up during ww2 in a country actually obliterated by fascism.

Last edited by uziq (2025-03-31 04:57:14)

he was essentially a jay. institutionalised and sculpted by the military-industrial complex, 'serving' as the equivalent of an IT guy.

then wrote a bunch of crypto-fascist power fantasy books for crew-cut repressed nerds who couldn't make sense of life outside of the suckling teet of the military.

bad writer, actually! not good!

Finally reading for pleasure again.

I am doing two books at once. "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and "War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust."

I was given the Holocaust book as a gift from the a friend on an academic commission for the Holocaust.

I went to Barnes and Noble and bought two more World War 2 books. "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "Panzer Commander" by Heinz Guderian.

I also bought the novel 2666 and blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

4 books came out to guess
Spoiler (highlight to read):
$90

both novel choices are very good, if a little bit too archetypally 'dude lit' taken in aggregate. very much the novel equivalent of having a fight club movie poster on your dorm wall. still, two incredible texts. read a renata adler novella from the new york review of books editions next as penance.

blood meridian is one of the great american novels of last century. art doesn't have to be wish-fulfillment or superhero power fantasies.

you read it for the biblical language and certain tone, the Miltonic lyricism and powers of imagination, and for the memorable characters. not to feel good about the 'what' of its depiction. humanity does terrible shit. spend time in the imaginative space of our monstrosity !!!!

Last edited by uziq (2025-05-12 11:18:04)

KJ goes woke !!!

good book.