The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour

...ding, The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour. The central thesis of the book is that we are all writing more than we ever have in history in the form of tweets, Facebook updates, texts, emails etc. Seymour contends, however, that we are not so much writing as being written by the platforms we use and that we all have a propensity for trolling and narcissism that tech companies exploit with a kind of algorithmic agnosticism. Seymour chronicles t...

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Go Plant a Million Trees

...of the world’s problems including climate change and soil erosion. In the book Silver makes the provocative suggestion that we might all be better off with a greater emphasis on tree crops instead of clearing land for monotonous fields of wheat, corn and soybeans. He has an interventionist, Johnny Appleseed like passion at odds with the hands-off, leave-no-trace branch of environmentalism. Silver says, “Instead of trying to have as little impact...

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Urban Homesteading: What Went Wrong

...mostly solid. What I’m more concerned about are things I may have said in book appearances, blog posts and press interviews after the books came out, specifically that the changes we need to make to avert crises such as climate change and healthy food systems are all about personal choice. While I never said we could save the planet by learning to make jam, my studious avoidance of political controversy may have left that impression. Along that l...

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How I Learned to Stop Hating and Love the Vegan Cheese

...on fermentation that will include his vegan cheese recipes. Look for that book next year. In the meantime you can enjoy his two previous books, The New Wildcrafted Cuisine: Exploring the Exotic Gastronomy of Local Terroir and The Wildcrafting Brewer: Creating Unique Drinks and Boozy Concoctions from Nature’s Ingredients. On that second book–Pascal brought some of his home concocted beer to the class and it was delicious. His brewing method is sim...

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News From Nowhere

...e.” Speaking of beauty, my dear neighbors, you should definitely read this book in the facsimile edition that reproduces Morris’ impossibly beautiful printing. Reading it this way has the hopeful quality of holding an object from the future Morris imagines. Morris’ exquisite typography physically locates the reader in the place of the time traveling narrator. That said, if you don’t feel like springing for the book, you can read a copy online. And...

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