I don’t think anything would have prevented this. Of the two people who participated in the thread one admitted to only reading one chapter and skimming the other two.
Not only is Gulag Archipelago long but it’s also dense. It’s not impenetrable in the way I’d guess Nietzsche would be but it’s rich with information to a point it’s hard to know where to start with a post. Starship Troopers was still a fictional story and full of filler that no one would talk about. Reading through this it seems you could have discussion for days on multiple paragraphs if you had enough history and feedback for it.
On top of that the book is depressing and is coming in at a depressing time given everything happening. It wouldn’t surprise me if most people called it quits at chapter 3. Not everyone can have a proper maladjusted sense of humor to draw interest at the suffering of others. Someone remarked before that they stopped reading after chapter 1 or 2 due to the depressing material and after finishing chapter 7 I’m sure things are just going to keep going down hill.
Since this is the second book there are still some kinks to work out in how much should be read in a week so that people can keep up and digest it. Some books may also need to be skipped and read as individual work at least until a core group of readers can be established.
One change that I’d make for future books, if it could be done, would be if the person that recommended the book would take lead on the discussion, have a digital download of the text ready before hand though something like Project Gutenberg or z library, that they had already read the book prior to recommending it, and would be able to write up three or so comments for each week. I don’t know if that would help but it should kick start the discussion at least.
It’ll be a learning experience for the first half-dozen books at my guess.
These are all blind recommendations as I haven’t read them but I found them on z library (https://z-lib.org/) when I searched for global slavery.
Critical Readings on Global Slavery (4 vols.) edited by Damian Alan Pargas and Felicia Rosu (https://1lib.us/book/12515628/2cf3df)
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy by Kevin Bales (https://1lib.us/book/2042887/261bc3)
The Problem of Slavery as History: A Global Approach by Joseph C. Miller (https://1lib.us/book/17505570/70149e)
What is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective by Noel Lenski and Catherine M. Cameron (https://1lib.us/book/5216878/8ecf57)
I can’t speak on any wokeness in the books or the authors but the downloads are free so if you have the time pick a book and take a stab at it. I’d start reading one but I’m still on the Gulag Archipelago right now.
You can download five books per day without an account so if you want you could also send your friend a copy of Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman. You could consider that a historical embellishment of non-American slavery from a certain point of view.
But the most awful thing they can do with you is this: undress you from the. waist down, place you on your back on the floor, pull your legs apart, seat assistants on them (from the glorious corps of sergeants!) who also hold down your arms; and then the interrogator (and women interrogators have not shrunk from this) stands between your legs and with the toe of his boot (or of her shoe) gradually, steadily, and with ever greater pressure crushes against the floor those organs which once made you a man. He looks into your eyes and repeats and repeats his questions or the betrayal he is urging on you. If he does not press down too quickly or just a shade too powerfully, you still have fifteen seconds left in which to scream that you will confess to everything, that you are ready to see arrested all twenty of those people he's been demanding of you, or that you will slander in the newspapers everything you hold holy ....
And may you be judged by God, but not by people ....
pg. 127-128
Cock and ball torture from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia…
Or, for example, that colonel, Konkordiya losse's friend, who had roared with laughter in the Vladimir Detention Prison at the memory of locking up a group of old Jews in an ice-filled root cellar, had been afraid of one thing only during all his debaucheries: that his wife might find out about them. She believed in him, regarded him as noble, and this faith of hers was precious to him. But do we dare accept that feeling as a bridgehead to virtue in his heart?
pg. 172
I was wondering if you’d bring this up in relation to the doctor’s plot. I couldn’t help to wonder if his wife’s view of him wouldn’t be the only thing he’d need to worry about.
Reading through just the first two chapters of this text I’m struck by what happens and at just how alien life for the average Russian would be and how it got that way.
This may be off-topic for the discussion thread but does anyone have any good recommendations for books on the Russian Revolution or the rule of the Tsars to put what’s going on here into perspective? I’m trying to make sense of this through my knowledge of the American Revolution and the French Revolution and though I can see parallels with the French Revolution and the Terror the Russian version seems to be a Terror that just never collapsed even in the face of World War II and that dumbfounds me.
In 1927, when submissiveness had not yet softened our brains to such a degree, two Chekists tried to arrest a woman on Serpukhov Square during the day. She grabbed hold of the stanchion of a streetlamp and began to scream, refusing to submit. A crowd gathered. (There had to have been that kind of woman; there had to have been that kind of crowd too! Passers-by didn't all just close their eyes and hurry by!) The quick young men immediately became flustered. They can't work in the public eye. They got into their car and fled. (Right then and there she should have gone to a railroad station and left! But she went home to spend the night. And during the night they took her off to the Lubyanka.)
Pg. 15-16
Defense does have benefits but one thing lacking in this example was the drawing of blood. The arrest was called off due to resistance but with none of the fatal kind. I think your viewing those carrying out the arrests as having principles. If there was stiff enough resistance those expecting an easy job would balk at having to put their lives on the line to do their job. If enough people had resisted violently enough, since the vast majority were dead anyway if hauled off the gulags, the security apparatus could have fallen apart due to desertion. It’s all hypothetical speculation though since that never happened.
