Kenneth > Recent Status Updates

Old books really are a crapshoot of racism.

"Jesuit Fransisco Cabral was reluctant to go into theological details with his Japanese neophytes lest they became experts and created heresies." LMAO skill issue. "What if the people I'm preaching to on my missionary trip get better at religion than me (⁠ ⁠≧⁠Д⁠≦⁠)"

I gotta do more research on the history of the separation of church and state. What do you mean the protestant reformation normalized civic courts? There has to be a prior example.

"And so his brother had been killed, his brother who had laughed at him but who had loved him as well, loved him before anyone else thought of him at all. Sax wandered over the fractured plain, distraught – distraught at the loss of a friend a hundred and fifty-three years before. Sometimes it seemed there was no such thing as time."

"Indeed, compared to things like human history or psychology or culture, it was even somehow comforting. It was only quantum mechanics after all, something that could be modelled by mathematics." I love Sax. I've also felt this way about complex processes.

I really like Sax. He's such a quintessential Scientist Character and Robinson really explores scientific philosophy through him. The number of times I've heard someone say irl that mathematics is the language of nature!

"History was a wave that ran through time slightly faster than an individual life did, so that even when people lived to only seventy or eighty they had been behind the wave by the time they died."

"...doing everything possible to protect one’s offspring; which of course endangered all offspring, by the aggregate of individual selfish actions."

This is turning into a classic "progressive at the time, racist now." The scientists Kelvin lists and respects have a mix of white and nonwhite names, but the black woman is never explained or expounded on. Rheya has no existence beyond Kelvin but that's due to her construction. Who is Gibarian's construct? Why is she wearing what she's wearing? Was Lem describing the practices of a real African tribe, or was he exot

"For seven or eight years, the academic literature
produced a spate of assertions which although framed in polite, cautious terms, amounted to little more than insults, the revenge of a rabble of leaderless suitors when they realized that the object of their most pressing attentions was indifferent to the point of obstinately ignoring all their advances." Hilarious description.

"I know all about Gods, Captain. I know that a God that demands a child's life is not a God worth saving." Hot DAMN!

"We have been given a task to which gods are unequal, and so it is left for mortals to see to the end." Slam dunk of a line.

I knew that Ed's story was going to be really fucking sad, but goddamn.

Really like the phrase "communal mechanisms of repair"

If the scientists KNOW that the ocean can recreate objects, why did they think the guy that saw the kid was crazy? If they deliberately drop manmade objects to see how the ocean reacts why are they confused or disbelieving about the ocean reacting to a whole ass person being dropped in?

Of course the book she's drawn to read is a cookbook 🙄

"[Alonso de Nájera's] solution: a line of forts, a permanent army, the extermination of the local Indians and their replacement by more quiescent Africans." Shit man imagine rebelling so well the Spaniards give up on trying to enslave you.

Okay now he's just making up words.

I was promised complex themes and this is feeling... a bit... twee....

I'm glad that Greengrass has a grasp on who he's writing for. Sometimes in academics a concept or definition cannot be substituted with a layman term and Greengrass successfully explains each term before he drops it.

If the visitors are based on subconscious desires and generated memory what is UP with this mystery black woman? Is Lem trying to comment on fetishization?

Don't like his attitude towards women.

Man I don't care about these characters at all.

This book is sucking so much that even a genuinely plot-changing event that upsets all of my assumptions has not made me want to keep reading.

Current guesses: Anna needs to replace herself as the baby maker to escape, that's why she needs Our Protagonist (whose name I've forgotten) to be a descendant of the holler people; also the effigies are remnants of the original holler people (the small figures in the pictures); The Blood Is Thinning or something and the effigies need new baby sacrifices. Or something.

This is edging closer and closer to mediocre. Crazy that I had a nightmare about the deer creature.

Ok but WOULD an IUD protect against monster rock impregnation?

Okay, Perry is the real MVP of this all. If I'm trapped inside this machiavellian gender web I'm taking you with me. Huge bummer that we are getting Mycroft's mindfucked narration.

I love a good creepy rhyme. The standing stones are I think celtic? specifically Irish celtic design.