milfstalin asked:
are there any books/articles/texts/authors you would recommend reading to understand/about 1979, the historical context leading up to it, and/or the modern day IRI? i only learned the bare-bones liberal history basics and i would like to understand the communist/materialist perspective of the events/the state. thank you and have a good day/night!
ghelgheli answered:
Absolutely! Note that while I’ve not personally read/watched all of these, the rest have been endorsed by people I trust. Note also that of course, none of these are uncritical recommendations.
For overviews of the past century, from the period of the Constitutional Revolution to the present:
Regarding the 1953 coup in particular:
On ‘79:
Jumanji, Zathura, the cones of dunshire, Ajimbo, card wars, sword of cthulhudor.
put in the tags other fictional board games, the rules are
Escalators and Eels, which despite its name being a clear reference to the real-world game of Chutes and Ladders, is clearly a different game: there is an explicit loss state, taking escalators has benefits beyond position, etc
always been kind of fascinated by the fact that so many wikipedia pages for complex emotional states/afflictions are represented by paintings, a disproportionate number of which are by edvard munch
cauchesque asked:
can you drop a reading list for summer thought?
transgenderer answered:
uh so i don’t think “summer thought” is a thing BUT
but most importantly, “the man who loves wisdom must be acquainted with very many things”. i think the most influential stuff on my conception of the world is just a ton of different ethnographies, to get a sense of how different human lives can be. my ethnography reading list is
for three perspectives on hunter gatherers. most humans were hunter gatherers but there’s no way to be “representative” of what that life was like because it was very diverse
for three perspectives on the way religion can form intense, altered, sort of mythopoetic experiences
for three perspectives on india, the other extant written tradition very concerned about god
uhhhh if ur not an ethnography guy read a lot of other nonfiction. preferably high on description, low on theorizing and interpretation (altho obviously the necessary summarizing of a huge amt of reading and interviews requires some theorizing and interpretation). biology is good, also expresses the main idea
go to a lot of art museums, unless you don’t like art museums i guess. in which case, read diverse fiction, fiction of different types, rather than mostly one genre
the main idea, to me, is 1) the good (as in, the well-lived life, but more abstract) is, if not infinitely multiple, very very multiple. there are many independent ways towards goodness, too many for us to achieve. as such, “genuine difference”, variety capable of achieving a large number of distinct goods, is a sort of “meta-good”. 2) there are other things. the kindest fact about the world is that it is, in fact, full of genuine difference! the world could be a single electron, but it isn’t!
The bean jar
[My Chemical Romance voice]: When I was…. a young boy… my Father… had what he called the bean jar…
have i mentioned recently @allieinarden is the best
