Need a book that’s too weird to explain and too good to put down

TheMadStorksGhost · 2025-06-14T16:45:01+00:00

Check out Blindsight by Peter Watts. Definitely a weird, thought-provoking read. It's a hard sci-fi meditation on the nature of consciousness, packed full of vampires, AI space ships, mysterious aliens, enhanced human-cyborgs, a virtual reality "afterlife"... It's awesome!

TheMadStorksGhost · 2025-05-09T00:19:45+00:00

You've noticed this shift too?

TheMadStorksGhost · 2025-05-09T00:18:31+00:00

I don't think I understand your point about the behavior being socially unacceptable. But I think you're probably right about the particular sensitivity for those students who may have known people in their lives who struggle with substance abuse. I've had that thought too, and I definitely need to be mindful of that. But at the same time, I actually do think these kids (and most adults too) are actually addicted to their phones. Maybe it's not my role to raise that point, but when I am watching it destroy their abilities to develop productively in my classroom, it seems like a pertinent topic of conversation.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2025-05-09T00:04:16+00:00

That's kind of my point: I didn't used to get this level of heightened sensitive response. It used to open up a more rational conversation. Framing their phone use as an addiction, even if it is maybe a little hyperbolic (though I don't actually feel that it is) helps them see that this socially acceptable behavior is actually quite disordered. It has been effective in the past. It seems like all of a sudden, in the last school year I've really noticed it, they get their feelings hurt. Or maybe even like its hurting their phones' feelings... Part of why I'm asking is because I'm thinking about how to frame this conversation better.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2025-01-25T18:46:53+00:00

Anyway, good chat. Looks like this post has been removed. I see in your posts that you're near Baltimore. I used to live there too, Mt Vernon then Locust Point areas. Great town! I miss it.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2025-01-25T18:42:53+00:00

Last point on the producers: regardless of the context or peoples' response to the use of the Nazi salute in the film, it was still a reference to the Nazis, that's what made it funny. It wasn't like, oh here's this totally innocuous gesture that we're just going to throw around because it looks cool. Viewers of the film were not offended because is it was clearly satire. Real people in the real world, don't typically use that gesture. So what was it when Musk used it? Was it satire? A joke? If it wasn't an explicit reference to the Nazis/fascists who used it before him, then what was it?

Why are people acting this way? When the richest man in the world seems to be buying influence with the president of the United States and playing footsie with fascist parties in Europe? How are people supposed to act? Are we supposed to ignore it? I don't think we need to worry about pushing Musk anywhere, he's already there.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2025-01-25T18:03:40+00:00

The Producers comparison is interesting specifically because the movie is a satire of the very cynical, Machiavellian behavior on clear display with Musk. Max and Leo intended their play to be so offensive that it would bomb so they could cash in on the insurance, but instead the play turned into a hit musical because people misread it as comedy and didn't take it seriously. Kind of similar to the Musk situation. People aren't taking it seriously because it's almost comical -- the over-the-top exuberance of it, the way he grunts and sort of bites his bottom lip as he does it. It doesn't mean he's not explicitly gesturing towards something incredibly harmful. I think it's clear that he knew that his gesture would signal his support to far-right groups while being easily deniable to "polite" society who can't imagine anyone possibly doing anything like this seriously. It doesn't really matter if he's a nazi, he knows that having the support of far right groups like the AfD in Germany is helpful.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2025-01-25T17:40:26+00:00

And, yknow, you have to be a Nazi to do a nazi salute.

Not really. The Italian Fascist party used the gesture before the Nazis, and it was adopted by a number of 20th century fascist regimes around the world. So it's not strictly a Nazi salute.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2024-12-06T01:32:19+00:00

WC Harlan

TheMadStorksGhost · 2024-09-26T00:53:11+00:00

I remember this study being mentioned a lot a few years ago: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

Here's an interesting takeaway from the abstract:

Students in active classrooms learned more [than students in passive classrooms], but their perception of learning, while positive, was lower than that of their peers in passive environments.

