The Dying Citizen by Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson (VDH) reminds his readers what it means to be a "citizen" of a nation state, using his expertise of ancient Greek and Roman society and guiding readers through is lens of the 16th & 17th century Enlightenment, the Federalists including the philosophy  and ideals behind the creation of the US republic, and US history in the last 150 years.  Hanson's interpretation is that a citizen is economically autonomous. VDH repeats through many examples that the notion of citizenship requires a large, strong middle class who have "material security."  Otherwise, VDH warns, all societies divide into "masters and peasants." This concept is similar to Karl Marx's analyses of capitalism in most of Marx's books and essays, except that Marx perceives ownership participation in the "means of production" to be "material security." Most of The Dying Citizen is VDH's analysis of the "new American peasantry," exemplified by student-debt-ridden younger folks, the USA's embrace of self-destructive policies in globalization, and "tribal" loyalties to ethnic or cultural groups instead of their nation state (place). VDH goes into details of the popularity and people who support these trends, including sanctuary cities, political correctness commissars, intentional destruction of civics education, and other societal & economic  trends that have destroyed US citizenship.

Unfortunately, VDH spends too many pages analyzing the presidency of Donald J Trump specifically instead of illuminating the decades-long changes in the relationship among people living in the USA to their nation state of residence, and citizenship globally in the 21st century. I expect more from such a great scholar.  3/5 Stars.

 

Grafana at KubeCon 2022

Here is a collection of KubeCon 2022 talks given by folks from Grafana Labs.

if you must: node.js in docker

Bret Fisher has updated a comprehensive review of node.js in docker, including node image selection, CI, CD, which docker image to use, etc.  I am not a fan of node; but it is very popular so I, and everyone else, need to support it.  And since k8s domination is sweeping the fashion trends around the world, we must all bow to our container masters and support these heavy frameworks as well.  I disagree with Bret's analysis of security concerns for a container base distro.  I firmly believe there is no attack service like no attack surface, so I personally prefer the distroless image maintained by the evil search giant (ESG).  Bret's analysis is a point-in-time, so tracking and re-analyzing his choices is still a moving target.  In general, one should make a selection based on long-term viability and projected maintenance support of one's components (get on a train and stay on it for a few years).  But his analysis is fantastic and worth reading.

Cloud domination

I love reading rants like this one about how & why entire developer environments are moving off of the desktop and into the cloud. As an old fart, I remember when we had telephone switches, answering machines, and call routing devices in our homes and offices, and how they moved quickly up to the "central."  I also remember X-Terminal hardware, where all environments, not just developer systems were in the cloud, somewhat akin to Chromebooks today. Personally, I have always been comfortable developing on remote systems because I always used command line terminals that accessed remote systems and rarely ran local dev until IDEs conquered most of my terminal use for coding.

Should you brand your workplace a "Family?"

Here are two articles worth skimming: the first is an interesting Harvard Business Review (HBR) study about the deleterious effects of branding and considering work colleagues a "family," and the second is a CEO letter about the separation of work from private individualism, specifically explaining that "work" is not a family.

(I stuffed both articles into a doc for you because they are behind paywalls.)

Eternity by Greg Bear

This sequel to Eon is a somewhat-awkward continuation of the Eon story and character arcs with a few good plot twists.  The overzealous too-many-ideas, awe-and-wonder Greg Bear style had a few too many deus est machina plot rescues but the book is still enjoyable. 3/5 Stars.  I shall probably read the last book in the trilogy at some point.  I still enjoy books written in the style of the golden age, despite my not being at the "golden age" (14-16) to enjoy them best.

Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch

I don't remember where this book came from or how it ended up in my queue; it was the next one up, so I dutifully picked it up and read it.  It is fun, light, and entertaining.  I love the immersive Thomas Hardy-esque descriptions of London neighborhoods and (accurate) history.  And I appreciate how the magic system is consistent and weaker than real-world physics and technology, such that it does not suspend disbelief.  I may pick up the earlier books or stories but my queue is growing to the point of Tsundoku ( 積ん読 ) so I probably won't. 4/5 Stars.

Last Contact: Galaxy's edge S02E05 by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole

More of the same close combat romps of our favorite wise-cracking heroes from the first 14 books killing them first (KTF) while the story line continues to drop very few hints of the coming "big reveal" of the mysterious overlord puppet masters behind the scenes.  Sometimes we need the comfort of light reading. 3/5 Stars.

Light Chaser by Peter F Hamilton and Gareth L Powell

Short, fun, light space opera with good writing, great plot and somewhat abrupt ending.  One hopes the authors expand upon the universe & the struggles of humanity versus the evil overlords in sequels. 4/5 Stars.

I have become curious recently about the utopian concepts within post-scarcity civilizations such as Iain M Banks' Culture books.  The optimism is dubious in light of the ugly reality contained within numerous historical examples of the resource curse.  (see here and here) Banks needed the "Minds" (powerful, guiding AI) to balance the darkness of human nature that corrupts society.  Hamilton may summon his theology and supernatural religious ideas as a cure.  Is there some purely secular, enlightenment approach to overcoming the resource curse?  Pinker's ideas assume scarcity.  I welcome and enjoy your comments.

Abrechnung von Barbara Peters

Kompliziert mit vielen Charakteren und falschen Hinweisen. Die Folter war schrecklich, aber nicht widerlich oder vulgär. Gut geschrieben. Ich habe nicht vor, ihre früheren Bücher zu lesen. 3/5 Sterne.