24v25
It occurred to me yesterday that I've accumulated a lot of resources that bear upon the great importance of Reading in my own experience, and that a Map of that landscape of books, texts, images, formats, technologies would probably be instructive. For the moment this page is just a rallying point where I can link things as my curiosity finds relevant materials...
Some Conviv texts re: Readings, so as to not lose sight of them:
of Books (February 2022)Paths chosen (February 2022)
Cognitive assemblages (May 2022)
of Reading (March 2023)
Reading 2 (July 2024)
...highlight...
...listen while organizing other books...
...to snuggle...
Guilty, but more aware of how differently one can read...
IA Richards How to Read a Page lists "100 Most Important Words", ...those which he deemed most abstract and multifaceted, those which possessed "extreme versatility and ambiguity." In fact, a word's risk of being misunderstood is a significant criterion for inclusion.:
Amount, Argument, Art, Be, Beautiful, Belief, Cause, Certain, Chance, Change, Clear, Common, Comparison, Condition, Connection, Copy, Decision, Degree, Desire, Development, Different, Do, Education, End, Event, Example, Existence, Experience, Fact, Fear, Feeling, Fiction, Force, Form, Free, General, Get, Give, Good, Government, Happy, Have, History, Idea, Important, Interest, Knowledge, Law, Let, Level, Living, Love, Make, Material, Measure, Mind, Motion, Name, Nation, Natural, Necessary, Normal, Number, Observation, Opposite, Order, Organization, Part, Place, Pleasure, Possible, Power, Probable, Property, Purpose, Quality, Question, Reason, Relation, Representative, Respect, Responsible, Right, Same, Say, Science, See, Seem, Sense, Sign, Simple, Society, Sort, Special, Substance, Thing, Thought, True, Use, Way, Wise, Word, Work....They are the most important words for two reasons:
1. They cover the ideas we can least avoid using, those which are concerned in all that we do as thinking beings.
2. They are words we are forced to use in explaining other words because it is in terms of the ideas they cover that the meanings of other words must be given.
I have, in fact, left 103 words in this list—to incite the reader to the task of cutting out those he sees no point in and adding any he pleases, and to discourage the notion that there is anything sacrosanct about a hundred, or any other number.
...A friend has suggested "Taste," "Health," and "Care" as worthy additions/substitutions to the list. I think "Value" and "Real" deserve a place. Do readers have other suggestions?
Mark Zuckerberg's transformation from a historically awful person to a historically monstrous person has been really something to see. In this week's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webtoon, Zach Wienersmith scores a body-blow on Zuck that was so perfect it made me bark with laughter:I firmly believe that Zuckerberg's transformation isn't due to the decay of his character. I think Zuck was always a creep, as any reader of Sarah Wynn-Williams's tell-all Facebook memoir Careless People can attest:Rather, I think the collapse of the internet into what Tom Eastman calls "five giant websites filled with screenshots of the other four" relieved Zuck of his nagging fear that a competitor would poach his users if he abused them too much. This is the enshittogenic environment at work — when we let firms form cartels, their owners become oligarchs.
...Tech is far from the only cartel. In publishing, we only have five major publishers left, and the largest, Bertelsmann, dwarfs the other four. It's hard to overstate how gigantic Bertelsmann is, but here's a trenchant example: Bertelsmann owns Penguin-Random House, and PRH has publishing deals with five sitting Supreme Court justices. This meant that a majority of the court had to recuse itself from hearing a plagiarism case involving a Ta-Nehisi Coates book. It's the first time a mass-recusal has scuppered a Supreme Court case since 1945, when the majority of justices disclosed that they were stockholders in the Alcoa, a monopolist
...Oligarchs are intrinsically enshittogenic. Oligarchs use their money and power to support strongmen who will trade money for government action, like Donald Trump, who offered a private dinner for major holders of his TRUMP shitcoin. The announcement prompted a ferocious bidding war among foreign agents and convicted criminals to buy up Trumpcoins and get a seat at the table