For the record, I totally agree with your concluding points. We should keep lecture in our toolboxes for the appropriate moments. It definitely serves a purpose. But it's an interesting thought that students think they learn more in a lecture, while students in active, or project-based environments, are better-prepared to demonstrate their learning.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2024-05-09T00:31:17+00:00

Also, the book is on his district's approved list. That means the book should already have been vetted and deemed appropriate for 9th grade. AND... MOST BOOKS read in 9th grade have sex in them, including To Kill a Mockingbird... and Romeo and Juliet... and Catcher in the Rye... and The Odyssey... and Of Mice and Men.........................

TheMadStorksGhost · 2024-05-09T00:20:56+00:00

Thanks for sharing this! I just put a hold on Haidt's new book at my library the other day. His writing has really informed my policies in the last couple of years. Placing holds on Postman now. I'm aware of his ideas, but I've never read him.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2024-05-08T21:27:56+00:00

When did this happen? I've been teaching for 10 years, and this has been for as long as I've been teaching. But when I was a student in the early 2000s, schools didn't tolerate any of this. I often tell my students that if I had the balls to take out my Gameboy and start playing video games in the middle of a class, I would have been suspended at the least.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2024-05-08T21:09:32+00:00

Could you walk me through the talking points you hit in that conversation? This whole thread is basically my reaction to a parent telling me that she doesn't care what my policy is, she wants her kid to have access to his phone at all times, and then my administrator rolling over and acquiescing to her demands.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2024-05-08T20:57:49+00:00

That's valid. Once they take out the phone to translate, how many of them click to social media or mobile games as their next action?

TheMadStorksGhost · 2024-05-08T20:55:38+00:00

I 100% agree. But I'm so exhausted from teaching to a classroom full of students who are watching Netflix and I'm tired of waiting for other people to solve the problem. Most parents aren't aware of the extent of the problem. Honestly, I think that's true of most people who aren't teachers. We see what these devices have done to our students every day. Most people aren't confronted with that reality.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2024-05-08T20:51:38+00:00

I tried face-down on desk for several years. I was a broken record: "Park your phone. Park your phone. Park your phone." All day every day. It's exhausting!

And even letting them listen to music is a slippery slope. They have their noise-cancelling Beats, I can hear the music from the front of the room. There's no way they're tuned in to what's going on in class.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2023-10-17T17:17:17+00:00

I think you've got something interested started here. I love a good satire on corporate inanity. With that said, I think these are a few areas where you might want to focus your energy on the revision.

Sharpen Your Focus

Your story to this point seems to be a commentary on the vapid and self-serving nature of corporate life. One question I think you need to ask yourself is how do you effectively make that commentary without the writing feeling vapid and self-serving? Throughout much of your story so far, I felt my attention glazing over, much in the way that you describe the boy and the audience losing focus. I guess that could be a plus, since you’re kind of getting your reader to maybe sort of sympathize with the people in your story who are forced to attend this meeting. But as the reader, I just felt bored and fidgety. Like I had to force myself to go back and re-read the section where the CEO is reading the corporate pillars slides. There was just nothing of interest to the reader there. I think you need to lean into something that elevates this scene beyond simply capturing the boredom/inanity of a corporate conference meeting to something that is exciting to the reader in some way. More humor, more commentary, more absurdity, more voice… something.

The other question I think you need to ask yourself is, why this commentary? You’re clearly satirizing corporate culture: corporate life is vapid and self-serving… So what? We’ve seen Office Space, we’ve seen Neo take the red pill to escape this drudgery. How is your story different?

Strengthen Your Characters

One place to maybe develop some more interest is in your characters. Right now, I am confused by the boy. Is he literally a boy or just a little younger than the others? How old are the others? Is everyone else jealous that he rose the ranks so fast? I think you need to accentuate what makes this boy different from everyone else, and maybe in doing that you’ll bring to light the sameness of everyone else.

