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altamira16Britney Griner is 6'9". At the beginning of this book, she is rushing with her bags out the door to catch a plane to Russia to play basketball. She forgot some nearly empty vapes in her bag, and that leads to being incarcerated in Russia for nine months. Her passport is confiscated at the airport. She is moved to pretrial detention, and she has to return to court over and over until trial and sentencing.
Because she is such a tall person, nothing fits. Her legs hang off the end of the bed until they make a bed that is the correct size for her. The gulag uniforms don't fit until she has a seamstress who makes her a new one.
After reading this and To Build a Castle by Vladimir Bukovsky, I am pretty sure that to survive your time in a Russian gulag, you are just supposed to take up chain smoking. It is mandatory.
She lost nearly thirty pounds while in the gulag.
Her wife Cherelle, the WNBA, and others advocated for her release, and it was great to see the love of the community shine through. But in Russia, lesbianism seems to be treated like a mental disorder so everyone is incredulous that she has a wife.
Her wife was finishing law school and attempting to pass the bar exam while advocating for Griner's release.
I thought that this book was really well done, and the warmth of Griner and her community balanced out the part about being in a Russian gulag.
Because she is such a tall person, nothing fits. Her legs hang off the end of the bed until they make a bed that is the correct size for her. The gulag uniforms don't fit until she has a seamstress who makes her a new one.
After reading this and To Build a Castle by Vladimir Bukovsky, I am pretty sure that to survive your time in a Russian gulag, you are just supposed to take up chain smoking. It is mandatory.
She lost nearly thirty pounds while in the gulag.
Her wife Cherelle, the WNBA, and others advocated for her release, and it was great to see the love of the community shine through. But in Russia, lesbianism seems to be treated like a mental disorder so everyone is incredulous that she has a wife.
Her wife was finishing law school and attempting to pass the bar exam while advocating for Griner's release.
I thought that this book was really well done, and the warmth of Griner and her community balanced out the part about being in a Russian gulag.
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wwdn_feedThis thing has been happening to me since I built my first blog about 25 years ago, and you’d think that by now it would have stopped, but here we are.
The longer I go between posts, the more SUPER IMPORTANT the next post becomes. This is especially gross after I’ve been promoting something. I feel like I’ve bombarded the world with my promotional stuff, so I ought to give the world something to offset that.
…only when I sit down to do that, the part of me that creates those things is like, “Oh hell no. I’m on vacation.”
So I come in here, day after day, get to about this point in a post just like this one, and then I get frustrated, delete it, and go play video games.
I have to break that cycle, so here’s a little bit of a roundup to put something new here.
Yesterday, I finished building the LEGO Batmobile, which I started months ago. It has some adorable little details that were a lot of fun to discover, but holy shit was it tedious most of the time. It turns out that building vehicles, even one that I have been obsessed with since I was a little kid, is not something I enjoy.
I think I’m doing the Haunted House next.
If you’d told me a year ago that the Stanley Cup final in 2025 would be the same teams from 2024, I never would have believed you, and once again I am cheering for Florida because Edmonton is literally the only Canadian team I just can’t abide. Sorry, Oilers Nation, but fuck Corey Perry.1
Remember Trek Side of the Moon? It’s back, in T-shirt form.
I loved the movie, but am very late to the What We Do In The Shadows series party, so I’m only now getting into its third season. A couple nights ago, I watched an episode that takes them to Atlantic City. Nandor gets completely hooked on a Big Bang Theory slot machine, and is delighted to discover that there is a television series that is “faithful to the slot machine.”2
The thing is … because The Big Bang Theory canonically exists inside the What We Do In The Shadowsverse, that means I exist inside that universe. This feels like an achievement that should come with a badge, and it makes me stupidly happy.3
Late last week,I saw that Loretta Swit passed away. We worked together when I was a kid, and I remembered some things about her.
A friend of mine observed that we are slowly becoming the Elders, and that’s just really weird. I have been thinking about that, and it turns out there is a lot about that I’m not really ready to embrace, like accepting that people I love, who mean so much to me, are getting older (and elderly) with all that implies. It’s just … it’s really weird. At the same time, it feels really good and … gentle? … to embrace a position in life that allows me to be a kind, patient, supportive, and encouraging person in the world for anyone who needs it.
I’m thinking a lot about how I can talk about things from a place of experience, in a way that younger me would have been able to hear and internalize. I want to be a Helper so much, y’all.
