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

!bookworms

@Murdervann pls

I was thinking about it and I realized that I have gotten bored of reading fiction novels and cannot decide what to go with in the non-fiction department.

I have read hundreds of short stories through my life and I realized that I never gave much attention to the written essays section of reading material.

Essays generally tend to be coherent observations about a certain topic, with a very high level of depth per para without being impossible to read, as I have found essays are generally written with the intent of being read by somebody else, thus requiring them to be comprehensible within their limited word and page limit. This stops any of the wordswordswords bullshit we face when dealing with the works of philosophers and so I feel like a good essay is the highest quality bang for your buck you can get out of any pieces of text that exist.

This is why I would like you guys to recommend me the best essays that you are aware of.

Do not recommend me the Unabombers Manifesto as I am already aware of it.

Thank you.

Actually a lot of it is the sort of retrospective wankery that successful authors frequently seem to drift toward in their late careers. You might like it if you love author commentaries, John Irving, and Charles Peepeeens, and if you don't you might still like something in it, but this is a shitpost, not a review.

The eponymous story is high quality dramalit.

You can read the whole thing here in the NYT archives

It starts with Irving's recollections of his childhood summers in New Hampshire, of long days spent running around with the boys, avoiding neighborhood dogs, and bullying an r-slured pig farmer named Piggy Sneed. The narrative ends with adult Irving watching that same r-slurred pig farmer burn to death while he spins a yarn to the other bystanders about how Piggy Sneed actually escaped the inferno and moved to Europe. When the fire burns out, Irving is tasked with scraping the charred r-slur corpse up from the ashes.

What makes "Trying to Save Piggy Sneed" dramapilled is the Shyamalan-level twist in the final act. The main anecdote of the essay could have existed on its own as a compelling, albeit somewhat tasteless piece on human ugliness and that very relatable sentiment of feeling kind of bad that you don't feel very bad about something. Instead, Irving uses it as a vehicle to present some hackneyed and self-obsessed musings on his role as an author because surprise! This is actually one of those autofellating memoirs where writers write about writing!

Piggy Sneed is a hilariously fricked amalgamation of disturbing personal story and tedious thinkpiece that manages to be less than the sum of its parts, but is more entertaining for it. Irving's sense of detachment from the events he's mining to fabricate an origin story for himself makes this read like an unintentional parody of the sort of neoconfessional slop that you'll be familiar with if you took a college English class or read a lit mag at any point in the last 15ish years.

It also sort of reminds me of that David Sedaris book where he uses his sister's suicide to brag about his beach house. And maybe that isn't a fair characterization of a book I didn't read all the way through, but if any of you are middlebrow New Yorker-brained Sedaris enjoyers and feel like concisely explaining how I'm wrong then maybe I'll read it.

Anyway I'm losing the plot here so I'm going to post this without wrapping it up

The Culture of Critique is the apotheosis of the "Culture of Critique" trilogy by Kevin Macdonald, an evolutionary psychologist professor. The history of this series is dramapilled in itself, basically this guy was big on group selection theory and noticed the jews existing as a specific group as a diaspora, so he decided to do some research on them. The first two entries, "Those who dwell alone", dealing with jews since their separation from Judea and the formation of Rabbanicial judaism, and "Separation and its discontents", dealing with the conflicts that arise between jews and gentiles, received great reviews from the mainstream jewish community and rabbis who loved the work....Then Kevin Macdonald turned his attention to the 20th century and caused gigaseethe, by the end of the research he had swallowed a redpill so massive that he dedicated the next twenty years to non-stop seething at jews

Culture of Critique reminds me a lot of "The Rising Tide of Color" by Stoddard in that it starts the book with a brief overview of the state of the world at the start of the 20th century. Kevin Macdonald comments on the state of the United States in the year 1900, saying they were a proud and confident people who had just conquered almost an entire continent, had a healthy vibrant culture and had a proper understanding of race. Then he contrasts that with 1999 (the present) where whites in the United States are being reduced to a minority, whites are afraid to assert their own racial interests and American culture has become self hating and unsure of himself.

The answer, he says, is because of the JEWS, specifically ashkenazi jews that arrived around that time from Europe.

