book thread
- Thread starter minty
- Start date
i think i have a physical copy of art of intrusion but i mostly hate bein' advertised to n tracked on shit so invisibility is more pertinent to my interests, as i merely want to be left the hell alone
i liked that i was doing some of what he had already suggested (separate emails with no names attached, signal, protonmail, noscript n adblock, etc). don't think i'm ever gonna go as far as a gift card ran burner phone and separate computer for everything but still useful to know
sort of noticed like with the philosophy chunk i ended up with a cybersecurity/big data chunk. currently listening to byron tau's "means of control" about how big tech and the government colluded to spy on everyone
this is the third or fourth book in a row to mention how much harder it used to be to spy on americans, the fisa law, and how metadata is not covered under the fourth amendment because if you write a letter you have to have a return and a destination address or if you call someone you have to dial a number and that is different than actually opening the letter or listening in.
im sure you remember all of that came about after the "jews did 9/11". every prez since (and including) dubya so far has allowed the surveillance state carte blanche expansions.
I just finished reading Deadeye Dick by Vonnegut (my favorite author).
Was pretty good. Like all of his books (except Slaughterhouse-5) it had that sort of proto-edgelord humor so it was pretty funny. Ofc he's not the most eloquent dude, nor does he write the most interesting plots, but he manages to make the reading so fun that I don't really care.
My favorite part about reading his books though is that there's characters repeated in all of them, and despite the fact that none of the books are 100% connected/in the same universe, the characters almost always hold the same places in the story, which i think is cool.
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater is his best book imo, probably my favorite book of all time, so if anyone else has read it I'd be super interested to know what they thought of it!
Was pretty good. Like all of his books (except Slaughterhouse-5) it had that sort of proto-edgelord humor so it was pretty funny. Ofc he's not the most eloquent dude, nor does he write the most interesting plots, but he manages to make the reading so fun that I don't really care.
My favorite part about reading his books though is that there's characters repeated in all of them, and despite the fact that none of the books are 100% connected/in the same universe, the characters almost always hold the same places in the story, which i think is cool.
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater is his best book imo, probably my favorite book of all time, so if anyone else has read it I'd be super interested to know what they thought of it!
i miss flying across the country without feeling violated
yes, this book mentions that a few days after 9/11 there were a few data businesses (they kept track of credit card transactions and phone book data, stuff like that) and they compiled lists of known associates of the saudis on the planes n ran to the government. not initially a bad idea to want to help, ofc
and after that initial shit when people were like "uhhh, when do we get freedumbz back?" rep wyden from oregon was there every step of the day asking provocative questions at the 3 letter agencies so people could know
basically tho, the tech coders on the west coast code so that big business can spy on you, and the tech coders on the east coast code so that big gov can spy on you, and they buy data from each other n suck each other off constantly
and the gov n big business both really like knowing when n where n how long you goon for
u.k. was considering a law making encryption on your devices illegal
this is also the third book to mention the alliance of the five eyes (uk, us, australia, canada, nz). totalitarian angl* spy menace alliance
anyway, finished that book. starting bruce schneier's "a hacker's mind" tomorrow
done re-reading zarathustra, it's been a while and honestly it made much less of an impact on me than when i was a teen. idk if the new translation i got over-pronounced the graphomanic tendencies of good old freddy or i'm just not as good at tolerating overly poetic cryptic shit as i used to be? might get the english translation too or actually sit down with a dictionary and the german version and try to squeeze more out of this book.
anyways i took shitload of notes, wrote all over my copy too so i might try and turn it into a longer text soon
main ironic take i have from this book is that instead of bringing about the new man the death of God brought about generation upon generation of what nietzche describes as the "last men"
anyways i took shitload of notes, wrote all over my copy too so i might try and turn it into a longer text soon
main ironic take i have from this book is that instead of bringing about the new man the death of God brought about generation upon generation of what nietzche describes as the "last men"
Tradition and the Individual Talent by T.S. Eliot. Reminds me much of Arnold's touchstone method of literary criticism (seen in The Study of Poetry), both of which are pretty good ideas when it comes to how we should determine the quality of texts. I dunno, it was enough to get my through an exam and also i'm autistic so its interesting to me 
also found Of Mice and Men in a bookstore so that'll be up next
also found Of Mice and Men in a bookstore so that'll be up next
schneier's "a hacker's mind" was mostly a run down of a bunch of shit i already knew, as it was mostly about how the elites use hacks to game the system in their favor, ex: a republican lackey pushed a 17 billion dollar tax break for real estate moguls going years back into the CARES Act an hour before it's signed into legislation, n finance bros using tax loopholes no real, actual working american would ever be able to exploit
after that, i then listened to virginia eubanks' "automating inequality"
it started off by going over the fun of "the poor house" and how being poor has always been a way for wealthier people to subject poors to mistreatment.
first chunk detailed how indiana tried privatizing their welfare system because a few case workers did a fraud (0.03% of case workers, but just like reagan lying about the woman using welfare for fur coats, it worked. nobody is more reactionary than the middle class)
where it was trialed at, it automatically kicked everyone off their welfare and they all had to re-apply and then wait by their phone for "phone meetings" which would sometimes not happen, only to receive a letter in the mail the following week stating they were losing their benefits for "refusing to comply". hundreds of thousands of papers were scanned to the new offices and 1/10 of it was lost. people who were deaf lobbied at the capital because how are they supposed to have a phone call interview. people in the hospital with terminal cancer were thrown off their benefits mid-treatment because they were in the hospital and not by their house phone. after the catastrophic failure the state sued ibm, who they outsourced all this shit to in the privatization effort, and ibm sued the state back.
the next chunk talked about los angeles' homeless in skid row. how during the 60's n 70's they tore down a lot of old low-cost housing n never rebuilt it n then started complaining about homeless people. because the cops go around with the caseworkers when they interview these people to get put on the housing list the cops know who they are and end up more likely to charge them with bs. there's a dude who was a middle class bank worker (gary?), had a bachelor's degree, and according to the author had a neat and tidy tent during her time talking to him, was well-spoken, etc. he lost his job at the bank during 08 recession, went down to help rebuild during hurricane katrina relief, came back to california, got his car impounded for no reason while he was trying to find work, and because he simply refuses to play ball with the dehumanizing process of being re-interviewed for registry (3 times he'd done it) or pay for the fees of getting his car back he's just stuck homeless. the last time the author spoke with him he was in jail and he said they charged him with breaking a public bus window with a plastic broom (there are video recorders on buses that could easily disprove this, but the point is to have him behind bars). once he gets out he will be back on the bottom of the housing registry list, if he re-applies, because jail counts as housing.
third chunk of book talked about cps in pittsburgh and how after the case worker inputs all the data there is an algorithm at the end that puts all the info on a scale of 1-20 (low to high risk). author interviews people who had had cps called on them by a random neighbor multiple times over little shit (like swatting, but in this case you might get your child taken by the state) and how stuff like that, despite the cases being closed after (it's technically illegal like swatting, but not enforced because any person can anonymously report child abuse), contributes to a high score later on and stays with them their entire lives (a child from a house that had cps called on them, who grows to have their own child, will have a higher score as a parent because cps was called on their house when they were 5). and again, any seeming noncompliance with this system creates a higher score (having case workers in and out of your home constantly, making appointments for classes/therapists for you/your kids, etc)
am currently halfway through another schneier book, "data and goliath" and i'm not really gleaning much new from it. same sort of run down. although one phrase stuck with me and that is that nsa considers people who use encryption a threat and are more likely to spy on them as a result. another small story was about a woman who applied to college and after she graduated there got notifications from other colleges that her data had been stolen from there. they had bought her data and wanted to market to her for their schools, she'd never interacted with them before.
a bit depressing of a conclusion to reach out of this post, but i guess the tl;dr is "the desire to maintain a semblance of dignity and privacy in the face of marketers and the gov wanting to know as much about you as possible is deemed as a threat"
after that, i then listened to virginia eubanks' "automating inequality"
it started off by going over the fun of "the poor house" and how being poor has always been a way for wealthier people to subject poors to mistreatment.
first chunk detailed how indiana tried privatizing their welfare system because a few case workers did a fraud (0.03% of case workers, but just like reagan lying about the woman using welfare for fur coats, it worked. nobody is more reactionary than the middle class)
where it was trialed at, it automatically kicked everyone off their welfare and they all had to re-apply and then wait by their phone for "phone meetings" which would sometimes not happen, only to receive a letter in the mail the following week stating they were losing their benefits for "refusing to comply". hundreds of thousands of papers were scanned to the new offices and 1/10 of it was lost. people who were deaf lobbied at the capital because how are they supposed to have a phone call interview. people in the hospital with terminal cancer were thrown off their benefits mid-treatment because they were in the hospital and not by their house phone. after the catastrophic failure the state sued ibm, who they outsourced all this shit to in the privatization effort, and ibm sued the state back.
the next chunk talked about los angeles' homeless in skid row. how during the 60's n 70's they tore down a lot of old low-cost housing n never rebuilt it n then started complaining about homeless people. because the cops go around with the caseworkers when they interview these people to get put on the housing list the cops know who they are and end up more likely to charge them with bs. there's a dude who was a middle class bank worker (gary?), had a bachelor's degree, and according to the author had a neat and tidy tent during her time talking to him, was well-spoken, etc. he lost his job at the bank during 08 recession, went down to help rebuild during hurricane katrina relief, came back to california, got his car impounded for no reason while he was trying to find work, and because he simply refuses to play ball with the dehumanizing process of being re-interviewed for registry (3 times he'd done it) or pay for the fees of getting his car back he's just stuck homeless. the last time the author spoke with him he was in jail and he said they charged him with breaking a public bus window with a plastic broom (there are video recorders on buses that could easily disprove this, but the point is to have him behind bars). once he gets out he will be back on the bottom of the housing registry list, if he re-applies, because jail counts as housing.
third chunk of book talked about cps in pittsburgh and how after the case worker inputs all the data there is an algorithm at the end that puts all the info on a scale of 1-20 (low to high risk). author interviews people who had had cps called on them by a random neighbor multiple times over little shit (like swatting, but in this case you might get your child taken by the state) and how stuff like that, despite the cases being closed after (it's technically illegal like swatting, but not enforced because any person can anonymously report child abuse), contributes to a high score later on and stays with them their entire lives (a child from a house that had cps called on them, who grows to have their own child, will have a higher score as a parent because cps was called on their house when they were 5). and again, any seeming noncompliance with this system creates a higher score (having case workers in and out of your home constantly, making appointments for classes/therapists for you/your kids, etc)
am currently halfway through another schneier book, "data and goliath" and i'm not really gleaning much new from it. same sort of run down. although one phrase stuck with me and that is that nsa considers people who use encryption a threat and are more likely to spy on them as a result. another small story was about a woman who applied to college and after she graduated there got notifications from other colleges that her data had been stolen from there. they had bought her data and wanted to market to her for their schools, she'd never interacted with them before.
a bit depressing of a conclusion to reach out of this post, but i guess the tl;dr is "the desire to maintain a semblance of dignity and privacy in the face of marketers and the gov wanting to know as much about you as possible is deemed as a threat"
Tech Noir
Ediot
Social credit score?
I FINISHED READING PLATOS' REPUBLIC RECENTLY AND I WILL PROVIDE A FEEDBACK :
THE BOOK IS VERY AHEAD OF THE TIME AND ITS SUPER OBVIOUS THAT ITS THE CORNER STONE OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY AS A WHOLE, HOW EVER I FEEL PLATO FUMBLED IN THE WAY HE PACES THE BOOK. FOR EXAMPLE FROM BOOKS 1 TO 7 I FEEL HE SHIFTS THE CONVERSATION BACK AND FORTH TOO MUCH BETWEEN OLD TALKING POINTS. (ITS FUNNY BECAUSE HIS OWN CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK CALL HIM OUT ON IT, SO IDK IF HE WAS TRYING TO MAKE SOME SORT OF 4D JOKE)
IT TAKES TOO MUCH BRAIN POWER TO FOCUS AND I WAS REALLY GETTING TIRED READING. I FEEL THE NIGGA SHOULD HAVE CLEANED UP HIS OWN MATERIAL A LITTLE BIT.
SECONDLY THE THING I DISLIKE ABOUT GREEK PHILOSOPHY IS THAT THEY HUFF THEIR OWN FARTS TOO MUCH (NOT EXCLUSIVE TO PLATO) IN THE SENSE THAT HE WRITES USING ONLY DIRECT CONVERSATION AS A NARRATIVE TOOL (GETS REALLY WEIRD AT POINTS, ESPECIALLY CONVOS THAT LAST FOR 40+ PAGES), TO SORT OF INSIST UPON HIMSELF AT EVERY POINT HE WANTS TO MAKE - IT IS LIKE HE'S TRYING TO PROVE EVERYTHING BY INDUCTION AND IT GETS REALLY TIRESOME CONSIDERING THE BOOK IS LIKE 400 PAGES LONG
FOR EXAMPLE : IF HE WANTS TO CONVINCE YOU A JOKE IS FUNNY, HE'LL START BY DEDUCING REALITY FROM ATOMS AND THEN BUILDING UPON IT UNTILL HE CAN MATHEMATICALLY PROVE TO YOU WHAT A JOKE IS, AND THEN HE'LL MOVE ON TO DEFINING GOOD AND EVIL SO HE CAN INDUCTIVELY PROVE WHAT HUMOR IS.
SO IT TAKES HIM ABOUT 3 HOURS TO GET TO THE FUKKEN POINT. A LOT OF THE THINGS HE PIVOTS ON ARE JUST A CONVOLUTED WAY OF SAYING "YES IT APPEARED TO ME IN A DREAM AND IM PRETTY SURE ITS RIGHT" - IDK IF ANY1 ELSE FELT THE SAME WAY WHILE READING
THE BOOK DEFINITELY PICKS UP TOWARDS THE END. I REALLY LIKED THE PART WHERE HE DISCUSSES MORTALITY & AFTERLIFE. I LIKED THE CRITIQUE ON VARIOUS SOCIETAL SYSTEMS. KEEP IN MIND THIS NIGGA LIVED OVER 2000 YEARS AGO
I RESPECT PLATO FOR BEING A REAL THUG WHO WRESTLED, AND WAS VOCALLY AGAINST BOY FUCKING SO THAT MAKES HIM A G IN MY EYES THOUGH. I GIVE THIS BOOK 7.45 / 10
THE BOOK IS VERY AHEAD OF THE TIME AND ITS SUPER OBVIOUS THAT ITS THE CORNER STONE OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY AS A WHOLE, HOW EVER I FEEL PLATO FUMBLED IN THE WAY HE PACES THE BOOK. FOR EXAMPLE FROM BOOKS 1 TO 7 I FEEL HE SHIFTS THE CONVERSATION BACK AND FORTH TOO MUCH BETWEEN OLD TALKING POINTS. (ITS FUNNY BECAUSE HIS OWN CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK CALL HIM OUT ON IT, SO IDK IF HE WAS TRYING TO MAKE SOME SORT OF 4D JOKE)
IT TAKES TOO MUCH BRAIN POWER TO FOCUS AND I WAS REALLY GETTING TIRED READING. I FEEL THE NIGGA SHOULD HAVE CLEANED UP HIS OWN MATERIAL A LITTLE BIT.
SECONDLY THE THING I DISLIKE ABOUT GREEK PHILOSOPHY IS THAT THEY HUFF THEIR OWN FARTS TOO MUCH (NOT EXCLUSIVE TO PLATO) IN THE SENSE THAT HE WRITES USING ONLY DIRECT CONVERSATION AS A NARRATIVE TOOL (GETS REALLY WEIRD AT POINTS, ESPECIALLY CONVOS THAT LAST FOR 40+ PAGES), TO SORT OF INSIST UPON HIMSELF AT EVERY POINT HE WANTS TO MAKE - IT IS LIKE HE'S TRYING TO PROVE EVERYTHING BY INDUCTION AND IT GETS REALLY TIRESOME CONSIDERING THE BOOK IS LIKE 400 PAGES LONG
FOR EXAMPLE : IF HE WANTS TO CONVINCE YOU A JOKE IS FUNNY, HE'LL START BY DEDUCING REALITY FROM ATOMS AND THEN BUILDING UPON IT UNTILL HE CAN MATHEMATICALLY PROVE TO YOU WHAT A JOKE IS, AND THEN HE'LL MOVE ON TO DEFINING GOOD AND EVIL SO HE CAN INDUCTIVELY PROVE WHAT HUMOR IS.
SO IT TAKES HIM ABOUT 3 HOURS TO GET TO THE FUKKEN POINT. A LOT OF THE THINGS HE PIVOTS ON ARE JUST A CONVOLUTED WAY OF SAYING "YES IT APPEARED TO ME IN A DREAM AND IM PRETTY SURE ITS RIGHT" - IDK IF ANY1 ELSE FELT THE SAME WAY WHILE READING
THE BOOK DEFINITELY PICKS UP TOWARDS THE END. I REALLY LIKED THE PART WHERE HE DISCUSSES MORTALITY & AFTERLIFE. I LIKED THE CRITIQUE ON VARIOUS SOCIETAL SYSTEMS. KEEP IN MIND THIS NIGGA LIVED OVER 2000 YEARS AGO
I RESPECT PLATO FOR BEING A REAL THUG WHO WRESTLED, AND WAS VOCALLY AGAINST BOY FUCKING SO THAT MAKES HIM A G IN MY EYES THOUGH. I GIVE THIS BOOK 7.45 / 10
Yes, I am sure all of that happened exactly as the shrieking Leftist claimed and none of it was made up out of whole-cloth.
Call Me Tim
EDF Hero
Still trying to get through this.
In english his writing is really repetitive. Smacks of brainwashing to be honest.
Or is this just a shit translation.
If you want to skip the repetitive shit and see the actual substance, read his Genealogy of Morality insteadStill trying to get through this.
In english his writing is really repetitive. Smacks of brainwashing to be honest.
Or is this just a shit translation.
ofc
it extends beyond that example tho
article from the same author (inb4 someone brings up that it's the guardian, the guardian also published the snowden leaks). the gist of that is some states are now using computer algorithms to "find overpayments" from decades back and then now that the people are on social security which leaves ppl broke, the state still expects them to pay it back.
so the social credit metric bar is "have you ever needed any of the money back that we deducted from your paycheck, you piece of shit?"
didn't finish data and goliath yet. will tomorrow. after that, since it is starting to sort of get repetitive, gonna go for thomas andrews' "killing for coal" about labor war, ofc
i know if nobody else reads my textwalls, you do, to cry abt them
everystein>look it up
>it's the rockefellers
anyways added to my reading list
singleberg
timeowitz
I recommend the dice man
also marching powder
I would post more but I read mostly weeb and sci fi shit
sci fi is alright, could always share the weeb shit with hypeshot in the zoo.