What books are you reading?
- phuketrichard
- Expatriate
- Posts: 16889
- Joined: Wed May 14, 2014 5:17 pm
- Reputation: 5786
- Location: Atlantis
Re: What books are you reading?
just started it, on Zlibrary
The gripping true story of an indigenous people running the world’s mightiest narco-state—and America’s struggle to thwart them.
The gripping true story of an indigenous people running the world’s mightiest narco-state—and America’s struggle to thwart them.
In Asia’s narcotics-producing heartland, the Wa reign supreme. They dominate the Golden Triangle, a mountainous stretch of Burma between Thailand and China. Their 30,000-strong army, wielding missiles and attack drones, makes Mexican cartels look like street gangs.
Wa moguls are unrivaled in the region’s $60 billion meth trade and infamous for mass-producing pink, vanilla-scented speed pills. Drugs finance Wa State, a bona fide nation with its own laws, anthems, schools, and electricity grid. Though revered by their people, Wa leaders are scorned by US policymakers as vicious “kingpins” who “poison our society for profit.”
In Narcotopia, award-winning journalist Patrick Winn uncovers the truth behind Asia’s top...
In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. HST
Re: What books are you reading?
"Mt. Paektu is located at 42 degrees North Latitude.
"Kim Jong Il was born in 1942.
"There are too many significant facts associated with the mountain to say they are coincidental."
"Kim Jong Il was born in 1942.
"There are too many significant facts associated with the mountain to say they are coincidental."
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
“There are terrible difficulties in the notion of probability, but we may ignore them at present.” - Bertrand Russell
“There are terrible difficulties in the notion of probability, but we may ignore them at present.” - Bertrand Russell
- InkkieTime
- Expatriate
- Posts: 27
- Joined: Sun Jan 28, 2024 11:29 pm
- Reputation: 14
Re: What books are you reading?
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
-
- Expatriate
- Posts: 290
- Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2022 6:55 pm
- Reputation: 203
Re: What books are you reading?
Set in the future, following the destruction of the ecosystem humans live alone in underground cells with terminals connected by cables to a central data store called The Machine. Their needs are met with films and music piped to their rooms; meals and medication are delivered. They communicate with others via video calls, rarely travelling as everywhere is now the same (airport culture). Their muscles atrophy due to their sedentary lifestyles.
Notifications fill their waking hours: The Machine collects their opinions, builds profiles.
The only work being done appears to involve the regurgitation of data. The main character is an academic whose lectures last 10 minutes (attention spans).Vashanti's next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one's own ideas?
She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.
That would be Facebook friends I presume.
So not much new here then.
But written in 1909.
- phuketrichard
- Expatriate
- Posts: 16889
- Joined: Wed May 14, 2014 5:17 pm
- Reputation: 5786
- Location: Atlantis
Re: What books are you reading?
one of the best travel books i have read on India and train travel
Highly recommend, anyone who has ever travelled will love it,
A firsthand account of 40 Bengali Indian villagers who are given the chance to see all of India by a wealthy landowner.
2 reviews
Highly recommend, anyone who has ever travelled will love it,
A firsthand account of 40 Bengali Indian villagers who are given the chance to see all of India by a wealthy landowner.
2 reviews
This is a incredible book. Apparently a true story, a wealthy benefactor sets up a trust to provide a Third Class Train Ticket for all of the residents of a small Indian village to travel throughout their country. No one has ever been anywhere and this is the story of the first group that sets out to fulfill the bequest. There is joy and sadness, victory and tragedy.
its on ZlibraryThird Class Ticket is at once a celebration, a lament, and a swansong for a country that is in itself surprised at being one. The book is brilliant, in that you get to hear from people you seldom hear from, and their life, their viewpoints, their aspirations all bring forth a portrait that is as rare as it is beautiful. Which is also why it is a surprise that this book isn't better known. It should be. It is a classic.
In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. HST
-
- Expatriate
- Posts: 684
- Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:01 am
- Reputation: 509
Re: What books are you reading?
Ive recently started reading Zecharia Sitchin. Im not sure if I full believe in it (humans were created by an alien race) but its fun to entertain the possibility
-
- Expatriate
- Posts: 290
- Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2022 6:55 pm
- Reputation: 203
Re: What books are you reading?
The Story Paradox by Jonathan Gottschall
Includes a very strong attack on Wokeism and left wing bias in academia and the media.
Also,
The Big Blare is, like these characters, an implausible combination of greed, vanity, depravity, solipsism, selfishness, and insecurity all overlaid with an out-of-control case of Dunning-Kruger–style narcissism. And this perfect storm of psychological pathologies is wrapped up in a physical package so viciously exaggerated that it violates the rule that fictional characters should have some type of real-world plausibility.
My only problem with the Big Blare is that he somehow escaped the fiction world he was clearly made for—an inspired satire of the crudest elements of the American character all personified in one tumescent, ochre-tinged symbol. And when he escaped, he brought the fiction world with him and marooned almost half of the country inside it.
- Roryborealis
- Expatriate
- Posts: 476
- Joined: Sun Jun 11, 2023 10:05 pm
- Reputation: 146
Re: What books are you reading?
The New York Post (the favorite of this website's owner). Because it is so much more factually reliable and credible than the Associated Press, right?
- phuketrichard
- Expatriate
- Posts: 16889
- Joined: Wed May 14, 2014 5:17 pm
- Reputation: 5786
- Location: Atlantis
Re: What books are you reading?
suggested by a close friend, so far
amazing:
amazing:
In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. HST
- alexvanlaar
- Expatriate
- Posts: 204
- Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2017 6:28 am
- Reputation: 58
Re: What books are you reading?
phuketrichard wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 8:56 pm I've always enjoyed reading Burroughs since the 60's
BUT i never knew how travelled he was
he lead a hell of a life>> an lived in some fantastic times
"Anarchist, heroin addict, alcoholic, and brilliant writer, Burroughs was the patron saint of the Beats"
“Almost indecently readable . . . captures [Burroughs’s] destructive energy, his ferocious pessimism, and the renegade brilliance of his style.”—Vogue
In fact he was junkie, early eighties he got substituted with Methadon.
Saw him often in my doctor's clinic op de Amsteldijk in Amsterdam from 1982 till 1985.
Always wearing a nice suit, think he was alreadybetween 50 and sixty at that time.
He didn't talk a lot, like me, we got along mostly without talking.
Then he wanished in the air!
-
- Similar Topics
- Replies
- Views
- Last post
-
- 3 Replies
- 1559 Views
-
Last post by ali baba
-
- 10 Replies
- 4532 Views
-
Last post by techietraveller84
-
- 3 Replies
- 1792 Views
-
Last post by Kuroneko
-
- 37 Replies
- 9221 Views
-
Last post by Lost50
-
- 4 Replies
- 596 Views
-
Last post by johnny lightning
-
- 6 Replies
- 3637 Views
-
Last post by John Bingham
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: Alex, BongKingKong, Google [Bot], Joakim, Ong Tay, rgrowden, Semrush [Bot], xandreu and 735 guests