Karky > Recent Status Updates

Inconsistency in the details of world building can pull you out of the narrative. For example, I would have expected the protagonist to freak out the first time they experienced night. When they realized there were no drawn curtains on the window, someone who is conditioned to be in survival mode would have suspected trickery or something wrong with their eyes.

Won't know for sure til the 2nd book, but it seems I was overthinking some things. I was surprised by the char reveal in the battle scene, though I was half right. It was just a battle, though, so Harrow would be an important spy to keep under cover if a Sister. Cressida's grief is likely real, but... Still possible. Though I'm not sure what Harrow's insistence was, other than a plot device. Lisbeth seems innocent.

Predictions: Verity showed a hint of aggression--prolly a hint that she's a witch using the bad spells. Harrow is super keen on Gideon sleeping w Rune & that's sus--makes me wonder if she's Cressida & there's something to that cursed brand. Plus, Lisbeth is sus. It was hinted that one could revivify & disguise self w a lot of blood. At least Cressida is alive, & her 2 sister's bodies disappeared... It's them.

Rune found a displaced book left out in her secret room. I think it's the servant who stayed with Rune after Nan's purging--she's part of the group behind the string of murders. It's probably why she stayed: access to spellwork.

But hey! At least m question of how Rune is SO reckless was answered. However, if she does have such a martyr complex, then you'd think she'd be more careful about protecting her associates.

Adding Gideon onto her list makes no sense. She's aware of how sus his sudden interest in her is. He's far too clever, so he'd surely catch her and not likely to let slip much info. Plus, threatens her friendship with Alex whom she takes on, as he's made it clear that he doesn't wish to involve his brother. The cons far outweigh the pros.

Prediction: Alex ratted on Nan. Prolly thought he was protecting Rune.

All was good until marriage came up. I understand the logic of marrying into a connected family for the intel. I also understand the difficulty of choosing between dumb enough to not catch his wife, but smart enough to retain information. It would also strengthen her anti-witch persona, and remaining unwed may raise suspicions. But it's so risky and begs the question... To what end? No discussion of what comes next.

"Irony in most cases is not real. It does not matter what someone really believes. They didn't always know what they believe. If they believe it enough to laugh at it, they believe it enough. If they believe it enough to drive across the country to match for it, they believe it enough. And if they believe it enough to mow down 26 people for it, they believe it enough."

"There's a lot of scientific data that explains why [the great replacement theory] is false ... But I learned over time that trying to match these guys study for study didn't work. It was better to appeal to common sense. The epic of Gilgamesh described the splendor of a well planned city in Sumer Mesopotamia some 2000 years before Scandinavians developed runes; how did that happen?"

3 pillars of utter bullshit race science that totally disregard ACTUAL science--3. Great Replacement--Jewish ppl acting on biological instinct criticize dominant culture to weaken it. Increasing immigration=more POC, supporting trans rights=castration of yt men, & convince submissive women to mate w POC, thereby replacing white ppl with an easier to control population. This allegedly prevents Jewish genocide? BONKERS

3 pillars of utter bullshit race science that totally disregard ACTUAL science: 1. Winter "theory"--cold climate evolved brains to plan ahead & altruism to survive winters together; warm climates allowed less smarts, prone to act w/o thought of consequences. 2. Women evolved compliant&submissive bc tribes killed men of rival village&took war brides; killed women who fought, ending their genetic line. 1/2

"... It was a waste of time to tell them that race is a social construct. It wasn't just that they found it an unconvincing counterargument. They saw it as proof of what they already believed; that women had evolved to repeat whatever dogma was popular."

The ppl sharing race science feel reverence for the idea of dispassionate, objective, scientific, logical dissection & debate. They try to seem like elevated intellectuals, making it hard to break through to ppl who can't identify bad science they encounter. They get mad when their "rational" identity is challenged, but they can't recognize their anger as an emotional reaction bc they're so invested in that identity.

Many references sprinkled in. Adding them to me To Read List, including an article called, "Dear White Women: Here’s Why It’s Hard to Be Friends With You / How white women’s covert aggression turns them into a Black woman’s nightmare" by Savannah Worley.

Emily&friend go to conf & the CEO has a strongly religious message. High control groups are stealthy like that: they start with common needs like community & purpose; the core beliefs come much later. MLMs are similar to religions; structurally, reason terminating rhetoric, and appealing to authority. Most MLMs are in Utah; a lot of stay-at-home moms in LDS. Draws parallels between MLM sales/recruitment to missions.

