slime-orb:

nostalgebraist:

slime-orb:

nostalgebraist:

slime-orb:

i love the joke in wise children where (the shakespearian vaudeville extravaganza) what you will is never punctuated the same way twice

#what you will! what! you will? what? you comma will?! #please read wise children.

This is relevant to my interests because I love Angela Carter’s writing style but I have actually never finished one of her books because I can never get into the plots

Haven’t tried Wise Children though

ooh which ones have you tried to read? the later ones tend to be most interesting writing-wise but also the most meandering in plots, and she started deliberately doing kind of picaresque novels around then. especially like, the infernal desire machines of doctor hoffman and nights at the circus.

i think in some ways she’s the kind of writer who works best at short story length (and i highly recommend her collected short stories)

Infernal Desire Machines and Nights at the Circus are exactly the ones I have tried to read, as it happens.  (Have also read and enjoyed some of her nonfiction essays)

I’ve been meaning to try The Bloody Chamber for a while, seems very well-liked

the bloody chamber is good…it seems to be her best-known work in the u.s., i think because it influenced the popularity of fairy tale retellings in fantasy fiction. i get the impression her novels are a little more widely read in the u.k.

i kind of think it’s worth reading all her short stories (the collected edition is burning your boats), at least, i originally read the bloody chamber when i first discovered her, then went back and read burning your boats and felt like i had much better grasp of, idk, what the stories were doing in that larger context. i mean i am also biased in that i’m a) super obsessed with angela carter and b) love reading short stories. but anyway some her other short fiction is really great. some of the stories originally collected in american ghosts and old world wonders are these semi-biographical semi-mythological sketches of figures selected by angela carter as quintessentially american, including edgar allan poe & lizzie borden.

Cool, thanks!  My library has Burning Your Boats available … 

(via sapphorb)

chamomile-geode:

all right this is what made me realize dostoyevsky is a hilarious genius:* in his book, ‘the possessed,’ about pre-revolution radicals, there’s this scene where the main characters have invited all these people to a revolutionary meeting that they’re disguising as a birthday party in case someone unsympathetic comes in. but the first problem is that no one they invited is actually sure whether they were invited to a “birthday party” wink-wink nudge-nudge coughrevolutioncough, or whether this is straightforwardly someone’s birthday party. so for the first part of the meeting everyone’s trying to behave in ways that would be appropriate for both a birthday party and a revolutionary meeting. and that is such an amazingly bizarre subset of human behavior, holy shit, i could not stop laughing

and just to add to that: later, when everyone’s realized they are in fact at a revolutionary meeting and things are getting heated and serious, there’s a point where the revolutionaries start arguing and at the height of the conflict this college kid jumps out of his chair and says, “there is no difference between good and evil!!!”

and this has almost nothing to do with what they’re talking about, but he’s super proud of himself and you can tell he like “realized” that in one of his philosophy classes and has been waiting for a revolutionary meeting so he can throw that out there, he’s been saving it the whole meeting so he can say it at the most dramatic time

quick, someone raise dostoyevsky from the dead so he can write comedies of manners about modern radicals

*although antisemitic to the point that some of his work feels infected, you’d want to avoid or at least discount it. less antisemitic than most russian christians of his time, but that leaves a lot of room

(via chamomilegeode-deactivated20221)

Reading recommendation for effective altruists

aguycalledjohn:

press.princeton.edu/titles/5897.htmlozymandias271:

perversesheaf:

I highly recommend Thomas Pogge’s World Poverty and Human Rights. Pogge wrote his PhD at Harvard under Rawls and is now a professor of philosophy at Yale. Get the second edition – a paperback is super cheap used on Amazon.com. 

Besides the ethics of global poverty generally, the book focuses on systemic issues like trade agreements, difficulties with building stable governments in the  third world, and intellectual property laws relating to the pharmaceutical industry that turn out to really screw the global poor. Such issues do not seem to be popular in the EA community, which is unfortunate. 

I especially recommend the book if you are turned off by the crude, robotic utilitarianism of people like Singer (which appears to be widely endorsed by EAs). Pogge’s discussion is more nuanced and ultimately more satisfying. 

Thanks for the rec.

Part of the reason that EA doesn’t focus on systemic issues is that it is much harder for the individual to change IP law than it is for the individual to buy a malaria net. In addition, global health is far easier to measure, and there’s a certain tendency to look under streetlights. :P The Open Philanthropy Project is intended to correct this problem, but is currently concentrating on US policy, scientific research, and global catastrophic risk rather than foreign aid (the former two have some overlap with what you’re talking about, though).

I also endorse Pogge. Was a major part of the module I did at [British University] on World Poverty and Human Rights. 

Other recommendations Henry Shue, wo I think is the originator of the concept of basic rights, that is the rights you need in order to ccess your other rights . ( E.g. you need a right to basic subsistence in order to access your right to freedoms, you needa basic level of safety to be access your right to vote, free expression, etc.). Which is notable for using hardcore libertarian premises to derive the conclusion you should provide for the worst off. 
http://commons.pacificu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1317&context=eip
press.princeton.edu/titles/5897.html

Also

• * Elizabeth Ashford
  
• Charles Jones, Global Justice 
  
• Simon Caney, Justice Beyond Borders
  
• Debra Satz, “What Do We Owe the Global Poor? q}�PJ�w
  

Actually heres the syllabus: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qjgo5yg21vtcpch/4625%20syllabus.docx?dl=0 

(via akkkkaall1ttyynnn)