Software engineer from #Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Opinions are my own, not those of my spouse, employer, child, or pets. In fact there are few areas in which we agree.
Interested in #FOSS and #Linux, as well as federated social nonsense like the #Fediverse and #XMPP and #Matrix
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46% complete! ssweeny has read 7 of 15 books.
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away - no climate change, no war, …
From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, an …
Hard to say much about this book without spoiling the fun. I definitely recommend going into it knowing as little as possible.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set …
ssweeny
boosted
Oh look at that — BookWyrm gets mentioned in the Washington Post.
What is BookWyrm‽ —
BookWyrm is similar to Mastodon, in that it is an open-source'ish (with restrictions) social-networking platform for the Fediverse, BUT —
Rather than being about micro-blogging, BookWyrm is about books, tracking what you are reading, and sharing it with others.
Think GoodReads for the Fediverse.
![BookWyrm
Unlike other book-loggers, BookWyrm is decentralized, meaning it’s owned by its users rather than one entity. (The social media platform Mastodon is probably the most popular example of a decentralized online network.)
BookWyrm is a collection of communities[1], but the largest is bookwyrm.social with about 15,000 users. Making an account is simple, so you can start tracking and reviewing books right away.
One unique BookWyrm feature is the “books” tab — a feed that shows activity from other users if they’re engaging with a book on your shelf.
BookWyrm is free and web-only. It’s clunkier than other options, but perfect for readers who want a homegrown online hangout.
[1] https://joinbookwyrm.com/instances/](https://bookwyrm-social.sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/images/status/b7adf94d-3980-4268-88c0-53ae5f3ef88c.png "BookWyrm
Unlike other book-loggers, BookWyrm is decentralized, meaning it’s owned by its users rather than one entity. (The social media platform Mastodon is probably the most popular example of a decentralized online network.)
BookWyrm is a collection of communities[1], but the largest is bookwyrm.social with about 15,000 users. Making an account is simple, so you can start tracking and reviewing books right away.
One unique BookWyrm feature is the “books” tab — a feed that shows activity from other users if they’re engaging with a book on your shelf.
BookWyrm is free and web-only. It’s clunkier than other options, but perfect for readers who want a homegrown online hangout.
[1] https://joinbookwyrm.com/instances/")
![BookWyrm
Unlike other book-loggers, BookWyrm is decentralized, meaning it’s owned by its users rather than one entity. (The social media platform Mastodon is probably the most popular example of a decentralized online network.)
BookWyrm is a collection of communities[1], but the largest is bookwyrm.social with about 15,000 users. Making an account is simple, so you can start tracking and reviewing books right away.
One unique BookWyrm feature is the “books” tab — a feed that shows activity from other users if they’re engaging with a book on your shelf.
BookWyrm is free and web-only. It’s clunkier than other options, but perfect for readers who want a homegrown online hangout.
[1] https://joinbookwyrm.com/instances/](https://bookwyrm-social.sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/images/status/35c3edfe-7d33-4e15-8094-58935efc690e.png "BookWyrm
Unlike other book-loggers, BookWyrm is decentralized, meaning it’s owned by its users rather than one entity. (The social media platform Mastodon is probably the most popular example of a decentralized online network.)
BookWyrm is a collection of communities[1], but the largest is bookwyrm.social with about 15,000 users. Making an account is simple, so you can start tracking and reviewing books right away.
One unique BookWyrm feature is the “books” tab — a feed that shows activity from other users if they’re engaging with a book on your shelf.
BookWyrm is free and web-only. It’s clunkier than other options, but perfect for readers who want a homegrown online hangout.
[1] https://joinbookwyrm.com/instances/")
This book is full of righteous anger coated in wit and sprinkled with humorous anecdotes.
For example the famous bit about the trumpet (which I quoted earlier bookwyrm.social/user/ssweeny/quotation/3538582#anchor-3538582) starts a chapter about how a musical instrument exchange group on Facebook had to deal with a group of unruly racists.
The "Witches" in the title are, of course, feminists. If you consider yourself one or would like to this book is definitely worth a read. Probably even more so if you don't.
There was one thing that nagged at me as I was reading. This book was written in 2019. Before COVID, the 2020 election, the insurrection at the Capital. There's a lot of stuff about how Trump is terrible and enabling all sorts of evil stuff and the whole time I kept thinking to myself "sister, you have no idea..."
My husband plays the trumpet, which is a sort of loud pretzel originally invented to blow down the walls of fucking Jericho and, later, to let Civil War soldiers know it was time to kill each other in a river while you chilled eating pigeon in your officer’s tent twenty miles away, yet somehow, in modern times, it has become socially acceptable to toot the bad cone inside your house before 10:00 a.m. because it’s “your job” and your wife should “get up.” What a world! If one was feeling uncharitable, one might describe the trumpet as a machine where you put in compressed air and divorce comes out, but despite this—despite operating a piece of biblical demolition equipment inside the home every bright, cold morning of his wife’s one and only life—the trumpet is not the most annoying thing about my husband.
— The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West (Page 122)
I saw this quote floating around the internets a while back and as a husband and former trumpet player I knew I had to read this book.
I'm nearly done with it and so glad I picked it up.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set …
Madi Preston, a veteran of Britain’s elite special operations J-Squad unit, is burnt out and …
Definitely a fun read. Classic cyberpunk setting that just exists in the background without taking up too much attention.
My only real complaint is that the art style changes a bit too drastically a bit too often, to the point where it can be hard to track which character is doing what between pages.
The overall arc is has been done before but there are some fun twists that completely make sense in the setting but that I haven't seen to often.
Madi Preston, a veteran of Britain’s elite special operations J-Squad unit, is burnt out and up to her eyeballs in …
Madi Preston, a veteran of Britain’s elite special operations J-Squad unit, is burnt out and up to her eyeballs in …
From R.A. Salvatore, the legendary creator of Drizzt Do'Urden, comes the start of a brand …
Time for a bit of ridiculous fantasy to cleanse the palate.
It's a fact of life: birds flock, fish school, people "tribe."Every company, indeed every organization, …
Overall I think this book had some good points to make. Networking, finding "tribes" at work, and using language to influence that tribe to behave a certain way are useful ideas that are actionable and backed by data.
However like many books in this vein it feels as if the page count was padded with anecdotes that slowed down the pace and perhaps spaced the real lessons too far apart. I found myself having to turn back a few pages to remember what the point of a particular story was supposed to be.
Overall I'd recommend the book but it might be sufficient to read the summary at the end of each chapter.
It's a fact of life: birds flock, fish school, people "tribe."Every company, indeed every organization, is a tribe, or if …
