Jonathan Vincent > Recent Status Updates

"Now St. Hilarion Castle was a stronghold of the Turkish community... And the next morning it was a Turkish police sergeant who prevented me from walking. 'You're entering a military area. You must take a lift."

Genuinely crazy that basically the exact same thing happened to me at the same place, like 50 years later. I think based on his description I even know what part of the road he was on

"The city was founded by the Spartans of Praxander and was famous for its homosexuals."

Well okay then

Haven't started yet, but I'm already confused why the cover talks about seven plagues when there were quite famously ten.

You are a door to an existence she does not desire, but even if the room beyond is repugnant, that door has won a portion of her affection.

"Masha had begun work at sixteen and studied for a degree at the same time. She had long brown hair that fell in skeins, and beautiful teeth."


That's a description of his wife 😅 What an odd choice

"We will beat the Chechens to a pulp so that the present generation will be too terrified to fight Russia again. Let Western observers come to Grozny and see what we have done to our own city so that they may know what may happen to their own towns if they get tough with Russia. But you know in 20-30 years a new generation of Chechens will grow up.. and we'll have to smash them again."

Chief of staff of the R. army

Random thing, but as violence against the British gets started in Cyprus, all the officials immediately draw parallels to Palestine and fear that will be the endgame. I never really considered how 1945-48 in Israel/Palestine looked from a British perspective, but for the officials in the colonial office it seems to be a humiliating defeat (which, fair assessment). Interesting parallel.

The moment of appropriation targeted the beneficiaries of the old order. In doing so, it tended to unify the victims. In contrast, the moment of redistribution disaggregated this latter group- because it created out of this group the beneficiaries of the new order.

In it's motivation and construction, I argue that the Rwandan genocide needs to be understood as a natives' genocide. It was a genocide by those who saw themselves as sons and daughters of the soil, and their mission as one of clearing the soil of a threatening alien presence.

The dedication:

"For Zohran"

Lucky bastard gets to be mayor and gets a book dedication 😤

"I did it because it meant a pleasant ride across a charming landscape and partly because it was another head to add, American-like, to my collection of places visited..."

This guy is an encyclopedia of old and random stereotypes

"This book is dedicated to my ten Nazi friends"

🤨

Interesting first line

I think this is the first thing I've ever read that takes the Metaverse seriously

"One of the rebel groups [in Syria] was an Islamist outfit, Jabhat al-Nusra... Its leader was a Syrian who had fought the Americans in Iraq after 2003."

It really says a lot about the unexpectedness of Assad's fall that a book written only a few years ago gives the current president of Syria one line, and doesn't even say his name.

Just to start, I absolutely love this cover.

The activities and pressures of the authorities began to be felt more openly in the town... At first they had paid attention to who did what and how he behaved, and now they inquired about who thought what and how he expressed his opinions.

For those who rule and must oppress in order to rule must work according to reason; and if, carried away by their passions or driven by an adversary, they go beyond the limits of reasonable action, they start down the slippery slope and thereby reveal the commencement of their own downfall. Whereas those who are downtrodden and exploited make equal use of their reason and unreason for they are but two different...

Speech from a government official to the town:

"It is more than likely that you have heard tales about me even before I came here and I know without asking that those tales could not have been pleasant or favourable. Probably you have heard that I demand work and obedience from everyone, and that I will beat and kill anyone who does not work as he should and does not obey without argument...

And everywhere were sheepish smiles of a peculiar sort. The smiles spoke of sheep who, under proper conditions, could commit murder gladly.

I see the day coming when ceremony must take the place of faith and symbolism replaces morality.

The City 4/5

How long will my mind endure this slow decay?
Wherever I look, wherever I cast my eyes,
I see all round me the black rubble of my life
Where I've spent so many ruined and wasted years

I can't quote it fully here, but this is such a harsh poem. The lines about are said by another and the narrator responds with, basically, "It'll be no different anywhere else, because the person there will be YOU."

Here lies a toppled god
His fall was not a small one
We did but build his pedestal
A narrow and a tall one

Father Edeux could imagine just what kind of bishop Monsignor would be. His reign would be a wise one, excessively so. His mind was made up on everything, excessively so. He would know how to avoid the snares set in the path of the just man, avoid them, too, in good taste and good conscience.

Everyone blamed everything on them, everyone knew that they would cause trouble. He even knew from experience what they were like. But who were they?

"Who are they?" Bill asked.

"They are everyone who wants to be one of them," Deathwish said. "They are both a state of mind and an institution... They die off and are replaced, but the institution of they-ness goes on."

Yuu smoothly explained my husband's sudden absence, replacing the provocative word "incest" with other words such as "work."

Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.

Being loved comes at a price, unless we are utterly without conscience.

A complex civilization like ours is necessarily based on the individual's adjusting himself to changes whose cause and nature he cannot hope to understand: why should he have more or less, why should he have to move to another occupation, why some things he wants should become more difficult to get than others, will always be interconnected with such a multitude of circumstances that no single mind will be able to...

Probably it is true that the very magnitude of the outrages committed by the totalitarian governments, instead of increasing the fear that such a system might one day arise in more enlightened countries, has rather strengthened the assurance that it cannot happen here.

Other sources indicate that for every ton of gold in Kolyma that was extracted, 700-1000 lives were lost in the process.