Luke > Recent Status Updates

No idea how this is going to go, but it's certainly nostalgic to be back.

You ever read about scientific advancements geared towards environmental protection that bring tears to your eyes? Yeah.

Lisbon pre-dates London, Paris and Rome and was the first and last capital of colonization, and I could feel Africa all over it.

Not sure if it's supposed to be on purpose that the narrator keeps missing the word 'ancient'; of course a four-year-old knows Greek. Four-year-olds are knowing Greek every hour of every day, even now.

Love it when I'm on book buying duty for work and some queer works I've been looking forward to end up on the list; like, sorry, but you folks are getting your Vitamin Q.

When you look of footage of [Paris on Victory in Europe Day], when the victory of the Allies in the Second World War was officially proclaimed, you won't see a single non-white soldier celebrating in the most symbolic record of the French resistance, despite the fact that two thirds of those soldiers had brown skin.

Don't judge a book by its cover, of course, but damn if it doesn't look fine.

She came downstairs to find Jagvi frying pancakes shirtless in a pair of black underwear, the bulge of her packer visible.
She looked impossible. She looked holy, like San Rocco himself had shown up to make Angelina breakfast.

The girl had interrupted to say that the world had changed and Mark, lying back exhausted on his pillows had said with a sort of grim sharpness:
"It is you who say it....Then you must run the world....I know nothng about it...."

Not going to lie, I wish I could purge my follower count. It's absurd having a four figure count and being able to count the number that actually fruitfully engage on the palm of my hand.

Community safety hubs operating in a transformative framework understand that when people don't have a safe home to sleep in, it is a form of violence and contributes to instability that can lead to other forms of harm. Thus, providing safe housing and addressing communities' range of basic needs is as much about interrupting violence as stopping someone from pulling a trigger.

Russia became insecure and inward-looking, and a secular society (religion was suppressed in the USSR) was now finding meaning in an almost militant Russian Orthodoxy branch of Christianity, encouraged more recently by Vladimir Putin and embodying that old idea that has become synonymous with historical amnesia, inequality, homophobia, racism, violence, bigotry and ignorance: 'Let's make our country great again.'

The safety concerns that have emerged as the result of climate change [...] create opportunities for people to show up and be in communities with one another that center on support and care, as the state, including police, continuously shows how unprepared and incapable it is of dealing with [...] the needs of people as they experience routine crises that are amplified in moments of ecological emergency.

Reading Goals for 2025:

-Revisit many authors
-(Re)Introdice myself to genres I tend to skip over (sci-fi, mysteries, nautical historical fiction
-Continue to prioritize queer reads
-Keep up with public library offerings
-Always leave room for spontaneous reads, from newly released to used book pick ups
-My concrete list for all this can be found here.

This really is a great book, but there's no reason for the author to go out of his way to humanize the poor widdle (white) cops just trying to protect rich (white) people's property.

Well, after taking a look at the 2025 challenge details and seeing all the micro challenges that have nothing to do with my reading priorities and everything to do with GRAmazon pushing sales, I'm not committing for the time being. The last thing I need is giving the site an excuse to shove even more pop-ups in my face, all the while not being able to see what my friends are reading.

Happy 2024 Reading, folks! Some fun stats of mine:

# Read: 121
# on the TBR for 10+ Years: 70
# local library checkouts: 70
# of 5 Stars: 7
Best Book Read: A Stranger in Olondria - Sofia Samatar
# of languages read in translation: 13
# of 2024 publications: 15
Best 2024 Book Read: Villa E - Jane Allison
Longest book: The Longman Anthology of World Literature by Women: 1875-1975 (ed. Marian Arkin) - 1328 pgs

Enjoy!

So far, this book is just doing a paint by numbers in writing different social demographic set in the mid 20th c. US. Hope the horror picks up as compensation sooner rather than later.

Just a really solid book with solid characters and a solid plot and some really nice spice in both the horror and the queer varieties. I'm actually glad i picked up the eBook, cause I'm really appreciating being able to ride out my 2nd dose of chemo while reading this.

An important consideration is that all police encounters contain the threat of violence, whether police violence occurs or not.

The idea that someone can just 'casually' feel up another person's packer as part of the whole 'friends joshing friends' is absolutely ludicrous but I'm not gonna lie, still affirming somehow.

"I have an argument but feel free to skip it if you think I won't adequately explain it." Serano what are you doing.

"Ultimately, the one certainty for Europe is that she knows a 'nigger' when she sees one: she should — they were a figment of her imagination, a product of her creative mind."

-Caryl Phillips, The European Tribe

As soon as I stepped foot outside I heard the melancholy arpeggios of a piano, sampled in a hip-hop track, booming out through the austere off-white tower blocks in the distance. It was a spooky soundtrack because the theme so suited the visuals of the place, and it almost sounded as though the bricks and the mortar of the estates themselves were weeping.

Peace and solidarity to everyone today, especially to those dealing with cancer as I am. I prefer Yule Boasting to New Years' Resolutions, but if I were to render the latter concrete, here's one read that goes towards actualizing them.

Starting this earlier than expected, but if no one's going to appreciate a newly released queer book on Libby, I certainly will.

To talk about poverty is to talk about ourselves at some point in our lives.

"What our students really need is childcare, Tressie," he said. "I've imagined it. Why aren't there childcare centers and public resource offices next door to each of our schools!? We'd make a killing if they were and, yes, make their lives better, too. That's a win-win."

Like Walmart being subsidized by food stamps.

I'm not surprised private equity is at the heart of this, but it does get old. Who needs conspiracies when you have shareholders.

Wow, what the actual fuck did GR do to Listopia.