Automatically Didactic

Full title is “Crash Override:  How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate “

First of all, I object to the label of “memoir”, as it seems to be applied to any serious book written by a woman that doesn’t fall neatly into a “serious” category. This is research, bitches, and  Zoë Quinn was the unwitting test subject.

I never followed Gamergate and had some vague idea of what was happening at the time. It led me to play Depression Quest, which I thought was an amazingly honest look at people with depression (of whose ranks I number in). I bought this book because I noticed that she was coming to Powell’s to promote it and I felt like the least I could do was boost her book sales by 1. Little did I know what I was in for when I began reading. 

I was appalled throughout the book, to be frank. Appalled than an abuser would take his abuse online and not only find support, but an ARMY of other abusers to assist him in abusing his ex (who dared to leave him). Appalled that the most the justice system could or would do was issue a restraining order (which made the abuse even WORSE) and tell her to “go offline”. Appalled that the very social media platforms used by countless abusers do LITTLE TO NOTHING to protect their subscribers. And most of all, appalled that this is often framed as a “woman’s issue”.

However, while I read, Ms. Quinn was transformed in my mind from a sad story to a champion of online rights. She went through so much that she already had laid the road to assist others and founded a company to do just that. She assisted former harassers that now found themselves the subject of harassment. How many of us could say we would do the same? I probably would have given up halfway through and moved to a foreign country, but this lady went on to speak at the United Nations! 

I really wanted to like this cookbook. I was entranced by recipes that didn’t use an all-purpose gluten free flour. The recipes seemed solid and the accompanying photos were delectable. I had a difficult time not bookmarking every page I wanted to try. 

However, once I actually started using the book, there were problems. The angel food cake called for a cup of cornstarch and tasted like it. The pear cake came out beautifully, but got very soggy over the next few days as the cake soaked up the juices from the pear quarters. The pumpkin bread has yet to de-mold in one piece, because despite my lengthening the cooking times, it’s just too dang wet on the bottom. Getting anything unstuck takes a heroic amount of effort, even with parchment paper.

I think the only thing that may have come out perfectly is the meringue cookies. I had never made meringues before, and they were super tasty, but it’s hard to mess up sugar and egg white. Although a timeline on when the egg whites should thicken would have been helpful. The first time I made them, it took so long that I thought they were contaminated and almost gave up. The author also has you grinding almonds into flour, but not suggesting almond flour/meal itself, which is cheaper (a pound of almond flour is about $10; a pound of almonds might be $10, depending on where you shop. And then you have to grind them, or if you’re like me, get annoyed with the food processor). 

I would say that if you are a very experienced baker who loves to problem solve, this book has some good ideas you. Everything was delicious (even the weirdly starchy angel food cake), but problematic. I’m still on the fence about whether or not I want to pick up a used copy. That opera cake on the cover looks great, but how many weekends do I want to spend fixing the recipe?

Here is a brief overview of books that I either decided not to read, or started reading and lost interest, or realized that they weren’t going to say anything new to me. 

The Idea of Decline in Western History: The first chapter basically says it all; this is not a new concept. Civilizations throughout history have all thought the golden age was passed and everything is terrible, boo hoo.

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us: One of those books you may find fascinating if you don’t know anything about psychopaths and enjoy lots of stories about them from a psychologists point of view.

The Cold Dish: Part of the Longmire mystery series. If you thought the show was slow, wait til you read the book. It’s not a bad book, just a very slow paced one. 

Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny: The title is more interesting than the book, which drones on about how we’re practically living in tyranny already, so just go one step further and elect an actual tyrant. “Caligula” narrates the whole thing and it became somewhat tiresome for me ten pages in. Further proof that if Multcolib doesn’t have a book, I probably won’t like it.

America’s War on Sex: Well-written book on a very divisive topic. I was especially amused when the author compared abstinence education like reducing medical teachings to leeches vs leeches and bloodletting. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of information in the book that I hadn’t already heard, but good book for anyone wanting to refute those who would legislate morality.

