Alex
Against Disruption: On the Bulletpointization of Books
It’s the beginning of a new year and you might have seen, floating around on social media, lists like 52 Books To Read in 2024 or 42 Books That Will Change Your Life posted by Library Mindset, an account with 4.6 million Instagram followers. You might notice comments on these lists like “Omg I wish […]
Brotherless Night
Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K’s invitation to work as a medic at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. When one of her medical school professors, a Tamil feminist and dissident, invites her to join a secret project documenting human rights violations, she embarks on a dangerous path that will change her forever.
I’ve been on a big of a Sri Lankan binge (…3 novels, but that’s 3 more than usual) recently, and Sashi’s story of becoming a field medic in the middle of the civil war was my favourite of the three. Brotherless Night is an excellent book that got my attention and broke my heart a…
Filterworld: how algorithms flattened culture
From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed—informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch—as we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal.
This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called “Filterworld.” Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Users of technology have been forced to contend with data-driven equations that try to anticipate their desires—and often get them wrong. What results is a state of docility that allows tech companies to curtail human experiences—human lives—for profit. But to have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, while convenient, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question.
I found out about this book through an article by The Guardian that copied an extract from it, and I’m planning on eventually posting my full reading notes here eventually. The idea of « flat culture » really captivated me and I could recognize it easily, being used to international travel for work and seeing…
linuxcon
Four Horsemen
Four Horsemen is a visual novel / SLG about homelands and the immigrant experience. Play as a group of four contemporary immigrant teenagers squatting in a World War II era machine gun bunker, trying to find a place for themselves in a pre-apocalyptic, present-dystopian country that has no place for them. Will you go native, turning against your own people to bury the past your parents fled to escape? Will you cling to your parents’ identity at any cost, at the price of being a permanent stranger in your home country? Or will you strike out on your own, turning against both your homelands to shape a destiny for yourself? Love is all you need…and also improvised firearms.
ok, ok, this is my last review for today, but who knows when my next « get sick, break down and refuse to get up from my desk all day » day will be? Four Horsemen has four immigrant children moving into an abandoned building. From there, a lot can happen based on your choices.…
Lore Distance Relationship
Follow user StaircaseHaven14 on a Neopets-esque site called Ruffians as she faces life’s challenges, RPs with her long-distance BFF (or more than BFF?) Bee, and encounters familial hardship, from age 8 to 18.
I went into this 2000s Internet visual novel game with absolutely no idea what was going to happen, and that’s what made it so magical and moving to me, so I can’t really review it. Or tag it appropriately on this blog. Or anything else. Here’s what I can say: it’s a text-based visual novel…
com__et
Everyone has always shown You the path to follow. And so You do, because you ____ ____ ____ want to end up with Him.
But then You can play again, maybe if You say something different ___ ____ ____ to Her, it could go another way.
Maybe You’ll even see the hidden _____ ____ ____ __ _ ____ End.A visual novel about words and choices being hidden from You until you find a way to reveal them.
📝 6000 words
💿 4 songs, including a dynamic track
☠️ 5 dead ends
❌ 1 false end
🕛 1 ____ End
A tiny visual novel which can be played (with slightly weird formatting) on Android or on a computer. The concept of sentences in the game, but new words completely changing the meaning of the sentences when they’re added after a couple of runs, is really excellent. Highly recommended. From the authors, there are content warnings…
Order a pizza
A visual novel where you play as a divorced dad trying to order the perfect pizza.
In which you are a divorced dad trying to order a pizza for your estranged daughter and your new girlfriend. You realize you’ve been selfish and do some deep introspection (with some nightmarish elements, a death, and a lot of deep dread). It’s a very short visual novel and I highly recommend playing it, if…