I had a meeting with my team to discuss next steps on It’s Storytime. The audience is small but passionate, and growing steadily. I think we’ve found a way to make it break even, or slightly better, while the audience continues to grow. Thank you to everyone who is supporting the show on Patreon, to everyone who has liked and subscribed and whatnot. It looks like the audience is right around 20,000 listeners which seems like a lot to me, and something I feel really good about! But you know what’s crazy? In the podcast world, it’s tiny. Isn’t that nuts?
When I was walking Marlowe, I came across this weirdly bent spoon in the street, so I posted it in my Instagram stories with the caption “If anyone sees Uri Gellar, tell him I found his spoon.”4
I think this is a pretty good joke.
I watched a fantastic film a couple nights ago, about the post-punk scene in West Berlin from 1979-1989, called B-Movie: Lust & Sound. It’s streaming all over the place, and if you like the same kind of music and aesthetics that I do, it’s probably worth your time.
I think that’s all for now. Have a good day, friends.
- Also, Florida sent 9 players to Four Nations, and Four Nations was the most exciting and satisfying hockey tournament I have ever seen. So there’s that.
︎ - I love how this show keeps surprising me like this. The first time, it was throwing the bone off the roof in the werewolf fight. I never saw it coming, and it just killed me. ︎
- I also exist inside Tommy Westphal’s snow globe, but that doesn’t feel as exclusive. They’ll let anybody into that thing. They let me in there! ︎
- If you get this reference, that means it’s time to schedule a colonoscopy, if you haven’t already. And make sure you’re getting enough vitamin D, because our aging bodies need it. ︎
bethbethbethOn May 8th, I offered to read the first five books people recced - assuming they were available (preferably from the library) - and I'd give a short review [https://bethbethbeth.dreamwidth.org/701769.html].
This is the sixth recced book review.
Rules for Ghosting (2024), by Shelly Jay Shore (recced by mx-sno on bluesky)
Yes, this is a romance (gay cis man/bi trans-man), but it's also a story about family dynamics, grief, birth and death, found family, Judaism, and a dog named Sappho.
Oh, and ghosts!
I'm passing on the rec, but I'd offer two caveats:
One...if you have anxiety surrounding death rituals, including taharah (the "ritual washing, purification, and dressing of a deceased Jewish person before burial"), you might want to think twice.
Second, on a pure story level, there's sometimes a little too much "not telling people important things either for their own good or because you don't know how to start the conversation" for my personal tastes, but for all I know, that's your favorite trope. :)
However, Rules for Ghosting is generally an interesting, good-hearted story with a clever premise and a diverse group of likable characters.
This is the sixth recced book review.
Rules for Ghosting (2024), by Shelly Jay Shore (recced by mx-sno on bluesky)
Yes, this is a romance (gay cis man/bi trans-man), but it's also a story about family dynamics, grief, birth and death, found family, Judaism, and a dog named Sappho.
Oh, and ghosts!
I'm passing on the rec, but I'd offer two caveats:
One...if you have anxiety surrounding death rituals, including taharah (the "ritual washing, purification, and dressing of a deceased Jewish person before burial"), you might want to think twice.
Second, on a pure story level, there's sometimes a little too much "not telling people important things either for their own good or because you don't know how to start the conversation" for my personal tastes, but for all I know, that's your favorite trope. :)
However, Rules for Ghosting is generally an interesting, good-hearted story with a clever premise and a diverse group of likable characters.
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altamira16This book is about how the rise of tiny pocket computers has been bad for children. It goes after, not only the pocket computers, but social media and video games. The video games bit feels a little "old man yells at clouds" and reminds me of the concern trolling about metal music and rap music. It just feels like someone doesn't like video games and has not played them with their friends.
Chapters five, six and seven are probably the most important parts of this book. Chapter five talks about social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction.
Then chapter six insists that social media harms girls more than it harms boys. Basically, girls and boys use social media differently. The girls are more social online, and this can make disorders that are social worse. For example, eating disorders can become worse when girls engage in social media. If you are interested in girls sports, social media will be happy to send you down an anorexia rabbit hole. Self-harm can become worse when girls are discussing it. There are girls who do not have dissociative identity disorder acting like they have it because they see it on the internet, and it seems cool. The same thing happens with Tourette syndrome. Girls are more affected by visual social comparison. Their aggression is relational. They will harm each other's friendships to attack one another. Girls share emotions and disorders. It says that girls are more subject to predation and harassment, but I think we should worry about boys with this too because over the past few years there have been sextortion scams against teen boys that have led to suicide.
