book about the way that micro-organisms work and have a large role in conditioning the experiences of macro-organisms. interesting book, do recommend.
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| lgbtq | marxist | linux | furry | sometimes nsfw |
learning haskell & deleuze
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aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm)'s books
2025 Reading Goal
59% complete! aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) has read 19 of 32 books.
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aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) finished reading I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) started reading I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) finished reading Kino's Journey: Volume 1 (English) by Keiichi Sigsawa (Kino's Journey, #1)
Unofficial English Translation of the first volume of "Kino no Tabi". Translated by Barnnn ( …
Finished the first volume of "Kino's Journey" only 18 more! (actually 20 but the last two don't seem to have any translations)
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) stopped reading Kino's Journey by Keiichi Sigsawa (Kino's Journey: The Beautiful World (Shiomiya), #01)
“So, who’s the kid?” “My name is...” ××××× hesitated for a moment, turning slightly to …
nevermind this is a newer manga ;w;
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) started reading Kino's Journey by Keiichi Sigsawa (Kino's Journey: The Beautiful World (Shiomiya), #01)
“So, who’s the kid?” “My name is...” ××××× hesitated for a moment, turning slightly to …
reading the translation present here: web.archive.org/web/20250306133603/barnnn.blogspot.com/p/kinos-journey.html
I just like the atmosphere of Kino's Journey. Also, Kino is like canonically NB.
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) started reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable …
Reading for class. Teacher mentioned that the prose is beautiful and the content is deeply uncomfortable. I agree.
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) commented on A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze
One annoyance of reading Deleuze and Guattari is that it always leads to me having to read other books. Plateau 8 is "1874: Three Novellas, or “What Happened?”" and it talks about 3 different novellas: - In The Cage, Henry James - The Crack-up, F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Story of the Abyss and the Spyglass, Pierrette Fleutiaux
Guess I hafta read them too (aside from the last one which hasn't been translated).
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) commented on A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze
I just finished plateau 7, "Year Zero: Faciality".
It's sort of about the way that the face has ceased to be a biological thing and has transitioned to being a means of personal identification, but also signification. For instance, your facial expressions is very meaningful feedback to a person you're having a conversation with.
The plateau is kind of about how... potentially limiting(?) ... faces/faciality are and about trying to deconstruct that way of interacting in the world is?
It's sort of odd to me because this plateau immediately follows the "how do you make yourself a body without organs?" plateau which is about trying to de-structure yourself/your life in order to allow more experimentation/ways of thinking/creative possibilities.
They seem like very similar plateaus.
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) commented on A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze
I forgot how impenetrable this book is. Maybe that's why Spinoza's Ethics seemed so easy. I was coming straight from A Thousand Plateaus.
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) finished reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian: Or The Evening Redness in the West is a 1985 epic novel by …
Had to read for class. It's a very smart novel, but doesn't feel like it has characters or a plot. I can recognize the Quality of the book, without finding it particularly interesting.
It seems to be commenting about manifest destiny and the paradoxical nature of enlightment rationalism and the sheer amount violent that occurred in the name of manifest destiny and westward expansion. It's probably the second most violent book I've ever read after American Psycho.
The violence in Blood Meridian doesn't exactly bother me, it all feels so impersonal and though it graphic and pretty detailed, it isn't very personal and, given that no one is strongly developed as a character, it just doesn't really cause much of an emotional response.
It kind of seems like a book by a man that is aware of his writing prowess that wanted to write something Risque and Notable, and it …
Had to read for class. It's a very smart novel, but doesn't feel like it has characters or a plot. I can recognize the Quality of the book, without finding it particularly interesting.
It seems to be commenting about manifest destiny and the paradoxical nature of enlightment rationalism and the sheer amount violent that occurred in the name of manifest destiny and westward expansion. It's probably the second most violent book I've ever read after American Psycho.
The violence in Blood Meridian doesn't exactly bother me, it all feels so impersonal and though it graphic and pretty detailed, it isn't very personal and, given that no one is strongly developed as a character, it just doesn't really cause much of an emotional response.
It kind of seems like a book by a man that is aware of his writing prowess that wanted to write something Risque and Notable, and it worked. It's a book you can probably read 10+ times and continue to get things out of, but I will likely not read it again.
No longer are there acts to explain, dreams or phantasies to interpret, childhood memories to recall, words to make signify; instead, there are colors and sounds, becomings and intensities (and when you become-dog, don’t ask if the dog you are playing with is a dream or a reality, if it is “your goddam mother” or something else entirely). There is no longer a Self [Moi] that feels, acts, and recalls; there is “a glowing fog, a dark yellow mist” that has affects and experiences movements, speeds.
