The Human Brain. Inside the most complex object in the known universe. New Scientist Essential Guide N7 Edited by Caroline Williams

A super interesting read. My favourite chapters where the one about female and male brains concluding first that there aren't female or male brains but brains with a mixture of female and male characteristics and second that (adult) brains are a product of the lives we live, education, etc. I also liked the chapter about How to treat a sick brain discussing Music, Psychedelics, Ketamine and Brain electrical stimulation. Apart from the hallucinations they produce I had heard about the powers of DMT and Ayahuasca to treat illnesses and to help overcome fears (like fear of death). I think I'd like to read more about the topic.

Blue Giant by Shinichi Ishizuka

It follows a boy, Dai, who is passionate about jazz and his tenor saxophone. He learns how to play it by himself and practices every day by the river. He will never stop until he becomes the best jazz player in the world.

This is one of those reads which makes you smile all the way. Dai reminded me of my younger self when I had plans and energy, and had all the time in the world! Beautiful.

I first knew about Blue Giant when I attended the Manga Citi Exhibition at the British museum in 2019. I loved Shinichi Ishizuka's art!

The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

This book has helped me to understand the concept of time a bit better. The idea of time is very complicated and I haven't grasped it all but I think I'm in a better position now to keep on reading on this topic.

I got the point that time is not absolute but relative. It varies depending on mass and speed. So time passes slower on the ground than up in the air or in space. The closest you are to matter the slower time passes. Also the fastest you are travelling the slowest time passes for you. All this makes it impossible to conceive of a unique "present time" for everything that exists in the universe. So we cannot say what is happening "now" in the Andromeda galaxy for example because we don't share the same time patterns.

There is also strong connection between Entropy and time. In fact time is defined by Entropy. We can tell time is passing because Entropy has increased. "The difference between past and future does not lie in the elementary laws of motion; it does not reside in the deep grammar of nature. It is the natural disordering that leads to gradually less particular, less special situations. "

Explaining time becomes even more difficult when we introduce quantum physics. At the quantum level there isn't time. But it is somehow created through quantum interactions? I will have to reread this part of the book at some moment...

Oh and there is an excellent section at the end with Rovelli's thoughts about mortality and death. 👍

Anyways the book is excellent and written in an easy to understand language. It's the concepts it's trying to explain which are difficult.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

A well known classic about a man who becomes a bug overnight. He sees his body is that one of a bug but he is still a man. Or is he not?

Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce

I read this book as part of my #myculturewarsproject. A project I started to understand discussions I read in the media. I have previously read The Righteous Man by Jonathan Haidt, The Madness of Crowds by Douglass Murray and The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye.

This is a well-researched, well written, eye opening book about an ideology which originated from ideas by social scientists and gender ideologists but which has been spread to other areas of societies, such us governmental, political, educational, medical institutions, social media, etc. This ideology has managed to remain invisible, unnoticed, under the radar, to the eyes of the common people. However it is very influential as it has managed to gain access to key political spaces and it is changing laws which affect lots of (vulnerable) people.

The ideology is called Gender Self Identification, and it means that anyone can claim to have any gender identity they want. This ideology has influenced law in several countries. Through a series of distortions and misinterpretations, concepts such as sex, woman, man, female and male are redefined or erased. Leaving gender identity as the sole idea to guide it all. (Gender used to be understood as a social construct associated with sex. Now it is a "feeling" disconnected from sex, because sex doesn't exist.) K. Donelly says, this ideology is an intellectual illness lacking rationality and reason. And if you think how can something like this could affect you or society in general, this book explains all the implications brilliantly.

It starts by explaining the trans sexual/gender phenomena, mainly from a medical and psychological perspectives. It introduces concepts such as androphilia and autogynephilia as well as dysphoria which explain some of the causes of transgenderism. It then introduces the idea of gender identity and how through time it co-existed with the concept of sex but now it has to make “sex” disappear from the collective memory to be able to go with their expansion plans. So for example, now women or men are not people who were born female or male but people who feel like they are women or men. The words women and men are disconnected from biology. This explains why now trans-ideologists consider a transgender woman (a man who transitions to woman) a woman and a female. As this ideology has been adopted in several areas of our societies, including the UK, now a born-male person can claim to be a woman (like your mother who gave birth to you) and access for example Women’s prisons, Women’s sports, Spaces where women recover from rape, domestic abuse and the like and others.

 

Another related and disturbing issue is the epidemic of transgenderism with so many people wanting to transition to the other gender. The book explains how trans-activists groom children and young people into trans-identification, followed by social transition, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and medical interventions. All this is done by repeated gender-affirmation on social media, by therapists and doctors. The book also explains how most of these medical treatments and procedures are novel, and that there are little if any long term studies in these topics. There is no idea of the long-term consequences of using cross-sex hormones for example or how experimental are bottom surgeries are.

 

There are many more issues discussed in the book but little space here. So I will just mention one more, and it is that the gender self-identification ideology rejects biology and science. It is not based on facts and truths and it resembles a cult or religion with fanatic followers repeating mantras such “a trans-woman is a woman”.

 

I wish I could express my thoughts in a better and more organised way but I this is what I am able to do at the moment. I hope I’ll be able to write more when I manage to process all the information I have read.

 

I totally recommend this book if you are interested in the topic and/or if you are worried about children, women and the future of our society.

Embers of War, Fleet of Knives and Light from Impossible Stars by Gareth Powell

Quick read and great fun. The trilogy looks into ancient races, beings from higher dimensions, sentient ships and the imminent collapse of a human civilization. The topic that engaged me the most was that one of artificial Intelligence and how it can develop a conscience. I recently read an essay on Machine Ethics by Susan Anderson, which also looks into how AI can be considered moral agents. In the trilogy we have war AI regretting past actions and becoming more aware of the consequences of their actions but also "non-war" AI becoming genocidal machines following nonviolent moral values. It was interesting to reflect on how AI can go these two different paths in light of Anderson's essay.

Anyway that was the fun part. On the negative side I'd have to mention, one, the sometimes tiring and repetitive way in which the author recaps past events. And, two, the super annoying, random and distracting insertion of an event in the last 5th of the 3rd novel. That is, when the focus should have been on concluding the story and tidying up loose ends.

Spoiler Alert

The author shows a character, who wasn't even secondary but random, have a gender identity "crisis" 1hr or so before a confrontation with enemy battleships. The captain of the ship refers the character to the infirmary for a gender reassignment right away with a discourse on how these things can be sorted blah blah.... all this which is irrelevant to the story and happens in the middle of a space battle.

Anyway, read this if you don't mind the above 😁