Organizing Required

“This is my job. If I’m being asked to do more than my job, I can say no. If they fire me, they’re — that’s like way worse for most employers. So you do have a lot

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Babel (Part 2): The Necessity of Violence

“Part of what the author has documented scholarly throughout this entire fantasy, historical alternative reading of history is the potential that is unleashed or released when terms from different languages are uttered into a space or are inscribed,

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Babel (Part 1): An Arcane Translators Revolution

“As so often happens in stories like these, the only offensive choice they have in the face of what I’m reading to be an insurmountable enemy, something — the only offensive action they can take is self-destruction, and

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Adventures of the Body

“So the priorities are shifting. When you’re younger, your mind and soul feel more important than your body. But now that you as an individual are getting older, your body is making a claim for some priority space

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Ideology and Imagination

“It’s like it needs to be imaginary before it becomes real. Well, there’s like a cyclical, the chicken and the egg, which was first? I guess reality was probably first, but it can’t — for us to interact

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The Topic of Death

“So he wants to die deliberately and he’s considering who to ask. These, I presume, are people or gods with whom he is close. The choices strike me as having an inherent performative quality. If he’s a god,

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National Insecurity

“…what does classified information do? I think the metaphor that we’re intended to bring to it is war, spying, national secrets, and the vulnerabilities of huge things like infrastructure. I imagine that the individual instances of it are

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“What’s crazier–plants speaking, or humans listening?”

An excerpt from The Overstory by Richard Powers, pp. 318-322, read by Steph.

Transcript:

“A lot of evidence suggests that group loyalty interferes with reason.”

Maidenhair and Watchman trade smirks, like he’s just told them that science has

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In-group Realignment

An excerpt from The Overstory by Richard Powers, pp. 232-238, read by Steph.

Transcript:

Four years at Fortuna College come down to one afternoon: Adam in his spot in the front row, Daniels Auditorium. Professor Rubin Rabinowski at

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