Reviews and Comments

just reading the section on minimalist typography and realizing i'm almost alone on this thing in having permanent caps unlock

I was expecting this to be a breezy, empty-calories read, but it's much more. The author is a linguist and is able to anchor the material in research and rigor while still keeping it fun af

The preface to this 2006 edition is about how SF is a failed imperial city but here's why he wrote these things this way, and about the twin towers and the Gulf war and how he really wanted to write about NYC as the real imperial city but all this bombing got in the way, and I just can't. If he doesn't think what he wrote is relevant anymore, I can't be bothered to muck through it. DNF. Actually Did Not Start.

Observations of a Black Millennial pop-culture junkie who teethed on The Little Mermaid. Ponders successive generations' tendency to produce fewer good/evil narratives in favor of messy relationships. Disney was a shaping force for her; she describes growing into a love-hate relationship with the Mouse. At the end, she's clubbed and dragged by Megyn Kelly. Recommended (the book, not the dragging).

If you came for witches, you're going to get a whole lot more. Witch-hunts are demonstrated to be just one of the mechanisms by which women have been and are held down. We're led through pop culture and the image of the 'old hag' that permeates films and Disney cartoons. Then we're taken to hospital for a critical look at medicine and a particular gaze at obstetrics and gynecology.

But first, motherhood. The front half of the book is a polemic against societal norms for mothering and parenting — only a mutant doesn't want kids — that may turn off readers well before she actually converts them. It's a fine line. I can't say pulling punches would have reached more people. I only know I almost didn't make it.

a more sweeping book than i had expected. the idea of 'witch' comes to represent the power of a woman freed from the shackles of patriarchal society. chapter 1 digs into mothers being held down by societal pressures to eat last and be only supportive, not sentient. quotes corinne maier's 'no kid', which i read back in the day (and found a bit shrill, but it could have been my lack of language aptitude).

The author's voice — earnest and sometimes dad-jokey without hysterics — is the reason you should make room on your shelf for yet another book on the environment. Sure, some of the chapters will cover ground that you may already know pretty well. But the other twenty will open your eyes, like revealing a sick forest behind a felled tree.

And just like that, this returns to the headlines: the founder of HackingTeam, a rival spyware outfit to NSO whose history is intertwined with it, was arrested and jailed on suspicion of attempted murder.

techcrunch.com/2023/11/29/founder-of-spyware-maker-hacking-team-arrested-for-attempted-murder-local-media/

I still insist that @sarahpinsker@wandering.shop was the first to use "the before times" as a pre-pandemic dividing line — because her pandemic book came out in 2019.