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vivi

vv@books.solarpunk.moe

Joined 2 years, 4 months ago

Autistic, anarchist, trans woman.

Mastodon: vv@solarpunk.moe

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Jia Tolentino: Trick Mirror (Paperback, 2020, Random House Trade Paperbacks) 3 stars

Not for me

3 stars

I found this wholly uninteresting. Seemed to be very focused on celebrities and privileged life. I wasn't able to find any interesting nuance, and it didn't feel very organized or coherent to me.

I just suspect it isn't for me. It just feels very allistic in a way that is incomprehensible to me as an autistic person, I guess. I can certainly imagine it appealing to someone else.

I'm not sure what else to say because I just didn't get it at all?

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started reading ENTWINED by VARC

VARC: ENTWINED (Paperback, Art Editions North) No rating

'ENTWINED: Rural. Land. Lives. Art.' Was a multi-partner project, organised by VARC (Visual Arts st …

I was an artist on this project. Just starting to read my copy of the book. There ar over 30 authors and artists (including me) and I really like many of their works.

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Moira Weigel, Ben Tarnoff: Voices from the Valley (2020, FSG Originals) No rating

From FSGO x Logic: anonymous interviews with tech workers at all levels, providing a bird's-eye …

I talked to a guy who used to work for one of these companies. ... And one of their shticks was, “Oh, we’re going to use social media data to figure out if you’re a great credit risk or not.” And people are like, “Oh, are they going to look at my Facebook posts to see whether I’ve been drinking out late on a Saturday night? Is that going to affect my credit score?”

And I can tell you exactly what happened, and why they actually killed that. It’s because with your social media profile, they know your name, they know the names of your friends, and they can tell if you’re black or not. They can tell how wealthy you are, they can tell if you’re a credit risk. That’s the shtick.

And my consistent point of view is that any of these companies should be presumed to be incredibly racist unless presenting you with mountains of evidence otherwise. Anybody that says, “We’re an AI company that’s making smarter loans”: racist. Absolutely, 100 percent.

Voices from the Valley by ,

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Andrew Mefferd: The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution (Paperback, 2019, New Society Publishers) 3 stars

Learn how to use natural no-till systems to increase profitability, efficiency, carbon sequestration, and soil …

Tillage results in two self-perpetuating cycles: it burns up soil OM necessitating the addition of more, and it stirs up weed seeds, necessitating yet more tillage to kill the weeds. Conventional farming “solves” these two problems in a manner that is not sustainable. For depletion of organic matter, it treats the soil as a substrate for holding plants and disregards the depletion of OM. For weeds, it has herbicides.

The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution by 

There's a lot of information available for free on the Internet, but now that I've been growing food on a (very) small surface for a few years, I realize I often understood the general idea but didn't get some details that actually make this or that technique work. For instance I understood why it was important not to till, but sometimes I sowed seeds on a soil that was still too hard and could have been slightly loosened on its first centimeters and fertilized (the seeds obviously didn't grow).

I'm still at the beginning of this book but I'm glad the author aims to talk about different versions of no-till, which may or may not be adapted to the reader's situation or specific culture, goes into details, and then interviews several farmers who successfully applied these no-till techniques.

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Jia Tolentino: Trick Mirror (Paperback, 2020, Random House Trade Paperbacks) 3 stars

So far this book is... Extremely straight and extremely allistic. The writer seems to be (knowingly and jadedly) tightly bound by capitalism and many toxic elements of western society in a way that I really cannot relate to. And she seems to think that it is pretty inescapable. So far I have been reading it with the interest of a somewhat bored anthropologist--in that at least I'm finding the perspective novel and different--but I'm unsure whether it is worth continuing. For now, I'll keep on reading, though.

Merlin Sheldrake: Entangled Life (Hardcover, 2020, Random House Publishing Group) 4 stars

There is a lifeform so strange and wondrous that it forces us to rethink how …

Great introduction to fungus!

4 stars

It was really enlightening to learn about the incredible impact that fungus has on all parts of the world.

I was especially intrigued at how plant roots and mycelium work together. It was also very surprising to hear about the impressive effects that truffles have on humans. I hadn't known that they had such an effect on people.