#bancodealegrias :-)
Ayer acabé un libro intrigante, entretenido y bien escrito, que fue un placer leer: "Player Piano" primera novela (1952) de un autor preferido, Kurt Vonnegut. Se suele decir que es de humor y de ciencia ficción. La sociedad estadounidense en un futuro no muy lejano altamente automatizada y dividida entre ingenieros y gestores, por un lado --- una oligarquía pretendidamente benigna --- y el resto de la población --- que se dedica a trabajos menores y sobreviven gracias a la seguridad social. Todo coordinado por un gran ordenador. Cada ciudadano con una clasificación precisa relacionada con su IQ... Y una rebelión de sociedades secretas que captan a algunos "ingenieros"... Algunos buenos gags. Pero en general lo que en los años 50 quizás habría parecido una parodia hoy tal vez haga menos gracia porque se parece mucho a lo que se nos viene encima con la broligarquía y la IA gestionando nuestras vidas.
Aún así fue un placer y una alegría leerlo, los giros inesperados, los personajes simpáticos, algunas situaciones absurdas, el "buen rollo" que me transmite el autor...
Ya se ve que cada cual tiene sus propias alegrías... Eso también es bueno, creo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)
#lecturas #books #Vonnegut

#Kurt #Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope:

"Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man.
You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?

And so I pretend not to hear her.

And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people.
And see some great looking babies.

And a fire engine goes by.
And I give them the thumbs up.

And I'll ask a woman what kind of dog that is.

And, and I don't know.

The moral of the story is
— we're here on Earth to fart around.

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that.

And what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is
we're dancing animals.

You know, we love to move around.

And it's like we're not supposed to dance at all anymore

Read the first 100 pages of Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano", his first published novel (1952). Sort of Sci-Fi. US society is completely automated and there is an elitist engineer class that is in control of the machines. Regular people badly survive with minor works organized by the state and no saying about their world. Two important engineers are having a moral crisis, not sharing the blind enthusiasm of their peers. Now they are drinking in a regular people's bar on the other side of the tracks...
Good ideas and good writing: it's Vonnegut!
Of course it is striking the analogy 70 years before with the tech bros and AI. Let's see how it goes!
#books
#Vonnegut
#automation

I began reading "Player Piano" a "sci-fi" novel on automation's social impacts written in 1952 by cherished writer Kurt Vonnegut.
There are some pages at the beginning of the engineers "recording" the work process of their best machine operator, that reminded me of AI critiques as the automation of social intellect and practices by Pasquinelli and others --- and their quotes of Babbage theorizing it early in the xix century. Hm.
It's probably going to be interesting as we are indeed in a new wave of automation and Vonnegut is such a clever and humane critic.
#Books
#Vonnegut
#Automation
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)

Anti-empathy = death cult: the #DOJ's disgusting delay of #Abrego Garcia's return; the kidnapping of the #RumeysaOzturk #KhalilMahmoud's imprisonment; cuts to #Medicaid, #SocialSecurity, #Alzheimer's research & "So it Goes" to quote #Vonnegut.

"Trump's sociopathy now outranks the empathy of Jesus in MAGA eyes. But there's another angle to this, as well: This is about the MAGA right's unhinged obsession w/gender & escalating hatred of women."

https://www.salon.com/2025/04/11/magas-on-empathy-exposes-misogynist-fears/

#USPol
#Misogyny

Anti-empathy = death cult: the #DOJ's disgusting delay of #Abrego Garcia's return; the kidnapping of the #RumeysaOzturk #KhalilMahmoud's imprisonment; cuts to #Medicaid, #SocialSecurity, #Alzheimer's research & "So it Goes" to quote #Vonnegut.

"Trump's sociopathy now outranks the empathy of Jesus in MAGA eyes. But there's another angle to this, as well: This is about the MAGA right's unhinged obsession w/gender & escalating hatred of women."

https://www.salon.com/2025/04/11/magas-on-empathy-exposes-misogynist-fears/

#USPol
#Misogyny

“The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.”
― Albert Camus
#vonnegut #camus #maga #nightmare #ignorance #vice #virtue

Finally watching Breakfast of Champions (1999) today (and in high quality!) thanks to this drive @wendigo sent me. About time I did, too, it's my favorite Vonnegut book. Dark. Weird. Fantastic. Didn't even know there was a movie til recently. Has Bruce Willis and Nick Nolte. Wild.

https://letterboxd.com/film/breakfast-of-champions

You wonder what's all about the air raids on #Dresden and why it is still notorious (not only because of #Vonnegut)? Who started the myth of a "city of innocents"? And how is the famous book #LTI of Viktor Klemperer connected to it? Here some clues from Johannes Schütz and our colleague Mike Schmeitzner
https://tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/universitaetskultur/magazin/artikel/dresden-und-der-13-februar

Got into Vonnegut as a teen after reading Slaughterhouse-Five, my dad had a copy from college (and I later dug Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, my favorite of his). But I'd never seen the movie adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five from 1972, so I'm watching it now. So far, so good- captures what I remember of the book pretty well.

Here's to the weirdness of becoming unstuck in time

https://letterboxd.com/film/slaughterhouse-five

If you know Vonnegut, perhaps you know the concept of a karass. Tonight I saw a lot of old co-workers, people who were there when I started a new chapter of my life, and them as well. There was a lot of mutual understanding that we had some kind of special chemistry together. I think that was a karass. And now that the last one has left the company, I still had no trouble saying see you next time. We will see each other again. We are a karass.
#vonnegut #karass #togetherfeeling #work #kismet

#Dorktower

http://www.dorktower.com/

#LettersLive #Vonnegut #Cumberbatch

What does the SF writer Kurt Vonnegut wants the future to read ?

"Benedict Cumberbatch reads Kurt Vonnegut's letter to the future" [6:54 min]
by Letters Live

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhTr8wH2P4

Quote by LL:
"Dec 22, 2024
In 1988, the great American novelist Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to the people of the future.
Benedict Cumberbatch read this remarkably precient letter at Letters Live at London's Royal Albert Hall on 12th December 2024."

you wake up. you're still a lizard sunning on a red rock. it was all a dream.

“We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
#Vonnegut

I always admired Kurt Vonnegut's view of #ArmisticeDay, #RomeoAndJuliet, and #Music.

We are dancing animals

Kurt #Vonnegut

Who are your 5 favourite authors, and your favourite book by each. I need a reading list to help me escape this endless doomscrolling.

I’ll start.

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

John Irving - A prayer for Owen Meany

Paul Auster - The Music of Chance

Neil Gaiman - American Gods

Terry Pratchett - Small Gods

Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5

(Yes, that’s 6)

You?