He identifies four intellectual movements responsible for dissolving white racial identity. Boasian anthropology, which asserts that all races and cultures are equal and that claims of cultural superiority are invalid. Marxism, which promoted universalism and the dissolving of national differences. Freudian psychology which pathologized healthy behavior as being a sign of mental illness. And Cultural Marxism, which likewise pathologised all in group selection as being a sign of mental disorder and leading to fascism. These destructive intellectual movements, Macdonald asserts, were pushed by jews who identified strongly as jews, specifically as a strategy to dissolve the identity of the society around them. Basically he's asserting that jews acted in bad faith, and had their own self interest at heart when they pushed these ideas. His charge is intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy, as they never turned it inward and focused on the most insular culture of all.

This is where I learnt something from the text, something that !chuds and !nonchuds alike can take home. The process MacDonald described gets laid out in full, and you see one charismatic jewish leader (Freud, Boas, Ardorno, etc) get a place in a university chair somewhere, and then start an inner cult with dedicated students. These students all then venture out and dogpile the opposition with WORDS WORDS WORDS, they work to seed themselves in university chairs elsewhere, falsify research blatantly, until they're in a position to say "It's the mainstream consensus". You seen it especially with Boasian anthropology, with Margarat Bead just openly bullpooping about Samoan society and lying about her research to push that theory of cultural relativism. By the time the intellectual dishonesty was discovered it was too late, they were already embedded in university chairs everywhere and writing all the textbooks. It was a march through the institutions.

The book is filled with anecdote after anecdote of jews acting two faced and having double standards (and there is a lot). Stuff like Einstein smugposting about how nationalism is an infantile disease, and then soyfacing hard and rushing to fundraise for Israel, the "great hope of the jewish people". Rabbis in the 1980s bragging with triumphant joy at the demographic shift, saying we've passed the point where brownshirts can be marching on our street, the implication being that the sacrifice of american homogeneity was worth it if it protected the chosen. The other thing that MacDonald noticed was the shift in jewish participation in a movement in regards to its alignment of jewish interests. When Stalin turned out to be a bydlo country yokel who hated the master race, suddenly jews dropped communism in the 1950s and started forming neoconservatism on the other side, with a massive shift in support following the Arab Israeli wars.

What makes the whole trilogy hilarious to read is the transition from enthusiastic academic interest in a subject that interests him to just pure butthurt. It's like watching the kid being made fun of realize they're not laughing with him, they're laughing at him, it's that exact same hilarious loss of innocence. The paranoia, hatred and contempt for jews is absolutely dripping from the pages by the closing chapters of the Culture of Critique. He finishes off by indirectly saying the nazis were right and we need to become nazis again. He does this by saying "Nazism is a mimickry of the jewish evolutionary strategy...whites must become like jews to survive". Which taken together means he wants to answer the jewish question exactly like the nazis did.

My personal opinion....I'm not really entirely convinced. 100 years is a long history and jews have been involved in a lot of intellectual activity, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to fill an entire book of two faced smarmy behavior taking place over a hundred years for any group that writes and studies as much as the jews. Plus with an intermarriage rate of 50%+ I don't really see it as a successful strategy to dominate like Macdonald thinks it is, you don't mix with the people you're dominating. Even the most racist South African would be roping if the intermarriage rate was anything like that during apartheid. Of course Kevin MacDonald copes and says "no no, you see, marrying and breeding with whites is part of their strategy ". But it just seems like he's schizo on this point.

I'd give it a read still, I learnt a lot about the history of certain intellectual movements, and I learnt how dog-piling works well in academia to advance your own theories. I'm sure in twenty years time we'll find out a lot of the current mainstream consensus was made by a similar sort of dogpiling.

>"The best book I've ever read was Atlas Shrugged in 8th grade. Changed my life."

>Not because I remember anything about it, or believe anything it espouses, or even like it all that much, but because it's a useful filter for obnoxious people in meatspace.

>If someone I don't know too well asks me what my favorite book is, I say Atlas Shrugged. If they react inappropriately, I'll be cordial and treat them with respect, but I don't want to be friends. If they're way too supportive - the same rule applies.

>If they're critical in a way I can appreciate, then I know they can either tolerate ideas they hate or have the social accumen to not go too hard in the paint early on in a relationahip. Really, I'm just looking for people who won't jump down my throat on a faux pas.

