The conservatives do connect ideologically, like the communists of old. So ideas get copied a lot

Also, since Trump did win, people figure that works, let's do that.

Libre Institute playbook. Koch-funded propaganda outlet for Latin America...

https://thelibreinstitute.org

It's a unified global move to promote Conservative philosophy just as the Allies championed Democracy after WW2. CPAC is an international organization. No election is local any longer.Every election moves the dial for the world's population.

!macacos !latinx come check the"white-saviors". They unironically believe some think tanks no one even heard of has an impact.

When are they going to learn that MONEY HAS NO IMPACT IN POLITICS ANYMORE!!!

So many dem candidates lost despite outspending repubs. In Brazil Henrique Meirelles blew 100 million R$ on campaign just to get 1% of the votes while Bolsonaro won after spending like half a million R$. In the age of social media noise is enough to get you elected.

Not just ideologically, but also socially and financially. US right-wingers pour a lot of money into fellow organizations all across the Western world. Like anti-abortion movements and similar culture war shit

Is Brazil part of the West?

Brazil, nothing new to see here, what do you expect in a deeply racist, conservative, and misogynist country lihe the US? Brazil looks a joyful and open country in the surface, but beneath the reality is ugly, it is just a brutal uncivilized and corrupt, where religious fundamentalist have to much power as in the US.

TIL that southern Brazil is heavily Bolsonarista. I would have thought most Bolsonaristas came from like the "inland" region (north? west?)

Ha! No, southern Brazil is like Texas. They even wanted to secede in the past.

Burgers leftoids learn LATAM uneducated and ignorant poorcels are the core voters of our left-wing parties.

Also, the South is not comparable to Texas, that would be Goias or Mato Grosso do Sul. The Brazilian South is more similar to the Mid-West (soybeans, corn, kraut and slavic descendants). Also people here are quite socially liberal in the cities, Rio Grande do Sul is a famous target of gay jokes, but people here can't stand economic leftism, they're very economically right-wing.

!neolibs !bookworms

Today we release our latest investigation.

Author Neil Gaiman has been accused of sexual assault by two former partners in the first claims of misconduct against him, and is the subject of a police complaint in New Zealand.

Listen: https://t.co/emjtiynCnS

🧵1/6 pic.twitter.com/3eOyxHakcm

— Tortoise (@tortoise) July 3, 2024

!bookworms Here's my TWOW take.

A Dance with Dragons got published in 2011 and he got some leftover chapters for TWOW.

He started writing some of the book in the 2011-14 frame but his ADHD lead him to promote the show, go on tours and write TV scripts. So advancement was slow.

2015-18 he misses his deadline, the show outpaces the books, during this time he writes Fire & Blood (2014 was A World of Ice and Fire and 2015 A knight of the Seven Kingdoms) because he loves the Targaryens and is obsessed with Lore.

2019 the show ends and he gets sadge because it was shit and probably rewrites a ton of TWOW.

2020-2022 Pandemic Years: He said he made tons of progress writing hundreds of pages. By late 2022 he gave the first major update of the book in years, it was 75% done.

Now it's likely his ADHD is striking again with House of the Dragon and the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms show that he's producing himself plus depressed with Drumpf and his old friends dying (the latter I suspect is a bigger cause).

I still believe we'll get TWOW eventually as too much of the book exists but ADOS is getting extremely unlikely as he wants to write another Dunk and Egg novella and Fire & Blood part 2 after TWOW. I hope he at least writes some outline for ADOS to get published if he kicks the bucket before lol.

Also some excerpts from his blog lmao.

There is war everywhere. Ukraine and Gaza dominate the news, but there is a war in Myanmar as well that our western media just ignores, things are heating up in Yemen and the Red Sea, North Korea has nukes and is testing missiles and rattling sabres, Venezuela is threatening to annex three quarters of neighboring Guyana.

Meanwhile the US grows more polarized every day. Hate is rising, democracy is under threat, millions of Americans have swallowed the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Newspeak has taken over political discourse, cancel culture is destroying lives and careers, and we have a disgraced, indicted, venomous ex-president winning primaries despite openly declaring that he will be a dictator on day one and will govern on a platform of "retribution," when he is not busy grabbing women by the kitty. His last attempt to overthrow the government failed on January 6, but some of his more ardent supporters are now saying that "next time" they will bring more guns. There are actually folks out there wanting civil war.

