Teaching the golden compass so I’m rereading that.
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Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Gets a lot of great reviews but I’ll wait for the movie.
Interesting start but through first ~25% (5-6 chapters) and couldn’t retain interest. Not really multi-layered thought, seems like just another straight story oriented sci-fi book-to-movie style.
The Sea Came In At Midnight by Steve Erickson
Very readable from a special author.
Blurs the lines between fantasy and reality.
Hope it is better than the movie. I went to see it in a luxury theatre (one with sofas, waiters etc.) I feel asleep for an hour.
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Well it’s non fiction. So far so good.
So, it’s a who done it. Early pre-FBI investigation of a series of murders and other acts of violence against the wealthy Osage tribe.
I reminds me a lot of this
Which is also FBI investigation that ends quite disappointingly in no arrests.
I hope this one turns out better. I assume it does as JEHoover is running the show.
This book is phenomenal. Slater once wrote a letter to the Israeli embassy to assist with its navy.
After careful research, he found out that it’s been Israel sabotaging the peace process all along.
This book is useful for debunking ignorant, racist, dumb, and propagandistic pro-Israel myths about the conflict, such as Barak offering Arafat 95% of the West Bank.
It’s kinda like Dershowitz 's Case for Israel, except it’s not plagiarized from a hoax, and it’s been vetted by the peer-review process (Oxford University Press).
Like Slater, I still believe in the need for a Jewish state, in spite of Israel’s intransigence. This book really resonates with me.
Yeah, except maybe right up until 10/7. An interview with the author on 10/16/23
ROBINSON
You’re suggesting that the moderating tendencies, or the appearance of moderating tendencies, within Hamas that was noted in the quotes that you have between 2006 and 2010 was quite real. But because that opportunity was not taken to deal with these people, they may have empowered the fanatics who said, essentially, we have nothing to lose here. We’re never going to get a Palestinian state, settlements are going to continue to expand in the West Bank, Gaza looks like it will remain under de facto Israeli control indefinitely. As we looked out into the future before these attacks, it seems like, as you pointed out in the book, Israel’s policy was essentially to maintain the status quo, and the status quo was going to be deeply unjust to Palestinians.
SLATER
Yes, but the more important point is Hamas, by its agreements to end terrorist attacks in Israel and prevent others from engaging in terrorist attacks, they accepted, in practice, if not rhetorically, if you let us rule over Gaza, we won’t attack Israel. They also want to rule over the West Bank. There certainly could have been a conflict between the Palestinians in the West Bank, or the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, and Hamas, eventually. So it wasn’t only Israel, it was also Hamas, which accepted that there was not going to be a Palestinian state. And of course, the judgment Hamas leaders were making—not the terrorists now, but the leaders were making—was that if we attack Israel, we’re going to be bombarded and repressed, and there will be huge casualties. And that happened—it’s happened three or four times; this is not the first time that Israel has bombed Gaza. And if they go in, it won’t be the first time they sent troops in there. After three or four of these things, Hamas apparently, seemingly, came to the conclusion that there was no point, that there was everything to lose and nothing to gain by continuing quixotic attacks on Israel.
All of that now has been blown up by these attacks by these Hamas fanatics. How this is to be explained in light of what Hamas has apparently been willing to accept, we don’t know. And possibly, that simply there’s a group of fanatics who were not under the control of the Hamas leaders would be very hard for me to believe and very hard to understand. If the Hamas political leadership said, yes, let’s support this attack—that if there was this kind of attack, the worst terrorist attack on Israel with these murderous fanatics slaughtering innocent people—they knew they had to know with 100% certainty that there’s going to be a massive Israeli response. So, why did it occur? We don’t know the answer to that.
ROBINSON
It does look suicidal. It’s bizarre, it in a certain way.
SLATER
It’s literally suicidal because the 1,500 Hamas fighters that went into Israel had to know they were not going to get out of Israel, that they’re going to be hunted down and killed. So, they were suicidal. It’s fanatical, suicidal terrorism at its worst. And they also had to know that the killing of the terrorists was going to be only the first step for a massive Israeli response, which we are already seeing in Gaza. Israel is not only bombing, but they’ve cut off electricity, water, and food, and they control the entry of all of those things. What did Hamas think? What did these people, if they had any leaders, think was going to be the case? What Israel is doing in Gaza is unprecedented only in its extent. There were other massive attacks on Gaza, and in some cases, the West Bank, after a particularly egregious terrorist attack on Israel. But these other attacks on Israel, which have led to massive Israeli responses, would be maybe the bombing of a restaurant and 25 people are killed. That’s bad enough, but it doesn’t compare with what the fanatics did this time.
The Current Israel-Palestine Crisis Was Entirely Avoidable ❧ Current Affairs
I’ve heard this before, that Israel just left them there to fail on their own, so that sooner or later, a 10/7 would happen and then Israel could go in and do what they will, take over, slaughter, excommunicate, what have you. It seems like blaming teachers that kids who don’t go to school can’t read or do math and suggesting that they, the teachers, should have done more.
The guy seems to start with the thesis of it’s Israel’s fault and work backward.
There’s an incredible quote you have from an admiral saying, “It will be a catastrophe if we win.” That’s an interesting thing to say. Why would it be a “catastrophe if we win”?
If “we win,” it means that we’ve just created more resentment and hatred, and it’s going to come back against us in the future.
Nothing about whether or not the Palestinians were inept or incapable of self-rule. Just that the Jews let them down by letting them try.
He predicted a security disaster for Israel. Bull’s eye.
Slater’s exhaustively documented but accessible work also predicted that Israel’s policies toward Palestine were creating the conditions for a “disaster.” Three years later, Slater’s predictions have tragically come true.
Slater is Jewish.
So? He’s allowed. And seriously, did anyone think that the Palestinians with or without Hamas were capable of self-rule? “Predicting” a collapse followed by a lashing out at Israel? Wow, Nostradamus lives!
I have just started that one this week. So far quite fun.
Every intelligent and non-racist person knows they’re capable of self-rule. That’s why a 2-state solution with a Palestinian state is standard US and EU policy.
Is that why they’re a failed state? Btw, how is one racist towards Palestinians?
Are you suggesting that I’m racist towards them? Here in public?
A good friend of mine from high school recently told me he was in the Masons. Figured I’d give it a look.
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You can’t be a failed state id you were never a state. Even this guy knows:
“This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.”
Well that changes now because I am today starting to read…“S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure”.
If those were not enough clues to the name of the book, here are more, Buttercup and Westley and Inigo, the greatest swordsman in the history of the world.
The Princess Bride
Well I finished The Princess Bride in a couple days and the book is definitely not as good as the movie. So I’ll give it a two maybe a three out of five.
This is really an interesting book. 
And one of the first I’ve read that looks at medieval life and times in a straight forward non fiction way. The torture! For — like— everything! No wonder the death penalty doesn’t work now to deter crime. They’re doing it wrong! 
And the masons history and myth busting is fascinating.
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From the book
Inigo: “I don’t like killing a girl,”
Vizzini: “God does it all the time; if it doesn’t bother Him, don’t let it worry you.”
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