Well, this turned out to be one of the most devastating books I’ve ever read. ‘Song of Stars’ by Guus Luijters, trans. Marian de Vooght, is a beautifully written attempt to recuperate the memory of a Jewish girl from the Netherlands, murdered by the Nazis.
#TIL that in 1929, JM Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, gifted his work's copyright to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
"Through this gift, Peter Pan’s magic made an unprecedented leap from the realm of fiction into reality and the hospital began to receive royalties every time a production of the play was on, as well as from the sale of Peter Pan books and other products."
He llegit quasi totes les novel·les de #GarcíaMárquez i fa uns dies vaig començar aquest recull de contes. Només puc dir que és absolutament magnífic. Us el recomano molt molt! @bookstodon#bookstodon#llibres
#Bookstodon / #BookSky challenge: Choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#JustFinished Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant
This has been an absolutely fascinating book to read and is perhaps the most important book I'll read all year. Merchant is spot on with his commentary about the parallels between the first Industrial Revolution and now. We have not learned a thing about protecting our populations and economies from mass unemployment during technological upheaval.
I spent last night thinking about the "shift to the left" initiative at my old job, basically reducing the complexity of any work you can enough for someone lower paid and lower skilled to do it. And now the push to automate anything that is repeatable. In both cases, the companies reduced staff enough to make you HAPPY to get the work off your plate. By running departments "lean" enough to mean we can't complete our objectives,
the powers that be force us into participating in our own obsolescence. It's sinister and brilliant at the same time.
Shifting to the left has morphed into shifting to lower cost environments. Hire someone in the Philippines rather than Hong Kong or North America. And sure, I'm all for global wealth, but it does seem both exploitative of the Filipinos and detrimental to those in higher paid environments.
If we were hiring them for expertise rather than for taking up lower level work, I would feel differently. But doing this is restricting entry level positions in places where you're trying to get your experts, thus limiting the growth potential in those economies. It's going to depress the tech sector in ways I don't think they've considered enough to care about. Or maybe they have considered it and still don't care.
There was even a quote in the book from some first Industrial Revolution tech bro saying, essentially, "Go ahead. Try to get the government to care enough to fix this." And we're right back there now. We can't even go back to the old ways of destroying the tech that's destroying our lives because we live in a surveillance society. And where the hell is that AI being hosted anyway?
It's spread out across geographies and there are backups. I don't know how we'll make it through this.
Are other sectors as bad as tech? What happens in NA when what's left of the middle class is gone and only the ultra rich can afford to live? As each small piece of wealth for the average person erodes, cracks appear in the foundation of the economy, and the negative impact will spread.
haven't been reading as much as I'd like this year and am craving something akin to Several People Are Typing (aka grown up sci-fi-ish version of ttyl)
A young girl learns of her grandmother and great-aunt’s involvement in the Dutch Resistance during World War II in this heartbreaking middle grade story of family, history, resilience, and hope from acclaimed author Liz Kessler.
Just finished reading my first spy novel in ages. Felt like one and oh my goodness it was great! Gave it 4,5 stars as the story is a bit slow in certain parts ( that's in part a pro too in others )
The book is called A Spy Alone by Charles Beaumont and I highly recommend it.
For no particular reason, I had The Rooster Bar by John Grisham on my TBR and started reading it this week. I don't normally go for "airport books," but this one is a ton of fun. Now I remember why I read over a dozen of Grisham's books in the 90s and early 2000s. It's been a while since I picked him up... almost a couple decades, but I'm glad I did again.
FTR, The Rooster Bar has nothing to do with chickens. 😉
#CurrentlyReading Knock, Murderer, Knock! by Harriet Rutland, a little-known crime writer of the late 30s/early 40s, who wrote three well-received novels before divorcing her husband and moving to Devon, whereupon she wrote no more. Knock, Murderer, Knock! is reminiscent of Agatha Christie, if AC had been on the sweet sherry for 48 hours before sitting down to type. Having a good time with it, needless to say. #reading#books#bookstodon