American Krogan makes good long-form content but I don’t remember much discussion on the videos that get posted here.
I’ve watched the first two parts of his series on Bioshock: Infinite and I’m catching a lot of stuff I missed or glossed over playing through the game back in the day. His videos on Bioshock are also a great watch if you have the time.
Robocop 1987 bathroom scene.
I think it’s more sunk-cost than Lysenkoism. The media spent so much time pushing fear all throughout Wu Flu they can’t just turn around and turn it off. The military and children need to be jabbed because if they don’t then people will question just how much of the fear porn was made up. The ‘pandemic’ is the worst disease ever and the economy needed to be shut down over but don’t worry, your children are fine and don’t need the jab that was forced on you to keep your job.
Once that starts happening on a wide scale all of those bought-and-paid-for poison jabs will have to be destroyed like the clot shots they are. The pharma companies stock will tank, people will start asking questions about those who got rich and cashed out before things fell apart, and angry citizens will start to demand accountability for those in the government. If nothing happens people will just angrier and angrier.
To me it seems they just need to keep the circus going past the point where things fall apart so there will be bigger problems to deal with over a reckoning for the current situation.
I never played the game but didn’t Hellgate:London have some lawsuit brought against the developers about some church being included? I remember reading an article back in the day that concluded that it was more about some type of copyright that the developers didn’t get permission or pay the church for including them so they tried to get the church removed from the game.
On reading the article on Wisconsin earlier I thought this would be a good solution to the problem. Move them down to Chicago and see how things go when they start to clash with the urban youth.
In other words, let them fight.
Whatever you do, just don’t get yourself permanently banned.
This place really would lose a lot of character if you weren’t around to shout about the Jeeeeews!! and call people cucks while reminding us you’re a writing a book. You’re clearly more than a troll. You’ve got passion in abundance but don’t have a firm grasp on the delivery. Keep working on and I’m sure you’ll get there in time.
My interpretation on how this came about:
Writer 1: Let's do a homosexual propaganda episode!
Writer 2: How do we disguise it?
W1: We'll do it as a holodeck thing!
W2: Won't that be out of character for almost all of the cast?
W1: We'll do that sex virus thing from TNG. The episode where Data was fully functional.
W2: How will we make that work? It'll be forced for sure.
W1: It'll be a test thing. For the stunning and brave black female lead as a command thing or whatever.
W2: How are we going to have a conclusion that isn't a disaster?
W1: We'll play it off as that Kirk thing, Kobiashi Maru. The lose-lose situation where it's supposed to show your character.
W2: But Kirk beat that by cheating so if we don't have our stunning and brave black female win people will point out that a white male succeeded where a stunning and brave black female lost.
W1: If anyone points that out we'll just call them racist because it's current year!
And my biggest error in all of this is thinking they had a discussion at all instead of just going with an already written fan fiction posted somewhere on the Internet.
I’ve taken up drawing with the hopes of expanding into digital art once I learn the fundamentals. Also getting back around to dabbling in writing again.
For the month of October I was also going to try and get some of the horror classics read such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The King In Yellow.
They Kill Themselves And Take Society With Them
People Pretend They Don’t Exist To Avoid Going Insane
Expensive To Maintain And A Last Resort To Rely On
All They Can Do Is Destroy What Useful People Built
Ugly To Look At And Worse On The Inside
No One Wants To Be Around Them When They Go Off
I checked the PDF copy that I have and chapter 6 starts on page 237. In comparison my PDF copy of Starship Troopers is only 157 pages. While I haven’t read Gulag Archipelago I’d imagine the writing is much denser than Starship Troopers.
Five chapters with only a week’s discussion seems a lot to bite off at one time.
Writing has a low bar for entry given the large literacy rate and proliferation of computers and smartphones in the modern world. So you're going to have a large number of people who will attempt their own fanfiction, short stories, books, ect., and think that they can do it well given they've been writing for years in school. But creative writing is a different beast from regular writing and good creative writing is far above that.
The safe space/participation trophy/there are no wrong answers culture in school is another factor. When people jumping into something like creative writing only get told how good they are and how they can do anything if they put their mind to it hit the real world they flounder. They may have it in them to succeed but they were never told there was going to be a lot of hard work and missteps along the way. So those people default back to just wanting praise for their work and just consider everyone offering valid criticism as trolls or 'haters' or fallback to 'It's just not for you.'
Good writers, or people who want to become good writers, will need to group up and make their own writing groups where they offer valuable and effective criticism. I've heard it's tough to find a good group of writers for that and maybe some enterprising individual can come along and make a website for that one day. Then, hopefully, control of it can be retained from the leftists that'll want to take it over and turn it into another safe space.
Also, by AO2 do you mean Archive of Our Own?
No one pushing this really cares about the 13% and gun violence.
This is about deflecting single mothers raising terrible children.
"It's the guns! It's the video games! It's movies and television!" They have to deflect because if people started looking into the parenting and the values it would become obvious where the problem is.
Those who refuse to participate until after the thread is stickied are guilty of Anti-Soviet Agitation and deserve execution for their actions directed toward the overthrow of the book club of the worker’s and peasants’ soviets!