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Reading at 2X speed just to make the narrator sound human... And it's still so weird.

Keeping this edition due to the cover, but I am listening to the audiobook version.

And is Kent Klineman, the narrator, a real person? Or just AI reading? The words do not flow together and seem to be all "added" words, with, big, pauses... between each... word. The inflection does not work. As if the narrator decided to say each word alphabetically, and then edited together based on Gibbon's script. Maddening

It allowed me to lay bare my life, right on the tip of my middle finger

Over the last twenty years, I have come to understand that there is nothing more American than forgetting the past. It is through the obliteration of memory, an obliteration perpetrated with great deliberation by the State upon the citizenry, that the American identity is fashioned. But conditional citizens will insist on remembering.

We gossip because we want to believe that if we just know enough, we can keep ourselves safe and control our future.

Due process is not the goal of the whisper network, nor should it be. Conviction is also not the goal. The goal is always consciousness raising, to make you aware of how someone might behave, as of awareness is enough to protect you.

People reduce a credible allegation, an accusation against someone who has harmed someone else [to gossip as a way to] delegitimize it and undermine it, and make it seem as if its simply a rumor with no weight and no teeth to it. Calling this form of cautionary tale gossip demeans its credibility and injects the stories with a pebble of doubt. Evette Dion

Man. Reading this in a post Cait Corrain world is chilling.

I dont care how on the nose this is or how much RF Kuang pulled from her own life. This stuff happens. This stuff happnes. And we as readers can eother be part of the industry that supports this or we can be a solution.

Or women being in high ranking positions means that somehow sexual abuse on their ships still happen? It's not one tiny role but multiple women in charge and yet this still happens on their watch?

Or that the ghost spirits the girl grew up with and KNOWS they are made into ship icons and KNOWS that these spirits take forms and yet when seeing one makes her freak out and choose possible rape over being near one?

Cont. There is no military precision or details to his characters that says he followed orders. In fact if the characters never said anything I would never have pegged him as ex military

Or she... she apparently "grew up in an Inn" or worked in an inn, and yet doesnt know how you handle men or seeing people be sexual isn't something she is used to. Blushing virgin unused to people being animals.

HM Long does a great job at creating a unique world, but doesn't quite get the world building achievement IMHO.

Her scenes are too condictory or the text doesn't support it at all.

He is a disgraced navy man. And yet I have not seen him do anything that remotely connects him to the navy outside of other characters saying "hey weren't you in the military" there is no getting up at the morning no matter the day...

This book was published in 2019. And in 2022 its not frightening to hear that public venues are shut down. The dystopian calamity of not meeting publicly really goes out the window when you witnessed grown adults scream and throw tantrums outside of hospitals because they want to go to bars and get their hair done. So...thank you selfish people for live concerts?

Reproductive politics in America inevitably involves racial politics

Locking up astronomical numbers of black men and women is a powerful way of restricting reproductive Liberty and transferring political inequality to the next generation.

According to the CDC, Black women account for 36% of abortions in the US although blacks comprise less than 13% of the national population. Because they are disproportionately cash poor and face a host of structural barriers to accessing reproductive health services are more likely to be deterred by restrictive abortion laws and risk injury and death as a result both from unsafe pregnancies and unsafe abortions

Since 1973 when Roe v Wade, more than 700 women have been arrested detained or subjected to force medical interventions because of pregnancy related accusations. African American women in particular were significantly more likely to be reported by hospital staff arrested and charged with crimes. The 2001 conviction of Regina McKnight paved way for prosecuting women who suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth.

Medical researchers have definitively discredited this myth of the crack baby: the baby's exposed to crack cocaine and utero during this era grew up and we're not the monsters the media predicted. The negative outcomes they exhibited as newborns, originally attributed to crack, actually resulted from structural inequities experienced by black children

Accelerate your learning. You need to climb the learning curve as fast as you can in your new organization this means understanding it's markets, products, technologies, systems, and structures, as well as this culture and politics.

The Lafayette Greenway had an initial budget of 9 million but is already expanded to incorporate new playgrounds, dog runs, community gardens, and athletic fields that Branch off the pathway. Commercial establishments including bars and restaurants are opening on or around the trail. Real estate development is following and in the process helping New Orleans become more walkable and compact

New Orleans had 11 miles of bike weighs when Katrina hit: today it has 115. Since the greenway opened New Orleans has shot into the top American cities for bike commuters it currently ranks fifth in the per capita population that cycles to work and it promises to move further up. New Orleans is a fine Place to look if political officials need evidence that social infrastructure can lure people out of their cars

1 particularly effective initiative is the "floating schools and libraries" program led by Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, climate change access to education human Rights healthcare and the digital divide with the buoyant social infrastructure of boats. Children are not the only beneficiaries, the boats also hold adult education including courses for literacy sustainable agriculture and disaster survival

Waterplein Benthemplein

Rotterdam which has a long history of flooding has created funds for an upgrade. In the Netherlands we focused on how to prevent it from coming in New York City focused on evacuating people. The most interesting thing is figuring out what to do with the water once it's there. Rotterdam is now a global leader in architecture of accommodation: rather than blocking rain, the city is creating usable physical places

Sociologists have consistently found that participating in organized sports teams increases social capital and leads to a more participation in non-sports related collective activities as well. 80% of people who play and organize sport have friends in the organization considerably higher than the rate for those who participate in humanitarian environmental or consumer orgs

Barbershops allows patrons to articulate controversial ideas and to argue them out until everyone has a better sense of who they are why they're in the situation, and what they believe. When the barbershop closes The Men Who spend time there feel a little less isolated and vulnerable. The bonds they form provides strength for the social bridging that comes later making them better prepared to engage the world outside

According to the American public health association community gardens do more than provide shade and reduce the temperature in overheated Urban environments. They foster interactions within and across generations resulting in less social isolation as well as more cohesion civic participation and neighborhood attachment. They reduce stress levels, help children develop positive feelings about nature, and healthy food

Food: 13% of low income census tracts are food deserts according to USDA reports.

Between 1991 and 2004 overdose deaths in Switzerland dropped by 50%. Not a single person died at the supervised injection sites. Fewer people were choosing to take heroin. The number of new users dropped 80% between 1990 and 2002. The country song 90% drop in heroin related property crimes. It is now national law and copied internationally.