>Later on in the relationship I'll tell them my actual favorite book, "A Canticle for Leibowitz", or "Neuromancer", or "The Dying Earth" (my opinion changes based on my mood).

cue seething from failures at shit tests

>I think you're dismissing the people such as myself that would note you as an idiot without comment and move on wanting nothing to do with you.

>The fact is, some people deserve harsh judgement. Including people who lie to someone and think they are morally superior for doing so

>I don't want to pass this test. Someone who uses one of our first interactions to test how tolerant I am of Objectivism removing themselves from my life is an ideal outcome.

Whoa what if DAY but NIGHT?? I bet THAT got you excited to read 900 pages of "queer feminist fantasy!"

!bookworms

If you're into scifi at all you should read this. I wont spoil it but its about intelligence and consciousness. the writing is good too which is rare in scifi

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

!bookworms !classics

Le sexy s*x thread number amerite?

@Murdervann pls

"They call that govment! A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin. Them's the very words. I says look at my hat—if you call it a hat—but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I—such a hat for me to wear—one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights."

"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free BIPOC there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane—the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that BIPOC vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me—I'll never vote agin as long as I live.

And to see the cool way of that BIPOC—why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people, why ain't this BIPOC put up at auction and sold?—that's what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There, now—that's a specimen. They call that a govment that can't sell a free BIPOC till he's been in the State six months. Here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free BIPOC, and—"

Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language—mostly hove at the BIPOC and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous.

He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University's required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they're assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames's students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.

This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.

the future is r-slurred

I'm currently working on the outlines for my main characters, and my female lead has very specific features and measurements. Breast size and buttocks shape and size has always been the most difficult for me to describe in a tasteful manner. With my main character having size HH cups I cannot think of any other way to describe them as "amply massive heavy slopes."

The story will have mature content and is in the dark-fantasy romance genre.

!chemistry !bookworms !ifrickinglovescience they adapted it into a TV show with Brie Larson. Have any of you read this book? I know this show exist because my mom watched it and talked to me about it then I googled it, find out it was a book then I went /r/books and it looks like any fiction made in the year of our lord 2015+

https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/v5yjs6/lessons_in_chemistry_by_bonnie_garmus/

The plot seems to be: 1950s chemistry PhD student gets r*ped and stabs her male feminist. She gets expelled of her PhD program and becomes a girlboss in cooking with a cook show. The foid falls in love with another chemist and refuses his marriage proposals, the moid dies but she's pregnant. A few years later she was this hyper intelligent dog and a 5 year old kid who can read and quote Peepeeens and the main foid does neurodivergent quircky shit on her cooking show like referring to salt as sodium chloride or vinagre as acetic acid. She apparently also angrily tosses a food can into the trash because "it's filled with chemicals", lol sounds like TBBT level dialogue.

What the frick is all the soyfacing "so heckin' mindblowing!" shit about?

Nothing is revolutionary or impressive compared to SciFi that was written years ago. The Dark Forest theory isn't new—it's already been proposed as a (dumb) potential solution to the Fermi Paradox. However, there are other explanations that make a lot more sense. For example, life might be rare, and intelligent life even rarer. The chances of two civilizations existing at the same time, where both their planets can sustain that kind of life, is minuscule—especially within a manageable radius.

So, unless some civilization invents interstellar travel, there's almost no chance of actually encountering aliens, aside from maybe microbes. But I doubt even that, since we've yet to discover any, even at the microbial level--but hey, gotta write a book and as long as it's well thought out, I can run with it.

The Trisolarans on the other hand, could never have evolved in the first fricking place. But reddit "science" worshippers (uh-oh a heckin strawman) would say, "Well, you don't know the different places life can evolve—maybe it could evolve on even the most hostile planets," my response would be: maybe, but in that case, why isn't there life on Venus? Why is there no life on Mars? Why don't we see giant floating octokitties in Jupiter's atmosphere or spiders on Mercury? Those planets can't sustain life, and Trisolaris, with its unstable three-body orbit, would be even worse. It wouldn't last long enough for life to develop—it would either be ejected from its solar system or collide with another planet or its sun. Although Alpha Centauri doesn't even have a fricking orbit like that.

