Zompist Bboard Again

I'm on a bit of a Fintan O'Toole binge right now; I've now read Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain (also known as The Politics of Pain: Postwar England and the Rise of Nationalism). Great book, even though at times it's a bit too highbrow for my taste. It's not a chronicle of Brexit; it's a sequence of musings and thoughts about the psychological effects that led to Brexit. One of the most important of those, in O'Toole's opinion, is the British tradition of seeing the titular "Heroic Failure[s]" as one of the greatest things in the world. See also Orwell's quip, which O'Toole quotes at one point, that "[t]he most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction."

O'Toole also digs into English resentments over winning a really big war and not having much to show for it afterwards; and diagnoses a certain English desire to have an overbearing colonial master to struggle against, like, for instance, all those countries historically colonized by England did.

EDIT: One of my favorite putdowns from the book is a remark that, during the Teresa May era, "[t]he Tories tried to build a personality cult around a woman who doesn’t have much of a personality."

I should give a fair warning that at one point, O'Toole deadnames a scholar who transitioned later in her career.

And another one from Fintan O'Toole: Three Years in Hell: The Brexit Chronicles. This one is a collection of columns he wrote for various outlets from 2016 to 2019. Some of his ideas from these columns had already been included in Heroic Failure, so there were some repetitions from my perspective, but I didn't mind that.

However, because of the book, I now know that Boris Johnson once wrote a novel called Seventy-Two Virgins, and now, barring dementia or something like that, I can't unlearn that fact.

Anyway, one of O'Toole's main ideas about Brexit is that it is mostly an assertion of a specifically English, as opposed to British or UK, nationalism, which sounds about right to me.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2024 12:00 pmAnyway, one of O'Toole's main ideas about Brexit is that it is mostly an assertion of a specifically English, as opposed to British or UK, nationalism, which sounds about right to me.

Oh, very much so. It has nothing whatsoever to do with most kinds of Scottish nationalism, for example.

alice wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2024 2:22 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2024 12:00 pmAnyway, one of O'Toole's main ideas about Brexit is that it is mostly an assertion of a specifically English, as opposed to British or UK, nationalism, which sounds about right to me.

Oh, very much so. It has nothing whatsoever to do with most kinds of Scottish nationalism, for example.

I'm not a Brit, but I was under the impression that Brexit was seen as a betrayal by many Scots, because for those who voted against Scottish independence remaining part of the EU was implicitly part of the deal.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2024 3:50 pm

alice wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2024 2:22 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2024 12:00 pmAnyway, one of O'Toole's main ideas about Brexit is that it is mostly an assertion of a specifically English, as opposed to British or UK, nationalism, which sounds about right to me.

Oh, very much so. It has nothing whatsoever to do with most kinds of Scottish nationalism, for example.

I'm not a Brit, but I was under the impression that Brexit was seen as a betrayal by many Scots, because for those who voted against Scottish independence remaining part of the EU was implicitly part of the deal.

This is very true too.

Spent much of this week reading John Scalzi's novels Starter Villain and The Kaiju Preservation Society (in reverse order compared to their publication). Both great, quick, fun reads. And both of them left me wishing they were longer.

I always get that feeling when reading scalzi (i mostly have it read for me by some dude who works for audible). do consider reading the interdependency series, for I much enjoyed it.

Torco wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 2:54 pm I always get that feeling when reading scalzi (i mostly have it read for me by some dude who works for audible). do consider reading the interdependency series, for I much enjoyed it.

I already did!

Just read Ed Zitron's piece The Rot Economy, ( https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/ ) which brilliantly sums up a lot of stuff that some of us might have been thinking for a while.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 1:11 am Just read Ed Zitron's piece The Rot Economy, ( https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/ ) which brilliantly sums up a lot of stuff that some of us might have been thinking for a while.

Yeah, I think he's put his finger on the problem.

What's kind of missing is any solution. Which is probably because any possible solution means hobbling venture capital somehow, and those guys are too rich to hobble, at least in the US.

