Part II of an epic saga. Roland, the last gunslinger, encounters …
Content warning
Possible spoiler
Halfway through The Lady of the Shadows. Struck again by King’s ability to distill the human condition into his characters. In many ways, he seems to be developing contemporary archetypes with the introduction of the Three. Odetta/Detta an extreme example of the duality within, an iteration of Venus/Lilith, the composed socialite vs the feral temptress. Savoring the narrative, knowing that the Work in this chapter is to integrate the two into a new, unified self.
Part II of an epic saga. Roland, the last gunslinger, encounters …
Content warning
Spoiler alert
Second volume of re-read. Currently up through prologue, the prisoner, and the interim scene on the beach, Roland healing from his wounds and Eddie going through withdrawal. I’m struck by a few changes in perspective since reading 10 years ago: again, as with first volume, I relate to Roland’s worldview a bit better, world-weary but firm in purpose, seeing himself in the role as mentor toward Eddie, sensitive to his need to process his own demons through talk.
I’m also more intrigued by Kings imagery of consciousness, through the plot device of doorways into other worlds through others’ minds. Again, King doesn’t attempt to make sense of his imagery, which again I think is part of his appeal. Here there are psychological elements of the idea of an internal Other pulling a unified self into a new reality. Resonates with a lot of things I’ve been going through over the past 6-9 months.
In the first book of this brilliant series, Stephen King introduces readers to one of …
Up to part IV, the Slow Mutants. I’m enjoying the foreshadowing and Easter Eggs of various plot devices in upcoming books. The untold backstory of Susan Delgado and Mejis is an obvious necessity for Roland’s character development, but there are subtler details peppered throughout the pages, such as short references to how the Beams distort clouds or the coming loss of Roland’s fingers, that a first-time reader would miss.
From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny …
What a ride!
4 stars
Well-written for the most part. Some minor issues in use of tense but I blame the editor. It’s a good inside look at the culture within one of the worlds most influential companies and says a lot about how we measure success as a society. I think the perspective of an outsider from the corporate standpoint (UN background) and cultural standpoint (NZ citizen) is really important for seeing and understanding the harm that Facebook and other growth-at-all-costs enterprises have done to both their employees and customers. I laughed throughout the whole book at the absurdity of it all, then I took away a star because I remembered this is nonfiction and I have to actually do some mental and emotional labor in how I respond to the information within.
In the first book of this brilliant series, Stephen King introduces readers to one of …
Decennial series re-read. Taking my time with it. Noticing a change in the way I relate to Roland, as less of a role model and more of a peer. I understand his sense of resignation for doing a thing because it needs to be done, and doing it well through habituation and because doing otherwise would mean not doing it at all.
Science Fiction set in the future on the planet mars. People are divided into colors, …
Meh…not sure what the hype is about. A primitive tribal social structure on a future Martian colony? It doesn’t make sense and isn’t made clear in introductory chapters.
There’s the world you can see. And then there’s the one you can’t. Welcome to …
Well-written, lacks thematic development
3 stars
The story has a good cadence to it until about 2/3 through where it accelerates to getting its themes across at the expense of coherence. It feels like story was pushed toward publication before it was fully developed. Lots of background questions left unanswered. Poor fictional geography. These would have been permissible but too much psychological complexity is introduced towards the end to ignore them. It’s a decent quick read, but unclear what kind of story this is.
Pretty convincing argument for inverting the current neuroscience paradigm with implications for mental health treatment and AI development. The current paradigm, “outside-in,” studies the brain from theories of mind developed from behavior and observation prior to effective measurement tools. Buzsaki believes this perspective has outworn its usefulness and suggests reorienting ourselves around what we know about brain systems. That is, by testing specific neural functions and observing the behaviors that arise, rather than observing a behavior and investigating the neural mechanisms behind them. This is in part due to ways in which separate systems within the brain intersect and reinforce each other to produce a vast variety of behaviors all from the same base networks. One example being the 6000+ languages that all arise from the same region of the brain.
The main thesis refutes the tabula rasa paradigm, that the brain is a blank space onto which experience is …
Pretty convincing argument for inverting the current neuroscience paradigm with implications for mental health treatment and AI development. The current paradigm, “outside-in,” studies the brain from theories of mind developed from behavior and observation prior to effective measurement tools. Buzsaki believes this perspective has outworn its usefulness and suggests reorienting ourselves around what we know about brain systems. That is, by testing specific neural functions and observing the behaviors that arise, rather than observing a behavior and investigating the neural mechanisms behind them. This is in part due to ways in which separate systems within the brain intersect and reinforce each other to produce a vast variety of behaviors all from the same base networks. One example being the 6000+ languages that all arise from the same region of the brain.
The main thesis refutes the tabula rasa paradigm, that the brain is a blank space onto which experience is written. Rather, the brain possesses a certain number of patterning templates (ie gestalts) that it compares and derives relationships from in the real world. Two systems, one generalizing/non-specific and the other precision-based/specific, work together to assign attention and meaning to various phenomena. These are eerily similar to the fast/slow systems described by Kahnemann et al, though both arrived at their conclusions separately.
Highly recommend this book to anyone interested in consciousness and theory of mind.
Ch 10: Discussion of space and time in the brain. Makes the interesting case that these are concepts derived from measuring tools and that the brain does not have centralized, internal mechanisms for tracking either. Neurons and neuronal groupings can track firing rate but these are self-referential and do not rely on an internal “clock.” Space is tracked by grid cells and place cells but these do not calculate distance. Rather, the brain sees space and time as equivalent, and will come up with ways create reference objects within local surroundings for either, as demonstrated by a variety of indigenous cultures that do not use formal metrics.
Ch. 1: Introduction to concept of feng-shui, terms, principles, and schools of thought. A landscape is balanced by active (yang) energy and passive (yin) energy. The dwelling and the gravesite are the respective archetypes of these two energies in the built environment. Properly siting each of these is the primary goal of feng-shui. Two schools developed in this endeavor. The Form school uses an intuitive approach of reading geomorphology to determine sites for buildings. The Compass school uses metrics and analysis. Once a building is sited, additional landscape elements are introduced to correct any disturbances in flow of energy.
Ch. 2: “Energy” is referred to as chi. In its simplest sense, chi is the vital energy conferred by the breath that animates the mind and body. However, it exists along all layers of physical space, including the landscape. Chi has a variety of qualities, but the major sheng chi and ssu chi reflect the yang/yin balances observed. The purpose of feng-shui is to slow and collect chi while not allowing it to stagnate. Lengthening and curving water courses is one approach to this. Planting wind breaks or fencing is another. Chi transforms its quality throughout the day and according to influence of the planets. Each landscape element therefore requires attention and balance, as well as an outlet to allow continuous flow across neighboring sites.
First post from new instance. It seems that earlier book comments and reviews did not survive the migration process.
Nothing is permanent.
About 2/3 through this book. Pretty dense with neuroscience despite the attempt at plain language. The whole premise of the book is to upend the conventional (outside in) approach to studying the brain, which is to observe a behavior and investigate the neural mechanism underlying it. Buzsaki argues we should be looking at neural relationships first (outside in) and seeing what behaviors emerge.
