Which book are you reading now? Volume XIV

[yung.carl.jung]

Anyone know of good history books about the German Kaiserreich? I've got some decent sources in German, but was look for stuff not by natives.

Also I just finished Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities", a superb book about the origins and spread of Nationalism, and perplexingly even featured a susbstantial defense of Nationalism v. Racism and Imperialism. Also establishing once more that both non-"Western" focussed historians and Marxist historians are based beyond belief. Reading about 20th century Indonesia and 19th century Siam is absolutely enlightening vis a vis (Post-) Colonialism.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Also establishing once more that both non-"Western" focused historians and Marxist historians are based beyond belief.

I do not know what this sentence means. Was a word or two left out?

 

[red_elk]

Biased

 

[Birdjaguar]

Biased

That makes perfect sense now. Thank you.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

based is an adjective and it means "great", basically

 

[Birdjaguar]

based is an adjective and it means "great", basically

Nice try.

 

[Josu]

Ended Los asesinos del emperador -The Emperor's Assassins - by Santiago Posteguillo, a historical novel about Trajan.
Narrates Trajan's raise since he was a kid until he became the imperator. The story is centered in Trajan from one side and how the killing of Domitian took place from the other. As every historical novel has a fiction side, the author wrote an annex explaining what is documented as real, what is lucrubation and what is fiction. A good novel, however, not this author's best.
Will read second and third parts of the trilogy without doubt.

Starting Gateway, by Frederick Pohl

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'm reading a collection of short stories about the (post-)apocalypse. One of them is about a serial killer, a veterinarian who euthanizes people as she would animals. She tells them she's treating them and gives them an injection that will "help them sleep."

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Practical Statistics for Data Scientists (2nd edition) by Peter Bruce, Andrew Bruce, and Peter Gedeck covers various techniques and their implementations in R and Python. The book, as admitted in its preface, does not include methods that originated in computing such as neural networks. There is a focus on rectangular data and topics of lesser interest to data scientists such as formal statistical tests are indicated. Overall, a well-illustrated and less-technical introduction to statistical computing.

 

[Ajidica]

If you ever want to understand how erratic Trump was as President, definitely read John Bolton's book.

You mean Bolton's attempt to be readmitted to the DC Cocktail Circuit?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Nice try.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=based

A word used when you agree with something; or when you want to recognize someone for being themselves, i.e. courageous and unique or not caring what others think. Especially common in online political slang.

Do you ever do google searches for.. anything?

 

[red_elk]

"Marxist historians are based beyond belief" means their work is based not just on belief, but far beyond that, on hard historical evidence

 

[Birdjaguar]

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=based

A word used when you agree with something; or when you want to recognize someone for being themselves, i.e. courageous and unique or not caring what others think. Especially common in online political slang.

Do you ever do google searches for.. anything?

What's Google?

I did look up "based" after your post to see if I was missing something and found this at MW
based
adjective

\ ˈbāst \
Definition of based
(Entry 1 of 2)

: having a specified type of base or basisa soundly based argumentI realized that his technique was psychoanalytically based.— Robert Klitzman—often used in combinationoil-based paintsa fact-based narrative

From your link:

A word used when you agree with something; or when you want to recognize someone for being themselves, i.e. courageous and unique or not caring what others think. Especially common in online political slang.

The opposite of cringe, some times the opposite of biased.

The latter usage is the original use as coined by rapper Lil B, and the word originally took off on the meta-ironic website ***** with the latter meaning. For that reason the word is largely used meta-ironically (without context you can't tell if it's being used ironically or sincerely as it's used in both ways) and was popularized in online political slang of conservatives and the political right before being adopted into mainstream online political slang

I don't keep up with Lil B or rap slang or Reddit or *chan. Millennials have been changing language rapidly and inventing new words and changing the meaning of old ones. That is what generations do. I keep up when it is interesting or important. The suggested typo of leaving out an i to make biased into based seemed an elegant solution fitting with Occam's razor. Your adoption of a new word meaning derived from a rap singer is fine, but just don't expect everyone else to be aware of your assumptions.

 

[sendos]

You mean Bolton's attempt to be readmitted to the DC Cocktail Circuit?

I don't think he would be interested in returning, not with his falling out of Trump. That basically burned his Republican connections, given how the Republicans are just walking in lockstep with Trump.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Leviathan Falls
(The Expanse #9)

Expected November 2021!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

So excited for that @Birdjaguar !

I'm actually picking up a book at the library today, the first since last March (thanks Covid!). It's about the early days of SpaceX and I plan on reading it on the beach this week.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm 1/3 in and it is thankfully an unbiased take of the company's early history. I was a bit worried this would be a sycophantic love letter but the Eric Berger doesn't shy away from some of the awful working conditions the employees endured. He doesn't overplay them either - truth be told, the company was doing a lot of exciting things that no one else was even thinking about at the time. That alone kept a lot of employees hooked and many of them would have worked very long hours without being told to. Many of them even gave up lucrative careers in the government or big aerospace companies to join SpaceX so it's hard to say people were abused by working there. It was very rough though, and people were required to give up their lives effectively to work there - the book returns to the theme several times of how the majority of those early employees were young and childless.

That was a prime recruitment demographic for the company (whether intentional or not) due to their ability to work longer hours due to lack of family commitments. Then after the first few years, it seems a whole wave of people left as they began to marry and have kids. It's hard to say whether this was overall a net negative for the company - did the churn cause them to lose more productivity than they gained from pushing everyone so hard?

 

[Kyriakos]

I am reading another memoir of a personality from the greek war of independence. This one was written in 1850, and so had to start by alluding to the disgraceful Don Pacifico/Lord Palmerston affair.
At least Lord Palmerston was far more disastrous in the case of Denmark and the second Schleswig-Holstein war.

Locally, the book's author is usually likened to Thucydides, due to the latter's similar (dual) role in a notable war, by being both active as general and historian. The similarities generally end there; Thucydides was far more of a historian (he is, after all, the 'father of history'), while Makrygiannis was an honest patriot and saddened by decadent politics.
He describes a chronic and systemic decadence, which would only end with the first balkan war (60 something years after this book...) and an actually skillfull prime minister, Eleutherios Venizelos.

In the future I also plan to read on Venizelos. But two books by personalities of the greek war of independence (both memoirs) really help me to form an idea about how it was.

 

[Josu]

Ended Gateway by Frederik Pohl.
As all I have read from this writer, it was OK, fresh, interesting. However, did not like too much parts with sigfrid.

Starting Danza de tinieblas by Eduardo Vaquerizo (dance of darkness). A steampunk ucrony whose Jonbar point is Philip II from Spain diying prematurely and his half-brother John of Austria is being crowned. Centuries later a detective investigates a crime.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I just got this from Amazon today. I am interested to see if it makes any actual sense.