On Mastodon I'm @Nonya_Bidniss@mas.to I love science fiction.
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Short, fast read in which the author discusses many examples of how Trump's autocratic and fascistic impulses played out in his actions & words as well as the toadies around him. You heard about these things when he did them; Gessen discusses them in the context of the would-be autocrat's intent & desired effects.
An exhaustive recounting of pretty much every rotten thing Republicans have done to damage the U.S. politically in modern history. Ultimately as it reached the current day I stopped listening to this audiobook, as I have personally lived through the criminal Trump regime and the literal destruction it perpetrated, and I'm still watching the current malignant shenanigans of the post-Trump death cult that still calls itself the Republican party; I need no summary of it. For those interested, I think you'll find a lot of history in this book you might not have been aware of.
Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city.
Every city has …
Content warning Spoilers
A unique fantasy story of struggle against an eldritch horror by the diverse "avatars" of New York City as the city is "born" as a sentient entity. The enemy is an alien intelligence, so alien that it comes from another dimension and can't really be contemplated due to its "wrongness." Its manifestation in this world is simply: whiteness. It's a parasitic, devious, violent, very white entity who claims if it doesn't destroy this world, its own world will die. I was ok with being hit over the head with the symbolism, since sometimes I miss subtle stuff. It's been said this book is about gentrification...it seemed to me it's also about white colonization. An otherwise three-star story but I'm giving four stars for its unique ideas & world building.
From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, …
A good book if you want to know everything about information from the concept of information to the history & development of theories and technologies. A real soup to nuts book. One of the key things I learned is that information theory and all that goes into it is just not of interest to me. (shrug) But if you're into it, I bet you'll really like this book.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a book by Yuval Noah Harari, first published …
Sapiens (2011, Harper) 4 stars
(Audiobook) I already knew a lot of the content but I enjoy having it from a new perspective with a variety of new anecdotes. At some points I distinctly felt like the author's biases were coming through--in fact at some points I really questioned his ideas--but otherwise an enjoyable and informative book.
Easy reading, short book. I'm not a fan of time travel stories, they usually just get ridiculous & too hard to track. This one didn't try anything fancy and I liked the main character. Good ending. I'll probably read more in the series.
From the 2017 John W. Campbell Award Winner for Best Writer, Ada Palmer's Perhaps the …
This whole tetralogy was bizarre, excessively wordy, and generally unpleasant, all the characters and their interactions were insane, finally culminating in a drawn out death wheeze of an ending. I only finished each book including the last out of a mild fascination with "could this get worse, or will it get better?" Was the author simply playing a colossal joke?