alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

Livro devastador. Surgiu tantos pensamentos que fico falando com todo mundo sobre este livro. Deveria ser leitura mandatória nos colégios e nas faculdades no Brasil.

Jantar Secreto é um humor negro que passa pra ser um verdadeiro horror. A história revolve sobre quatro amigos que resolvelm de pagar uma dívida enorma, a qualquer custo.

É muito bem escrito no sentido do arco da história—com cada capítulo, as personagens murgulham cada mais profundo no mar de atrocidades. Quase não consigui parar de ler até cheguei no fim. Seria uma ótima serie para Netflix.

Porém, tem detalhes não tão legais: um dos amigos se chama Leitão, e as piadas de fatfobia só pioram de lá. Outra coisa mais perdoável é que o livro ignora as leis da física até momentos mais convenientes. Parece suspeito para quem lê bastante sobre assassinatos.

Mesmo assim, Jantar Secreto é um bom comentário sobre uma sociedade que dá muito mais valor e privilégios para os ricos do que para os pobres. Não para com as críticas dos ricos, só. Tem muito mais pra falar a respeito de quem quer ser rico. Ganância, orgulho, egoismo, cobiça... Quando gente da clase média quer emular os ricos, acabe oferecendo a própria humanidade e senso de moralidade como sacrifício.

Most of these 10 arguments are explanations of what I would hope experienced internet users already know about how Google and Facebook make money. If you don't know what their product is and how they sell it, you should read this book. Lanier lays it out in plain English.

The only chapter that really interested me was argument 10, about how social media mimics and distorts our spirituality. Acknowledging your own ignorance is a key component of science and spirituality. Algorithms reward us for confusing our ignorance with truth; virality is the only truth. Additionally, there are features of spirituality that algorithm internet mimics, providing users with cheap answers to questions about the purpose of life, intrinsic value, identity, and worthiness.

The author's goal is not to bankrupt Facebook and Google, but instead to force them, through boycotting, to reform their business model. I don't have a problem with Google because my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. More transparency would be welcome, though. I will delight in the day that Facebook sinks. If only it would fade away like Myspace. I just don't see how I can quit. Whatsapp is an essential tool for business in Brazil, more than email in my case. Whatsapp is owned by Facebook. Currently it is free and there are no advertisements. So, follow the money. It claims end-to-end encryption, so much so that when Brazilian judges have ordered the company to provide copies of messages, FB resisted and said it was impossible... but user experience suggests otherwise. Many people have reported seeing advertisements appear on Instagram after mentioning a product only on Whatsapp. And in Dubai you can be fined for using swear words on Whatsapp--obviously it's selective enforcement, but how would LE know unless it wasn't truly end-to-end encrypted for all users? Zuck is a liar and not to be trusted, that's the bottom line.

Anyways, I had already deleted all social media apps except Whatsapp off my phone and unlinked my FB login from 3rd party sites. I never click on ads, I keep my "partners" privacy settings as tight as the options allow... but it's still the best way to communicate with friends scattered around the world.

Thinking about this quote from alt-right writer Mencias Moldbug:
"In many ways nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth. Anyone can believe in the truth. To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army."

LOTS of sweets and baked things and the majority of the savory recipes aren't really interesting to me..

This is a fictional journal of when the bubonic plague hit London in 1665. It's roughly chronological (you can tell by the monthly charts of how many people died) but there are no chapters or headings. The writing is very meandering and circular, but there are some interesting anecdotes.

My main interest in reading this book was to compare my plague year to his. Thank God we're not dealing with the bubonic plague this year. But there are a lot of similarities:
- Rich people were the first to escape the city. In São Paulo and New York pretty much everyone who had a second home fled to it.
- Travel was very difficult: not only did other countries seal off their ports, but citizens had trouble getting permission documents to travel to other counties within their country.
- An inclination to infect other people. Certainly some people don't have the choice, "I have to work," and he addresses that, and others chalk it up to "We're all going to die eventually," but there were people who wilfully infected others. Cannot but help think of all those people have temper tantrums about putting on a mask. "Some will have it to be in the nature of the disease, and that it impresses every one that is seized upon by it with a kind of a rage, and a hatred against their own kind—as if there was a malignity not only in the distemper to communicate itself, but in the very nature of man, prompting him with evil will..." Or maybe it's a subconscious self-loathing: "When men are once taken to a condition to abandon themselves, and be unconcerned for the safety or at the danger of themselves, it cannot be so much wondered that they should be careless of the safety of other people."
- There was no true lack of goods or food, but the supply chain was all thrown off. Certainly seeing that in SP--sometimes there's just a random product missing in the stores. Cornstarch, coconut milk, etc.
- People came back into the city at the first reports of the plague abating, and even though they had been so careful up until that point, they reopened too early and many died.

Some differences, too:
- People forgot about religious differences, letting Dissenters preach in churches left empty by Church of England ministers who had fled.
- The gov't appointed doctors, nurses, and surgeons to help poor people for free.
- Infected people were locked in their houses under guard. The guards were paid by the gov't and were to run errands if the families requested.