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 6:57 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 1:11 am Just read Ed Zitron's piece The Rot Economy, ( https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/ ) which brilliantly sums up a lot of stuff that some of us might have been thinking for a while.

Yeah, I think he's put his finger on the problem.

What's kind of missing is any solution. Which is probably because any possible solution means hobbling venture capital somehow, and those guys are too rich to hobble, at least in the US.

We could try to introduce socialism - as in, outright socialism, not social democracy - but I don't see how to get that done politically. (Very indirectly related to this, my general assessment of politics in our time is that a) the status quo is horrible, and b) the people with the best chance of actually destroying the status quo generally want to replace it with something even worse.)

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 1:11 am Just read Ed Zitron's piece The Rot Economy, ( https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/ ) which brilliantly sums up a lot of stuff that some of us might have been thinking for a while.

Echoes here of Dan Olson's Line Goes Up.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 7:07 am

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 6:57 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 1:11 am Just read Ed Zitron's piece The Rot Economy, ( https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/ ) which brilliantly sums up a lot of stuff that some of us might have been thinking for a while.

Yeah, I think he's put his finger on the problem.

What's kind of missing is any solution. Which is probably because any possible solution means hobbling venture capital somehow, and those guys are too rich to hobble, at least in the US.

We could try to introduce socialism - as in, outright socialism, not social democracy - but I don't see how to get that done politically. (Very indirectly related to this, my general assessment of politics in our time is that a) the status quo is horrible, and b) the people with the best chance of actually destroying the status quo generally want to replace it with something even worse.)

Completely agreed.

Reading "The Cruel Prince" by Holly Black. I haven't done much fiction reading in quite a while. And as someone who wants to get published one day as a speculative fiction writer myself, I've been doing myself a disservice. It's also just nice to be reading again.

Jumping up-thread a bit:

”Raphael” wrote:Spent much of this week reading John Scalzi’s novels Starter Villain and The Kaiju Preservation Society (in reverse order compared to their publication). Both great, quick, fun reads. And both of them left me wishing they were longer.

”Torco” wrote:I always get that feeling when reading scalzi (i mostly have it read for me by some dude who works for audible). do consider reading the interdependency series, for I much enjoyed it.

”Raphael” wrote:I already did!

As it happens, my brother sent my wife and me a bundle of John Scalzi E-books for Christmas, so I have now read Fuzzy Sapiens (after re-reading H. Beam Piper’s [/]Little Fuzzy[/i], which it reboots), the Interdependency series, and Old Man’s Wat (Scalzi’s first published novel), and my wife and I are currently reading The Kaiju Preservation Society. The only book in the bundle I have not yet touched is Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, which is a collection of Scalzi’s blog posts.

(Note: I wrote this before seeing and replying to the posts above.)

Some time ago, I read the fantasy novel The Interpreter’s Tale: A Word With Too Many Meanings by E.M. Epps. The main character in the novel is a military interpreter who is recruited to serve as a negotiator for a diplomatic marriage, where the potential married couple speak different languages. The author is evidently a conlanger, although the novel contains few explicit examples of the conlangs proper. One notable feature is that the interpreter (although not any of the other characters) thinks in terms of modern linguistic terminology, with terms like “conjugation,” “serial verb,” and, most dramatically, “hypochoristic derivations” (i.e., diminutives), which is helpful for readers with some linguistic background, but a bit jarring. (To be charitable, I suppose one can pretend that these are meant to correspond to in-world equivalents. It would probably have been more interesting if the author had created in-world terminology, but that’s not really the point of the story.)

Last autumn, my wife and I took a trip down through Roanoke, Virginia, and on to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina, as well as a later trip back to Roanoke; along the way, we picked up several books, including 23 Tales: Appalachian Ghost Stories, Legends & Other Mysteries, edited by Terry Shaw and Brad Lifford, and The Cherokees of the Smoky Mountains by Horace Kephart (first published in 1936), which I have read, and Backwoods Witchcraft: Conjure and Folk Magic from Appalachia by Jake Richards and Cherokee Narratives: A Linguistic Study by Durbin Feeling, William Pulte, and Gregory Pulte, which I have not. The last book is perhaps of linguistic interest: it contains several Cherokee oral tales, each of which is given in Cherokee, Latin transcription, a literal translation into English, a morpheme-by-morpheme breakdown of the Cherokee, and a freer translation into English.