Good morning !bookworms

Since none of you came up with an original/cool idea for a book, instead of going for the same 3 authors, I have selected 8 books for you to choose from (all the books are available for free on Library Genesis, so don't even use the excuse of not buying)

I have decided on 8 recommendations, all are from the last 10 years

2 Sci-fi books

3 speculative science

3 on Israel

Vote:

AND FINALLY

cc: @nuclearshill @binturong

https://archiveofourown.org/works/48535702/chapters/122428366

Summary:

After upsetting Celebi, capitalist banker, Edmund Blackadder, is transported to St. Fandom Academy in Ilex Forest. Edmund must take over the school so he and his sidekick, Baldrick can return to their rightful dimension. As well as teaching history, Blackadder is eventually assigned to be the homeschool teacher of Class D, which includes notorious students such as Eric Cartman, Ash Ketchum, and Vicky Pollard.

Notes:

This is a rewrite of my 2008 fanfic, St. Manga School. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3995816/1/St-Manga-School

Chapter 1: Punishment

Chapter Text

Edmund Blackadder, owner of the world infamous Custard Bank was on top of the world. Thanks to another interest raise and mass deletion of jobs, he would be another billion pounds richer. He was going to spent that money all to himself, and he had no intention of sharing it with anybody. His life was perfect.

That was until his assistant, Baldrick had a cunning plan to make his birthday a magnificent one. With the modest salary, Baldrick received, he invested in a lifetime supply of turnips, and a pet he bought off random grunt from the streets.

"What is this meant to be?" Blackadder asked, picking up the green creature from the sack of turnips.

"Happy birthday," Baldrick said with a smile on his face. "From all your friends from Custard Winnings Bank."

"Well where's my cake?"

"I couldn't afford it."

"Baldrick, you're about as useful as a magikarp in battle stuffed with raspberries and cream."

Baldrick nodded. "Sounds delicious."

Blackadder sneered at the creature in his arms. "Just what on earth is this hideous green fairy alien with bit blue and black burglar eyes suppose to be?"

"It's name is Celebi." Baldrick patted Celebi on the head. "And a lovely little thing it is too."

"So you're blind as well as draft?" Blackadder mumbled. "Well thank you for your mind generosity, Baldrick, but there's only one place for this beast!"

"Where's that?" Baldrick asked. Blackadder eyed up the nearest trash in and tossed Celebi in. "Don't be like that, Boss. It did nothing wrong to you."

"It's face offends me," Blackadder howled. "It is the worst birthday present anyone could have. Your cunning plans are about as useful as the diary of the nine-legged Prince of Nigeria."

"I'm sorry, Sir!" Baldrick picked up the trash can so Blackadder could hear the muffle sobs. "When I saw this little thing for sale I thought it was a perfect present for you. You're on your own, and I thought you could do with some company."

Blackadder turned away. "Baldrick, you know me, I prefer my own company."

Baldrick took out an invoice for Blue Ladies For Hire. "Is that why you spend £5000 a week on prostitutes?"

"What are you doing with that?" Blackadder snapped, and snatched the paper off him. "Baldrick, you've given me no choice. I should fire you, but I can't be bothered with the paperwork." Blackadder held his hand out, closed. "Here is my fist, kindly run to it as fast as you can!"

"Alright then," Baldrick said and ran up to Blackadder for a whack in the face. Baldrick collapsed. As the trash can hit the floor, the whole room warped into a scarlet volcano, revealiving a white vortex. Before either men had a chance to speak, they were swept away into the abyss as Celebi waved them off.

"What the bloody heck was that?" Blackadder wiped himself as he got up.

"We've been taken to another dimension!" Baldrick guessed, scratching his pants. "Well the gates over there say we are in…" He tiptoed above Blackadder's shoulder to read the sign. "S.T.D Fanny Alchemy?"

Blackadder rolled his eyes. "It says St. Fandom Academy…why are we here, Baldrick. This is your fault for gifting me the cursed-bogey-coloured-rat with-Down-syndrome."

"As I was trying to say," Baldrick said. "Celebi can time travel, so when you run out of money, you can go back in time and get the money again so you can spend it again."

"Your head is as empty as a unicorn's underpants."

