Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris

Read Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris ( )

The first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, from railroad capitalists to microchip assemblers, showing how Northern California created the world as we know it

Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate, the people are educated, rich, healthy, enterprising. Remnants of a hippie counterculture have synthesized with high technology and big finance to produce the spiritually and materially ambitious heart of Silicon Valley, whose products are changing how we do everything from driving around to eating food. It is also a haunted toxic waste dump built on stolen Indian burial grounds, and an integral part of the capitalist world system.

I forced myself to not take any notes or highlights when reading this book, and ended up with three (3) highlights on a 700+ page book, which I consider a win. Palo Alto was a really good book at some points, and felt like a chore at others. I think the images and narratives are…

Yes, men are losing rights in the age of feminism

Liked Yes, men are losing rights* in the age of feminism (tacit.livejournal.com)

That’s the pesky asterisk in “men are losing rights*”. And it’s a different argument than “ha ha ha LOL shut up you haven’t lost any rights.” Men have lost rights. Unpacking why, and whether we shoud’ve ever had them to begin with, is a different conversation, and one I think we need to be willing to have if we are to deconstruct the weird entitlement of the manosphere.

Salt Crystals by Cristina Bendek

Read Salt Crystals by Cristina Bendek ( )

San Andrés rises gently from the Caribbean, part of Colombia but closer to Nicaragua, the largest island in an archipelago claimed by the Spanish, colonized by the Puritans, worked by slaves, and home to Arab traders, migrants from the mainland, and the descendents of everyone who came before.

For Victoria – whose origins on the island go back generations, but whose identity is contested by her accent, her skin color, her years far away – the sun-burned tourists and sewage blooms, sudden storms, and ‘thinking rundowns’ where liberation is plotted and dinner served from a giant communal pot, bring her into vivid, intimate contact with the island she thought she knew, her own history, and the possibility for a real future for herself and San Andrés.

This is the second-to-last novel of an old Charco Press bundle I bought. Charco Press is a small but mighty independent publisher which started in 2017 in Scotland and specialises in translation of novels from Latin America. Their books are out of the ordinary, make me discover new horizons, and they also look really pretty…