As noted above, I have been reading the works of John Scalzi, including Fuzzy Sapiens, the Interdependency series, Old Man’s War, and The Kaiju Protection Society. Currently, I am starting The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss, which is a science fiction novel about a generation starship; one notable thing about it is that the colonists aboard the ship are a community of Quakers, who strive to follow the Quaker principles of consensus and pacifism. I thought it would be an interesting counterpoint to John Scalzi’s work; the Interdependency series in particular is inhabited largely (although not entirely) by cynical characters doing cynical things, and I thought it would be a change to read a story about people trying to live up to an ideal, as well as a slower-paced, more contemplative work (as opposed to Scalzi, whose work, as noted, is generally fast-paced). The author, Molly Gloss, was a long-time friend to the late Ursula K. Le Guin. Most of her works fall under mainstream fiction; The Dazzle of Day was her excursion into science fiction.

My other recent reading includes The Steerswoman Series by Rosemary Kirstein, How to Live Like a Monk: Medieval Wisdom for Modern Life by Danièle Cybulskie (host of the Medieval Podcast), and Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, edited by Alicia Spencer and Blake Gott (I picked the latter up as a free PDF after hearing an interview with the editors on the same podcast). In, addition, I also recently re-read the book version of the Language Construction Kit, and have just acquired Almea: Industrial Age, although I have not read it yet.

In addition, I have a fairly lengthy driving commute, so I have taken to downloading and listening to podcasts while driving. Those I listen to regularly include podcasts on the topics of worldbuilding (including Worldbuilding for Masochists and Exolore, which I have just started), history (The Medieval Podcast, Byzantium and Friends), and news from the former Soviet Union (e.g., In Moscow’s Shadows, The Eurasian Knot), as well as The Prancing Pony Podcast and Today’s Tolkien Times (reading and discussing the works of J.R.R. Tolkien) and Old Gods of Appalachia (Appalachian folklore meets Lovecraftian horror; I began listening to the podcast after seeing one of their live shows).

(I apologize for the length of this post, but all of these were things that I felt were worth sharing, so I bundled them all into one.)

Books:

Really fun reads:

1. Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. A nerdy professor of fairies is forced to weaponize fairytales in her quest to complete a comprehensive encyclopedia of fairies. High point: induce crying to freeze an enchanted sword of tears.

2. The Captain by Will Wight. The seven-fold Archmage becomes the captain of a "spaceship" of lost technology. Before he can fully activate the ship, insidious forces seeking to conquer the galaxy try to put him out of commission. WH40K-like fantasy space opera, but clearly inspired by shounen in style, though in good ways only. High point: The pilot of the "spaceship" is basically the anime psychopath character in entertaining ways.

Way above average:

1. Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree. Questionable Content (the webcomic) with D&D races and a D&D subplot.

2. The 5-Minute Sherlock series by Drew Hayes. The silliest detective series of all time?

Songs:

I've been listening to 4 songs on a loop: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLz- ... xjTqQzs6Wv Flowers from Hadestown might be the best possible song.

Ah mio cor: https://youtu.be/_3HR2rbnld8

Videos:

NCommander is back! Yay! https://youtu.be/LJ-8v9yIBx0

Girlboss fascism: https://youtu.be/9a7LrWo47I0

Korean politics: https://youtu.be/sPNUem_2vCo

Startups are Shutdowns now: https://youtu.be/-V9yPGdubHQ

Why is it that pope figures consistently have a better take on Marxism these days than just about anyone else? https://youtu.be/cVvEOdXz_pk

Anti-fascism is now illegal in Finland: https://youtu.be/-ALRi0zNfuc

Farscape, Babylon 5, Andromeda