2021 Reading List (Part 1)

13/12/2021

I have not written anything for a while, having gone from taking a short break at the wind down of university and then straight back into work, and thought that I should get a head start on the yearly reading list review. I hope to add another one or two by year’s end, but I am quite happy with the amount I’ve managed to get through this year. List will be in the order I read them with comments looking back over them, and with a few exceptions I would recommend most of them. Also keep in mind the earlier in the year it was the less precise details I’m going to remember about the book, so bear with that.

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The Irony of Trump’s Twitter Ban

10/01/2021

Trump has been permanently suspended from Twitter, and seemingly banned from various other social media sites, in the wake of his efforts to incite violence in Washington DC. Obviously, that hasn’t simmered down tensions on the dear bird app as we now have an already raging debate reaching new heights – that is, the power of Big Tech and the right to freedom of speech in relation to causing harm. I’ll let that little discussion run its course, because here I just want to point out the obvious contradiction from the pro-Trump camp.

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Go Read Merchants of Doubt

25/06/2020

Merchants of Doubt, a 2010 book written by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, is a must read. As one of the testimonies on the cover of my copy says, if there is one nonfiction book you read this year, it is the one to go for (obviously try to read more than one, but make Merchants of Doubt a priority). It follows a number of stories that mar the history of scientific progress by telling them from the perspectives of actors we often don’t hear from in the modern “debates”: the scientists themselves.

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Daniel Hannan’s Arguments Against Socialism

12/04/2020

I have recently stumbled into a few videos online with pro-capitalist arguments, decrying socialist ideas and encouraging free markets to take full form. The one thing I have found listening to them, whether their arguments have any legitimate points within, is their selective examples and, at times, complete disfiguration of facts. One such video was an argument about why socialism did not work by a man (who I know nothing about beyond this) called Daniel Hannan. I haven’t written in a while, so what better way to get back into it than by questioning this random guy’s points?

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Addressing Modern Slavery: A Reflection Pt.1

02/11/2019

I am currently reading Addressing Modern Slavery by Justine Nolan and Martijn Boersma, and it’s a shocking read. Not shocking in the sense that we don’t know it exists – everyone should know that it not only exists, but many of our choices as consumers are intimately linked with this wretched reality. No, that slavery exists isn’t revelatory – but many of the stories and statistics, the main one being that there are over 40M slaves worldwide, are heartbreaking. And very little is being done about it. But that shouldn’t surprise anyone either.

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Why Anarchism?

A year ago, I started this website, almost gave up on it immediately, and was pretty sure I didn’t want anyone except a close friend or two to know about it. Now, it’s been a whole year, I’ve obviously kept going with it, and while I hate doing so out of fear of pushing my own writing, I have no real issues telling people about it if the topic is relevant. Recently I was asked a simple question: why anarchism? The answer seems just as simple: it makes sense.

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Don’t Sympathise With Corruption

21/09/2019

Sam Dastyari resigned from Parliament after it was revealed he was under the influence of Chinese donors. Whether you believe his tale of being used without realising or not, that he resigned almost immediately and has since recognised his mistakes is good. But it was still corruption, and I don’t exactly feel sorry for his career falling down as a result. And now he’s trying to get us to sympathise with Gladys Liu.

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The Lewis Powell Memorandum: How We Got Here

17/09/2019

It was only recently that I found out this document even existed. Almost half a century after it was written, it is certainly an interesting read – with the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious just how successful the ideas of this small memorandum have become. Much to the detriment of the average person, of course.

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