Chapter seven on boys is more vibes-based. Boys are not engaging socially on the internet. They are watching a bunch of YouTube and playing video games. Haidt leans heavily into Johann Hari's book Stolen Focus that I reviewed here about two years ago. This chapter has graphs, but it is vibes-based because they did not actually find evidence of pocket computers harming boys in the literature. There is some discussion about how boys fail to launch, and hikikomori, a Japanese term for man children who hide in their rooms and come out at night when the rest of the family is asleep. There is a section on boyhood without real-world risk that was common in boyhood before. Mary Pat Campbell, an actuary, likes to discuss "the fatal stupid period" where boys are taking the type of risks that lead to their own deaths. The age range that she is discussing is probably in the early twenties while the one that Haidt is discussing is in the teens. Anyway, the chapter on boys discusses a lot of addictions that are not real like "video game addiction" and "porn addiction." I mean, people can choose not to control themselves with this stuff and can get into repetitive habits, but classifying a bunch of this as addiction feels like people should be exerting some self-control. Haidt mentions that the research on video games shows that video games have benefits.
Then in Chapter 8, he talks about spiritual degradation, and how people should have spiritual practice. This is the type of Haidt nonsense that drives me up the wall. If you think spiritual practice is important, then let us know what spiritual framework you are working in. A lot of people are honest about what religion they are operating in but Haidt always has a spiritual view from nowhere in his books. There was a graph with an x-y-z axis in this chapter to make it feel more science-y. My son was looking over my shoulder and made fun of it. The x axis was closeness. The y axis was hierarchy, and the z axis was divinity.
Chapter 10 is asking for laws, and it mentions that the Age Appropriate Design Code was passed in the UK. Then it mentions the US Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). A lot of people were concerned about KOSA because some implementations seem to want companies that are doing bad things with user data to collect more user data on children. Haidt proposed that the information be gathered by a third party, but having a third party gather the information does not reduce the risk of a database of children's information being out there. He suggested blockchain could fix this problem, but I am not sure how blockchain could fix this problem. This chapter discusses how congress has been pretty useless on passing laws related to tech, and he is correct on that one.
This book seemed very tech-forward for a book that is telling you to keep your kids away from phones. It is talking about blockchain and AI as if these are useful things. It is talking about the metaverse as if it is a positive thing. And some of this stuff like the metaverse has not actually proven to be useful in any way at all. With AI, it is just too soon to tell, and we probably should not be throwing AI at kids just to find out if it is useful or if they are going to be using it to generate porn.
Chapters 11 and 12 about what schools can do and what parents can do were a lot stronger than some of the earlier chapters.
The Facebook whistleblower testimony from Frances Haugen was mentioned in this book, and that was some of the stronger stuff about the ages of kids Facebook is collecting information on.
There are probably a lot of people doing research on Human Computer Interaction who have studied the behavior of teens online, but the folks who worked on this book did not look into any of that it seems. I think it would have been stronger if they looked into some of the research in that field.
Chapters five, six and seven are probably the most important parts of this book. Chapter five talks about social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction.
Then chapter six insists that social media harms girls more than it harms boys. Basically, girls and boys use social media differently. The girls are more social online, and this can make disorders that are social worse. For example, eating disorders can become worse when girls engage in social media. If you are interested in girls sports, social media will be happy to send you down an anorexia rabbit hole. Self-harm can become worse when girls are discussing it. There are girls who do not have dissociative identity disorder acting like they have it because they see it on the internet, and it seems cool. The same thing happens with Tourette syndrome. Girls are more affected by visual social comparison. Their aggression is relational. They will harm each other's friendships to attack one another. Girls share emotions and disorders. It says that girls are more subject to predation and harassment, but I think we should worry about boys with this too because over the past few years there have been sextortion scams against teen boys that have led to suicide.
Chapter seven on boys is more vibes-based. Boys are not engaging socially on the internet. They are watching a bunch of YouTube and playing video games. Haidt leans heavily into Johann Hari's book Stolen Focus that I reviewed here about two years ago. This chapter has graphs, but it is vibes-based because they did not actually find evidence of pocket computers harming boys in the literature. There is some discussion about how boys fail to launch, and hikikomori, a Japanese term for man children who hide in their rooms and come out at night when the rest of the family is asleep. There is a section on boyhood without real-world risk that was common in boyhood before. Mary Pat Campbell, an actuary, likes to discuss "the fatal stupid period" where boys are taking the type of risks that lead to their own deaths. The age range that she is discussing is probably in the early twenties while the one that Haidt is discussing is in the teens. Anyway, the chapter on boys discusses a lot of addictions that are not real like "video game addiction" and "porn addiction." I mean, people can choose not to control themselves with this stuff and can get into repetitive habits, but classifying a bunch of this as addiction feels like people should be exerting some self-control. Haidt mentions that the research on video games shows that video games have benefits.
