Old YA. The classic find a book, read a book at my parents鈥� house over the holidays. The sweat and vomit and nights of this book flashed back in everyOld YA. The classic find a book, read a book at my parents鈥� house over the holidays. The sweat and vomit and nights of this book flashed back in every chapter鈥攊t is all bodies telling鈥攁nd the bleakness, my god! Absolutely brutal. Does not give you a single hook to hang joy on. Asserting yourself is often being alone, very emptily alone....more
Cool little book that nails the eternity thought experiments that kept me from sleeping in middle school鈥攃apped, but eternal in all effect. I ran thatCool little book that nails the eternity thought experiments that kept me from sleeping in middle school鈥攃apped, but eternal in all effect. I ran that section of my brain so much that I short circuited the existential crisis light: this lets me gaze at it again.
Probably the most ambiguous piece of LDS art I鈥檝e found. Inventive in all the great ways of good SF, with much leaner and cleaner writing. Ultimately for the raised religious and currently religious, but has enough ties to an earthly life of loss and solipsistic detachment to have enough for everyone. Uses the body really well. Anyways, good book!...more
Best reading slump smasher鈥攖his is vile pulp with an unstable narrator who flies between his levels of rationalization鈥攁lmost machine like, dumping waBest reading slump smasher鈥攖his is vile pulp with an unstable narrator who flies between his levels of rationalization鈥攁lmost machine like, dumping water on a steaming engine that was pushed to the red line 3 years ago. Some great twists within the Sheriff鈥檚 framework. Mostly readable, Thompson opens up every basement nook of the English language....more
Alt titles: 鈥淭hat Really Good Sunday Times Article Done 25 Times in a Row鈥� 鈥淭he Longshoremen Really Should鈥檝e Gone on Strike and So鈥淗uh, cool: The Book鈥�
Alt titles: 鈥淭hat Really Good Sunday Times Article Done 25 Times in a Row鈥� 鈥淭he Longshoremen Really Should鈥檝e Gone on Strike and So Should Everyone Else Probably鈥�...more
Your job fragments you more than it would鈥檝e 30 years ago, but so much of the stuff that you would鈥檝e had to do 30 years ago has been taken off your pYour job fragments you more than it would鈥檝e 30 years ago, but so much of the stuff that you would鈥檝e had to do 30 years ago has been taken off your plate by technological advances鈥EIRD, HUH?
Almost no stylistic flair, but notes and readings galore and a very clean four parter. Advances in technology are generally making our jobs worse, not, or more socially alienating, while delivering very little for anyone whose income shows up on a 1099 or W-2, change my mind....more
A first glance would have this fitting in with the general revisionism of American protest politics from Occupy to Palestine, but it鈥檚 NOT that. AmeriA first glance would have this fitting in with the general revisionism of American protest politics from Occupy to Palestine, but it鈥檚 NOT that. America is correctly situated Odd West Arnstead style as the force of globalization (鈥淎mericanization鈥�), but the protests movements鈥攎ainly Occupy鈥攁re also correctly situated as nowhere near as impactful or important as the 8 highlighted here. It is so important he refuses that frame鈥攊t is intellectually honest and also sidesteps the tedious, tiring substack style American electoral culture analysis.
Anyway, I mostly agree with his takeaways here, and it feels like real bow tied on whatever tactical/strategical mish mosh came out of the new left and then the 2000s and seem to have reached their zenith about a year ago. The short of it is don鈥檛 tip over the table unless you have your people ready to reset the table, or someone who is organized (read: the military, the right) will reset it for you. The long of it isn鈥檛 too much longer but is worth reading into, with great parts about the individualizing of the Hollywood poisoned imagination (the Hong Kong stuff was so steeped in Hunger Games, Marvel, etc.) and how limiting American news media also becomes on that front as it invisible hands the stories to tell and the photos to take.
Exceptional and not-so-cleared-eye, Bevins is right in here with his interview subjects without holding them out at a cool distance or getting smugly, patronizingly close. It鈥檚 very human.
I think the factory setting of your run of the mill college educated left leaning career minded American has some very shallow horizontalist, consensus seeking, prefiguring impulses鈥擨 mean aesthetically鈥攑icked up from sort of just the blob that is easily, automatically shed for the daily life. I say this as one. I think this is very convenient for authoritarian, undemocratic, violent, what have you forces. Bevins says join a union or an org of some sort even if it鈥檚 鈥渇eeling sorta cringe鈥� and think of the long haul of the future!...more
So glad Ganz wrote this and got published, definitely stands as the best parlay from Substack newsletter into hefty book.
Every chapter works on its owSo glad Ganz wrote this and got published, definitely stands as the best parlay from Substack newsletter into hefty book.
