Review: Anarchism: Arguments For And Against (by Albert Meltzer)

Tiny book review. Shadow And Bone (Leigh Bardugo).

Finished Shadow And Bone in one day. Ordered the rest of the trilogy + first Six Of Crows secondhand. Netflix defenetly spoiled me, but there was also a good thing about watching part of the story before reading it. I could imagine the characters more diverse than they were described in the book. I am a little confused about why there were almost no describtion about the way people looked. It would be such a cool thing to imagine the different cultural clothes, what the different ethnicities looked like ect.. I mean sure, I can imagine for myself how someone from the Shu Han place would look like (I personally think about the Tatar-Mongols because of their closeness to Zar Rus) but it would be great to see more details of their special things like acessories, ways to sit, gestures, foods, anything. In Shadow And Bone we know nothing about the Fjerdians Alina met except of all of them having beards xD and we know literally nothing about the third nation (there were Ravkans (Rus based), Fjerdians (Nordic folx), Shu Han (mongol based) and the other one which sounded German or Dutch but had no describtion whatsoever so I did not even remember their name)… that’s a shame. But I hope more will come in the next books. In addition to that it was a little confusing for me as someone who speaks Russian to see the choice of words for some things. And sure, they don’t SPEAK Russian, but it’s still strange to see an infinitive verb used as a subject, it just takes away something serious from the dialogue for me… but I guess it’s a me-thing, because folx who don’t speak Russian probably enjoyed every minutes of it (and I am very happy for them!)

I do admit, that the book inspired me to pick up the worldbuilding process after I am finished with my last theater science paper.

I had so many punk, alternative, leftist, communist, anarchist friends and then anti-covid measures were lifted and after half a year into it i was left with two people who are still wearing a mask and take other measures. I got to know some other chronically ill folx which still take covid seriously, but everyone else who was so so feminist and anti-racist and pro trans* rights and pro migrants and antifa and all that.. everyone else just stopped reacting to my info about masks and solidarity and stopped texting me all together. I am asking myself sometimes how do they live with their consciousness? How do they walk around, see masked people sometimes and think "oh, elfi was a great friend to me, i was so grateful for their knowledge and help, but then the whole respect-my-life-and-health thing became too much for me so i just ghosted them. what a great way to say thank you, it was!" Of Corse not, they pushed me out of their lives like they did with everyone else who is chronically ill and/or Disabled while being covid cautious. What a pity. My heart broke so many times in the last 3 years. But also: how are we meant to achieve a revolution, how would we eat the rich or abolish whatever there is to abolish, if we cannot even protect the most vulnerable by making the minimal effort of not making them sick by choice? (because knowing that you can protect someone and not doing so is a choice to bring them in potential danger) How do we talk about feminism and trans* rights if we cannot manage the basic consent question of "i do not give you my permission to bring me in more danger"? Questions about questions, as they say in germany T.T

anyways, after writing multiple articles for the newsletter on that topic i still have so many things to say, one day there will be a great book about it (already made a layout for the story) and I hope i will not get even more brain fog and other issues. There are so many books i yet have to write...

Tbh if you consider yourself "Alt" or "punk," I don't care unless you wear a mask in public. Otherwise, you're just another poser.

https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/elfi_reads

My storygraph Account✨ it’s created by a Black cis woman (hope it’s true) and should be better than good reads. I really enjoy that people can submit trigger warnings and also upload their books themselves.

Just started Shadow And Bone. I watched some of it via Netflix adaptation, but once I have found out that there is a book I did not want to finish watching. Also, I remember very little if the story, so I almost get to know the characters for the first time.

„Suffering is cheap as clay and twice as common. What matters is what each [person] makes of it.“ (Ruin and Rising, Chapter 7)

Very hard researching for the Theater science paper writing about VANYA when Andrew Scott is just there. Just putting out all this characters by himself. Let them flirt, make love, suffer. Sometimes two people cannot act out the chemistry between two characters and somehow Scott manages to play chemistry between the characters all by himself. Live. On stage. Uff..😮‍💨 (in my opinion, VANYA is not good as a Chekhov piece, but it’s genius as Andrew Scott’s one man show, just like Akbar from The Guardian said in her Review)

My comment:

Yes! This! Sure, screens not cool, Social Media ruining Generation after Generation BUT no social media and no screen actually made damage to all the parts of the body, made your immune system weaker in a way that you are constantly ill with a new thing, made your immune permanently Disbaled, made you so ill that you cannot leave the bed, have a smalltalk, smell stuff or cope with light, cannot remember simple words on a permanent basis, forget the things that you are actively doing in the moment, isolate you from most of the people and almost all places due to lack of acessability and/or your health state, made every condition you have much worse and with every re infection you become worse and worse and actually even if you have been healthy and have been using no screens and no social media you still can become Disbaled and chronically ill in the worst way possible (but even the mild/moderate cases are horrible believe me please). So yeah… phones, right?..

P.s. the way people are in active denial being like “yeah but have you seen research to the way phones alter our brains?” Well yes, but it’s reversible and you can literally just do your best and make yourself busy without the phone. But there is no way you alone can prevent a covid infection and there is no cure or treatment for ME/CFS (which is so often the main chronic illness end up after covid) and LC. So… I would choose the phone and do what I can to not have a problem with it. But even though I mask and have been isolated by people who have been my friends and also by academia, medical institutions, states decisions ect., I am still at risk of re-infection and loosening even more of my energy, brain capacity, concentration and NOTHING is under my control. I can only do things and hope but there is no evidence that some things actually always help. None. You can ”cure” phone addiction or short attention span as a result of social media but you cannot cure ME 🥲 so how about stop the denial, take the mass disabling event seriously and stop comparing apples with oranges?….

It’s always “phones are ruining our brains” and never “the virus known for post-viral cognitive decline, which causes short term memory loss, brain fog, and decreased spatial reasoning, that we let run rampant through our communities for years is ruining our brains”

Learning how to edit long videos on my laptop is actually really fun. Also it looks almost like the pictures from my ✨vision board✨

Soon I am 27 and will have to make a new vision board for the next solar year. I am very interested to see what things will stay and what will change 🦆🦔

This is the pile of things I am planing to read while working through “Who’s Afraid Of Gender” (Judith Butler) for my thesis.

P.s. I already read Plato’a “Symposion” and wrote a paper in the uni about it, but I liked it so much I wanted to read something about Symposion since I have nobody to talk to about it.

Am I asking for too much? Just a tea party with pretty cups and way too sweet pastry and open end gossiping session 😭

Granada's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes S1Ep11, "The Resident Patient" (1985)