pdotb started reading Practicing Social Ecology by Eleanor Finley
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Practicing Social Ecology by Eleanor Finley
How can we harness society's potential to change the trajectory of the climate crisis? So many of us feel helpless …
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15% complete! pdotb has read 8 of 52 books.
How can we harness society's potential to change the trajectory of the climate crisis? So many of us feel helpless …
Fashionable and upbeat high schooler Aya loves listening to rock, but no one else seems to share her interest…until she …
Fashionable and upbeat high schooler Aya loves listening to rock, but no one else seems to share her interest…until she …
The Old English Baron is an early Gothic novel by the English author Clara Reeve. It was first published under …
Content warning canpol, racism, violence
Not a review as such, because I don't really know how to give this a star rating. It was more academic than I was expecting, though I shouldn't have been surprised given it's a university press! Among the 'highlights' was chapter 2, with a classification and partial enumeration of far-right groups in Canada. Particularly notable was its explanation of the ideology behind Diagolon, which is much more sinister than I remember from news coverage around the time of the convoy. There's some good analysis through chapters 3, 4, and 5 of how people are attracted to far-right groups and the world-view they build up. The authors see group members as rational actors, even if the underlying facts they lean on are a very one-sided view of reality, often veering into conspiratorial thinking. Chapter 6 is particularly good on the failures of PSC and CSIS, who appear stuck in a post-9/11 focus on Islamist terror and almost willfully ignore the danger of the far-right. Also good to see the authors comment on the term 'lone wolf' -- as they point out, this commonly-used expression assigns far too much 'coolness' to these individuals and is practically only ever used for white attackers -- 'lone actor' is a more helpfully-neutral term.
In February 2021 the Canadian government published a considerably expanded list of domestic terrorist entities. While some, such as Blood …
Elizabeth Bennet is Austen’s most liberated and appealing heroine, and Pride and Prejudice has remained over most of the past …
One moment, Sir Sam Vimes is in his old patrolman form, chasing a sweet-talking psychopath across the rooftops of Ankh-Morpork. …
This is the first of Pratchett's novels that I've read to the end (I've certainly tried at least one before and didn't get anywhere) and I think I understand the attraction. Vimes is a thoroughly decent chap, in a messy world, and Pratchett weaves words of wisdom into a pretty entertaining story. I'm not sure it moved me enough to hoover up the rest of his books, but I at least understand why people like him so much.
Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is a witty satire of the sentimental novel, a popular genre in …
I don't think I'd appreciated before now just how funny Austen could be. Among some highlights:
Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a favourite with any of her husband’s family; but she had had no opportunity, till the present, of shewing them with how little attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion required it. (p44).
His manners to them, though calm, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil; and on Colonel Brandon’s coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be equally civil to him. (p240)
Elinor, while she waited in silence and immovable gravity, the conclusion of such folly, could not restrain her eyes from being fixed on him with a look that spoke all the contempt it excited. It was a look, however, …
I don't think I'd appreciated before now just how funny Austen could be. Among some highlights:
Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a favourite with any of her husband’s family; but she had had no opportunity, till the present, of shewing them with how little attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion required it. (p44).
His manners to them, though calm, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil; and on Colonel Brandon’s coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be equally civil to him. (p240)
Elinor, while she waited in silence and immovable gravity, the conclusion of such folly, could not restrain her eyes from being fixed on him with a look that spoke all the contempt it excited. It was a look, however, very well bestowed, for it relieved her own feelings, and gave no intelligence to him. (p309)
Explicitly named after al Qaeda, the Base essentially fell apart after having been infiltrated by Winnipeg Free Press journalist Ryan Thorpe in 2019. The group made the most basic mistake that gangs involved in clandestine activity can make: it recruited outside its immediate social network. Intrigued by leaflets, Thorpe simply got in touch with the group via its phone number, which quickly led him to the core of the organization -- and eventually to an FBI investigation.
— The Great Right North by Stéphane Leman-Langlois, Aurélie Campana, Samuel Tanner (Page 57)
lol
Content warning canpol, uspol, fascism
Beginning in early 2017 we found that our prospective research participants seemed less reluctant to speak candidly about their adherence to far-right ideas, tactics, and networks.
— The Great Right North by Stéphane Leman-Langlois, Aurélie Campana, Samuel Tanner (Page 17)
Hmm. I wonder what was going on in the world at the time that would have made far-right groups more willing to speak openly...
We all go through times when it feels like the ground is being pulled out from under us. What we …