Heidi > Recent Status Updates

Starting strong with a critique of Rousseau & Hobbesian version of pre-history.

Enjoyable, but just as I get a feel for the characters the story jumps on to a new set.

This book is already winning points over most business books because it emphasizes that competence as an important starting feature.

She's just described headphones and phones as separation devices causing city dwellers loneliness, but she neglected to mention cars for everybody else!

Right now she's diagnosing the tricks of language and community building being used by right wing parties to divide countries.

Timely, depressing diagnosis of where we are and how we got here but also showing how we can maybe get out of here.

Re: debt as enslavement/enclosure, individualization & shaming of people thrown into debt for necessities of life. Targeting the previously non-economic social networks and sharing of women particularly. Intentionality of the localized shame by globalized elites who profit from it.
Ongoing nature of enclosures, world bank demands removal of monetary sovereignty, trad. commons, austerity.

10% into the Introduction and I'm already thinking of a CEO skill set that includes "convincing/forcing people to work for starvation wages"

Just finished the first essay, and wow. I'm looking forward to diving into the rest of the book, and am already looking up people she references and adding more books to the to-read pile.

Ooph, that's a rough start. Trigger warning for the first chapter for sure.

so far good facts but he just went from talking about how city water managers tend to do barely the minimum and corporate interests were incorrect about the science of percolate and then he talks about this as if independent scientific boards would solve deciding whether something should be regulated. Is he assuming academics? The experts in the field would be the same water managers and corporate scientists...

Interesting listening to an essay that takes pride in the Sunrise Movement's 2018 occupation of Nancy Pelosi's office. I looked at photos - they were respectful, apparently even allowing people to work while crowding into every space.

Listening to the audiobook so I can't tell the spelling of that contributors name. It was a poem called November and it was following a touching essay. Several good essays & short pieces so far. The Libby app makes it hard to find table of contents/chapter endings, which is unfortunate when I just want to start the piece over again.

Overall interesting so far, interesting how home economics and political economy were so much more tightly viewed in the early USA. Some interesting parallels around the civil war, with an underwhelming mixed cross section of the Whig party got split by one issue and turned into several other parties. Also, how slaves as capital/collateral created additional pressure to expand slavery, similar to oil leases now.

Everytime I read this I'm brought to a state of peace and love. Necessary right now.

Interesting how he looks at surveillance of protests as a deterrent to first amendment right to peacefully assemble.. it brings up all kinds of thoughts. Does that mean surveillance of peaceful organizers(thinking of various Black liberation groups) is in itself a rights violation before they've even made the arrest or especially if they haven't made an arrest? Also, maybe I need more privacy screens for my yard.

This is exactly the book for my mental health at the moment.

This book needs a trigger warning - it starts with a discussion of Sandra Bland and quickly moves through Montezuma, the CIA and Hitler. Not exactly a pleasant distraction from the sucky world outside.

"If not being subject to an eternally vigilant network of cameras every time I walk down a street means that I might occasionally have an infinitesimally higher chance of being mugged or assaulted, I'll accept that risk." He's speaking from the community least at risk of being mugged or assaulted. I'm not sure I disagree with him, but his dismissal rankles. Contrarian: sexual assault conviction rate is troubling.

Fundamental disagreement with this approach "Built into any humane system of laws is a contradiction. On one hand, we want laws to be enforced fairly and objectively. It offends our sense of justice when one person gets away with something for which another is punished. On the other hand, we want some space for disobedience." He resists surveillance bc endangers disobedience vs resistance to unnecessary obedience.