Book recommendations and reviews

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Postby el3so » Wed Jun 29, 2022 10:36 pm

Thanks for the reminder. I really enjoyed Quartered safe out here, author came off as a bit of a turd but dude definitely knows how to write.

Sci-fi I re-read most of the old Gibson books. The books themselves are old as well, the translated ones used to be easiest to find. Still like him, but the scene skipping gets on my nerves.

No kindle or audiobooks for me, I count on needing stuff to write on, insulate layered clothing, start fires or wipe my ass with when the world ends.
skynet prompt: witty line, a bit offensive, medium levels of spelling error, Rastafy by 10 % or so
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Re:

Postby Tarkan » Thu Jul 07, 2022 2:03 pm

el3so wrote:Thanks for the reminder. I really enjoyed Quartered safe out here, author came off as a bit of a turd but dude definitely knows how to write.

Sci-fi I re-read most of the old Gibson books. The books themselves are old as well, the translated ones used to be easiest to find. Still like him, but the scene skipping gets on my nerves.

No kindle or audiobooks for me, I count on needing stuff to write on, insulate layered clothing, start fires or wipe my ass with when the world ends.


Peter Turchin's "Secular Cycles" and "War, Peace, and War" are good reminders that nothing new is under the sun, and all we need to usher in a new golden age is to purge our excess of elites.

Peter Zeihan's "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" is a nice, bleak look at predicting the next 20 years as globalization and the global world order collapses due to demography

On the sci-fi front, Peter Watts Blindsight and Echopraxia are fairly bleak near-future sci-fi looks at first contact.
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Re: Book recommendations and reviews

Postby Kurt » Thu Jul 07, 2022 3:11 pm

I am reading The Strange World of Human Sacrifice by Jan N. Bremmer

Now I am reading the part about Human Sacrifice in Christianity. Most of the rumors about it was Roman pagan bullshit designed to inflame anti-Christian persecutions. But these rumors were that they sacrificed children and drank their blood for their "Communion". Later, after Christianity got established John Chrisostom would adapt that Pagan slander and used it against Jewish Christians (Those Christians who practiced Judaism while believing that Jesus was their savior). Then that slander was later adapted to Jews in Europe and combined with Blood Libel.

Of course the book was written in 2007 but now we see QAnon using the same slander against "Liberals" as child eaters.

The only valid account of Christians practicing actual Human Sacrifice likely happened in Ireland in the middle ages. It typically happened when a monk or an Abbot responded to a prophecy about the death of a Nobel or destruction of their Monestary and offered to be buried alive and have a building named after them. Apparently they believed when you had a prophecy it could be subverted by offering up someone to die.

That practice gradually faded away.

In most societies that practice human sacrifice don't really view themselves and practicing it. Most of the sacrificed are poor, old or disabled and not the strong, young or virgins etc.
A good contemporary example was "Dying for the economy" at the start of COVID-19 in 2020. You had policies that would definitely kill people and kill the old and vulnerable and even had people call to have people die "for the greater good". Another example would be the "Single Child Policy" of China (infanticide for "The Greater Good")

I have not hit the chapter on the Evenk of Siberia yet but apparently that is supposed to be the most subtle way of killing people and not have it seem like killing at all.
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Re: Book recommendations and reviews

Postby Tarkan » Thu Jul 07, 2022 6:49 pm

Abortion is mostly child sacrifice at the altar of convenience and "freedom".
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Re: Book recommendations and reviews

Postby Kurt » Fri Jul 08, 2022 2:20 am

Tarkan wrote:Abortion is mostly child sacrifice at the altar of convenience and "freedom".

The ancient world never considered that. Abortion is not covered in this book but right now i am just at rumors of infanticide (after birth)
Blackstones Commentary on English Law only focused on abortion and the soveriegn / royals. Basically it could be treason for a wife to abort but others were not mentioned. My guess is wives were forbidden to abort but mistresses might be expected to abort.
But anyway that is not what the book is about. It would actually be an interesting study.
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Re: Book recommendations and reviews

Postby Tarkan » Fri Jul 08, 2022 1:38 pm

All political bullshit aside, I've read here and there rumors that the continental Europeans (particularly the Germans and Slavs) would periodically practice child sacrifice when building bridges, buildings, and the like (entombing a living child so it's spirit would protect the structure) up and through at least the 1700s. Of course, I don't think anyone has ever found any of these entombed kids, so probably bullshit, but interesting nonetheless in that they aren't "blood libel" stories like "Jews drinking the blood of children" stuff or the modern Q-anon variants.
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Re: Book recommendations and reviews

Postby Kurt » Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:40 pm

Tarkan wrote:All political bullshit aside, I've read here and there rumors that the continental Europeans (particularly the Germans and Slavs) would periodically practice child sacrifice when building bridges, buildings, and the like (entombing a living child so it's spirit would protect the structure) up and through at least the 1700s. Of course, I don't think anyone has ever found any of these entombed kids, so probably bullshit, but interesting nonetheless in that they aren't "blood libel" stories like "Jews drinking the blood of children" stuff or the modern Q-anon variants.