All the stuff related to multiple spatial dimensions doesn't make sense scientifically. It's fricking ridiculous. There's no indication that other dimensions are actual physical planes we can visit, rather than just a way that a string folds in on itself and in which case, we're already in those dimensionrinos. The "escape velocity" of the 2-D vector higher than light from beyond the antipodal distance of the oort cloud and Pluto is just a handwave for "I need to kill everyone" because it doesn't make any fricking sense by any kind of spacetime metric that wouldn't rip the planets apart with tidal forces from its motion

The idea of the droplet being able to hit targets 40 kilometers underground is doubtful. We likely couldn't even dig that deep, regardless of technological expertise, unless we had some way to stabilize structures at that depth. Even then, the droplet has a set kinetic mass, and once it runs out of kinetic energy, it wouldn't be able to penetrate any farther into the bedrock, no matter how hard it is. Even with the most advanced thrust imaginable, there's just no conceivable way it could achieve that—it's not even relativistic.

On top of that, if you had a relativistic railgun and hit the droplet, even if it's "unbreakable," the deceleration from something like 4 million Gs would still wreak havoc on the electronics inside. So, while it might seem impressive at first glance, scientifically, if you apply any amount of common sense, it quickly becomes absurd.

The idea of spaceships accelerating at 125 Gs but only reaching 0.1% of the speed of light is completely absurd. If a ship can thrust that violently, why can't it get up to speed? You'd think with engines that powerful, we could extend their thrust duration by simply adding a larger fuel tank. You could build a fuel tank the size of a football field if needed. So, that doesn't make any sense.

The "Project Staircase" concept was flawed too. Why couldn't we accelerate something to even 1% of the speed of light? Back in the 1960s, we had proof-of-concept for Project Orion, which could theoretically reach anywhere from 15% to 50% of the speed of light using nuclear bombs for propulsion. So, the limitations being presented here are ridiculous, especially since Orion would be capable of carrying a significant payload.

Then there are the sophons, which are obviously ridiculous too. Pretty much everything is kind of absurd when you think about it. I'm not sure why this all appeals—it's an interesting read, sure, but it's essentially a fantasy novel set in space.

It also reflects a very Chinese worldview, where everyone is seen as the enemy, and you must defend yourself. People are portrayed as needing to be controlled because they're too stupid to handle freedom responsibly. But perhaps the most unbelievable part is the idea that humanity would submit to a gigaglobohomo government like that. I could see people agreeing to something like the UN or a coalition, but a global government suddenly having martial law over everyone?

I feel like this is the kind of shit the average parses as "mind-blowing" and "realistic"

The morality is abysmal, killing people is a-ok as long as you have good intentions but everyone is out to kill you anyway. Although actual data shows that despite chud and redditroid fears, people are actually hardwired for social cooperation and empathy.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S002209651500168X?via%3Dihub

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongan_castaways

The characters are 2-D, Luo Ji is probably the most likable character and he's a literal manlet incel.

Shit just happens, the 4-D space handwave to disable the droplets was a unecessary Deus Ex Machina.

But, otoh, it's a decent read. I'd class it more like a comic or anime than actual literature but it's not terrible.

I think the writer makes books for people who cut their teeth on ridiculous Anime concepts, and maybe that's why it was so well received.

Anyway, I know nobody asked but I felt like bitching.

Next day Pap was drunk, and he went to Mr. Thatcher's and bullyragged him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then he swore he'd make the law force him.

Thatcher and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther not take a child away from its father. So Mr. Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business.

That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide me till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I borrowed three dollars from Mr. Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said he was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for him.

When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says:

"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before he'll go back. You mark them words—don't forget I said them. It's a clean hand now; shake it—don't be afeard."

Figure 1

So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge's wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge—made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it.

Figure 2

The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way.

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

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As for me, nothing

I still have to finish Ben Wilson's "Metropolis"

Marcellus... Marsey...lus. Say his name.

His last words were not a lament, not a supplication, not a polemic. They were a kind, empathetic, and truly Christian appeal to human goodness.

Springing from his bronzed Yakubian dome, like Athena from Zeus, like mayo monkeys from... Yakub...

a final poem.

