User Profile

jay Locked account

j12i@wyrms.de

Joined 2 years, 3 months ago

Contains brainfog. I admire people who have a clear definition for what each number of stars means, but I give them out purely intuitively.

This link opens in a pop-up window

jay's books

Currently Reading (View all 11)

Tony Hillerman: The ghostway (Paperback, 2002, HarperTorch)

Old Joseph Joe sees it all. Two strangers spill blood at the Shiprock Wash-O-Mat. One …

The Ghostway

A friend recommended this series for the pacing and the important role the landscape plays in the stories, which intrigued me. And it really delivered in these respects. The pacing is truly excellent, unhurried without dropping the reader. The description of the landscapes painted them well enough in my mind, without ever having been in any similar ones. The glimpses into the life and inner worlds of the protagonists were convincing and interesting. The unraveling of the mistery felt engaging and natural, despite the small red herrings.

Books I really love are usually ones that concern themselves with the big questions. This isn't that—not that it leaves them out, it's just not what the book is about. It still was a pleasure to listen to, and made me think about how I acquired this taste and how useful it is at my present point in life.

I listened to …

avatar for j12i jay boosted

I think the most interesting part for me is to analyze a little how this book positions AI compared to other books in the genre.

I don't know if this is just my own bias (and aversion to techbros), but there's something about this version of AI in this book that seems like it's meant to be an extension of LLM airquotes AI hype. It's something about the wording of "when AI began participating in creative tasks" that twigs that feeling for me. There's almost nothing here about sentience or consciousness. AI is both simultaneously a critical focus of the book while also relegated to the background.

We're told that AI has "worked magic on municipal planning and administration freeing the world of poverty" (citation needed). The book mentions one-off forensic evidence of "companies [that] were created by AI that emerged organically from global networks" but that's the last we …

avatar for j12i jay boosted
Emma Braslavsky: Erdling (German language, 2023, Suhrkamp)

Emma Erdling ist notorisch pleite. Nur dank der Unterstützung ihrer kinderlosen Großtante konnte sie sich …

Thomas lachte kurz auf und schüttelte den Kopf. "Für den Freund der Aufhellung behalten Wort und Begriff des Volkes selbst immer etwas Archaisch-Apprehensives, und er weiß, dass man die Menge nur als Volk anzureden braucht, wenn man sie zum Rückständig-Bösen verleiten will."

Erdling by  (Page 358)

Thomas Mann redet da, evtl. ein echtes Zitat aus dem Doktor Faustus

avatar for j12i jay boosted
Sophia Fritz: Toxische Weiblichkeit (Hanser)

Etwas fühlt sich falsch an: Wenn wir lächeln, obwohl wir eigentlich streiten möchten. Wenn wir …

"er konnte nichts dafür dass ich eine begegnung auf augenhöhe fast phobisch vermied und mich stattdessen permanent unterordnete, indem ich ihn idealisierte, mich für dinge begeisterte, die er mochte, keine einwände erhob und immer verständnis zeigte. meine unterordnung bestand nicht darin, dass ich mich degradierte, sondern darin, dass ich mein wesen unbewusst und intuitiv auf seinen gefallen ausrichtete. ich ahnte, was er brauchte: ob es die sanfte empathie einer guten freundin oder die emotionale distanz einer vielbeschäftigten, begehrenswerten frau war. ich konnte zehnminütige sprachnachrichten aufnehmen oder eine nachricht zwei tage lang ungelesen lassen. so oder so, ich war nicht ehrlich. nicht, weil ich ihn faktisch anlog, sondern weil es mein primäres ziel war, von ihm behalten zu werden. und dafür musste ich möglichst unproblematisch sein. ich kuratierte und zensierte mich von dem moment an, in dem ich beschloss, dass die andere person eine war, die mich lieben sollte."

Toxische Weiblichkeit by 

ding ding ding

avatar for j12i jay boosted
avatar for j12i jay boosted
Waubgeshig Rice: Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018)

"A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful rising literary voice. With winter looming, a small …

Moon of the Crusted Snow

Moon of the Crusted Snow is a story about a small, remote Anishinaabe community surviving through the beginning of an apocalypse. Power goes out, communication is down, and they turn inward to try to take care of their community, through leadership struggles, limited food, and the chaos of taking in strangers. I read this as a part of July's #SFFBookClub book.

I quite enjoyed the smaller focused story of survival here, where the outside world is at the margins. It centers a small Anishinaabe community, and about its dread and uncertainty and adaptation as everything starts to slowly unravel when winter sets in.

For me, the part that set the tone of the entire story was the conversation that Evan Whitesky has with the elder Aileen Jones, about halfway through the book. She says that there's no word for apocalypse in Ojibwe. But more than that, she says that their …

avatar for j12i jay boosted
Alexis Shotwell: Against Purity (2016)

The world is in a terrible mess. It is toxic, irradiated, and full of injustice. …

Living well might feel impossible, and certainly living purely is impossible. The slate has never been clean, and we can't wipe off the surface to start fresh -- there's no "fresh" to start. Endocrine-disrupting soap doesn't offer a purity made simple because there isn't one. All there is, while things perpetually fall apart, is the possibility of acting from where we are. Being against purity means that there is no primordial state we might wish to get back to, no Eden we have desecrated, no pretoxic body we might uncover through enough chia seeds and kombucha. There is not a preracial state we could access, erasing histories of slavery, forced labor on railroads, colonialism, genocide, and their concomitant responsibilities and requirements. There is no food we can eat, clothing we can buy, or energy we can use without deepening our ties to complex webs of suffering.

This book champions the usefulness of thinking about complicity and compromise as a starting point for action.

Against Purity by  (Page 11 - 12)

avatar for j12i jay boosted
Alix E. Harrow: The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Hardcover, 2019, Orbit)

Once we have agreed that true love exists, we may consider its nature. It is not, as many misguided poets would have you believe, an event in and of itself; it is not something that happens, but something that simply is and always has been. One does not fall in love; one discovers it.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by 

I feel so foolish to acknowledge it, but this is how it feels with Jennifer.