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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   2619 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 8, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

Still on Future Shock, 12 Commandments and Closing of the American Mind.

Dearly Devoted Dexter. Watched the show first, which is in violation of my normal policy (of original-first unless the original is a manga), so I figured I'd read the books.

Favourite line from the first book: "Chop up the bad guys, Dexter. Don't chop up your sister."

Permutation City and my new hard copy of Xenosystems from passage press

I even got the hat with it but they released a new one:

https://passage.press/products/xenosystems-hat

Permutation City

I really loved this book. Aside from being generally interesting it felt like the guy predicted AWS in 1994, at the least.

Intelligence and Democratic Action by Frank Hyneman Knight (1960).

I was looking up if anyone had used the term "familism" to describe an ideology that orients itself around promoting the family and discovered that Frank Knight did, in that individualism should more rightly be called familism as the family is the effective basic unit of economics. Knight was one of the founders of the Chicago School of Economics, taught Milton Friedman, and is the spiritual godfather of neoliberalism. Unlike Friedman, Knight was much more pessimistic about the ability of the market to regulate itself and viewed it only as the best of a bunch of bad options. I'm finding his perspective to be refreshingly terse, straightforward, and skeptical.

Just read Starship Troopers for the first time. I loved it. I thought it was a very thought provoking exploration of what being a good citizen means. I also feel like some of the criticism the book gets is pretty bad faith. Like no, Heinlein wasn't advocating for military rule over people. No, he wasn't saying fascism is good. It just feels like people really overreact to the book sometimes.

I also loved it. I've caught a couple people calling it fascist also admitting they haven't read it. Very fun book.

Still on Future Shock? Look man, it's like 5 months that you cannot finish this book. It's starting to feel a little embarassing to read every time about your "progress" with this book, you know...

A pointless and antagonistic comment.

This is your second comment ever, so you're clearly an alt and you appear to be here only to troll.

On the off chance you actually want to participate, I'm only going to ban you for a week, but if you come back and do this again, it will be a permaban.

Reading Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland as part of an overall obsession with the Troubles.

FWIW, I'm still very interested in the subject, but haven't read that much about it in a while. I feel like I've had my fill of books about the leadership structure and decision-making of the various militias and Government departments, and what happened in all the big-name incidents. What I'd really like to read more about is the less prominent stuff, the experiences of the "little guys" on all sides and lowest-level fighters, the backstory of the lesser-known but more routine happenings that deeply affected the lives of the people involved (or ended them, of course). So far, this book seems to deliver!

Are you looking for fiction or non fiction?

I have my own stories of growing up and raising kids during the Troubles but I don't know if those are too small scale.

As an example: I have been glassed by the son of a prominent Loyalist paramilitary leader when I was younger (mistaken identity), then his Da, came to my parents house and very politely threatened that should the RUC be involved he would come back with friends. However after he learned my name, He instead promised his son would come and apologize, as my uncles were friendly with another big shot in the paras, and he wanted to smooth things over (my mothers belief of why at least).

His son did come and apologize profusely, and clearly had a black eye and split lip, so punishment of a sort had been meted out.

Certainly in small towns like the one I grew up in the paras acted as arbiters of a sort. Drug dealers back then would often be kneecapped if caught. Though nowadays what remains of the paras are more likely to be dealing themselves, than keeping their neighborhoods clean.

For smaller issues, you could look at our various flag and parade protests/riots, the Holy Cross walking to school incidents, and the demise and re-organization of the RUC into the PSNI and the contentious nature of integrated schooling, which have more day to day impacts, though are probably not as dramatic as all our bombings and shootings!

Non-fiction I'd say. Is Troubles Fiction even a thing?

That is the sort of thing I'm more interested in, thanks!

I have read about things like that going on. It seems to be a great truth that, if you as a rebel group do a sufficiently good job at booting out the Government and getting people not to trust them, then you now become the Government. People will start coming to you to resolve petty disputes and enforce order, whatever they consider that to be, and if you do a decent job at it, then you're just that much more powerful.

I'd read about the militias on both sides often spending a lot of time extorting businesses, and often even cooperating with each other on who got to shake down who, despite being technically at war with each other. Also at least the outline of reorganizing the RUC into PSNI, supposedly now with more Catholics. The efforts to integrate the schooling sounds very interesting too, though I don't know where to read much about that. It seems like the separated schooling must have been a big factor in keeping the communities split apart enough to create such a conflict in the first place.

Non-fiction I'd say. Is Troubles Fiction even a thing?

Oh yes, ranging from fictionalizations of real events (Walking to School is an example here, basically a fictionalization of the various issues kids crossing sectarian lines to get to school had, of which the Holy Cross incident in 2001 is probably the most prominent), to Across the Barricades (Romeo and Juliet but with more kneecappings) and the like. I think there is even the Iliad but with the Troubles instead of the Greek/Trojan war. Garth Ennis (writer of the Boys and Preacher etc.) has Troubled Souls and For A Few Troubles More graphic novels. For movies and TV you have Derry Girls, '71, Belfast, Omagh, etc.