The Perplexing Smiles of the Children of Palestine

A mealy-mouthed title, but a meaningful one.

despite the actions of a few,

(a bold word for a black man to begin with)

and excessive retaliation,

The Marxian (Marcian?) dialectic is set; action, reaction.

drones,

planes,

bombs,

tanks,

Notice the structuring here: first introducing the antagonists by an extended merism representing the state, or repeated synecdoche, arguably both - then their acts by the same device:

rubble,

buildings demolished,

vanished houses and neighborhoods,

hospitals targeted,

U.N. shelters disrespected,

Asyndeton. It's when you leave out conjunctions, example 'for'. A classic trick of Greek rhetoric to emphasize, one Maestro Marcellus employs in his jarring list.

murder,

death,

deliberate killing of noncombatants,

babies buried alive,

amputations,

hunger and political starvation,

Here, Marcellus employs the rhetorical equivalent of fugue stretto by introducing the harmonic elements of alliteration, rhythm and rhyme. It is clear the climax and coup de grace is up soon.

Next, take the line 'hunger and political starvation'. Isn't 'political starvation' odd? This is an example of hendiadys. What is this, you ask?

You take an adjective and a noun, and then you change the adjective into another noun.

So instead of saying 'I'm going to the noisy city' you say 'I'm going to the noise and the city'.

Here he means 'politically starving hunger', hunger brought by their political subjugation.

lack of or no water,

strategic sanitation,

An excellent use of irony, to cut off the tap is 'strategic sanitation'

daily terror,

and terrorized daily,

On another note, note that Marsey and I just used polyptoton. This is repeating a word in a different case, inflection, or voice in the same sentence; "to talk the talk", "Give us this day our daily bread", here, "terror and terrorized".

military maneuvering,

moving here and there,

to return back again to nowhere,

trauma with all its manifestations,

international parleys and hesitation,

defiance to the realization of two nations,

you can practically hear the stretto, the building climax as syllables and rhythmic elements are tacked on to say "two nations", but then a fall,

global aid thwarted,

global amnesia,

a fall of anaphora, the repetition of the beginning word for multiple clauses:

• We shall fight on the beaches,

• We shall fight on the landing grounds,

• We shall fight in the fields and in the streets,

parental worries -

notice here the dash, it's a clear rhythmic change via aposiopesis, Greek for becoming silent, a favorite of HP Lovecraft

• Tidy your room, or else …

the silence is filled by the reader, why do these parents worry?

in the face of apex arrogance

and ethnic cleansing by any definition...

still your laughter can be heard

and somehow you are able to smile

O resilient Children of Palestine!

What a brilliant, powerful finish by an Islamic scholar and gentleman, an innocent man who saw in his own peril, the "perplexing smiles" of the Palestinians. For you may think this poem is about Gaza, but it's truly about his own persecution.

Bravo, Marsey! Bravo!

A fair ratio:

TL;DR

As you can see, Marsey Williams is a brilliant poet and rhetorician. If you ever doubted this point, you may be a philistine. For Marsey uses merism, synecdoche, asyndeton, stretto, alliteration, hendiadys, irony, polyptoton, anaphora and aposiopesis to craft a poem with a profound double meaning that passed most by. Did you chuds even know what these devices are before I explained them? Did you even know what the poem meant?

Of course not.

You will never have the brains, the heart, the soul, or the poetic gifts of Marcellus Williams.

This is the fate of every innocent black man in modern America; to be persecuted, to be resented, and to be hanged.

An account of growing up in Communist China in the 1960s. I'm only sharing it because it is the best thing I've ever read in my life.

It's really remarkable how her experience was so close to mine in some ways. I don't know what makes me feel I know her. Obviously growing up before smartphones and that. But it's more than that.

If anyone actually gives a shit, let me know.

Like those freaks doing the JonBenet Ramsey case.

The manga is an autobiography following Kabi Nagata, a young woman, exploring subjects such as her mental health, her exploration of her sexuality, and her experience with growing up.[3] Her experiences provide context to why she chose to lose her virginity to a female s*x worker.

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

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I read almost nothing this week but a few pagea of Ben Wilson's Metropolis. But it didn't stop me from buying this when I went to the bookstore last Sunday