Moar Selmy.

Moar "mummer's farce."

"The Ugly Little Girl"

Just like me fr

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18017207

I heard a lot of praise for Bulgakov's oeuvre in the past, so I decided to give it a go.

I have read Russian literature in the past by recommendation of family and friends who always showed much interest in it; be it Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov or Pushkin.

But recently I noticed that knowledge of Russian literature virtually stops at the onset of the revolution. When it comes to the Soviet era, there is a sort of intentional silence regarding the literature of that time, at least in the West and its colonized peripheries. Anecdotally, I once had a conversation with my mother during which she claimed that the Soviet period was a dark time to be living in Russia. When I asked her what's the basis of her statement, she said this is based on the novels she read, citing Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The awkward smile on her face after telling her that these authors died decades before the revolution was priceless; bless her heart, but I am digressing.

When a few exceptions of Soviet literature emerge out of the iron curtain, it turns out to be some anticommunist rambling, just like Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.

Considering the critical acclaim, it feels wrong to say that I found it to be average. Was I supposed to cheer for the devil and his retinue as they terrorize Moscow? Maybe it's my ideological orientation which prevents me from fully engaging with the novel, and I'm alright with that. Though I did enjoy the chapters narrating Pontius Pilate's encounter with Yeshua Ha-Nozri.

Anyhow, was Soviet literature ever popular? Did it die out after the collapse of the union? Or has it always been curtailed in the West?

Check it out.

Get the first book from your local library or for free as well from Z Library (PDF version).

First book in the series is A Game of Thrones.

Check it out.

Start with A Game of Thrones, Book 1 of A Song of Ice and Fire, and then go from there.

I have my mechanical keyboard attached to my tablet so I'm able to type again without the screen, even if I don't have my computer.

Take care, folks.

Start here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PKNG8t-XPho&list=PLMLTM7CoBZvIs5vNnwL3Ee25qbyudFda4&index=1&t=3s&pp=iAQB

You can also get A Game of Thrones from your local library; best to patronize it while they're under attack by the right-wing.

Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman is what I'll be exploring.

Anyone want to read along with me?

tværpostet fra: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4611140

I loved this book just as much as Leviathan Wakes. 9/10. I would highly recommend this to anyone who's a fan of science fiction, and his read Leviathan Wakes

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4150047

Just helping someone out.

I'm reading a copy of Che's Bolivian Diary printed by Pathfinder. It's got a lot of really great supplemental information in it.

I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning about the Soviet Union, their trade unions, their working conditions, their technology, or what life was like for visitors.

The best way I could describe Uruguayan Journalist Eduardo Galeano's book is that it's a poetical obituary of the art of soccer. As the author writes in the first lines, “the history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots. In this fin de siècle world, professional soccer condemns all that is useless, and useless means not profitable.”

Galeano recounts the development of the sport from its ancient roots, its bourgeois upbringings in the modern age, through its proletarisation and to its eventual commercialisation by the global market. The history of soccer is one of those few instances whose origins are less grim than their present actuality.

The fact is that professional players offer their labor power to the factories of spectacle in exchange for a wage. The price depends on performance, and the more they get paid the more they are expected to produce. Trained to win or to win, squeezed to the last calorie, they are treated worse than racehorses.

Soccer in the chaotic 20th century turned from an innocent sport into a profitable and equally shady industry milked to its last bit by bureaucrats, merchants and corporations. Players are owned and sold and disposed of like slaves in plantations. The profession being shaped by the entertainment industry, the common man fails to regard the soccer player (or of any other mainstream sport for that matter) as a worker with labour rights, and the international bureaucracy tries its best to maintain the status quo.

The machinery of spectacle grinds up everything in its path, nothing lasts very long, and the manager is as disposable as any other product of consumer society.

But, despite the chronological narration, this is no history book, far from it. The passion and vividness in which the author describes some of most iconic plays from around the world, old amd new, capture a beaty that no camera or TV screen can ever catch.

