Kathy > Recent Status Updates

the vibes of Signalis in a medium that’s accessible to me.

I feel like the chapter on “the contemporary structure of plunder” is not as clear as it could be.

Kuang can’t write*, but by god she can compile a killer anthology! (* in my annoyed, salty, and probably unfair opinion after reading Katabasis)

feeling every emotion under the sunnnnn 🥰💕🥰💕🥰💕😭 i love this book sm

On Karhide’s slide into violent nationalism: “The mood of the city was bleak, although business was good, prosperity in general, and the weather fair.” :( relatable

Thus far, chapter three is so generalized and opinion-based as to be meaningless. Very hard to read when he won’t (1) be specific enough for u to know wtf he’s talking about or (2) cite any references you can check. imo, the weakest section of the book BY FAR. also boring and annoying to read.

“Friedrich List, father of the German customs union, once observed that free trade was Britain’s chief export. Nothing roused such British anger as protectionism, and they sometimes gave vent to it in violent language, as during the Opium War against China.”

Reminds me of this post, thematically: tumblr.com/that-gay-jedi/754453841115...

At 30% becomes inaccessible to screen readers.

I don’t think I truly understood the concept of “agricultural reform” in L.Am. (referenced and discussed in The Shock Doctrine, Empire’s Workshop, and Hope in the Dark) until reading the latter portion of chapter 2.

a silly little romp so far!

if I hadn’t just read the Grapes of Wrath and This Has Always Been A War, I don’t think I would viscerally understand the plight of Latin American agricultural workers as described in this.

“Is it hard, jailbreaking?”

A ship was a computer that you put desperate people inside, and when the computer went bad, the ship was a tomb you put desperate people inside.

This was a new kind of toaster, a toaster that took orders, rather than giving them. A toaster that would let her toast anything she wanted to toast: unauthorized bread. Even homemade bread. Homemade bread was something she’d read about in books, seen in old dramas, but she didn’t know anyone who actually baked bread. That was like gnawing your own furniture out of whole logs or something.

“More and more things keep happening, a real deluge of events, more than I am capable of collecting: I pull out the hem of my uniform and my cupped hands to try to catch it all, but buckets wash past me, and only small drops land on these pages…” (me journaling in 2025-26)

“if she names me in there, in the Operating Room—so be it: I will feel grateful to spend my final moments reverently kissing the punishing hand of the Benefactor. As a citizen of the One State, I have the right to receive punishment, and I refuse to give up that right. No citizen should ever attempt to refuse this one and only—and therefore, all the more precious—right—and none ever dares to." ok bootlicker

men love to write fucked up dystopias where the male main character comes to his senses/goes insane because of a beautiful one dimensional manic pixie dream girl

Currently reading the titular short story from “Unauthorized Bread”: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/0...