Vivian > Recent Status Updates

Here were two possibilities of viewing the relationship between the nation's leading newspaper and the president: as adversaries; or as, explicitly, not adversaries. By choosing to act as though in the war on reality it was possible not to choose sides, the Times--and with it, the American media mainstream--became, reluctantly though not unwittingly, the president's accomplices.

Trump's lies are outlandish because they are not amendments or embellishments to the shared reality of Americans--they have nothing to do with it. When Trump claimed that millions of people voting illegally cost him the popular vote, he was not making easily disprovable factual claims: he was asserting control over reality itself.

Magyar's description of the mechanics of autocratic attempts in post-Communist countries {...} talks about capturing the institutions of the state, obliterating distinctions among branches of government, and packing the courts. In Trump's case, the takeover of the state institutions has consisted of two parts: using them for personal gain and handicapping their service to the public.

But a reading of contemporaneous accounts will show that both Hitler and Stalin struck many of their countrymen as a men of limited ability, education, and imagination--and, indeed, as being incompetent in government and military leadership. [...]It was rather the blunt instrument of reassuring ignorance that propelled their rise in a frighteningly complex world.

That's the thing about Los Angeles. It's got a lot of broken pieces to it. But the ones that still work, really do work.

This feels like lancing an infected wound, that moment just before you slice and see what oozes out.

This is spends more time advocating for human design review of various spaces than breaking it down architecturally. I think I was expecting something a little different.

He was also, according to his file, "a first-rate scientist partial to beer," the kind of mind Control had seen before. It needed dulling to slow it down or to distance itself from the possibility of despair. Beer versus scientist represented a kind of schism between the banality of speech versus the originality of thought. An ongoing battle.

I have had 7 library book notifications come up in the last two days. I read fast, but not that fast, and some of these books were "5 weeks out".
(\_/)
(O.o)
I think not. Time to figure out which ones get deferred.

Ick. First section is all about bacterial and fungal microbes.

To love someone when they are going through agonizing grief means you know when there are no words that can comfort them.

Writing the first record or the first book is not the hardest thing you will do. Writing the second or writing the sixteenth, possibly. That is because the writer will have had their whole life to write the first one.

Reading about 9/11 still brings back weird, unsettled feelings.

This started off slow, and a bit blah. But I'm glad I stuck with it rather than pulling my usual, 'Toss it!' because it's really reeling me in.

More procedural than thriller. Interesting that the MC is a 65 year-old female police detective.

"One day, young lady, you will give your body and obedience to your husband and your soul to God." And I whipped around and said, "An what, pray tell, Grandma, are you saying is left for me?"

Republicans may have won, but Reagan said, "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." The Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in 1980 was David Koch of the Koch brothers.

~This explains so much about what the frick frack happened to the Republican party. Quote continued in comments for more clarification.

If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.

--I loved falling asleep that way as a kid. Except the colors would explode into stars.

If I were Elliot I'd brain my family members or leave home. Seriously, shut up--just because you think happy-go-lucky is a valid strategy for life doesn't mean everyone else is signing up or not--like serendipitous people don't sign up for shit.

*invisibly strangling characters*

Scared straight. Pretty much terrified of breathing through my mouth, right now. I thought this would be relaxing, deep breath kinda lull into sleep read.

we danced on air
the ones you failed
the ones you killed

~I like the Hanged Maids' Chorus

My local bookstore delivered my books! I have more books! Books, books, books!

[Tacitus] 'influence is rarely lasting, such is its fate.' It relies on someone else doing the thing itself. [Women's power] This is why Agrippina wanted potestas. Potestas was the ability to act. It was the power to do things in public. In Latin, it holds connotations of domination over subjects.

Another year later, a son was born and he, being more important, was given a good solid Glaudian name: Tiberius Claudius Caesar Germanicus. No one remember this, though, as two years later Claudius conquered Britannia and renamed his kid Britannicus. One of the the few upsides to being a girl in the imperial family was that your name wasn't changed every ten minutes to make a propaganda point.

These footnotes are cracking me up:
Dio, Roman History, 59.7.4. Dio is a bit obsessed with bears dying. I think he liked them.

OR

Suetonius tells us that Gaius [Caligula] was an obsessive fan of the Green Team, to the extent that he regularly hung out in their stables, checking out the horses.

That, and everyone being accused of incest as proof of their moral degradation. So funny.

Game of Thrones has got nothing on the Julio-Claudians. I forgot how insane they were. This is very approachable, casually spoken and not academic in tone, though Southon does a nice job explaining the context of events. And funny.

A sense of aloneness permeates these stories.

#2 "Gilberte Must Play the Piano"

Again unsettling, from the perspective of a preteen girl as she watches her parents fight their demons.

Starting off in order with these short stories.

"The Birthday": sideswiped. That was bit sad and desperate, but the mindset of a young girl is done well, unsurprisingly. Emotionally fragile.