"By blaming immigrants & non-Protestants for stealing jobs... [the Klan] stayed away from criticism of those who wielded economic power. Instead it blamed elites, typically presented as big city liberal professionals, secular urbanites who... looked down on Klans people as stupid, irrational, and/or out of step w modernity. This disrespect for the Klan only intensified its hostility & sense of righteousness."

KKK 2.0 seized on the anxiety accompanied by rapid societal changes. Urbanization lead to bustling cities & the jazz age. New waves of immigrants encountered a Red Scare. Women got the right to vote. Birth control & flapper subculture challenged sexual & gender norms.

I feel like I better understand why Italian Americans value Columbus Day despite the real man's genocidal tyranny. I didn't realize that the Italian gov't had broke off diplomatic relations with the US in response to the lynching of 11 Italian Americans in New Orleans in 1891. That President Harrison ratified Columbus Day to smooth things over. And how the mythologization accelerated Italians becoming "White."

Homogenous groups tend to assume that they think alike, and so there's more mental friction in diverse groups. It's like Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow when he described how harder to read text is more mentally taxing, but forcing us to slow down and critically think leads to better comprehension. Diversity is harder but the results are better because we're forced to critically think. Studies confirm.

White kids in diverse schools test higher, particularly in math & science. Better critical thinking skills when introduced to other perspectives.

Reducing Chicago's segregation to the national average: more finish higher education and earn more lifetime earnings. 30% decrease in homicide leading to less public costs in police, courts, and correction facilities. Raising real estate values & preserving the income tax revenue. Increased life expectancy. Integrated communities are less polluted, for white people too. Less insane housing prices.

Zero-sum game policies hurt everyone. Pools were filled w cement rather than integrate, & now those communities lack that amenity. College was largely free until the 1960s. White people benefit most from social programs, but fed contradictory narrative. White wages are kept down thru exploiting minority labor. Said programs built the white middle class before anti-discrimination laws, & now they're being destroyed.

I understand and agree with much of what they're saying, but they're repeatedly using analogies that I find clumsy. I guess this will be a theme in the book.

It's a strange choice to say that our terminology around cancer as a thing to fight against isn't helpful when earlier they mentioned how a mother had said "fuck your diagnosis" to a doctor and then lived years beyond the time he gave her

So far, I've read everything this covers in other material. The part that has jumped out of me so far was their comments on "trauma" becoming diluted as an overused term. While I think I understand what he's getting at about stress vs trauma, I don't necessarily agree with his reason for demeaning trigger warnings. He puts emphasis on RE-traumazation, but I wished he talked the visceral response some may experience.

This opens with how we're getting sicker. I don't know if that's the case since our understanding of illness has changed, and record keeping of certain populations was often neglected. In any case, the mention of younger generations feeling betrayed and not seeing a future in light of climate change, and the health impact of that stress worries me as we're already seeing a rise in the far right. It's gonna get worse.

I love her argument against using "penetrate" in sex and how it centers the male experience. That she asks you to imagine if the default was a word like "envelop" thus centering the female experience, and how that may emphasize the female orgasm to be seen as the expected conclusion since women are no longer linguistically subjected to the passive role.

"Linguists postulate this would also be the case in any language spoken under a patriarchal system since language ultimately reflects the beliefs and power structures of its culture. In English, our negative terms for women, which usually carry sexual conn, necessarily mirror the status of women in western society at large. That being the status us fillets and treats at best, and hobags and hell pigs at worse." 2/2

Negative slang for women from a UCLA survey fell into 4 categories: sexual promiscuity, fatness, evilness, & level of hotness. Another UCLA survey of gendered insults found approximately 90% slang for women were negative, compared to only 46% for men. Positive terms for women also tend to be sex themed, and often compared women to food, like peach. 1/2

Having a plan forward is more important than burning it all down. Giving people a chance & understanding what pressures may drive them to act against the collective interest is good. But some of his words ring hollow after his chapters on CEO sociopaths & people DEMANDING their rights in every political movement--through violence, I might add! I think a multi-pronged approach is better than one methodology.

There's material that I feel is genuinely good information. There are personal stories that make me question the author's credibility. Then there's the pro-capitalist narrative that makes me further question him. It's funny how he spends so much time on the evils of corporation in the beginning, and then argues for civility and the power of consumer choice. Like, you JUST laid out all the arguments against that!