shirleywhere - Tumblr blog

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[shirleywhere]

"I've been lost in the pistachio algorithm for weeks."

Sterre, 29.4.24, Meppel

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Usually, I simply post a book that I read that I liked - no real text or description because I'm usually just keeping a visual scrapbook of the books I like.

But #theoverstory merits a something special. I meant to finish this for #earthday but finished this morning as soon as I woke up. Even as I was reading, I kept thinking about what this book meant to me. That remains elusive.

Has anyone ever captured the essence of so many different trees as #richardpowers ? Not just *a* tree but chestnuts and firs and beeches and sycamores and lodgepole pines. I have spent a lot of time in forests but could never make a tree come alive in words this way - partly because I am guilty of not looking at them the way this beautiful book reminds us to.

At the same time that 'treeness' becomes so real, I don't think I have read such moving descriptions of love and relationships in a very long time.

So basically, thanks for this book.

I'm (still) sad and cynical about the future, but you've helped me see what I/we am/are losing in a crushingly beautiful way.

#books #reading #afewofourfavouritethings #forests #grief

[shirleywhere]

This experiment shows we are radically free. Not pleasure but justice can move human beings to deeds that overcome the deepest of animal desires, the love of life. We want to determine the world, not only to be determined by it. We are born and we die as part of nature, but we feel most alive when we go beyond it: To be human is to refuse to accept the world we are given. At the heart of Kant’s metaphysics stands the difference between the way the world is and the way the world ought to be. His thought experiment is an answer to those who argue that we are helpless in the face of pleasure and can be satisfied with bread and circuses — or artisanal chocolate and the latest iPhone. If that were true, benevolent despotism would be the best form of government.

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Everybody needs one.

[shirleywhere]

Perhaps if AI had started its rollout by replacing, say, human toil and labor rather than immediately targeting and automating the artistic and creative pursuits that make life worth living, you know, it might have better numbers.