@ all the dog
After all, is not Spinoza’s Ethics the great book of the BwO [Body without Organs]? The attributes are types or genuses of BwO’s, substances, powers, zero intensities as matrices of production. The modes are everything that comes to pass: waves and vibrations, migrations, thresholds and gradients, intensities produced in a given type of substance starting from a given matrix. The masochist body as an attribute or genus of substance, with its production of intensities and pain modes based on its degree 0 of being sewn up. The drugged body as a different attribute, with its production of specific intensities based on absolute Cold = 0. (“Junkies always beef about The Cold as they call it, turning up their black coat collars and clutching their withered necks … pure junk con. A junky does not want to be warm, he wants to be cool-cooler-COLD. But he wants The Cold like he wants His Junk—NOT OUTSIDE where it does him no good but INSIDE so he can sit around with a spine like a frozen hydraulic jack … his metabolism approaching Absolute Zero.”)9 Etc. The problem of whether there is a substance of all substances, a single substance for all attributes, becomes: Is there a totality of all BwO’s? If the BwO is already a limit, what must we say of the totality of all BwO’s? It is a problem not of the One and the Multiple but of a fusional multiplicity that effectively goes beyond any opposition between the one and the multiple. A formal multiplicity of substantial attributes that, as such, constitutes the ontological unity of substance. There is a continuum of all of the attributes or genuses of intensity under a single substance, and a continuum of the intensities of a certain genus under a single type or attribute. A continuum of all substances in intensity and of all intensities in substance. The uninterrupted continuum of the BwO. BwO, immanence, immanent limit. Drug users, masochists, schizophrenics, lovers—all BwO’s pay homage to Spinoza. The BwO is the field of immanence of desire, the plane of consistency specific to desire (with desire defined as a process of production without reference to any exterior agency, whether it be a lack that hollows it out or a pleasure that fills it).
It's sort of funny to think this snippet from Plateau 6 ("How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?") is the main impetus that I had to finally read Spinzoa's Ethics. I decided to reread Plateau 6 and it's still so wild and just kind of grabs me.
Am looking forward to Plateau 7. I'm back! :3
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) finished reading Ethics (Penguin Classics) by Baruch Spinoza
I have finished the Ethics \o/. I was caught offguard by the end of it because i still had like 90 e-reader pages of footnotes x3
The Ethics as a book is Spinoza laying out a framework for the physical world (part 1), how human bodies and minds operate (part 2), how human emotions operate (part 3), the state state that humans are in when they're not living according to reason and humans as they live according to reason (part 4), and finally how to become a free person/person that lives according to reason (part 5).
The book is written in a geometric style, which essentially just means that the arguments are laid out in terms of axioms, definitions, propositions, etc. It's pretty unintuitive and can be somewhat dry and annoying to read.
I've heard people claim that the Ethics is a really difficult work to read, but I didn't …
I have finished the Ethics \o/. I was caught offguard by the end of it because i still had like 90 e-reader pages of footnotes x3
The Ethics as a book is Spinoza laying out a framework for the physical world (part 1), how human bodies and minds operate (part 2), how human emotions operate (part 3), the state state that humans are in when they're not living according to reason and humans as they live according to reason (part 4), and finally how to become a free person/person that lives according to reason (part 5).
The book is written in a geometric style, which essentially just means that the arguments are laid out in terms of axioms, definitions, propositions, etc. It's pretty unintuitive and can be somewhat dry and annoying to read.
I've heard people claim that the Ethics is a really difficult work to read, but I didn't really find it that way. I will admit I never really attempted to work out the chain of propositions that Spinoza used to prove later propositions, I essentially just accepted that his justifications worked. If I were to read the Ethics again, I would probably be more thorough in that regard.
I read both Edwin Curley's "Behind the Geometrical Method" and Steven Nadler's "Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction". Of the two books, I would recommend the latter more than the former. It's a lot more indepth as a guide, though, I also liked the first.
I also don't think I would recommend that someone read this just for Spinoza's ethical philosophy. I think it's mainly if you want to see how Spinoza justifies his ethics and to get a taste of his method of argumentation. If you want Spinozist ethics I would recommend "Think Least of Death" by Steven Nadler.
If you want Spinoza's political/religious views then read his "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" (which I have not yet), or Steven Nadler's "A Book Forged in Hell" (which is about it).
Welp, I'm free! I can return back to Deleuze and Guattari \o/
aThousandCateaus (bookwyrm) started reading Morning Glory Milking Farm by C M Nascosta
Content warning nsfw
book about an educated college woman who can't find a job in her field and starts working at a place where she milks minotaurs.
I'm listening to it because it seemed like a strange thing to do, but also cuz milking is hot. She is a lady but that shouldn't matter too too much.
The book has pretty good reviews too by people, so I am curious if it'll be bad or not.