Non-fiction, I'd recommend From a Clear Blue Sky, which was written by the grandson of Lord Mountbatten. As a child he survived the bombing of his grandfathers fishing boat by the Provos, but his twin did not, so it gives a perspective on traumatic events and loss. Armed Struggle by Richard English, looks more at the evolution of the IRA since the Easter Rising in 1916. Lost Lives by David McKittrick, goes over the stories of those killed, some of which are pretty mundane. Bandit Country The IRA and South Armagh is a staple for a reason.

Voice from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland is excellent all round, Families at War: Voice from the Troubles may fit your bill, though I have not read it, but it is on my list. Supposedly it looks more at the family experiences during the Troubles.

I probably could go on and on, as there is a huge amount of literature generated about the Troubles in general.

As another anecdote, my grandfather told me that he once dug up a box of rifles that had been buried in his fields by one of the Loyalist paramilitaries (probably UDA or UVF given his location), but that he was more mad about how stupid they were in burying it in the middle of a field that was obviously going to ploughed at some point, rather than burying them along the hedgeline where they would likely have been undisturbed for decades. So he marched down to the local Orange Lodge (of which he was a member) and gave off about it over a pint. Mysteriously the guns vanished overnight, with some bottles of potcheen left in their stead. That's where I got the potcheen I would give you behind your mothers back when you were sick, he said. So you can thank those lazy eejits for the hair on your chest.

I had a feeling that sentence would come back to bite me, especially since I actually wrote a movie review of '71 on the old sub about 3 years ago. I've also seen Derry Girls (feels a bit forced IMO, but okay), and read Bandit Country. Sounds like a lot of other potentially interesting things to read too, and thanks for the anecdote.

The parallels with our current culture war are part of what makes it interesting. They did seem to also have the "politicization of everything" effect - ordinary citizens who aren't particularly political for either side having to worry about the politics of the people and businesses they interact with to do mundane day-to-day things.

Derry Girls is very up and down, but the thing I think it does well is juxtapose mundane concerns with the things we get used to (soldiers searching school buses, having to cross armed checkpoints just to go to the other side of town, paramilitaries stealing cars etc, with the sometimes shocking, large bombs, shootings of someone you know etc.

I have a very vivid memory of going about my day as a kid, maybe 11 or 12 and coming home to my uncle and parents having very hushed conversations while watching the news, where a large bombing had taken place in Belfast. Then 10 minutes later i was out playing kerby with my friends. Just the things you can get used to.

Now I live in the US I am not particularly worried their Culture War will go hot. Up until recently i lived in a rural very Red town. Yet I work in academia, so almost all my colleagues are Blue. When I had bbqs or parties and those worlds collided, there was no boom. As different as they are, they are (from the pov of this outsider at least) no where near as opposed as back home. Indeed even very blue progressives are often more patriotic and God fearing than Conservatives in the UK.

I think social media and the like makes it look much worse than it is.

Wind and Truth, Brandon Sanderson

I'll leave out any detailed descriptions of the book, but I finished over the weekend. I consider it stronger than Rhythm of War, but not as great as the first two, which are still a fantastic pair of books.

A good ending for a series that isn't ending, and a great place to pause the story. It's mostly explanations of what has happened far in the past, the kinds of mysteries that he's been teasing for four books, so that was satisfying. I'm pleased with where the characters have been left, as it gives fertile ground for the back 5. I could have done without the interracial gay romance, but what can you do.

Interspecies gay romance. Yup - my opinion is like that - better than RoW, worse than the first 3,

Wait it's out!?

Yeah. Took me 13 hours to read. A nice doorstopper.

I managed to finish by midday yesterday, still not quite 13 hours. That was having read the preview chapters, too.

Welp, I know what I'm reading now.

holy shit I didn’t realize it was out thank you

Started Castles of Steel after being drawn in by @naraburn's review. I'm not sure I can swallow all 900 pages of WW1 naval history but I'll stick with it for the meantime.

Oh man do you have a link to the review? I'm very interested.

I think he meant @netstack. First post on it is here.

Starts with an N, similar length... got there in the end.

@TitaniumButterfly The two posts I'm thinking of were this one and this one. They're capsule summaries rather than full reviews but it was enough to pull me in. A similar thing happened with a random Reddit comment about The Wager, another naval history book, which is not my usual style at all. That one is about a sailing ship getting wrecked on Cape Horn and conflicting accounts of the ensuing mutinies. Worth a read, and only a standard ~350 pages.

The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch.

About halfway through it. I'm not really sure what to make of it. It feels like a book very loosely in the spirit of Godel Escher Bach, playing around with how awesome the age of science and enlightenment is.

I'm reading it because Sam Altman said it inspired him more than anything else he's read.

Relaxing progressionslop from Acaswell:

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