Shielding C

Random Nonsense, Probably AI-Written

Revisado: 12-23-24

Rather than any actual history or coherent philosophy on suicide, this is a collection of random musings that jumps from one time period to another every sentence and keeps repeating unsubstantiated theses like "in modern times suicide is a mental disorder, but in Roman days it was normal."

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A very timely and important examination of public health

Revisado: 12-12-24

FINALLY, someone willing to say out loud what patients have been saying forever! In the era of RFK and Trump especially, it's so important to highlight medical science and examine the dangers that unmitigated infection poses to our health systems. Can't wait for the next episode!

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Forward-thinking and engaging episode

Revisado: 08-01-24

Great episode, didn't think I'd be that into taxes as a topic. Interesting intro too about the soldiers with complex health issues that the government wants to say weren't exposed to toxins. Reminds me of a lot of the issues around long covid.

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Can't wait for the long covid episode!!

Revisado: 06-27-24

I know there was a whole important episode about democratic reform to enjoy but honestly I was most blown away by the thirty-second discussion of long covid in the beginning!

Jon Stewart has gone to bat for 9/11 survivors who developed disabilities even as people floated the idea of 9/11 syndrome being a hysteria, so I guess long covid and ME are up his alley. As states copying model legislation developed by the Manhattan Institute enact mask bans and people I know on social media are placed under psychiatric holds for asking DOCTORS to wear masks, it seems like the idea of public health is being steam-rolled. Disabled people (including people newly-disabled by a virus they were told is no big deal anymore) are watching each other die on social media and desperately fighting from their sick beds for anyone to care while funding dries up and gets squandered on studies trialing cognitive behavioral therapy. ME patients have been fighting for decades for anyone to believe that common viruses can cause chronic illnesses and been dismissed as hysterics because disproportionately women are affected.

It took ACT UP before people in power recognized the impact HIV was having on the world. Now we understand that HIV causes AIDS, that other viruses cause cancers and we're finding links between a whole lot of mysterious chronic illnesses and common viruses. Mono has links to schizophrenia, asthma has links to the common-cold (rhinovirus), shingles is caused by chicken pox, etc. Imagine we can take one good thing out of the pandemic and help people who have been suffering with ME and being told it's all in their heads because that's easier than admit we don't know the cause of every illness.

I think it was the producer who pointed out in this episode that a lot of people who have long covid probably don't realize it, and this is so important to understand. Labor shortages and absence rates at schools are through the roof and health care is being triaged at every level and people have no idea why. And the conspiracy of silence around covid is the biggest obstacle to connecting all these dots!

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An average history ruined by the inclusion of blatant Russian propaganda

Revisado: 03-29-24

As someone who reads a lot of history, I found the book largely accurate, but not particularly captivating or eye-opening. That is to say, there was no new information presented here that I haven't read elsewhere.

Most historians try to offer something unique - either analyzing a source of information never before examined or reanalyzing older sources in light of more modern discoveries and theories. This author uses the framework of settler-colonialism as a lens to re-examine known history - a project which I can respect as a leftie - but hasn't produced any insights I would call unique or enlightening.

This is in spite of a fair peppering of arguments that take issue with the work of other scholars. The author's criticisms were mostly views I've encountered elsewhere, but the occasional novel critiques were not well-enough articulated or supported with examples to give me anything other than a momentary head-scratch.

I was perplexed, not enlightened, when Dunbar-Ortiz, a white lady, referred to one scholar's analysis of whiteness as the main project of colonialism as "naive" for its failure to center settler-colonialism over white supremacy. No case was made as to why settler-colonialism should be considered the better framework or as to how and in what ways the two frameworks conflict.

Later in the book, several astoundingly propagandistic paragraphs about Russia gave me context for this earlier dig at the concept of whiteness as "naive." After characterizing Russia's invasion of Afghanistan as a selfless attempt to help a beleaguered nation which cost it the Soviet Union, this author refers to "Russiaphobia" as a feature of "Yellow Peril."

The "Yellow Peril" is an unambiguously racist project. Find me the history where Russians were categorized as members of a "yellow" race. The idea that settler-colonialism as a framework is better than and in conflict with white supremacy here serves to justify the appropriation of terminology developed and analyzed by anti-racism scholars. The bigoted view of Asian people as perpetual foreigners ("where are you from? No where are you *really* from?" "You speak English so well!" etc. etc.) is a product of racism, not statist or political allegiance. Nobody is looking at blonde-haired blue-eyed Russians walking down the street as foreigners.

I don't normally leave reviews for mediocre histories, but if you're going to spice up your mediocre history with blatant propaganda the least you can do is not attempt to launder sympathy for an imperialist power through a framework designed to combat white supremacy.