"Well, its your own fault for upsetting Celebi?"

"We need a to find a way back, Baldrick," Blackadder said, straightening up his black jacket. "We need to go back to London and I shall need a cherry."

"GOOD LUCK WITH THAT MATE!" Out from the fog emerged an elderly man who could easily be Santa Claus if not for his anorexic figure. Everything about the man with the white beard and hair to his cloak revealed that he was a wizard.

"Are you Gandalf?" Blackadder asked.

"What?" the wizard laughed. "I'm far too young to be him."

"Dumbledore?" Baldrick asked.

The wizard howled with laughter. "I'm too old to be Dumbledore too."

"Who are you then?"

"You know? I can't remember! Ha!" The Wizard stared at Baldrick as he spoke. "I understand that Celebi has brought you here, Blackadder to teach history."

"I'm not Blackadder."

"Oh…" The wizard glared down at Blackadder. "It's misery guts over here."

"Can Celebi or you take us home, we have no time for foolish games and trickery."

"Sure!" The Wizard declared. "First, you must take over the school and become the headmaster."

"Really?" Blackadder snarled. "I have to give up my life of money and pleasure for these pesky little beasts."

"Yes!" The Wizard declared. "Oh! I remember my name now: it's Merlin!"

Merlin faded.

The gates to St. Fandom Academy opened, and Blackadder was welcomed into his new home.

!bookworms !chuds kino

Hey !bookworms

I figured if I can spend 5-6 hours a week watching reruns of old sitcoms, i might as well spend an hour on a bookclub in rdrama.

I have a few conditions though

Barred:

B.1. No classics (no Steinbeck, Harper, Borges, Hemingway, Conan Doyle etc). Doing a bookclub posts on their works is, frankly, well just circlejerking.

B.2. No modern hipster "I-went-to-Private-College" author (Franzen, DeLillo, Yanigihara, DFW, etc).

B.3. Goes without saying - "I'm too smart ie a neckbeard" type obnoxious people who recommend textbooks

Not Barred:

N.B.1. Really good fiction. Examples:

N.B.1.1 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - A recasting of "David Copperfield," narrated by an Appalachian boy whose wise, unwavering voice relates his encounters with poverty, addiction, institutional failures and moral collapse–and his efforts to conquer them.

N.B.1.2 Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

N.B.2. Really good biographies of interesting people written by really smart authors - Presidents (the lesser known ones especially), Industrialists (Vanderbilt, Joseph Kennedy Sr.), Generals (Omar Bradley, Nimitz, King etc), Scientists (Vannevar Bush).

N.B.3. Science Fiction (must be smartly written, the concept maybe dumb and unscientific). Think more "Story of your life" by Chiang and Jurassic Park by Crichton than whatever the heck Dune (too much on the nose) or Three Body Problem (trying to cover up lazy writing style with science) is.

N.B.4. I really don't want to but... History and General Nonfiction. Keep in mind Rule B.1 and B.3 still applies. No lame books like Sapiens or Guns, Germs and Steel. Neither are books like "Introduction to XYZ. An objective approach". Leave your autism out of this.

cc: @nuclearshill and @binturong (to pin this for 24 hours on /h/lit )

Edit: BARRED ON PUBLIC DEMAND: ANY NOVEL WITH 250+ PAGE.

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

!bookworms !classics

I'm still haven't finished Père Goriot and I began to re-read Crime and Punishment as It's been almost a decade since I read it and I was gifted a new and pretty hardcover edition. I forgot how neurodivergent the characters acted, I'm not talking about Raskolnikov but Luzhin for instance behaves and talks so strangely in his first meeting with his future brother in law and co., he first comes out as arrogant, then clueless with a "fellow kids" vibe. Marmeladov's rambling at the tavern was longer than I remembered, and what a pathetic and wretched person he is.

>Yeah, I'm a drunk unemployed loser, my wife got beaten up by shark loaners and I did nothing, my kids starve and my eldest daughter whores herself to provide for us, someone gave me a job out of good faith and old trust and instead of working I went to buy booze and get lost for 5 days. But God will have mercy on me because I'm self aware

I've always been optimistic about him finishing asoiaf, but the recent stuff like the Dunk and egg tv show seems to have motivated him more (ie pushing for money).