To Galeano, soccer is an art; the players are performers; and the stadium is a theatre. He denounces the mechanical vocabulary employed by the critics and commentators: the players of the Argentine club River Plate couldn't be a "Machine" when they had so much fun they'd forget to shoot at the goal; the 1974 world cup Dutch team nicknamed "Clockwork Orange" was more of a jazz band.

The reader throughout the book ceases to be simply a spectator. No, he is now bonding with the fatigued striker, the goalkeeper criminalised by the fans, the distressed referee, the suicidal star and so on.

Galeano remains very much aware that sport cannot be detached from the politics of our age. To some fans, especially in South America,

The club is the only identity card [they] believe in. And in many cases the shirt, the anthem, and the flag embody deeply felt traditions that may find expression on the playing field but spring from the depths of a community’s history.

”Soccer and fatherland are always connected, and politicians and dictators frequently exploit those links of identity.” The championship is a national pride, countries host the world cup to bleach the regime's record of oppression, wins are offrances to the monarch or the tyrant.

Being a Uruguayan, the author shifts the spectacle of soccer from the European pitches to the South American turf, breaking the mythological narrative of European dominance and superiority in a sport that had no meaning before the Brazilian Mulattoes Friedenrich and Pelé, the Argentine Di Stéfano, the grandsons of slaves Gradín and Delgado, all dabbled with the ball.

The game of soccer was and still is the source of happiness and glimmer of hope for the youth of the world. As for the professional sport, we must mourn its beautiful past and cry on the cold body that is shamelessly called “soccer.”

I recently finished the Epic of Gilgamesh, and I'm starting a collection of poems by Rumi.

I've previously read Cold Mountain by Han Shan.

Are there any other ancient poets/poems with published work that you'd recommend?

I'm looking for things that are:

• Basically as old as possible
• Poetic/mystic
• Not Christian (or Western, Greek, or Roman).

Thanks!

It was a really good read. The main character is a such a breathtakingly massive hater.

I have made what I believe to be the first reflowable version of "This Soviet World" by Anna Louise Strong.

This book is incredibly fucking good. READ IT. (please)

Download my EPUB version: https://comlib.encryptionin.space (or https://archive.org/details/this-soviet-world-anna-louise-strong)

"For us who are determined to break the back of colonialism, our historic mission is to authorize every revolt, every desperate act, and every attack aborted or drowned in blood."

I just finished it today. It was very interesting to read of the lives and traditions of the Ibo people, and it was very sad to see them begin to be destroyed by the colonial machine.

"He of whom they have never stopped saying that the only language he understands is that of force, decides to give utterance by force. In fact, as always, the settler has shown him the way he should take if he is to become free. The argument the native chooses has been furnished by the settler, and by an ironic turning of the tables it is the native who now affirms that the colonialist understands nothing but force."

Are there any books you've seen recently that you're curious about, or anything that you haven't quite decided if you want to start?

A comrade has provided a presumably more long-lived link here.
On my Kobo Clara 2E, putting them all in .kobo\screensaver\ causes the reader to load a random image every time I turn it off. Probably works very similar for other Kobo readers.
Non-permanent links: link1 link2 link3. If all the links are dead at some point, I can upload again.

Honestly stolen from Paperback Paradise, @paprbckparadise@twitter, paperback-paradise@tumblr

Goodreads link.

A different take on war. The most relevant 25% of the excerpt is in bold:

"I have volunteered," their octospider friend said, "to negotiate personally with the human leaders in an attempt to stop this conflict before it escalates into full-scale war. To accomplish this, however, I must Obviously have some help. If I suddenly appear in the camp of the human soldiers, they will kill me. Even if they do not, they will have no way of understanding what I am telling them. So some human who understands our language must accompany me to translate my colors or there's no way that a meaningful dialogue can be started."

After Richard and Nicole told the Chief Optimizer that they had no disagreement with the basic concept proposed by Archie, the two humans and their octospider colleague were left alone to discuss the details. Archie's idea was straightforward. Nicole and he would approach the camp near the Cylindrical Sea together and would request a meeting with Nakamura and the other human leaders. At that meeting Archie and Nicole would explain that the octospiders were a peace-loving species who had no territorial claims on the north side of the Cylindrical Sea. Archie would request that the humans withdraw from their camp and cease their overflights. If necessary, as a token of the goodwill of the octospiders, Archie would offer to supply quantities of food and water to help the humans through their current difficulties. A permanent relationship between the two species would be established and a treaty drafted to codify the agreement.

"Jesus," Richard said after he finished translating Archie's comments. "And I thought Nicole was an idealist!"

Archie did not understand Richard's remark. Nicole patiently explained to the octospider that the leaders of New Eden were not likely to be as reasonable as Archie was assuming. "It is entirely possible," Nicole said, to stress the danger of what Archie was proposing, "that they will kill us both before we are ever allowed to say anything."

Archie kept insisting that what he was proposing was bound to be accepted eventually because it was clearly in the best interests of the humans living in New Eden.

"Look, Archie," Richard responded in frustration, "what you said is just not correct. There are many human beings, including Nakamura, who do not give a shit what is good for the colony. In fact, the common welfare is not even a factor in the subconscious objective function, to use your terms-, that governs their behavior. All they care about is themselves. Every decision is weighed in terms of whether or not it will increase their own personal power or influence. In our history, leaders have often destroyed their own countries or colonies in attempts to retain their power."

The octospider was stubborn. "What you are describing just cannot be true in an advanced species," Archie insisted. "The fundamental laws of evolution clearly indicate that those species whose primary value is the welfare of the group will outlast those in which the individual is supreme. Are you suggesting that human beings are an aberration of some kind, a freak of nature violating a fundamental—"

Nicole interrupted. 'This is all very interesting, you two," she said, "but we have some more pressing business. We must design a plan of action that has no pitfalls. . . . Richard, if you don't like Archie's plan, what do you suggest?"

Richard reflected for several seconds before speaking. "I believe that Nakamura has committed New Eden to this action against the octospiders for many reasons, one of which is to preclude criticism of the domestic failures by his government. I do not think he will be dissuaded from his course unless the citizens are overwhelmingly against the war, and, I'm sorry to say, I don't think that will happen unless the colonists are convinced the war will be a disaster."

"So you think threats are necessary?" Nicole said.

"As a minimum. What would be perfect would be a demonstration of military might by the octospiders," Richard said.

"I'm afraid that's impossible," Archie commented, "at least under the current circumstances."

"Why?" Richard asked. 'The Chief Optimizer spoke with confidence about winning any war that might occur. If you were to attack and utterly destroy that camp—"

"Now it is you who do not understand us," Archie said. "Because war, or any conflict that can result in deliberate deaths, is such a nonoptimal way of resolving disputes, our colony has very strict regulations governing concerted hostile actions. Controls are built into our society to make war absolutely the solution of the last resort. We have no standing army and no stockpile of weapons, for example. And there are other restraints as well. All optimizers participating in a decision to declare war, as well as all octospiders engaging in an armed conflict, are immediately terminated after the war."

"Whaaat?" said Richard, not believing his translator. "That's not possible."

"Yes, it is," Archie said. "As you can imagine, these factors significantly deter our participation in nondefensive hostilities. The Chief Optimizer knows that she signed her own death warrant two weeks ago when she authorized the beginning of war preparations. All eighty of the octospiders now living and working in the War Domain will be terminated when this war is either concluded or the threat of war has officially passed. ... I myself, since I was part of the discussions today, will be placed on the termination lists if war is declared."

Richard and Nicole were speechless. "The only possible justification for war to an octospider," Archie continued, "is an unambiguous threat to the very survival of the colony. Once that threat is identified and acknowledged, our species undergoes a metamorphosis and prosecutes the war, without mercy, until either the threat is obliterated or our colony has been destroyed. Generations ago, some very wise optimizers realized that those individual octospiders who were engaged in killing, and the design of killing, were so psychologically altered by their experiences that they became a significant detriment to the operation of a peaceful colony. That's why the termination codicils were enacted."

What did you think? Is it worthwhile picking up?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekonomics