@masto.ai/@socprof. Interests: sociology, journalism, science-fiction, but not exclusively.
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Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of …
Silvia Moreno-Garcia provides another horror novel, also steeped into Mexican culture, in this case, the movie industry, mixed with occultism, and Nazis. She also includes the usual plucky heroine leading the action. She's an engaging writer.
I suspect this book was specifically written for sociology instructors in survey courses with a lot of topics to cover, largely undergraduates. The author goes through the usual intro to sociology topics: class, race, culture, sex, gender, race, deviance and uses examples from Reality TV / unscripted shows (1) to demonstrate that we are more reactionary than we think, and (2) to illustrate the concept of social construction. For a book about unscripted TV, I was expected more examples and a deeper analysis of these shows. The examples are limited both in depth and numbers. So while the book is very readable, it spends more time on sociological concepts and theorists than on its subject matter.
He's found a way to end their war, but will humanity survive to see it? …
I have loved the first two volumes of this trilogy. But this one, for some reason, was a bit of a slog, imo. Also, I'm not smart enough to enjoy loose ends.
The book delivers on its title. The author is the same guy who wrote Killers of the Flower Moon and he sure know how to write page-turners. Here, the basic story is about a squadron of British ships that, in 1740, were sent to chase after a Spanish galleon to steal its supposed load of silver. In order to do that, the squadron would have to round Cape Horn. A lot happens. Three different groups from the original crews make it back to England after about 6 years, some were shipwrecked, some carried out the mission, and two different groups of castaways ended back home through separate routes. It is a rich narrative, and a darn good story. Colonialism still sucks.
From a New York Times investigative reporter, this “authoritative and devastating account of the impacts …
That is the main thesis of the book: that the algorithms deployed by giants like Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter do not just allow like-minded people to find each other but that they actively push people together into extremist bubbles through their recommendation engines, up to and including genocide (as in Myanmar and Sri Lanka). The book goes through what seems to be considered now the origin story of radicalization and harassment via social media: gamergate. Things got worse from there, all the way to the January 6th attempted coup. The throughline is how social media platforms algorithmically push people towards extremism and outrage (which is more likely to be found on the right... see Irony and Outrage on this) because outrage keeps people glued to the platforms. The platforms want people on as much as possible, and if the way to get it is to destroy democracy, spread disinformation, destroy …
That is the main thesis of the book: that the algorithms deployed by giants like Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter do not just allow like-minded people to find each other but that they actively push people together into extremist bubbles through their recommendation engines, up to and including genocide (as in Myanmar and Sri Lanka). The book goes through what seems to be considered now the origin story of radicalization and harassment via social media: gamergate. Things got worse from there, all the way to the January 6th attempted coup. The throughline is how social media platforms algorithmically push people towards extremism and outrage (which is more likely to be found on the right... see Irony and Outrage on this) because outrage keeps people glued to the platforms. The platforms want people on as much as possible, and if the way to get it is to destroy democracy, spread disinformation, destroy any chance at public health, and violence, then so be it. Throughout the book, Fisher shows how the platform leaders knew the impact of their algorithm and did nothing, as one extremist event unfolded after another, rooted on the platforms, and yet they did nothing because the business model demands this. So it is not simply extremists finding each other actively on social media, it is social media pushing not just extremists but regular people into extremists groups or channels for the sake attention and data. It is deeply depressing and yet important. And because the platforms have learned nothing (and rolled back some of the measures they reluctantly took in 2020), we can expect more as the 2024 US presidential election approaches. All the more reasons to get off these platforms.
That book irritated me and I could not wait to be done with it. It's mercifully short. The premise is that we all believe in some conspiracy theories and most are believed by few people (according to opinion polls) so what's the big deal. We all need to calm down. After all, Trump accused Hillary of a lot of conspiratorial stuff but she did too. And a lot of Democrats believed that Trump conspired with Putin to win the 2016 election and it was totally a conspiracy theory and Bill Barr and Matt Taibbi showed it was nonsense. I mean, wtf. I don't have to explain how using opinion polls showing only 5% of respondents believing in Q shows it's nothing is misguided. What the authors completely miss is structural power. Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. There is no Democratic equivalent of Q and while there might be …
That book irritated me and I could not wait to be done with it. It's mercifully short. The premise is that we all believe in some conspiracy theories and most are believed by few people (according to opinion polls) so what's the big deal. We all need to calm down. After all, Trump accused Hillary of a lot of conspiratorial stuff but she did too. And a lot of Democrats believed that Trump conspired with Putin to win the 2016 election and it was totally a conspiracy theory and Bill Barr and Matt Taibbi showed it was nonsense. I mean, wtf. I don't have to explain how using opinion polls showing only 5% of respondents believing in Q shows it's nothing is misguided. What the authors completely miss is structural power. Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. There is no Democratic equivalent of Q and while there might be some conspiracy theories on the left, they have nowhere near the level of influence that conspiracy theorists have on the right, nor the media structure to amplify those conspiracy theories, not the actual elected officials to propagate them. I have read much better work on this from either other scholars (Meme Wars by Joan Donovan and others) or journalists who have done this work for a long time (David Neiwert), or even Cultish on the type of thinking that is pervasive in cult-like environments. Don't waste your time with this book.
The book explores the minds of the libertarian movement that have tried to crack up the nation-states in the name of capitalism without democracy and without national / legal oversight. The book starts with an exploration of Uncle Miltie's fondness for pre-reunification Hong Kong as well as the case of Singapore. As an aside, the book shows three generations of Friedmans, all with the same unoriginal ideas. More generally then, the book is about zones, export processing zones, economic development zones, free trade zones, all these areas carved out of national territories, exempt from regulations, labor laws, and (heaven forbid) taxation. This is the dream of libertarians: to crack up the nation-states, and create thousands of zones, governed by libertarian principles. It's entirely coincidental (snark) that these libertarian thinkers almost always end up bedfellows with white supremacists (see the case of Ciskei as "voluntary segregation"). For them, racial separatism and …
The book explores the minds of the libertarian movement that have tried to crack up the nation-states in the name of capitalism without democracy and without national / legal oversight. The book starts with an exploration of Uncle Miltie's fondness for pre-reunification Hong Kong as well as the case of Singapore. As an aside, the book shows three generations of Friedmans, all with the same unoriginal ideas. More generally then, the book is about zones, export processing zones, economic development zones, free trade zones, all these areas carved out of national territories, exempt from regulations, labor laws, and (heaven forbid) taxation. This is the dream of libertarians: to crack up the nation-states, and create thousands of zones, governed by libertarian principles. It's entirely coincidental (snark) that these libertarian thinkers almost always end up bedfellows with white supremacists (see the case of Ciskei as "voluntary segregation"). For them, racial separatism and segregation is ok as long as it "chosen" from the bottom up, rather than imposed. Out of this type of thinking also came the idea of seasteading, entities existing in international waters, therefore either not subject to any national laws, or choosing which ones to navigate to. In all the cases presented in the book, the common thread is a disdain for democracy and popular governance, and a solid dose of old-fashioned social darwinism, with the libertarians seeing themselves as superior beings, able to win against the Westphalian order, by sheer force of how much better the zones are, compared to messy democracy. In the end, all the different projects that have been tried, have largely been failures, but that never stops these self-proclaimed geniuses from moving on from one failure to the next, while claiming to go galt. And there is always seems to be deep-pocketed funders for these projects (the Koch brother are mentioned multiple times). The book is rich in examples of attempts at creating these libertarian paradises, from, again, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the docks of London, all the way to Dubai, Honduras, and, of course, the metaverse. In meatware or virtual reality, the wealthy can't wait to get away from the rest of us, and certainly away from any idea of the common good. And yet, as the book notes, "From Honduras to Dubai, the waged service class is the easiest for the visionaries to forget and the hardest for them to live without. (...) The cloud floats because the underclass holds it up." (222). Never mind the environmental toll of maintaining a "cloud country", funded through, of course, cryptocurrency. It is totally dystopian, of course, but there are some powerful backers behind this movement, like Peter Thiel. We should pay attention.
A conscientious objector to surveillance capitalism plans to battle the world’s largest social network/e-commerce/monitoring company, …
Content warning Review includes spoilers - A good book with one major critical omission
This novel is a sequel to Dave Eggers's The Circle. When the Circle was about a tech company that looked an awful lot like a hybrid of Facebook and Google, the Every is the resulting monster if Facebook / Google merged with Amazon, leading to the fictional company called the Every. It is absolutely terrifying how plausible the resulting dystopia is. And yet, it misses a BIG part of some critical aspects of the current times it aims to satirize. The premise focuses on Delaney, a young woman who gets herself hired at The Every with the deliberate objective of destroying it from the inside. Why? Because the Every, as the name indicates, controls (almost) everything. In the book, its main victim and martyr is a dog, whose deprivation of free running time at the beach, leads to his death. The Every is evil but full of people with good intentions, saving the environment, proper sourcing of resources, animal rights. But somehow, the Every applies awful tech solutions to these social issues. Horrifying results ensues (pets get banned) with every deepening of a culture of surveillance enabled by the company. So how will Delaney destroy it? By coming up with more and more awful ideas, each supposed to unleash such a backlash that it will end the company, only to be placidly (sometimes enthusiastically) embraced by an apathetic general public, expanding the reach of the Every deeper into people's lives. With every new idea, Delaney thinks she's got it, but no. This culminates with her sharing her last two ideas with the leader of the Every, Mae Holland (readers might remember her from The circle). As Delaney actually manages to convince herself that the Every can be used for goods, then... something happens. The book is a page-turner. Up until the end, I had no idea what would come next, and how the whole thing would resolve. The conclusion is we're fcked and it might be too late. With every new app, every new (both meaningless and treated as* meaningful metric), with ever more data, and bits of human features and behavior that can be quantified, the surveillance society expands in every direction. But here is what Eggers misses: the Every are all portrayed as socially liberal / economically libertarian. They care about the planet, animals, saving people, eliminating violence in society. But they go about it awfully. But where is the rise of fascism that we see today? Has the Every defeated it? How? As much as the book is near-future satire of our present day, it completely ignores this essential feature of our times: the rise of authoritarianism / fascism / theocracy. Somehow, this has completely disappeared in the Every's near future, and therefore escapes Eggers's critical eye, free to be then directed at the Everyones (as the Every employees call themselves), often portrayed as the "snowflakes" stereotypes that right-wingers like to lob at lefties. It's still a good book but it's a major omission.
This book is based on Karen Levy's research on the integration of electronic logging devices (ELDs) in trucks, supposedly to ensure better compliance with work hours rules and other regulations. Levy shows the actual impact of the devices (used mostly by large trucking companies initially, since then made mandatory by federal transportation authorities). This is where #sociology of #labor meets the #surveillance society. Levy explores the truckers' culture and ethos, based on rugged individualist values and not a small dose of machismo and how this culture conflates with increased surveillance, leading to various forms of deviance and ways to "hack" electronic surveillance. All the while, Levy explores the underlying structure of the trucking industry, its winners and losers, where exploitation is located and how the ELDs are positioned within the web of power relationships within this industry. This may all seem complicated (it is!) but Levy's writing is relatively jargon-free …
This book is based on Karen Levy's research on the integration of electronic logging devices (ELDs) in trucks, supposedly to ensure better compliance with work hours rules and other regulations. Levy shows the actual impact of the devices (used mostly by large trucking companies initially, since then made mandatory by federal transportation authorities). This is where #sociology of #labor meets the #surveillance society. Levy explores the truckers' culture and ethos, based on rugged individualist values and not a small dose of machismo and how this culture conflates with increased surveillance, leading to various forms of deviance and ways to "hack" electronic surveillance. All the while, Levy explores the underlying structure of the trucking industry, its winners and losers, where exploitation is located and how the ELDs are positioned within the web of power relationships within this industry. This may all seem complicated (it is!) but Levy's writing is relatively jargon-free and clear. This a is a book that is perfectly appropriate for undergraduates. I should note that there is a really good methodological appendix at the end.
The unmissable follow-up to the highly acclaimed Children of Time and Children of Ruin.
Earth …
I have been a huge fan of this series ever since I read Children of Time. This one is on a par with it. The premise is the same: an Earth Ark ship on its way to a new planet, supposed to have been terraformed in anticipation of human colonists, escaping a dying Earth. In line with the Gilgamesh of Children of Time, this one is called the Enkidu, on its way to a planet called Imir. but they are not the only one. There is also an expedition from the Humans and their non-human allies (portiids, octopi, and the new addition: corvids). There is, I think, a greater sense of tragedy to this one, with a mystery at its center. The ending is ambiguous so I'm not sure whether there will be another "Children of..." entry or not. Either way, this one was a page-turner.
Trust the Plan, by Daily Beast's Will Sommer, covers some of the same territory Van Badham's QAnon and On does, but because the former is more recent, it almost picks up where Badham leaves off. Sommer goes through some of the history of QAnon, starting all the way back to 4Chan and Gamergate, all the way to now. Some of this is already well known, and there is a certain amount of fatalism in Sommer's view that our current system cannot deal with QAnon, now that it's been welcome into the GOP. At the same time, Sommer's book clearly shows that QAnon is dangerous. The only quibble I'll have with the book is the repetition of the false frame of "America's political polarization". We're not polarized: one party decided to embrace a conspiracy theory and make it its core ideology, on a path to fascism via local and state-level authoritarianism. …
Trust the Plan, by Daily Beast's Will Sommer, covers some of the same territory Van Badham's QAnon and On does, but because the former is more recent, it almost picks up where Badham leaves off. Sommer goes through some of the history of QAnon, starting all the way back to 4Chan and Gamergate, all the way to now. Some of this is already well known, and there is a certain amount of fatalism in Sommer's view that our current system cannot deal with QAnon, now that it's been welcome into the GOP. At the same time, Sommer's book clearly shows that QAnon is dangerous. The only quibble I'll have with the book is the repetition of the false frame of "America's political polarization". We're not polarized: one party decided to embrace a conspiracy theory and make it its core ideology, on a path to fascism via local and state-level authoritarianism. Sommer sees no solution to this as he seems to think it's already too late.
The book is part analysis devoted to debunking most of the oft-repeated myths about poverty and the poor. But while doing that, Desmond turns the tables on the rest of us: poverty exists and persists because we benefit from it, and we like it that way. The second part of the book is all solutions on how to abolish poverty. None of this is easy, and, in the current political climate, advocating for poverty abolition seems hopelessly naive. As Desmond himself notes, it will take collective action and social movements. We're not there yet. And it feels like the countervailing forces currently pushing fascism and theocracy are not running out of steam. It certainly helps that Desmond writes extremely well and clearly. As with Evicted, it's worth reading the end notes. Let's see if Poverty, by America gets as much acclaim as Evicted.
Sociology
A little birdy told us you needed to know more about Mastodon
Ready to escape …
This is a very short read. However, you will find everything you need to get started with Mastodon, and quite a few handy tips for more advanced users. There is also a section on creating your own instance with a hosting service, if that's your thing. And the book closes with good Mastodon clients, and a quick overview of the other apps in the Fediverse.
Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a centuries-old delusion: that the earth …
It's easy to make fun of flat earthers but this book shows that they sit at the intersection of a lot of other conspiracy theories, and share a lot in common with cults. Weill goes through the history of the movement, in the 19th Century (it's not old, the Greeks had already figured out that the Earth was a globe). But, surprise surprise, it is really with Youtube and Facebook that the contemporary movement took off (see what I did there?) thanks to their recommending algorithm. And yes, flat earthers gravitate in the same orbit (natch!) as antisemites (if there's a conspiracy, there have to be conspirators), neo-Nazis, Q, and vaccine troofers. So it's not a movement of harmless eccentrics who can just be ignored. They join the crowds of radicalized by social media. It's not cute. It's dangerous.
The book takes as its starting point the arrests of Lori Vallow ("doomsday mom" as the media and social media started calling her) and her accomplice Chad Daybell, and follows the thread of Apocalypse-obsessed fringe LDS groups. Both are currently awaiting trial and facing the death penalty for a bunch of murders that include two of Lori's children, her ex-husband, and Chad's wife. What makes this book especially interesting is that it's not just a true crime reporting but it incorporates the context of what makes these weird "the end is nigh" offshoots of LDS actually not so much bizarre deviations but logical extensions. In other words, the fringe is not so much the fringe as slightly off-center. In addition, these cultish LDS groups overlap quite a bit with other similarly cultish groups: anti-government / anti-tax sovereign citizen-types, Q (of course), and white nationalists. As the author notes, "At the …
The book takes as its starting point the arrests of Lori Vallow ("doomsday mom" as the media and social media started calling her) and her accomplice Chad Daybell, and follows the thread of Apocalypse-obsessed fringe LDS groups. Both are currently awaiting trial and facing the death penalty for a bunch of murders that include two of Lori's children, her ex-husband, and Chad's wife. What makes this book especially interesting is that it's not just a true crime reporting but it incorporates the context of what makes these weird "the end is nigh" offshoots of LDS actually not so much bizarre deviations but logical extensions. In other words, the fringe is not so much the fringe as slightly off-center. In addition, these cultish LDS groups overlap quite a bit with other similarly cultish groups: anti-government / anti-tax sovereign citizen-types, Q (of course), and white nationalists. As the author notes, "At the heart of what happened is an ecosystem of extremism: extreme preppers arming up for the end of the world, extreme Mormons who focus only on the “latter-day” part of their church’s name." So this cannot be dismissed as the doings of deranged individuals.