The other day he posted a second solitary cryptic quote on his notablog, this time from best president TR: https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/06/19/words-of-wisdom-3/

Previously he had this quote: https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/03/11/words-of-wisdom-2/ (this one has a blue rose image which is significantly tied to Lyana Stark)

Idk I think it's coming soon

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

!bookworms !classics

I haven't done much reading this week but I started Père Goriot, it's only 200 pages long so I'll try to finish it this weekend. So far I like Rastignac and I think Madame Vauquer is kind of a c*nt.

!kino

Still don't know how to make polls lol

It's like a universe of neurodivergents, right? No normal human talks like his characters do.

Who's read these books? I want to talk this shit out because they make me mad. I read Vacuum Diagrams when I was in Jr High, and have been working my way through his shit recently. Though Vacuum Diagrams was depressing, but holy shit, it's all pessimistic.

Why the frick is he obsessed with eusocial humans? If anything, neurodivergents are the oposite of eusocial.

There's a lot of contradictory shit, too. At some point the Silver Ghosts changed from kinda inconsiderate peepees to selfless martyrs. In Vacuum Diagrams there was a machine in Saturn that resonated micro black holes to make a cheap starbreaker, but in Exultant, humans just straight up have starbreakers. And in The Siege of Earth, Saturn conceals the Snowflake that can manipulate Mach's principle and deliver instantaneous gravitational attacks far beyond what was described in Vacuum Diagrams. For that matter, why was mankind in a Xeelee Hypercube? In the Siege of Earth, Luru Parz (btw the worst fricking character) puts Earth in a basket of time or something like that, but not a hypercube. So what timeline did the 8th Room happen in?

Transcendent is kinda interesting as an idea, but also ends up being morally repugnant due to the Undying being fricking ghouls. Baxter seems to have this idea that living longer makes you more of a frickhead and less human, when I would say the oposite happens. The premise that the Transcendence either has to kill all humans or "redeem" them also makes no sense. Seems like a cop out so the mankind can fail. He also went in big with the Clathrate Gun hysteria in the 22st century part which isn't a real thing. He seems to have a habit of extrapolating one questionable study into a whole novel.

All in all, still entertaining. Just wish he could write something positive with actual human characters.

!writecel

I'm pooooooooooooblishing

I decided that I'm just gonna publish the fricking thing I've been working on as a fricking web novel. I realized I might never finish it, the fricking bar is fricking insanely low for free online self pub and having even a fricking handful of readers is fricking better motivation to write.

It also frees me from word count constraints, and in all fairness I don't think it's a fricking work that would ever get the fricking time of day from actual publishers.

Any of you do this, b-word? Thinking of uploading to Royal Road.

!bookworms share your comedy kinos

https://lithub.com/the-meanest-things-vladimir-nabokov-said-about-other-writers/

https://wmjas.wikidot.com/nabokov-s-recommendations

!bookworms !classics come check this out

Plato. Not particularly fond of him.

Lmao

Freud, Sigmund. A figure of fun. Loathe him. Vile deceit. Freudian interpretation of dreams is charlatanic, and satanic, nonsense.

Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind? I may have aired this before but I'd like to repeat that I detest not one but four doctors: Dr. Freud, Dr. Zhivago, Dr. Schweitzer, and Dr. Castro. Of course, the first takes the fig, as the fellows say in the dissecting-room. I've no intention to dream the drab middle-class dreams of an Austrian crank with a shabby umbrella. . . . The Freudian racket looks to me as much of a farce as the jumbo thingum of polished wood with a polished hole in the middle which doesn't represent anything except the gaping face of the Philistine who is told it is a great sculpture produced by the greatest living caveman.

Also @JimieWhales someone agrees with you on Hemingway and Conrad

Hemingway is certainly the better of the two; he has at least a voice of his own and is responsible for that delightful, highly artistic short story, “The Killers.” And the description of the iridescent fish and rhythmic urination in his famous fish story is superb. But I cannot abide Conrad's souvenir-shop style, bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist clichés. In neither of those two writers can I find anything that I would care to have written myself. In mentality and emotion, they are hopelessly juvenile, and the same can be said of some other beloved authors, the pets of the common room, the consolation and support of graduate students, such as—but some are still alive, and I hate to hurt living old boys while the dead ones are not yet buried.

Or

As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early 40s, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.

