Great Reads for January
Who cares?
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Tomorrow is Inauguration Day. As I wrote last week, I think we're in the natural fourth Turning - the Crisis - and this presidency marks the end of the old way of doing things, the old military industrial complex, the old compact that technology had with humanity is gone, the motto "don’t be evil" in the trash. In short, we're about to hit all death heads on the eternal slot machine and it's not going to be pretty.
But you know what? Who cares. We're resilient creatures. Death and destruction will always be with us along with joy and peace. We're moving into a kinder, arguably more distracted culture that a lot of us aren't used to. The next generation is diligently building the world in their image and we're not happy about it. Again, who cares.
The oligarchs will get theirs, in the end. Elon will die friendless and alone in some hyperbaric chamber. Bezos will roll through a few more wives until he dies in a rocket accident. Zuck will disappear from view and potentially reappear, Jobs-like, to fail another time. Trump has 10 years left on Earth, tops, and his followers aren't much younger. They're plopping backwards into the grave while their alt-right crypto-bro progeny lose all their money.
Who cares?
The world is moving toward justice. Everything is coming up our way. The right gets nothing except money, and even that is in short supply. We got peace, legal weed, self-care, women's health, equal rights, crime-free cities, and active protest. We have walkable cities and great vegan restaurants. We have nice new cannabis drinks and cool tech. They have a bleach-toothed pastor in a megachurch grifting them for cash. They have welfare and divorce. They have poor educations and health. They're losing their teeth in West Virginia, their kids are failing school in Louisiana. Texas can't handle two days of cold without the power going out. LA will be back in fighting shape in a year. The Red States can barely rebuild after their yearly hurricanes. Elon's rockets explode and the Bezos' Washington Post has been trashed.
Yet they still think they're going to rule the world.
Absolutely not.
It's 2025. Let's all go for a walk. Let’s put down our phones. Let's make some music. Let's protest. Let's take a road trip. Who cares? The end is not near. The age of uncomfortableness is here. Uncomfortable we can handle.
Who cares?
I built a brand new service for newsletter owners and advertisers to connect. I’d love your help.
It’s called SubMarket and it lets you create classified ads the newsletter creators can add to their newsletter. They’ll then get paid per unique click. I’m trying to figure out the right mix and interface right now so I’d love beta users. If you’re running a newsletter or would like to advertise, please click this button.
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And now, on to the books.
Tepper Isn’t Going Out
Calvin Trillian
A cute little book that seems caught in an another era, just before New York turned into an oligarch’s dream palace. Tepper doesn’t want to get out of his car because he paid 25 cents for his parking space. The hijinks that result are very cute in the way that Walter Kirn’s Up In the Air described a very special moment in American culture. Worth a read if you haven’t touched Trillian in years.
All Fours
Miranda July
I’m having a lot of trouble reading fiction and this was rough for me. That said, July writes with a lively style that is extremely autobiographical and it’s a great book to look into the peccadilloes and anxieties of 40-somethings — mainly women — in these shitty times.
All Systems Red
Martha Wells
Everyone said I should read this one. I did. It’s about a murderous robot who becomes self-aware and speaks, very archly, about its human charges. When someone looks to be destroying its science time, Murderbot jumps into action by murdering and solving crimes and stuff. Should you read it? Yeah, why not.
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