Jack Semancik > Recent Status Updates

Chapter 3 recounts the revolt against institutional education and religion by ministers during the Great Awakening, who sought to craft a less rationalistic (read: intellectual) form of Christianity. Simultaneously, Hofstadter notes the attempts of these same ministers to create institutions of religion and education for the rural masses living on the frontiers of the American empire, who existed without such.

After a busy few days, I’m back to reading. I’ve rounded the corner into part three, and I finally have the end of this book in my sights.

Chapter 11 attempts to depict the lives of those outside the elite classes (with as much evidence as exists for such). I especially liked the focus on the Roman taverns, dice games, and “Oracle kits” (a DIY divination kit, with pre-written questions and answers).

Chapter 7 is particularly interesting for noting the shift away from openness and oversight at Google’s AI division. This is especially clear with Google censorship of a paper detailing the energy-usage concerns of LLMs, and the impact on marginalised groups (prior to this, Google allowed their research arm to publish work with relative independence).

Chapter 8 focuses on the daily life of the Roman population during the late Republic, with an unintentional focus on the elite (because their lives are the best attested).

Elon Musk keeps featuring in each of the books I’m reading, and in each he appears as rash, naive, and prone to emotional outbursts.

I love the stream of consciousness style that this book takes on. It hooks you!

The appendix contains a reprinting of Zizek’s speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair, during which he discusses the context which gave rise to Hamas’ October 7th attack (while simultaneously condemning it, and Hamas as an organisation). The fact that this speech was given a little less than two week after 07 October 2023 led to many of the criticisms that Zizek covers in the second half of this work.

Zizek summarises his journal of thoughts on foreign policy in 2023 and 2024 by restating the need to cut off arms shipments to Israel and continue arms shipments to Ukraine, seeing the two states’ military engagements as incomparable (despite the way that many had linked them at the time). Restates a rather pessimistic view of the state of global cooperation.

Zizek litigates the various reactions to his comments on the Israel-Palestine conflict, originally made at the Frankfurt Book Fair but fanning out from there.