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Well written and interesting

Revisado: 12-14-23

A very informative and interesting history written for the average reader not just for people who have studied economics.

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Great Introduction to Economics

Revisado: 11-12-23

A well-told and lively story of the major theories and shapers of the field of economics. Having no background in economics I found it easy to follow and very interesting. I also appreciate that the author didn't inject any opinions or obvious biases into the history and managed to objectively and respectfully explain the visions of thinkers as politically divergent as as Adam Smith and that overpopulation guy on the one hand and Lenin and Marx on the other.

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2/3 Accessible and Interesting, 1/3 Shallow and Biased

Revisado: 11-08-23

For a book on economics it was pretty accessible and plain-spoken, with some interesting biographical details about all three economists.

For a history however it is badly biased. In the intro the author explains his view that the "big three" are best presented in a hierarchy of leadership, with Adam Smith at the top as the best and Marx at the bottom as the worst. This is in contrast, he tells us, to most economic historians who consider these three as a spectrum with Marx on the left, Smith on the right and Keynes in the middle. So even by his own account he's less objective than most.

I don't think such a bias necessarily makes it impossible to tell a good story, but unfortunately this author's bias excluded any interest or effort to understand his least favorite subject. I finished the book feeling like I only really understood two out of the three, as Marx is only described in caricature-ish terms, as the father of an evil and bloodthirsty global agenda. The parts about Marx's racism and familial discontents were informative, but there was no real effort to uncover what in Marx's vision was valuable - not only to himself, but also to generations of reformers and idealists, including a great many Black and Jewish intellectuals and feminists actively fighting for human rights around the world.

In contrast, the author is able to articulate the shortfalls of Smith and Keynes with humanizing context. We learn that Smith's religious and cultural background led him to exaggerate the value of hard work and ignore his own insights regarding scarcity, for example. We learn of their hopes and expectations for their own visions in the world, and understand what makes them valuable to their followers.

In short, I think this book is a good demonstration of why historians should stick to writing what they love and leave it to others to explain what they don't on a human level fully understand.

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Misogynist whines that he got called misogynist

Revisado: 09-21-23

There isn't much here in the way of a history of gossip or anything very intellectually stimulating. It's just a collection of the author's favorite rumors about celebrities of various sorts, annotated with the author's opinions about the relative truthfulness and morality of some anecdotes. Unfortunately this commentary frequently amounts to whining about feminism and nostalgia for the good 'ol days when people had too much dignity to disclose their traumas or call other people out on their casual prejudices. He felt the need to comment on three different rumors about domestic abuse that he was sure the rumors were true because the victim was a hard-to-live-with woman and the abuser was a stressed out man or one with a lot of physical energy. He concocted the juicy rumor to share with us that an ex writer whose writing career is usually said to have ended because of depression probably stopped writing because his wife was "crazy," which turns out to mean Epstein found her annoyingly talkative when he met her. Toward the end of the book Epstein switches from praising gossip to criticizing the way society today publicizes all its grievances, and it seems to me this shift occurred specifically so that could whine about a former student of his who told him to his face that she thought it was misogynist of him to keep calling on male students to speak while ignoring female students. It is totally unfair, he tells us, that in today's world a young woman can ruin a good professor's reputation because of being a feminist and also mentally disturbed. Fascinatingly, he does not deny her accusation that he tended to invite male students to dominate discussion in his classroom, but tells us that keeping track of gender imbalances was the real hamper to her education. He also says that he would have called on anyone who he thought had something intelligent to say, which doesn't at all refute her point that misogyny played a role in who he thought worth listening to. I listened to the whole book so I can say I gave it a chance, it just never amounted to anything more than misogynist whining and vapid anecdote.

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Misogynist fantasy

Revisado: 09-06-23

The author isn't shy about making things up for dramatic effect, narrating at length the dying thoughts of several men and the thoughts and motivations of Wuornos herself. He sprinkled these fictionalized accounts with misogynist slurs and made numerous offhand remarks about Wuornos' history of sex work contradicting her claims of being ashamed to be seen naked in front of customers that stop just short of implying as a sex worker she couldn't complain of rape. He passed up every opportunity to humanize her, including when she turned herself in to protect her girlfriend. The real Wuornos, whoever she was, gets substituted for a juvenile caricature of senseless evil. The performer exaggerated rather than moderating the effect of this caricature, hamming up the dialogue with his dramatic villain voice or with an irritating whiny voice whenever Wuornos was quoted (or ventriloquized, which the author did frequently, making up thoughts and quotes that couldn't be verified.) I'm glad this book was free and that it's over.

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