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Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Fri Sep 25, 2015 12:30 am
by jlane
Reading "Disrupting Digital Business" by Ray Wang @rwang0

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:03 pm
by pmahnn
jlane wrote:Reading "Disrupting Digital Business" by Ray Wang @rwang0

Read the summary on amazon, seems like another bullshit money grab. Then read the first review on the page:
Very elementary. Not a lot of content. Lots of contemporary terminology that is used by public speakers but no one else. Feels like made up words for old concepts to make it sound fresh and hip. No explanations. Think - flashy young conference speaker who gets you all fired up with cool new stuff only for you to realize later that he didn't actually say anything of substance.

What's your take?

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 12:41 pm
by Lox
I am also reading Stephen King, but this time its On Writing. I'm not a fiction writer, but it helps to understand how the technical aspects of prose interact with the storytelling.

Also... 'disrupting' is SHRN. Digital was the disruptor, NOW ITS THE DISRUPTED. Oh how the tables have turned.

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 2:12 pm
by skav
The World Until Yesterday.

Jared Diamond does anthropology. It's interesting to read compared to his previous two books. He definitely toned back his habit of overstating his narrative without supporting it but still doesn't do much service to what might be considered controversial assumptions. Much more conversational since a lot of it so far is rooted in Diamond's work in New Guinea back in the day.

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 10:59 pm
by ScreamingMedic
Playing tf2 on a my little ponies server I mean shobogenZo and a tale for the time being

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 9:26 am
by toivo
mostly just reading and re-reading and re-reading the new book- Challenging Theocracy: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics - for typos, due Nov.1. Islamic, Christian, and Judaic sources are covered, but my favourites are pagan myth and philosophy- pseudo-Apollodorus, Plato, Homer, Hesiod, Aristotle. trying to interpret texts that don't exist, thinking about the best kept secrets of western civilization- the Dionysian and Eleusinian Mysteries - outlier gods from the Olympian pantheon. all that is deep wears a mask.

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 11:50 am
by Lox
You read that shit backwards to catch the typos?

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 11:14 pm
by toivo
Lox wrote:You read that shit backwards to catch the typos?

i am accustomed to reading left to right, just going with the words until something goes off, and my mind doesn't like the formulation or flow.

i fear we have not gotten rid of god, because we still have grammar.

the last book:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2015/10/23/book-review-the-question-of-peace-in-modern-political-thought-edited-by-toivo-koivukoski-and-david-edward-tabachnick/

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 5:07 pm
by Lox
Devil in the details... lol.

The book on peace seems interesting but I think global politics would look a lot different if we actively sought peace instead of avoiding conflict or accepting conflict of we think we can win. Aikido v judo on the global scale.

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 5:10 pm
by skav
What would actively seeking peace look like though? It seems like a necessarily weak position.

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 5:30 pm
by Lox
How about moving quickly to policy that promotes peaceful outcomes rather than just looking out for your own interests and then protecting those interests from threats?

Like I said, it would be a massive paradigm shift. It only seems weak because we know that under our current way of thinking, this behavior opens you up to be exploited. You win this round, tribalism.

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 7:27 pm
by toivo
tribalism could win this, starting with a love of one's own, and seeing parities with other identities. most of the tribes i've encountered, i've liked at least halfway.

i think the weakness of peace studies has historically been in the easy pivot to the study of violence and armistices. what seems possible now is to consider what peace would look like day to day in terms of human security, rather than as the security of states, with violence prevention focused on the people who get hurt when crime happens. war is the crime that contains all other crimes within it. like zombies and their appetite for brains.

peace would mean establishing the conditions of voluntary consent.

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Tue Nov 03, 2015 7:28 pm
by Betty
Re-reading Tom Clancy's "Command Authority" and Miranda Carter's "George, Nicholas and Wilhelm" for personal reading.

Plus lots of depressing statistics for the research paper I'm writing (I'm back in school).

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Wed Oct 17, 2018 5:09 pm
by toivo
Preparing to re-read Rousseau right now; one has to love a thinker who admits in a preface that the notes are pretty much just random afterthoughts, contribute nothing to the logic of the essay, and are probably not worth reading.

Why would one even start writing, if you were to open up with 'Don't bother reading this'?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men"

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 4:06 pm
by FreeHueco
The best books I've read (okay, actually I listened to the audiobooks) recently were Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari.

These are both books that made me at least think while listening to them. That's more than I can say about most books.

Re: books and shit

PostPosted: Sat Oct 27, 2018 5:03 pm
by Lox
goddamn sapiens is everywhere