the vibes have actually never been better, and i have a general contempt for doomers like the residents of /r/collapse and other weird subreddits like that
commentary for a few of these: I'll Be Gone in the Dark
i... very much do not like I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, and i feel like i only need this particular passage to illustrate why. what i can appreciate about it is really limited to keeping this serial killer from recessing into history and getting away with his crimes. as an actual book, and as actual text on page, i have a lot of issues with this one! i don't really like how it's written so casually; i dislike how it's presented and the jumbled order of things; i really did not appreciate[^1] the gratuitous detail of how many of the Golden State Killer's rapes were committed, leading to such just. unbelievable paragraphs as:
Common sense, and any cop, will tell you that the no-pants rapist is an unsophisticated teenage peeper who just graduated from misdemeanor to crudely conceived felony. The punk doing the no-pants dance suffers from poor impulse control and will be arrested swiftly.
i think in general, the book reads like a jumble of blogs—and that would be fine if not for the fact that it's a book and not a jumble of blogs. it's a book that has been edited, and if this is what they salvaged in editing it, then... yeah. probably should have been kept in drafts overall. this solidified my general dislike of true crime
[^1]: for reasons both publicly decent and personal
You have a stronger will than I, being able to read all that and (presumably) not go insane in the process. Was there anything in particular that you learned that stuck out to you?
climate change projections are really a CYOA depending on how optimistic or pessimistic you want to be, and there is zero agreement on what remedies should be undertaken as a part of resolving it
virtually all of the reporting you've probably ever heard about Columbine is polluted by some degree of mistruth, miscommunication, or lies from the media, the police, or relevant parties with their own agendas
if there's any justice in the world, Pacific Gas & Electric executives will all be sent to the 9th circle of hell
socialists got pretty wacky when they were allowed to take power throughout the mountain West during the heyday of the Socialist Party of America, and communists even moreso during their brief period of relevance in the eastern corner of Montana
a lot of conservative Americans are very clearly best described as "stupid fascists", which is to say they are essentially fascist politically but so politically propaganized against that term, politically ignorant, or just plainly stupid that they don't realize they are essentially fascist. this is probably and currently saving us from an even more developed fascist movement than already exists, but how long it'll hold is not clear
That sent me on a !!fun!! Wikipedia trip. My favorite was a sniper attack on a substation that DHS alleged might have been an inside job. Also that's a lot of fires.
even though it's functionally a true crime book,[^1] White Hot Hate: A True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America's Heartland is probably the book that sucked me in the most this year. the ultimate story being told here is effectively copaganda—almost definitionally it has to be, since it revolves around the FBI successfully navigating an infamous domestic terror plot from the past few years. but in between that story this book also really goes intimate into how such plots manifest and take form. you get a real sense of the sort of person who would follow through with white supremacist terrorism—and, perhaps indirectly, how many of these people are pushed to act (or hasten how willing they are to act) with the cajoling of the FBI. i'm not sure a book has ever felt like a peek behind the curtain for me without just actively being a political tract in the way this one was
[^1]: and i very much dislike true crime as a genre—looking at you I'll Be Gone In The Dark
Shout-out for I'm Glad My Mom Died. It's incredible how McCurdy captured the feeling of constantly walking on eggshells around an NParent, not knowing what would set them off. Also, fuck Dan Schneider.
i managed to steamroll through it in about a day (combination of no computer + no television) which i don't recommend as it is a very voluminous book--it's one of the largest i have in physical form. basically guaranteed you'll get some value of out of it though if you've liked Graeber's previous work, either as a reference text or as a reading experience (it seems amenable to being used as both).