Priya Satia's Time's Monster, perhaps?

I like Jacky Magus overall, but I remember reading this and thinking "wait, isn't this the same critique of anarchism from Gillen's Uber?"

Which obviously anarchism doesn't work the same in the world of TPF, but it's weird that it's the second time this sort of argument has come up...

Been reading that old CIA expose that Alan Moore did for the Christie Institute. The swimming pools full of blood are such a visceral way to depict the scale in of their atrocities

Men are the ones who shrug off condoms, don’t take chemical birth control (“it’s too painful!”), aren’t practicing the pullout method properly, and have near zero legal obligations for unwanted children. But somehow this entire thing is a “women’s issue”

This just means I can hawk your book to even more of my friends, really

So cool that decades of ideological homeopathy have reduced women’s issues to just abortion and federal genital database

Sorry, should have been clearer; I mean that Harari's own conservative political beliefs seep into the way he evaluates evidence very easily, because he doesn't engage with social organization.

Ftr, I still own all the Harry Potter books. Don’t see the point in depriving myself of a childhood favorite just for some arsehole

I know it’s fashionable to criticize the series these days, but every critique I’ve read seems to ignore that it’s mainly a comedy with a very British sense of humor

His sequel, 1493, is also gorgeous! It takes on a global scope abt the impact of the Colombian exchange, which is usually never done.

If you’re just into Native American history, I have some disagreements with him about epidemic impact, but there’s a lot of other great books which go deeper

Sure, DM me, I’d love to talk cultural worldbuilding with another anthro nerd

@kenmora.bsky.social If you’re interested in that kind of broad scale human history I’d recommend Dawn of Everything by Graeber & Wengrow instead. If you want more biology, I love the work of Charles Mann or Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

On a more nitpicky basis, there’s a lot of small areas where he’s wrong (and it’s hard to tell why because he doesn’t cite sources).

Like he claims that a sophisticated fiscal system requires writing, which isn’t true; the Bank of England kept records on medieval tally sticks until the 1700s

and this is very common in general, where he isn’t very interested in social organization and dismisses it as “fictions.”

-the original argument was that foragers chose to forage because they wanted prosperity, not that they were prosperous because they could only forage.

So it’s this whole “tragic fall of man” narrative where man started farming and became inescapably trapped by scarcity and the state

For example, he uses Sahlins’ idea of the “original affluent society” to talk about how foragers often lived better lives than us. I agree.

But bc he focuses on the biological part (foraging) he ignores that

I’m less critical of the book than most anthropologists - there are some parts of the book I quite like, and Harari is a gifted writer.

But Harari also isn’t very interested in society & politics, and oft draws needlessly conservative conclusions as a result

On the other hand, it’s great for stealing inspiration. I’ve been working with a theological system combining Wogeo gender relations, Quechua diarchy, African theodicy, and Indonesian gender transcendent shamans!

I still use panels from that book as an example of terrible lettering, and the actual contents of the book are well… Sapiens.

There's a lot of elegance here, I think. Geometric vs amorphous probably isn't the best way to describe this, actually, but I get the sense of a lot of intentionality of shape here