Finished Paul Mooney's BLACK IS THE NEW WHITE, http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2017/0...e-and-his.html

and Alfred Bester's THE STARS MY DESTINATION. http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2017/0...-for-ages.html

Both awesome for different reasons.

check it out. The good people at UH put up the video of Jeff Vandermeer's lecture and talk (Southern Reach Trilogy author) https://vimeo.com/214921380

this everyone must check out

https://standardebooks.org

that is cool!

Oh man, The Stars, My Destination is one of my favorite books ever! So glad you liked it! That's another one I try to force on people, usually with zero success.

Just finished The Spiritual Technology of Ancient Egypt
http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2017/0...ciousness.html

cool stuff

So Rob...

How's Book of the New Sun coming?

it is in limbo, awaiting my neural net's re-alignment to the "fiction" end of the literary spectrum. Too busy these days reading about consciousness and cognition.

a few from a Library sale, so I paid 50 cents or so for each

Krakauers Into Thin Air. Everest climb disaster. Pretty entertaining. Another dangerous thing I'll never do

The Bridesmaid by Ruth Rendell. Read it because A Judgement in Stone was pretty marvelous, Bridesmaid not as good, but OK

Trying to find a hard copy of * "The Post Office Girl" by Stefan Zweig, which was apparently the inspiration behind Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel. At least partly.

Local bookstore had an ace copy with beautiful stylish art for a while but they must have sold it. Going to check the library tomorrow.

Really want to read this like now for some reason.

i'm reading a bunch of books on permaculture, soil science, water management, etc

NICE

i'd post reviews as i go but... hmmm... wait: robigator might be interested in the science

I'm pretty interested in science. Though it's taken a back seat to other things of late.

Anyway.

Finished Peter Godfrey-Smith's Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2017/0...system-of.html

Did you update me on your Book of the New Sun progress? I forget. Have you just thrown in the towel? It's ok if you have. Not for everyone.

sorry not a lot of updates on the soil science, been making practical updates instead. i have some righteous pumpkins and beans sprouting out of the ground, i have a small batch of "microgreens" (lol), i have ripe tomatoes, this season is looking good so far. in addition to five live houseplants (a record).

i was expecting the return of the monsoon and we've barely had one. hot and dry most days. growing a lot indoors where i control more variables. currently sitting on a hammock under the sun surrounded by vegetables. a good life!

anyway, the summary of the book is this: everything is alive in a perfect symbiosis if you just let it live. you have to control the associations between plants and other organisms, or more like, you have to let them happen, and develop with your cash and coverage crops, in order to have a great productive garden.

no amendments or chemicals, just teeming with life. as thick as the jungle (but microscopically).

there's a lot of money to be made in bio-products by the way lololol. but the #magas don't want to read a book about gardens. instead they want to work in coal mines. unbelievable.

i have a coal mine in my house stove thanks. all the fucking coal i need. everything else comes from biomass.

biomass ftw

I'm reading a Discworld book and I feel silly about it.

you said you liked science!

so what do you think about a biomass-centered technology? i mean where all of our products are biologicals--from plastics to to ceramic additives to fractal antennas. no or little mining, no or little industrial processing like, say, bleaching paper-- everything via bacteria/fungus/prokaryote. large animal too-- back to wools etc instead of synthetic fibers (not saying it has to be sheep, but i could be grown in agae vats. say: neosilks.)

DAMMIT MAN

I do like science! But I'm probably not informed enough on this area to comment much beyond saying, sure, sounds better than fucking coal, better than fracking.

I'm a bit of a germophobe, so I'm going to need to look into the role of microbacteria and fungus and whatnot before I make any kind of definitive statement about how I feel about that in practice.

I read a really horrifying book once about microbial life run amok and essentially invading humanity through airborne spores that changed our biological makeup and "assimilated" us into its mass of spores and greenery. Fucking bloody terrifying.

I'm all over the place today. Sorry. Told you I was feeling silly and reading Terry Prachett.

More later! Maybe!!

you're a germaphobe? what in the unholy beejeezus.

listen, jack vance or not, we're ruled by our microbes for sure. that's a fact.

those obsessed with disinfectants think one way, hippies think another. it's all due to the bacteria around them. and in their guts.

read SANDOR KATZ. the art of fermentation. read on biophilia.