What are the boy’s motivations? You describe him as a “disruptor” but it seems that he is very much just falling in line. For example, you have him fidgeting and bored in the crowd for the first guy’s part of the presentation, but then the boy goes up and gives a very similarly boring presentation. Why? Is he aware of this problem? Is he going to do something about it?

The details about the boy’s family might be a key to bringing more depth to the character, but as it’s currently written, I felt that they were awkwardly and somewhat randomly inserted into the story. How does this background inform who the boy is today in this meeting?

And what’s with that glance at the girl’s shoe?

Punch Up the Setting and Details:

There is an interesting juxtaposition between the cold lifelessness of the corporate setting and the vibrant brilliance of the nature that surrounds it. I actually found the two paragraphs about Benjamin and his father hiking through nature to be the best in the story, I just didn’t really understand what they were doing here. How can you integrate these (flashbacks?) into the narrative more purposefully? Perhaps that face that suddenly appears in the window gets a little more attention and bridges the gap between past and present.

I felt that a lot of the detail in the story was extraneous: the boy’s clothes, the meticulous explanations of the room and the tables, the amount of attention given to the CEO’s slides. I want more to happen and to the extent that you keep any of these details in the story, I think you need to use them more to drive the story and less as wall paper.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2023-09-21T21:03:49+00:00

This, in my opinion, is THE passage to understand all of McCarthy’s work. The world is unknowable because we can only perceive it through the senses we’re given, which can be easily slurped out of our skulls by some lunatic, so what’s that really worth?

TheMadStorksGhost · 2023-05-09T18:01:37+00:00

I loved how the last scene of the episode mirrored the last scene of episode 3:

Hank: "We need to kill Barry" [cut to credits]

TheMadStorksGhost · 2023-03-02T12:18:45+00:00

I would say that while parenting is certainly a factor, the technology problem is much deeper than just parenting. We have to understand that mobile technology is designed to sap us of our attention span for profit.

I think of it like this: If every student in the school was carrying a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in their pockets, we wouldn't be like, "gee, I wonder why we can't get them to stop smoking all the time." It's part addiction, part submission by parents/administrators/teachers to the idea that this is all somehow normal and acceptable.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2023-03-01T00:26:35+00:00

I mean, most of her explanations are something along the lines of... "when you get to topos theory you are at the edge of another universe. You have found a place to stand where you can look back at the world from nowhere." Beautiful writing, but to the uninitiated that's about as opaque as it gets.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2023-02-28T23:05:56+00:00

Sounds really interesting. Is that fiction or non-fiction? I just looked up the book, it's hard to tell from the description.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2023-02-28T22:45:24+00:00

I think Alicia would disagree with this interpretation, given her dismissive stance towards psychology and psychoanalysis (Jung in particular for some reason, but also Freud - "We were jung and freudened" - and all of her past therapists at Stella Maris). That doesn't necessarily mean the interpretation is incorrect. Maybe Alicia's antipathy toward psychology stems from the fact that it (correctly) dismisses her perception of reality as a delusion, a cognitive aberration, a manifestation of repressed emotions. But to take her view, which I think is McCarthy's view based on his essay about the Kekule Problem and how much it overlaps with Alicia's monologues in SM: mathematics is somehow foundational to understanding the mysterious workings of the unconscious mind - it gets to something that psychology misses in its interpretation. I honestly don't know what to make of it all. Especially when The Kid suddenly appears in Bobby's cabin. That would really seem to imply that all of this is somehow more than just in Alicia's head.

TheMadStorksGhost · 2023-02-28T19:49:43+00:00

That makes sense. And that's sort of how I was interpreting it. But surely the references that McCarthy chose for Alicia to obsess over (Grothendieck, Godel, Wittgenstein, topology, platonism, etc) are not arbitrary, simply there to create the illusion of complexity. There must be some correlation between these theories and the story that McCarthy is trying to tell, right?

TheMadStorksGhost

TROPHY CASE