Jacob Blank > Recent Status Updates

Cory Doctorow, I think it’s time to run for office or at least become a tech policy consultant for politicians. Any cabinet would be lucky to have him.

It is difficult to listen to an interview with Jigar Shah that starts with a factoid brag about how he bailed out Tesla and Elon Musk to stop them from going bankrupt.

It starts to make you wonder about the long view of this book and the interviews and if they’ll end up to be a catalogue of failures.

As the prophecy fortold, I, a white man, am becoming an American history reader. This is mostly in research for a family history project as my great great great grandfather died as a POW in the American Civil War as a Union solder. Truly horrific stuff.

I will not survive this

This book is so much more than it needed to be and might be a 5 star read.

The section on taste and algorithms helped me realize that my innate distrust of content platforms and preference to own (Spotify vs bandcamp/buying from labels) and preferring not to linger on streaming services (only watching things I want to, spending excess time elsewhere), while it sometimes makes me feel disconnected, is a net positive

Had no idea she was a founding member of The Pussycat Dolls, before it became a singing group.

Can't stop listening. Cried twice. A memoir with meaning, stakes, and solid perspective.

So this book rocks in a way that is so good and cool

Details coercive abuse so honestly that I can see this book being used by advocacy groups to help people understand how the quagmire of control and lies

Certainly a leftist history of the United States

Sure!

Oh, this miserable (sad) book

Apparently a huge driver of change is the urgency of fear.

How To Love a Chainsaw

My heart dropped when I thought she was about to say her name is pronounced “Anus”

Actually kind of a fierce critique of the limits of policing, albeit completely unintentional. Glossing over violence against women and casually admitting to entrapping sick and desperate poor people into property crime is so yikes.

Why am I hanging on every word? I’m such a sap.

Okay this is really good

A slow read, a little at a time is best. Explains most concepts with lyrical care and others with an assumption that you understand the jargon. A bit transcendentally academic and takes big swings with certain points and conclusions to fit a vibe. And a vibe it is- more of an invitation to think about ecology and economy differently.

Why I’m still continuing with this book:
60% sunk cost fallacy
40% I’m curious how Choi will torture her characters next

Oh we’re back in the contemporary lit trauma mines

Like a really good episode of The X-Files

Kind of a random Libby pickup. Fairly uncomfortable. Reads like The Handjob's Tale

Interesting-enough essays on gossip from a pop feminist lens that (so far) unfortunately refuses to budge from the position that women are infallibly ethical with gossip and never operate from the position of aggressor. This is kind of a long-standing gripe I've had with the podcast- no guest ever comes on and says "yeah, actually, I was bullied a lot and gossip played a crucial part in that". Big thesis shortcoming.

Cry count: 4

Let me just take a cry walk real quick

I’m deep in the contemporary lit mines

I don’t want to strip this book of its central subject with this statement, but this is turning out to be a definitive text on the slippery tactics of white supremacy in delegitimizing the experiences of Others.