EAT SAUERKRAUT

drink some piima cream. i drink 4 pints of cream per week. so goooood!!

okay man. i am in the mood to ferment stuff so adios for now.

reality is way funner than fantasy tho just sayin

william blake was a primary

My mother and my girlfriend are both super into all of this stuff. From kombucha to sauerkraut. Fermenting shit, talkin' bout the microbiome. Me, I can't take a sip of kombucha without actually vomiting. :(

fermentin' makes for good eatin'

fuk kombucha,i think it can give you botulism ha ha. but a good cheese. a good beer. a good funky soy sauce. a fish sauce. a really good yogurt (i like siggy). (i also like the "greek" one with whole fat, it's like, 4%). eat your microbes. for mental health. a well-made bread. toasted, with butter and marmite.

i forgot to mention yeasts earlier but fukin a yeasts! the yeasts that make laphroaig!

It will be myceleal life forms engineered to cosntruct our "plastics" and "wood" and steel" but all biodegradable and awesome

GREG BEAR - Blood Music. cyberpunk deliciousness about the consequences of granting bacterial life sentience and consciousness.

Humans by weight are about 30-40% microbes living on our skin, in our guts, and everywhere else they can hang on to.

Kombucha is weaksauce alcohol, fermented tea and juice. fucking jail-booze. I hate it. tastes like vinegared tea. fucking horrible..

In Puerto Rico they sell a weakly alcoholic drink called Mavi (Mabi?) that you can find homemeade at Agua Fresca stands. It gives you a calm little buzz, and it is delicious.

BTW, eating microbes (as in microbiotic yogurt, or kombucha) does not help introduce beneficial shit to you at all. your stomach acids will destroy them all befroe you can "absorb" or "utilize" the microbes. They are feeding you all a bunch of lies!!!

awesome posts above esp. the mycelial one but do you know it's been shown by research that even eating "inactive" yogurt cultures is good for you? so basically it's not about eating "live" microbes but just microbe bodies that's good for you. so it's not really about colonizing your intestines with the stuff but rather giving them some strangeness to entertain themselves--that's what counts it seems.

eta: start here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20403231, i'll look for more links

and yeah it looks like DEAD CACA IS THE BEST

I like Greg Bear, but I was actually talking about ANNIHILATION/AUTHORITY/ACCEPTANCE ya goofball. I thought for sure you'd pick up on that. ;)

Finished Gustav Herling's account of his time in Soviet forced labor prison during WWII. A World Apart

https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2017/...ag-prison.html

this has been a great read multiple times for me...I think I checked it out because Rudy Rucker talked about this in Forced Exposure #17 and it is also in Glenn Branca's cyberpunk list
http://www.glennbranca.com/cyber.html...I suspect the science behind the book is somewhat past date but conceptually it is not dated.

Have you ever read Mick Farren?

EDIT-jeez 1986 was a good year
BLOOD MUSIC - Greg Bear
THE GLASS HAMMER - K.W. Jeter
DAD'S NUKE - Marc Laidlaw(pb, used)$8.00
ECLIPSE - John Shirley(pb) $15.00
SCHISMATRIX - Bruce Sterling
IN THE DRIFT - Michael Swanwick(pb) $7.00

Was it me who recommended this to you? Think it was. Anyway, glad you enjoyed it. If enjoyed is the right word.

The chapter where he's talking reading a smuggled copy of The House Of The Dead was particularly powerful for me.

It was. Thanks for the recommendation. brutal stuff.

oh, thanks for this guys!

Really is. I'm sure you were the same in wondering how the fuck do you keep going day after day.

That bit where he talks about a guy who kept counting down the days left til he was free. He'd tell everyone about it then when the day came he was ordered to the, I don't know what you'd call them, wardens office who decided to add another 5 years onto the 10 years he had just done.

If I remember rightly he just goes back to the bunks and his heart just gives out and dies. Man, that was just awful.

Currently reading this. It gets real freakin heavy at points but it's fascinating.

I have this on my shelf, but have never read. Let me know what you think when you're done.

I needs to reads more books.

as it is im reading a bunch of websites on trading financial instruments

it's near the top of the bull market and the shit's gonna hit the fan not right now but it's coming

i wanna be ready ready ready

What is this poem?

English dude.

Forget when, although pre-20th Century.

Anyway, dude is riding to see his lover. He picks up his pace because it suddenly occurs to him that she could be dead. Or dying. I forget. That's about it.

Anyone know what the fuck I'm thinking of? It's driving me nuts.

not keats is it?

i vaguely remember hold up

dammit, it;s a mental contagion now

give us a clue? any clue?

I think I gave you all the clues I can.

I'm sure I read it in high school. A short poem.

Not Keats. This seemed lighter. A Cavalier poet?

Maybe I dreamed it.

Indeed.

The part towards the end where he is sent along with all the Poles that were available to a waiting area where ten or more dead were taken out every morning? horror. the way he describes how people would die solely from being stepped on by people trying to make their way to the shit/piss bucket? That theer were several dozen men in a room 6 x 8 meters? how he crushed a man's face in, killing him in the process, purely by accident? fuck.