Starts with a promisingly astute observation: “It would be so tedious for you, wouldn’t it, to have your research interrupted every so often by cultists wanting to worship the thing you were studying? In my department, now, we don’t have such problems.” “Good heavens, Harriet—you study money! All sorts of people worship that.”
(In STEM, we get crackpots, but our cultists are usually violently denying our findings instead of worshipping them.)
Dr. Idz doing some masterful work of destroying the misinformation and outright lies around food; which is noble work because there is a lot out there from self-serving people who aim to destroy other people's relationship with food. Demonizing certain foods doesn't help anyone except the ones on the fake dietician's pulpit! Moderation, varied eating habits, and exercise are always the right answers!
Finished Book 1 (a third) of #Dune by Frank Herbert and it is really good so far, I actually feel that watching the movie helps quite a bit to understand some things, they compliment each other well so far.
So, if you've read my other book reviews this year, you'll be familiar with the name Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic). If not, become familiar! His work (published in books, delivered by RSS feed or Xitter, or appearing on various websites) is always entertaining and informative.
The infotaining nature of his writing is clearly evident in his latest book: The Bezzle. I backed the Kickstarter that successfully funded an audiobook version, although audiobooks aren't my thing and I read it in eBook form on my Pixel 6a. It's the second Martin Hench book, a period piece starting in the dotcom boom era, years before the first Hench book, Red Team Blues. Here we see a less established Martin (sans tour bus) stepping unwittingly into the attention of a sleazy robber baron. Events spiral wildly away from a burger-supply Ponzi scheme (no, really) as the book progresses.
The book structure is a little odd; it felt like the pelt of two-and-a-half Last Week Tonight With John Oliver episodes stitched onto the bones of a modern-day Grisham novel. Here the blend of entertaining and informative comes to bear; you know you're being educated as you read, but it's enjoyable, so it doesn't feel like a lecture. There's lessons about MLM investment traps, the hideous state of the California prison-for-profit system, unfair music royalty practises, and more.
The Bezzle was a quick and excellent read, and I'll be delving more into Doctorow's back catalogue as the year progesses, thanks to a tasty Humble Bundle deal that's still active as I write.
Still not in the mood for "Exordia" and heavy ethics, so I'll read Pleiti and Mossa's new adventures next, as @older's sequel to "The Mimicking of Known Successes" is just out!
Welp, these long titles don't make good hashtags, do they.
The influencer that the internet needs - Cory Doctorow (find him at @pluralistic, pluralistic.net, craphound.com) - is back in my reading list with a second book for 2024. I backed the Kickstarter for the audiobook of the sequel to Red Team Blues (The Bezzle, review coming as soon as it's released!), choosing to take ebooks of Red Team Blues and The Bezzle rather than the audiobook as I like to read rather than listen. Cory chooses to Kickstart his books because Amazon forces reader-hostile DRM onto his works, and in his infinite wisdom, he wants his readers to be able to consume his content in they way they see fit, not in the way a rapacious tech giant demands. It's a publishing strategy that's worked out well for him so far. I wish more authors had the same opportunity to avoid being ensnared in the Amazon flywheel which operates to the detriment of both content creators and content consumers. (For more on this, read Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory and Rebecca Giblin, reviewed by me as Book 1 of my 2024 reading list!)
But I digress. What's Red Team Blues about? It's a hardboiled tale by way of Silicon Valley, where the protagonist just wants to do one more job before a well-earned retirement... and you can guess how well that goes. There's cryptocurrency and financial shenanigans that 67-yo Martin Hench is ably equipped to deal with, even if the blowback from his investigations take him well out of his comfort zone (a tricked-out tour bus named The Unsalted Hash). Hench is good with the ladies and knows his way around the dark corners of the internet like a Chandleresque gumshoe knows which bar to find a lead. There's social commentary that spans a gamut of problems with Big Tech and those left behind when the money floats to the top.
The writing leads you along at a brisk pace - I read this over a few days easily - but at times I found I could see Cory behind the veil of two characters having a particularly erudite and wordy discourse about computing or crypto. I pushed this aside when I realised that this was probably a case where a very intelligent author was supplying dialogue for a pair of equally intelligent characters, and perhaps I was just a little dumber than everyone involved.
I can't wait for the release of The Bezzle; it's not yet on sale, but you can get a copy of Red Team Blues from Cory's webstore at craphound.com/shop/ while you wait for the sequel's release!
Book 8 of 2024: Delilah Dirk and The King's Shilling by Tony Cliff
Book 2 of (currently) 4 in the Delilah Dirk Series.
263 page Graphic Novel.
Swashbuckling adventure story which continues following the (often violent) shenanigans that Delilah Dirk and Mr Selim seem to consistently find themselves part of.
Recommended if you like luscious art and derring-do!
From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting
by Judith Brett
I love a good election, and Australia does good elections. Getting to see Antony Green strut his psephological stuff on TV is great, but what's even greater is that our system works, and works to the benefit of the majority of Australians. In this book, Judith Brett outlines the history of Australian voting, from just prior to Federation to the modern day. It's not a roller-coaster of a read - at times it felt like I was reading a long Wikipedia article - but it was definitely interesting.
Of note was one chapter detailing the shameful treatment of Australia's Aborigines, who were denied the vote for far too long despite being disenfranchised in multiple ways; the author presents excepts from Parliament where votes for Aboriginal Australians are being debated, and the derogatory language is quite frankly appalling.
The success of the Australian voting system rests on three pillars: compulsory voting, preferential voting, and non-partisan electoral administration. Compulsory voting staves off apathy and ensures radicals don't overly dominate, preferential voting ensures the least worst option for the majority of voters, and a non-partisan electoral board keeps parties from gerrymandering and disenfranchising voters out of representation. It's a great combination and we're so lucky to have it. Other nations would do well to adopt as many of these three pillars as possible, and their voters should lobby their representatives to enact them by any means.
This is a great book, and it's a relatively quick read, so if you're a history buff or election geek, mark this down on your reading ballot!