After the plague of 1665 and the fire of London the following year, the whole country saw many years of financial growth to meet demands in the worldwide markets after 2 years of lack. During this time, poor laborers demanded and were granted higher wages, lifting many out of desperate poverty. The country also saw a flourishing of arts and sciences. I hope we will be able to say the same after our pandemic.

This straightforward and honest memoir by Pakistani-Canadian Samra Habib warmed my heart more than I expected it to. Yes, there is a lot going on here: immigrant, brown person, muslim, queer, minority people group even among Pakistanis, woman. But it doesn't get mired down in the political and constantly recenters itself on family and personal experience. Habib is now a journalist and photographer, and has driven a personal photo project into international success. Google it, it's good stuff. But her inquisitive spirit and thoughtfulness are what bring out the highlights in her story.

I'm trying a new thing where I make a recipe inspired by what I'm reading. Food pairing for this book: onion pakora and lassis.

Thousands of people have gone missing in the North American wilderness, and there is currently no official reporting system in place to know exactly how many people have vanished in national parks, let alone on other federal lands. Author Jon Billman tags along with Randy Gray as he hikes around the Pacific Northwest in search of his son, Jacob, who went missing in the Olympic National Park, Washington. As different theories as to what might have happened to Jacob are put forward, Billman weighs the likelihood of the theory by recounting cases of other people who went missing under similar circumstances.

This book combines two things that are fascinating to me: missing people and wilderness adventures. There's just so much mystery involved. Recently I saw a map that overlayed missing people with cave systems in N America. It made a good point. Sometimes it seems like people are just swallowed up. Maybe they are.

I don't know much about analyzing poetry. But while I was reading I was trying to see if the meaning of lines changed based on if you read it with the line before or the line after, or as a stand-alone. The meaning often changed and I thought that was clever.

#sundaypoetry

I have to be in a particular mood to accept ghostwritten books, and I guess I hit the timing right with this one. I ripped through the entire thing in 2 days. Of course, nothing will quench my love of American cults; it doesn't matter to me that they are all endless iterations on the same premise.

Catherine Oxenberg's story is a unique view of the ESP/NXIVM cult that dominated headlines a couple years ago. Her daughter India was a long-time member who moved up the ranks from the time she was a teenager taking ESP self-help classes with her mom to eventually becoming one of inner circle, complete with the infamous branding. The book thoughtfully weaves in explanations of the stages of cult behavior and brainwashing, with ever-ready examples illustrated by India. Those parts were the most interesting to me.

What really struck me throughout the book was how much money this woman—a Hollywood B-lister who is not as rich as the billionaire heiresses who bankrolled NXIVM founder Keith Raniere but still pretty rich, privileged, and well-connected (she constantly mentions random European aristocracy that she's related to)—spent on getting her daughter out of the cult. Plus she called in a lot of favors from her connections in Hollywood, the media, and her family's political contacts. But imagine if she wasn't that rich and couldn't afford to criss-cross the country at the drop of a hat, leave her kids with full-time caretakers, or pay for lawyers and meetings with psychologists. This concerned mother did everything within her power and it's quite clear that she has a lot of clout at her disposal, but imagine if she didn't. And think about the daughter, India: she blew her six-figure trust fund from her royal grandparents on the cult, but she still has the safety net of super rich parents and her grandmother who is literally a princess. Victim, yes. Lucky, definitely. These things are no doubt emotionally devastating for any family, but money sure pads the landing.

Overall very engaging! This book is about the life of one man who tried to take control of the nascent Mormon flock after Joseph Smith's death. Spoiler: Brigham Young wins out. But more than that, it pulls back the wool on the cultural zeitgeist that is the secret sauce of the American Dream.

It turns out that America has always had a particular weakness for the pursuit of fame and worshipping the "confidence man." We fall for it again, and again, and again. We love the story of the quick-on-his-feet entrepreneur, as epitomized by the Wizard of Oz or the snake-oil salesman—it matters not that we are the ones fooled out of our money, dignity, and for us millennials, our national inheritance. If we are allowed to eventually learn the machinations behind the man, then all is forgiven in honor of his audacity, guile, and showmanship.

The book quotes Charles Dickens who perceived this right away. Writing on his visit to America, he said:
“Another prominent feature is the love of ‘smart’ dealing; which gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust; many a defalcation, public and private; and enables many a knave to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a halter; though it has not been without its retributive operation, for this smartness has done more in a few years to impair the public credit, and to cripple the public resources, than dull honesty, however rash, could have effected in a century. The merits of a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a successful scoundrel, are not gauged by its or his observances of the golden rule, ‘Do as you would be done by,’ but are considered with reference to their smartness…

"The following dialogue I have held a hundred times, 'Is it not a very disgraceful circumstance that such a man as So-and-so should be acquiring a large property by the most infamous and odious means, and, notwithstanding all the crimes of which he has been guilty, should be tolerated and abetted by your citizens? He is a public nuisance, is he not?'

'Yes, sir.'

'A convicted liar?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And he is utterly dishonorable, debased, and profligate?'

'Yes, sir.'

'In the name of wonder then, what is his merit?'

'Well, sir, he is a smart man.'"