Every chapter works on its own and the book as a whole is a great overview of post-Cold War conservative movements that coalesced and then re coalesced after the War on Terror neocon consensus put a pause on it all. The compilation doesn鈥檛 QUITE work all the way as a whole. The bridges between some chapters are tenuous and inconsistently applied, and the 鈥�2020 is just 1992鈥� conceit gets stretched a little too far and a little too cute.
The Sam Francis thesis of it all is the actual meat鈥擣rancis as prognosticator and commentator and agitator of a movement attempting to overturn the post-Depression American track that jumped from lily pad to lily pad of economic boom and popular foreign policy (WW2, Cold War ebbs and flows).
Also just great writing. Ganz lets plenty of his style shine, and the dips into newsletter casualness and loanwords keep the book chugging along.
Thanks, Know Your Enemy! Shoutout Matthew Sittman and Sam Adler-Bell....more
A film for this: The Florida Project. A late capitalist economic hellscape of parking lots and unrootedness, all propped up by a massive corporation鈥檚A film for this: The Florida Project. A late capitalist economic hellscape of parking lots and unrootedness, all propped up by a massive corporation鈥檚 increasingly soulless closed-circuit of schlock, schlock squeezed out of the craft and skill and art of the past into a new cathedral of ritual and rite. Zoom into the family unit, a mom, moms raising children, guided by the old sage Dafoe crammed into the impossible paradox of managing (job) and nurturing (calling). He must manage more! More! All of it culminates when the expert agents of the bureaucracy sweep in faceless and out of the shot: 鈥渕om, you are not it.鈥� The only thing left to escape into is the schlock.
鈥淥ur growing dependence on technologies no one seems to understand or control has given rise to feelings of powerlessness and victimization. We find it more and more difficult to achieve a sense of continuity, permanence, or connection with the world around us. Relationships with others are notably fragile; goods are made to be used up and discarded; reality is experienced as an unstable environment of flickering images. Everything conspires to encourage escapist solutions to the psychological problems of dependence, separation, and individuation, and to discourage the moral realism that makes it possible for human beings to come to terms with existential constraints on their power and freedom.鈥�
I mean, I know that sounds like lightweight resentment fodder, some turbo boost for the right wing message machine鈥攚hich it can be out of context. But culminating on the book after Lasch draws up at least half of a convincing picture that 鈥渓ate capitalism鈥檚鈥� (his words) destruction of skill, rending of the connection between past and present, and undermining of key democratic pillars in favor of new corporate control through the professional manager, themself a selfless mess of unrootedness: it hits.
Anyway, some podcast was talking about reading Lasch defensively and critically.
Defensively, the GOP has certainly spun off some of the energy here, as the core of the book is conservative in its return to the past for reference points and skepticism of progress via technology and social science. Any hot RNC summer takes that tread down Lasch are ultimately abortive, though, as their whole project is about baiting populism on the rod and reel of anti-small-d-democratic measures (not even insurrection, just like respect of community) increasingly in the service of big tech and Silicon Valley.
Critically, there was a lot here to challenge some of my simple, long held beliefs about the role of the 鈥渉elping professions,鈥� how communities wield power (he surprisingly accepts the 68 Brooklyn school board takeovers as worth it over the bureaucratic control), the role of sport, the 鈥減rogress鈥� of mass education, parents being made to feel helpless, etc. etc. Maybe the most challenging play zoomed out is the general distrust of the expert as the expert at large via management fills the vacuum of self.
But also, the enjoyment: serve me up another plate of Freud, Mr. Lasch!...more
**spoiler alert** Meryl Streep audio book is all that really matters. My favorite part is when Meryl Streep gets to narrate a character not wanting to**spoiler alert** Meryl Streep audio book is all that really matters. My favorite part is when Meryl Streep gets to narrate a character not wanting to watch Deer Hunter. Just a lot of Meryl Streep faces burned into my brain (good thing!).
Tip top summer beach read for the upper Midwest, this is also great self-insert for getting the one up on a more successful ex and convincing yourself you will be able to convince, coerce, cajole your kids into bringing you some grandkids....more
Hot RNC summer: offers a clearer look at right wing aesthetic foundations than the dated MSNBC dishes鈥攁ggressively post racial, gender ambivalent appeHot RNC summer: offers a clearer look at right wing aesthetic foundations than the dated MSNBC dishes鈥攁ggressively post racial, gender ambivalent appeals to bug hunting that revive an alleged lost sense of history, undergirded by a common sense resentment of a freeloading elite and their merry band of the weak, the dissenting, and the disrespectful. There鈥檚 more here though, as Heinlen鈥檚 concept of sweat equity citizenship via violence feels as speculative as any of the tech, maybe even more.
Troopers is ultimately interesting in scope and probably an essential part of the American cultural canon, especially as a postwar vision of nationhood that crashed in 68 and burned out completely by 72. It鈥檚 also sort of boring....more
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