Then in Chapter 8, he talks about spiritual degradation, and how people should have spiritual practice. This is the type of Haidt nonsense that drives me up the wall. If you think spiritual practice is important, then let us know what spiritual framework you are working in. A lot of people are honest about what religion they are operating in but Haidt always has a spiritual view from nowhere in his books. There was a graph with an x-y-z axis in this chapter to make it feel more science-y. My son was looking over my shoulder and made fun of it. The x axis was closeness. The y axis was hierarchy, and the z axis was divinity.
Chapter 10 is asking for laws, and it mentions that the Age Appropriate Design Code was passed in the UK. Then it mentions the US Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). A lot of people were concerned about KOSA because some implementations seem to want companies that are doing bad things with user data to collect more user data on children. Haidt proposed that the information be gathered by a third party, but having a third party gather the information does not reduce the risk of a database of children's information being out there. He suggested blockchain could fix this problem, but I am not sure how blockchain could fix this problem. This chapter discusses how congress has been pretty useless on passing laws related to tech, and he is correct on that one.
This book seemed very tech-forward for a book that is telling you to keep your kids away from phones. It is talking about blockchain and AI as if these are useful things. It is talking about the metaverse as if it is a positive thing. And some of this stuff like the metaverse has not actually proven to be useful in any way at all. With AI, it is just too soon to tell, and we probably should not be throwing AI at kids just to find out if it is useful or if they are going to be using it to generate porn.
Chapters 11 and 12 about what schools can do and what parents can do were a lot stronger than some of the earlier chapters.
The Facebook whistleblower testimony from Frances Haugen was mentioned in this book, and that was some of the stronger stuff about the ages of kids Facebook is collecting information on.
There are probably a lot of people doing research on Human Computer Interaction who have studied the behavior of teens online, but the folks who worked on this book did not look into any of that it seems. I think it would have been stronger if they looked into some of the research in that field.
Tags:
bethbethbethOn May 8th, I offered to read the first five books people recced - assuming they were available (preferably from the library) - and I'd give a short review [https://bethbethbeth.dreamwidth.org/701769.html].
This is the fifth recced book review.
Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism (2020) by Jevin D. West & Carl T. Bergstrom (recced by Snakeling)
So glad this was recced, especially since the 5 years since publication has seen bullshit grow ever more ubiquitous ("Blah blah this administration blah blah.")
The book touches on so many things: linguistics, whether animals can bullshit, the debunked but not-dead-yet theories of Wakefield about Autism, the way technology (inc. the printing press) has changed how we bullshit, communication theory, etc. And that's just in the first 2 chapters!
It also looks at ways of assessing whether something's bullshit, even when we don't have a background in the field (e.g., if we don't have expertise in vaccine side effects), and when & where - if possible - to refute bullshit when you see it (w/o being that "Well, actually...." person)
Caveat: I had to get the audiobook (regular print & digital books had 2 month waits). This proved to be a problem because some of the scientific examples were relatively technical and required referring to downloadable pdfs of graphs, charts, illustrations etc.
OverDrive used to allow audiobook downloads, even after Libby was introduced, but OverDrive is no longer available in my library system and Libby doesn't allow PDF downloading. This made following some of the arguments difficult.
What I'm saying is...if at all possible, read the book instead of getting the audiobook.
This is the fifth recced book review.
Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism (2020) by Jevin D. West & Carl T. Bergstrom (recced by Snakeling)
So glad this was recced, especially since the 5 years since publication has seen bullshit grow ever more ubiquitous ("Blah blah this administration blah blah.")
The book touches on so many things: linguistics, whether animals can bullshit, the debunked but not-dead-yet theories of Wakefield about Autism, the way technology (inc. the printing press) has changed how we bullshit, communication theory, etc. And that's just in the first 2 chapters!
It also looks at ways of assessing whether something's bullshit, even when we don't have a background in the field (e.g., if we don't have expertise in vaccine side effects), and when & where - if possible - to refute bullshit when you see it (w/o being that "Well, actually...." person)
Caveat: I had to get the audiobook (regular print & digital books had 2 month waits). This proved to be a problem because some of the scientific examples were relatively technical and required referring to downloadable pdfs of graphs, charts, illustrations etc.
OverDrive used to allow audiobook downloads, even after Libby was introduced, but OverDrive is no longer available in my library system and Libby doesn't allow PDF downloading. This made following some of the arguments difficult.
What I'm saying is...if at all possible, read the book instead of getting the audiobook.
Tags: