Sally Strange replied to Flauschbuch's status
@Flauschbuch@bookrastinating.com Oh these books are so much fun! I really hope the author writes at least one more.
Interests: climate, science, sci-fi, fantasy, LGBTQIA+, history, anarchism, anti-racism, labor politics
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@Flauschbuch@bookrastinating.com Oh these books are so much fun! I really hope the author writes at least one more.
Content warning Polar bear/Amelia spoiler
I liked Amelia and her airship and her show until she decided to just open the door to a room where a bunch of polar bears were hanging out. First of all, what is it, six polar bears? On a ship with one human? Already a bad idea. Then she goes and does this. I forgot why. Anyway now I'm kind of rooting for the bears to eat her. Franz the autopilot can still take them to Antarctica and then the Arctic community can enlist a pilot with more sense for future trips.
@BEZORP@books.theunseen.city That's what got me!
@SallyStrange@bookwyrm.social I love the cover art! 👀
I was not a big tumblr user - tinkered here and there. This book is a great account of tumblr's technical affordances as well as its cultural significance. It's written by insiders, which I think brings a lot to the analysis. I read it for research on federated/decentralized networks, and that meant I was most drawn to their concept of "silosociality."
The authors argue that tumblr has a shared sensibility, oriented toward social justice and creating "safe space." They describe that sensibility in terms of silosociality, which involved the maintenance of boundaries that is not always creating cozy, happy places. There's a toxic side to it. Still, even with that toxicity, silosociality need not always be demonized - it's a different way of thinking about how we gather (online or offline).
"Tumblr users experience tumblr in silos that are defined by people's shared interests, but sustained through inward-facing shared vernacular …
I was not a big tumblr user - tinkered here and there. This book is a great account of tumblr's technical affordances as well as its cultural significance. It's written by insiders, which I think brings a lot to the analysis. I read it for research on federated/decentralized networks, and that meant I was most drawn to their concept of "silosociality."
The authors argue that tumblr has a shared sensibility, oriented toward social justice and creating "safe space." They describe that sensibility in terms of silosociality, which involved the maintenance of boundaries that is not always creating cozy, happy places. There's a toxic side to it. Still, even with that toxicity, silosociality need not always be demonized - it's a different way of thinking about how we gather (online or offline).
"Tumblr users experience tumblr in silos that are defined by people's shared interests, but sustained through inward-facing shared vernacular and sensibility, made possible by tumblr's features, functions, and rules." (52)
Navigating, learning, and becoming part of silos - this is hard. That's what drives some people away. But that friction is interesting and sometimes useful. Current discourse is allergic to silos and echo chambers (even as people flee to these kinds of set ups - group chats, private messaging apps) but that discourse is (to my mind) driven by corporate social media companies that want you to post more, and more, and more so they can mine the data. They can, obviously still data mine private messages. But their business model would have to change if people thought more about cultivating their silos and then moving between them (or looking for ways to manage the connections between their silos).
At any rate, this concept of silosociality is really interesting, and the authors suggest in the conclusion that it might be a way of thinking through the futures of social media.
If infrastructural systems are a physical manifestation of social cooperation, that also means they're a physical manifestation of the values and norms for the group. So as part of the transition from a service to a utility, this idea of what's "normal" also undergoes a transition.
— How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra (Page 125)
Faced with a coming apocalypse, a woman must reckon with her past to solve a series of sudden and inexplicable …
Selected at random based on what was available - I'm impressed. The author is also the narrator, which gives it a truly authentic feel. Choppy scenes strung together to create an impressionistic overview of racist violence and discrimination in the USA, with the freedom of the natural world and supernatural abilities as counterpoint.
I feel like this is a good complement to "Blackfish City" in that they are both concerned with the drowning of New York. While Qaanaaq is thousands of miles away from New York, and in that book it's considered dead while here it's half-drowned but still thriving, Qaanaaq, it turns out, was built by and influenced by lots of New Yorkers.
Is this what science is? Putting your blood and sweat into something that might be nothing? Well, I fucking hate it.
— Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson (The Space Between Worlds, #2)
Poetic descriptions usually put me off in a novel because the act puts importance on something that usually doesn't need it. It pulls me out of the story. Strong Washburn uses poetics instead to show the inner feelings of the character. And she does it well. You viscerally feel the turmoil or the disgust or the peace. It totally worked for me.
This was done in a magical-realism type of plot (though the grittiness is not like the wispy distance of the genre at all), so the dream-like connections to the earth had the same feeling as the prose.
And the final speech was brutally beautiful. I cried.