I know you all have short attention spans, so only five for now.

by Robin Sloan

Lacking in serious drama, this book makes for a good light read while potentially raising some questions about our computer overlords, and makes some fun references to things I never knew existed [Hadoop]. If you know me, you know how hard it is to make a reference to something I’ve never heard about before. 

The books basic premise is that out of work graphic designer gets job in mysterious [said in spooky voice] bookstore that is a front for an enormous library that is part of a 500 year old secret society who believes the secret to immortality is locked in a coded book. Google is also involved at one point. 

It’s okay - I especially liked the idea of a giant warehouse full of objets d’art that no one had claimed, but not especially compelling. Sort of like this review.

by Eldon Tayler

It’s hard not to sound condescending when writing about this book because I find the premise slightly ridiculous, but I’ll try.

This book is not about cults, conspiracies or secret societies [that’s another review] but about subliminal messaging in ads, how it controls us and how to protect ourselves against it. 

Book by Guy P. Harrison

Interesting book for those of you who like to argue down the ‘faithful’, but many of the questions have the same answer, so you really only need to read 10 of the reasons to get an overview of the debate tactics. If you’re more serious about your epistemiology, I highly recommend “A Manual for Creating Atheists” by  Peter Boghossian‎, which I will not be reviewing here on the account of it’s been too long since I finished it [but I DID read the whole thing].

This is, in fact, a novel, but I saw it in movie format, not having any clue what the premise was about, except some vaguely worded preview. As my choices that weekend were “The Brain that Wouldn’t Die” and this film, I went with the one I though I might get something out of seeing. 

The story is set in a world where a ‘scientific breakthrough’ has now allowed people to live well past 100.  Spoilers.

After reading the synopsis of the book, the movie does differ on what seems to be a few minor points, but overall I thought it was beautifully done, very well acted and directed. Major revelations are understated, such as finding out that ‘donors’ are thought to be less than human and ‘carers’ will watch everything that could [and likely will] happen to them when their own number is up. The dark irony here is that recipients of these ‘donations’ [or ‘normals’] are the ones who are less than human, turning a blind eye to the inhumanity they perpetrate on innocent beings, squeezing the life out of them so that their own may be extended for a few more years. The experimental school where they were raised as ‘normals’ really only serves to highlight the differences in their lives and provide that bastard of all bastards, hope, which comes in the form of various rumors about ‘deferrals’ [a limited time suspension of ‘donations’]. Of course, there is no such thing for anyone except carers. You basically donate vital organs until you ‘complete’ your purpose in society [i.e. die]. How many organs you can donate depends on how well you took your previous surgeries. It’s stated several times that donors have a max of four uses. 

The main question I had about this story was why didn’t these clones kill themselves? There were obviously some moments of extreme desperation and I was surprised that the subject of suicide was not addressed. I also wondered why none of them tried to run away, but not being ‘people’ per se means that they really have no choice but to stay within the system. And what was the big deal with the abandoned boat? Also, after donors complete, why isn’t there a total body harvest? Are organs now so plentiful that they are treated as a disposable? That’s the impression I got from how they left one of the bodies post surgery. Just a thing that had served its purpose. More where that came from.

I’ve noticed that any story where society changes the word for death [completion, released, renew, etc...] is a place where people are trying to ignore that it happens and all this really served to me was a good dose of re-thinking the ‘cloning headless bodies with organs’ question that’s been floating around since we first succeeded with clones.

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Like any Howard Zinn production, this was a thorough and unvarnished look into the history of white people and how we collectively tried to [and often succeeded in] destroy other cultures because we didn’t agree. It’s something every high school should have as required reading.

The main reason for yet another self-serving blog is to make notes on the crap ton [imperial] of books that I read, just in case someone else was curious about them. Rarely will anything be new or on the best-seller list or Oprah’s book club. It’s just me and my 200+ “For Later” bookshelf via my local library, of which, very few books will actually be read all the way through, but they will be completely perused to see if I find them interesting.