Kavinay
“The human body only has so much air in it. You have to make it last. One plate of beans can take a year off your life. I have avoided rumbustiousness all my days. I am an old person and that means what I say is wisdom!”
“Sooner or later, every curse is a prayer.”
This isn't really a children's book which actually makes it the perfect book for children. Terry Pratchett's touch with the ongoing education of young witch Tiffany Aching is clever and delightful.
As an admirer of much of Singer's work, the most charitable view I can offer is that effective altruism has not aged well since 2015.
Singer mentions “class” several times in his examples, but in all but one case he means it in the sense of an academic lecture, rather than socio-economic strata. It's quite a telling gap he avoids but there's a constant theme in Singer's examples of virtuous altruists:
•they're are all from relatively privileged backgrounds. Access to generational wealth and connections makes the decision to live on only median national salary less harrowing.
• the concept of establishing a career in the financial sector to then pursue altruism is blind to how the industry itself immiserates the poor and needy the altruist will eventually help.
• the complete bypass of public methods of redistribution and collective action–TAXES! Singer constructs an ethical obligation without a requisite policy obligation throughout. The idea of charities redistributing altruism rather than accountable public institutions (i.e. government) is just such a bizarre neoliberalism oversight to cap it off.
In a sense, Singer is proposing effective altruism as a way to put the current structure of society towards a more ethical distribution. He invests a lot of time praising people who believe they don't need to exploit the structure anymore but issue comparatively little pressure towards an ethical obligation for a change to the exploitation underlying it. Effectively, the altruism Singer is heralding is at best a secular prosperity gospel.
Spinoza is rare amongst philosophers in how we was such a lovable weirdo. Strahern paints the picture of a deeply principled but unintentionally comic man who had to be twice locked in his room to prevent suicidal protest in the streets.
I wish Strathern's concise surveys of philosophers and their context replaced a lot of readers in undergrad courses.
Books like this are tough to read. Not because Dalrymple's writing is hard to follow or the history suspect, but rather the opposite: it's just such a clear and depressing march towards atrocity.
The running theme is Dalrymple's comparison of EIC era looting with modern sums of wealth. It helps wrap the mind around just what a tantalizing target India was for corporate looting. The tactics and escalating scale of the EIC are scrutinized in the own words of British politicians and powerbrokers and care is taken to depict the Mughal leaders whose collaboration and conflict with a corporation would decapacitate their own empire.
The only major fault would be Dalrymple's treatment of EIC Governor-general William Hastings and Shah Alam is relatively sympathetic to their openly rapacious brethren. No matter how kind their sentiment to the Indian population was compared to the likes of Clive, rampant exploitation with a kind hand is hardly redemptive. There are no heros in charge during the anarchy.
Yes!
1. Abnett is really a cut above most BL writers. He has this knack for capturing the utter ridiculous banality of the Imperium even when the humans are battling the worst evils imaginable.
2. Stuff happens! More is brought to a head (Little Horus) and greater depth is added to the lore (Primarch creation) than the last 30 or so HH books put together. The shame of it is that the entire HH line could have been this good if the main line books followed a similar packed narrative rather than going on interminably about Calth and so on.
3. Everyone's swearing now. Is this new? Did I miss something where BL relaxed on the kid friendly dialogue accompanying genocidal violence? Even Dorn swears now. It's great!
I don't really read or enjoy much fantasy anymore. With the exception of Discworld, the worldbuilding and perspectives are basically variations on a century of white men defining the field.
N.K. Jemisin's not just telling a good story with depth and layers here. She's doing it with tons of style and craft. The use of second person? That takes guts. What an amazing work.
I know Ramondelli's art isn't to everyone's tastes. But I was surprised on reread to get deep into the first story without being explicitly aware this was his work. His art's come a long way to the point where he's able to convey a lot of dynamics and emotion via his style and it's hard to imagine a brooding Sandstorm, Bludgeon or Trypticon having the same effect under someone else's brush.
You come into this book excited to learn more about shows, cartoons and movies that JMS has enriched your life with. That's all there, but the real life upbringing and family of the author is the true driving narrative of this book and every bit as compelling and shocking as any fiction ever put to screen or paper.