Then on Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Dislike him. A cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. A prophet, a claptrap journ*list and a slapdash comedian. Some of his scenes are extraordinarily amusing. Nobody takes his reactionary journ*lism seriously.

The Double. His best work, though an obvious and shameless imitation of Gogol's "Nose."

The Brothers Karamazov. Dislike it intensely.

Crime and Punishment. Dislike it intensely. Ghastly rigmarole.

Then Camus, Sastre and Faulkner

Faulkner, William. Dislike him. Writer of corncobby chronicles. To consider them masterpieces is an absurd delusion. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me.

>Camus, Albert. Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me. Awful.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Even more awful than Camus. Nausea. Second-rate. A tense-looking but really very loose type of writing.

on the last one, but I like Camus.

What about the authors he likes?

He likes James Joyce, Kafka, Tolstoy, Borges and Bely.

He names “Ulysses”, “The Metamorphosis” and “Petersburg” as the greatest pieces of literature of the 20th century. “Petersburg” looks quite interesting by the way.

Pasternak, Boris. An excellent poet, but a poor novelist.

Doctor Zhivago. Detest it. Melodramatic and vilely written. To consider it a masterpiece is an absurd delusion. Pro-Bolshevist, historically false. A sorry thing, clumsy, trivial, melodramatic, with stock situations and trite coincidences.

!anticommunists thoughts on Dr. Zhivago? Even if only the movie?

To discuss your weekly readings or books, textbooks and papers.

!bookworms !classics

I finished “The Lady with the Little Dog” by Chekhov yesterday, there's only one more short story on the compilation book I have, “The Bishop”. Next I want to start “Père Goriot” by Balzac as I downloaded the epub on my kindle like 3 years ago but never read it.

!bookworms have you read it? I highly recommend it, it is an hilariously grim glance at 19th century Russian peasant life. It's a novella by Chekhov, just 35 pages long in the translation I read.

It's about a man named Nikolai who worked as a waiter in a hotel in Moscow. He was sent as a kid to get a better life but at the beginning of the story he falls and becomes a cripple. Unable to work, he returns to his village alongside his wife Olga and their daughter Sasha.

He had some happy childhood memories but once there he suffers a culture shock. The “Izba” (Russian peasant log house) where his parents, sisters in law and nephews live is very small and dirty.

Unlike most modern American “liberal urban dwellers visit their conservative country hick relatives” in this story, Nikolai's wife Olga is the pious one. She's very religious and regularly reads the Bible. Her in laws on the other hand are wretched people, they're all illiterate, they don't know any prayers and just go along with what the priest tells them, they curse and blaspheme a lot and display enormous ignorance (at some point their samovar get's confiscated because they didn't payed their taxes, the reason was that grandpa and uncle are both useless drunkards spending it all on vodka so the Starosta tells him to file a complaint in their next meeting, the author ads grandpa couldn't understand shit of those big words but felt satisfied). Granny is an abusive crone beating the crap out of her granddaughters for no reason other than being annoyed at the geese running around (Sasha tells her cousin that hopefully Granny will burn in Heck after Judgment Day). Uncle Kiriak is a violent boozetard who constantly beats his wife. At another point grandpa and his r-slurred buddies accidentally burn up the house of a neighbor. It is also stated that they use the money they collect for the village and spend it all on booze.

!nooticers !neolibs are these the BASED and TRAD Russians I keep hearing about?

Leo Tolstoy, despite being an admirer of Chekhov HATED this novella and wrote a scathing review calling it a “crime against the people” . Chekhov wrote the story after partaking in the Russian 1897 Census, he visited countryside villages, talked and observed people, Tolstoy's review makes sense considering Tolstoy was a landed nobleman LARPing as a peasant.

https://themasonicsociety.com/content/the-journal-of-the-masonic-society/

https://www.rosecroixjournal.org/resources

!bookworms

!bookworms !classics what's some “high-browed” literature you can't stand or just can't “get” despite the critical acclaim?

https://x.com/SimonSchfe45703/status/1799016360238088400

lmao @ humanities

(IDK the context of this and he might be replying to another philosopher and applying their logic to show something is ridiculous but that doesn't help my agenda so that possibility getting ignored)

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

!bookworms !classics

I'm started readings some Chekhov's short-stories. First one was “The Kiss”.