YOU ASKED FOR THIS!
Downfall. Kristi Noem Edition:
06.03.2026 03:22
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YOU ASKED FOR THIS!
Downfall. Kristi Noem Edition:
@kquist.bsky.social might have some perspective on cycling while listening to Moby-Dick.
Oh forgot to say it's also queer as hell.
It's a tale for our current time. It's about multiculturalism. It's about the rapacity and destructiveness of capitalism. It's about sustainability. And it's about a bunch of people knowingly following a crazed authoritarian to their doom.
Short answer: yes. Long answer: www.nathanielphilbrick.com/why-read-mob...
Counterpoint: nooooooooooooo.
What the what? Maybe I'm having a stroke.
When I interviewed for my current job in 1996, I had to explain to my future colleagues what a web page was.
THIS RIGHT HERE is what makes Moby-Dick so great. One minute you've got a lunatic screeching while St Elmo's fire burns on the masts, the next you've some serious Transcendental Anatomy dropped in your lap. 🐋
USians think something's that 100 yrs old is OLD and something 200 yrs old is REALLY OLD. No sense of time at all.
Same. Completely loathsome.
I know way too many people who pretend to be inept, incompetent, confused, whatever to get away with their shit and it makes me *crazy*.
I was picturing the interior like Shirley Jackson's Hill House, completely nonintuitive and maze-like.
This was life 4 of your 7 (so far) lives?
Wait, are you being serious? Like, we never really find out for sure what it's about? If so I already appreciate this book much more than I did a moment ago.
Also have to say I half expected someone to go through and classify the characters we've met so far (or at least Esther and the major Jellybys) as either fast fish or loose fish.
I appreciate that! Also, will have to go back and re-read this thread after I find out wtf the Jarndyce case is actually about.
Pizza Man
Amery, WI
Still holding out hope that the Jarndyce case has something to do with WHALE LAW. #dedlocked
I went to the ALife conference once and a guy described experiments he was doing to try to build a robot that could design and build robots. And even the *ALife* crowd was like, um, dude, you ever watch a movie?
👀 #neuroethology
Same! I lasted maybe 4 shipments before I bailed (and I split the last 2 with a friend). Live alone, way too many beans, and not the kinds I wanted/needed. Like, it was fun to get some offbeat variety of red bean but dammit I still needed chickpeas.
No shame in saying it’s not for you.
OTOH I read a short story by Melville this weekend ("the Piazza"), which was published a few years after MD. It takes place in the countryside in Mass.
And maybe this is on me but I was surprised how many allusions to seafaring life he managed to work into a story about a landowner.
Laissez Les Bon Temps OyVey
School currently murdering me too! Nominally it's our spring break but I'm spending the week writing a grant proposal and new lectures.
Hola, #bsbookclub. We should really read some Toni Morrison one of these days. (Gift link.) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/m...
I started it once and enjoyed it but it somehow set it aside and haven't picked it back up. Would definitely be in.
Yup, don't like Dickens and so far nothing in this book has affected that view. Am holding out for the spontaneous human combustion to redeem the whole thing.
Trump went from an obviously fake “No More Forever Wars” to “No! More Forever Wars” pretty fast
I just read this and see a two-dimensional character who's maybe part of a morality play (haven't read the book before so I don't know where this is going) and I think "yeah, this is why I don't like Dickens". Not thinking about it deeply; just, literally, "yeah this is why I don't like Dickens".
