mandolingual

I just finished the tome that is "The House of Government" - a look at the founding, arrangement, and domestic habits of/in the Soviet House of Government across from the Kremlin. It's a really fascinating look into Bolshevik psychology/culture at the highest level and shows how it really was practically an atheistic religion at that level. So much of the framing is centered around what books people are reading, how they are living (and indulging in the petty comforts of "bourgeois domesticity"), and so on. It has some sections that are a bit of a slog, going into boring details of domestic routine, but needless to say it picks up as it progresses into the late 1930s...

The Dark Forest continues a storied scifi tradition of conveying mind blowing ideas via wooden, chauvinistic characters.

Even if it's flawed, adding any friction at all to the effort of deception is a positive step.

At that point you've earned the fruits of your deception, just like the tricksters who spent time doing physical photo editing.

A small third party at the junction of two giants is infinitely more powerful than a small third party obliged to be the client of one.

"The unit above is the citation, not the claim." The RPM of the slop ouroboros ever rises.

Mid century American and Soviet space art had transparent political purpose, as does solarpunk. Futurism is rarely if ever just "it's the future, and that's neat!". It comes with the inherently political baggage of "We got from where we are to the glorious future, by way of (ideology)". Star Trek is a great example of this.

It's just Consciousness of the Gaps. Quantum mechanics are mysterious and are a frontier of science, so surely consciousness must dwell there.

These are indeed seven of the kinds of books I would expect to see in this kind of post shared on HN.

All those who voted for him and all those who didn't vote against him are equally complicit

So it is decreed! 'Cyberpunk aesthetic' is hereafter an incoherent concept! Well done, sir. Objective truth is defended.

And an aesthetic. You can google it if you're unfamiliar!

It's aesthetically extremely cyberpunk.