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. :(