Fionnáin wants to read The AI Con by Emily M. Bender
A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls …
Saw this quoted on Mastodon by @bonfire@indieweb.social and added it here
User Profile
I arrange things into artworks, including paint, wood, plastic, raspberry pi, people, words, dialogues, arduino, sensors, web tech, light and code.
I use words other people have written to help guide these projects, so I read as often as I can. Most of what I read is literature (fiction) or nonfiction on philosophy, art theory, ethics and technology.
Also on Mastodon.
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Fionnáin's books
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Fionnáin started reading Are Ye Going Up Town? by Hélène Bradley Davies
‘Are ye going up town? Shops and shopping in Limerick’ is the product of a …
Recommended by a colleague while I have been working on a project in Limerick. I got a copy from the library.
Fionnáin finished reading Ravel: a novel by Linda Coverdale
Fionnáin started reading Ravel: a novel by Linda Coverdale
I picked this up in the library, my eye caught by the cover, and took it out without knowing what it was about (it's a historical fiction of the last days of the composer Ravel)
Fionnáin finished reading Development as freedom by Amartya Kumar Sen
Development as freedom by Amartya Kumar Sen
Development as Freedom is a 1999 book about international development by Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen. The American edition …
Fionnáin wants to read Listening, Thinking, Being by Lisbeth Lipari
Recommended at a talk at a conference in Austria in 2024, added here to my (endless) 'to read' pile
Fionnáin wants to read The Mechanic and the Luddite by Jathan Sadowski
This short book demystifies how the two systems of technology and capitalism work together and …
A friend visited recently and was reading this. She said I would love it, and I expect that I will, so I'm adding it to my wishlist.
Fionnáin quoted Development as freedom by Amartya Kumar Sen
Development as Freedom is a 1999 book about international development by Indian economist and philosopher …
The rationale of the market mechanism is geared to private goods (like apples and shirts), rather than to public goods (like the malaria-free environment), and it can be shown that there may be a good case for the provisioning of public goods, going beyond what the private markets would foster.
— Development as freedom by Amartya Kumar Sen (Page 128)
Fionnáin
boosted
Yambunz quoted Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit
“In the year 1936 a writer planted roses.” So begins Rebecca Solnit’s new book, a …
...you might prepare for your central mission in life by doing other things that may seem entirely unrelated,and how necessary this may be.
— Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit (Page 24)
Fionnáin
boosted
Yambunz quoted Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit
“In the year 1936 a writer planted roses.” So begins Rebecca Solnit’s new book, a …
The trees made the past seem within reach in a way that nothing else could: here were living things that had been planted and tended by a living being who was gone, but the trees that had been alive in her lifetime were in ours and might be after we were gone. They changed the shape of time.
— Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit (Page 6)
Fionnáin started reading We Do Not Part by Han Kang
One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her …
I love Han Kang's writing and was delighted when they won the Nobel Prize. A couple of months ago a colleague gave me a book token for a favour I did them, and I picked this one up with it in a local book shop. Just started reading today.
Fionnáin quoted Development as freedom by Amartya Kumar Sen
Development as Freedom is a 1999 book about international development by Indian economist and philosopher …
A much more plausible explanation of the rapid increase in British life expectancy is provided by the changes in the extent of social sharing during the war decades, and the sharp increases in public support for social services (including nutritional support and health care) that went with this.
— Development as freedom by Amartya Kumar Sen (Page 51)
Sen is finishing a section here arguing that improved social services as a social good are potentially better for a country's life expectancy than an increase in GDP. They began this chapter with a look at different countries and how some have high life expectancy despite a low average income, and end here with a historical look at how the war years led Britain to introduce social policies that also improved loving conditions dramatically.
Fionnáin finished reading How to eat by Thích Nhất Hạnh
How to eat by Thích Nhất Hạnh
"How to Eat is the second in a Parallax's series of how-to titles by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh that …
Fionnáin reviewed Understorey by Anna Chapman Parker
‘It began as a way of drawing nothing – as near as I could get …
Drawing with lines and words
5 stars
Anna Chapman Parker is an artist who thinks deeply about incidental moments. This wonderful book charts a year in her life where she draws weeds that she finds on her wanders. It features both her writing and her drawings, and also some other artworks as references.
Parker writes about what she draws beautifully, about her days and her time with her family. She also weaves in observations on art history, writing and culture that show a deep and acute understanding of her craft.
The drawings are wonderful, the anecdotes thoughtful. Although I am not generally a fan of the diary form of writing, this book masters it, moving easily from anecdote to theory to humour, treating each day as unique. The quality of writing helps this. The end result is a joy to read and one I will revisit again and again.
Fionnáin reviewed Rats, Lice and History by Hans Zinsser
The classic chronicle of the impact disease and plagues have had on history and society …
Fascinating as a project, frustrating as a rant
3 stars
This 1934 book is a history of typhus presented as popular science (and apparently as a biography, although it doesn't really follow any such form).
The first four chapters are pretty much unreadable. One Stanford University scientist in the 1930s grinds an axe about many different scientists and writers for about 80 pages of text. Once he finishes with this rant, it gets more interesting as he begins a historical exploration of the spread of disease, and in particular how disease and war travelled together.
The writing stays on point mostly, except for a few more veiled jabs at other writers and some questionable classist comments that are troubling even for that time (a 'humerous' anecdote about having the police arrest a homeless non-white man so that he could gather lice from him sticks out in my mind). The fascinating two chapters on lice are by far the best of …
This 1934 book is a history of typhus presented as popular science (and apparently as a biography, although it doesn't really follow any such form).
The first four chapters are pretty much unreadable. One Stanford University scientist in the 1930s grinds an axe about many different scientists and writers for about 80 pages of text. Once he finishes with this rant, it gets more interesting as he begins a historical exploration of the spread of disease, and in particular how disease and war travelled together.
The writing stays on point mostly, except for a few more veiled jabs at other writers and some questionable classist comments that are troubling even for that time (a 'humerous' anecdote about having the police arrest a homeless non-white man so that he could gather lice from him sticks out in my mind). The fascinating two chapters on lice are by far the best of the book, however, where Zinsser shows a real affection for the louse.
Another fascination of this book is how it is a historical document of a specific time and sentiment, between two world wars, recording the history of typhus resonates today, when vaccination has made it a much more sedate disease. Zinsser has great moments when writing about disease, and disease history.