The Viking human sacrifices were documented by visiting arabs and quite gruesome. Rape and strangulation after seeing the rotted corpse of their "husband" they had to marry for the afterlife.

Germanic and Celts offered people into bogs. Quite well documented but who know how many were sacrificed who were tossed somewhere other than a bog to be preserved for a few thousand years.
Ancient Britons tossed swords into waters from causways dating back to the Beaker Culture of Europe. The Lady of The Lake giving Arthur Excaliber is probably a remnant of that practice. Wouldn't surprise me if they killed humans or livestock with the sword before chucking it in.
My mother in law sponsored a young girl from this region of Nigeria that practices cannibalism but only on strangers. So while she was bording with her she was worried that someone might try to eat her if she wandered off alone cuz thats what her family would do if they found a stranger. When she was confirmed in the Catholic church she could never return to her village, but it sounds like that is a place one would be glad to be exiled from.
To add to the confusion South Africans always report fake news about Nigerian cannibals mostly to stir up hatred towards the Nigerian immigrants there (they say they are from the north east but the cannibals live in the south east and rarely leave their region unless sponsored by someone.
However Nigerians and Kenyans think Swiss and German people are prone to eating children. Probably some weird story tied to that
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Re: Book recommendations and reviews

Postby seektravelinfo » Fri Sep 30, 2022 2:44 am

Kurt wrote:However Nigerians and Kenyans think Swiss and German people are prone to eating children. Probably some weird story tied to that


From the folk-tales collected by the Brothers Grimm from the people living in the Black Forest? Ya think?
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Re: Book recommendations and reviews

Postby Kurt » Fri Sep 30, 2022 1:36 pm

seektravelinfo wrote:
Kurt wrote:However Nigerians and Kenyans think Swiss and German people are prone to eating children. Probably some weird story tied to that


From the folk-tales collected by the Brothers Grimm from the people living in the Black Forest? Ya think?


That would make sense. Also Colonials tended to send their really fucked up people down to the Colonies so who knows? There might have been actual white cannibals there.
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Re: Book recommendations and reviews

Postby seektravelinfo » Fri Sep 30, 2022 2:38 pm

Kurt wrote:
seektravelinfo wrote:
Kurt wrote:However Nigerians and Kenyans think Swiss and German people are prone to eating children. Probably some weird story tied to that


From the folk-tales collected by the Brothers Grimm from the people living in the Black Forest? Ya think?


That would make sense. Also Colonials tended to send their really fucked up people down to the Colonies so who knows? There might have been actual white cannibals there.


It makes me wonder if the early Teutonic tribes practiced cannibalism, or if it was resorted to in times of famine.
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Re: Book recommendations and reviews

Postby Kurt » Fri Sep 30, 2022 2:50 pm

seektravelinfo wrote:
Kurt wrote:
seektravelinfo wrote:
Kurt wrote:However Nigerians and Kenyans think Swiss and German people are prone to eating children. Probably some weird story tied to that


From the folk-tales collected by the Brothers Grimm from the people living in the Black Forest? Ya think?


That would make sense. Also Colonials tended to send their really fucked up people down to the Colonies so who knows? There might have been actual white cannibals there.


It makes me wonder if the early Teutonic tribes practiced cannibalism, or if it was resorted to in times of famine.


Most of the information on that comes from Romans who tended to want to paint their enemies in a bad light. The Barbarian take over of Rome resulted in such horrific things like banning bloodsports, except in Spain and Portugal where they kept Bullfighting. and making it illegal to leave children as old as 5 years old in the city dump to be eaten by wolves.

Even famine based cannibalism is usually eating the people who already died. I have found plenty on human sacrifice in Europe (Vikings were the worst by far...multiple days of feasting and gang rape followed by strangulation of the rape victims and cremation after the poor girl was forced to marry a corpse that had been in the ground for 20 days) but no cannibalism.
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Re: Book recommendations and reviews

Postby SethF228 » Wed Oct 19, 2022 10:26 am

Nigel Kelly is a good book for history and Culture as it has a well-written book with every detail of the past and the current scenario of the country.
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