I listened to the Michelle Williams audiobook of Britney's memoir. This brief read wasn't exactly highbrow literature in terms of its writing, but it I listened to the Michelle Williams audiobook of Britney's memoir. This brief read wasn't exactly highbrow literature in terms of its writing, but it would have been bizarre if it had been. Britney and her ghostwriters did a decent job of putting Britney's story into a narrative that read like the same woman who makes Britney's famous Instagram posts.
If you're interested in hearing Britney's story from her own point of view–whether you grew up listening to her music or not–read it. Britney explains the factors she believes made her parents into the loveless, exploitative people they became. She describes the disintegration of her relationships with her family as they do their best to isolate her, culminating in the conservatorship, her forced institutionalization, and her eventual push to escape the hold placed on her. This is a story of unbearable loneliness, tempered by Britney's indomitable spirit and determination, her love for her children, and her unapologetic understanding that what was done to her by her family, by the media, and by the world, was wrong....more
Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and documentari"if the Naomi be Klein
you’re doing just fine
If the Naomi be Wolf
Oh, buddy. Ooooof." -Twitter proverb.
Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and documentarist whose work focuses on environmentalism, organized labor, fascism, and capitalism. Naomi Wolf is an American author and theorist whose body of work began with The Beauty Myth, a 1991 third-wave feminist text. Now, she is better known as a conspiracy theorist and for her appearances on Steve Bannon's The War Room show, arguing that vaccines are permanently damaging us and that COVID lockdowns were the beginning of an expanding project for a shadowy government to control our every move.
Because these two women share similar names, professions as authors, and Jewish heritage, they have been mixed up. Mixed up, like, a lot. For years Naomi Klein has dealt with being mistaken for Wolf. "Did you see what Naomi Klein tweeted?" "Did you hear Naomi Klein was on the War Room again?" After years of this. Naomi Klein became a little obsessed with the mixup, fascinated with what moves a person to move from kind of mid at feminist theory but mostly attached to reality to a fixture of the conspiracy movement. She dives into the concept of the doppelganger, identifying ideas, people, and institutions with with "shadows" or "doubles". I thought the chapters about Israel and Palestine were especially good.
Overall, I thought this book was very interesting and had a lot of meaningful things to say. Sometimes, the connections holding the different subject areas get pulled a little too far, but overall, this is an excellent use of a personal experience and a theme as a guide into various examples of "doubling". ...more
"It's not supposed to be efficient," Dr. Jim O'Connell says of medicine. Dr. Jim O'Connell, referred to throughout most of this biography as just Jim,"It's not supposed to be efficient," Dr. Jim O'Connell says of medicine. Dr. Jim O'Connell, referred to throughout most of this biography as just Jim, is a central figure in Boston's efforts to provide medicine to its "rough sleepers"–Jim's name for the people living in Boston's streets and parks. In 1985, Jim, with a fresh medical degree from Harvard and nearing the end of his residency at our prestigious Mass General Hospital, was offered the opportunity to set up a program to serve Boston's homeless population. While Jim tries his best to serve his patients with empathy, compassion, and humor, the problems facing residents of Boston experiencing homelessness are more than he alone can fix, though he and the organization he builds do their best to do what they can. Topics Kidder dives into include the maze of thankless paperwork and legal appeals it requires to house these people, the social factors and past trauma that led to homelessness for them, and the dynamic community of the rough sleepers, many of whom attempt desperately to support each other while fighting to survive. Kidder and Jim tell the story of "Tony", a rough sleeper who attempts to be a rock to others in his community while struggling with substance use and the deterioration of his physical health, his past trauma, and the stigma placed on him as a level-three sex offender from an offense incurred decades previously.
Reading this as a person who has lived just outside of Boston since I was thirteen is totally wild. "It totally changed how I think when I'm just driving around," commented my mentor who recommended the book to me. I know those places. I got my tonsils removed at MGH. In undergrad, I lived a mile away from "Mass and Cass", Boston's "methadone mile" an area where many of Boston's recovery-focused services are headquartered. It's a place that's known as a place to come for vital healthcare services, and as an open-air drug market. I know all of these places. I feel like I have a better understanding of this issue now, yet I'm more aware now that there's so much I don't know.
I thought this book was very well-written and answered a lot of questions I had about homelessness in my area ("Why is it just so hard to house these people?") but it also made me realize I have a lot more to learn. Good book....more
As usual, Alison Bechdel's work is beautifully drawn, expressive, and meditative. Of course it is. This book is about Alison Bechdel's lifelong fascinAs usual, Alison Bechdel's work is beautifully drawn, expressive, and meditative. Of course it is. This book is about Alison Bechdel's lifelong fascination with exercise, and also about transcendentalist writers? This one was her least relatable one yet to me as a person who does not have a lifelong fascination with exercise (my feelings are more... dread and fear).
Bechdel chronicles her relationship with exercise through each decade of her life. She explains the changing face of exercise and "wellness" in American culture, from her first encounters with outdoorsy gear in the L. L. Bean catalog, to the exercise routine ads she'd read in magazines, to the American adoption of Asian martial arts and other practices. She goes through a whole bunch of stuff in her personal life–her girlfriends, her deep attachment to her secluded home in the woods, her relationship with her aging mother.
She also examines the transcendentalists–18th-century Romantic essayists and poets and the Beatniks' relationship to nature. I don't know a ton about either of those things, so this was an interesting primer. Yeah, I've made it 27 years without ever reading Kerouac.
Good stuff. Maybe not as intensely touching as Fun Home, or as funny and absorbing as Dykes to Watch Out For. But worth a read for sure....more
"Coding in whiteface was the last thing I expected to do when I came to MIT, but–for better or worse–I had encountered what I now call the 'coded gaze"Coding in whiteface was the last thing I expected to do when I came to MIT, but–for better or worse–I had encountered what I now call the 'coded gaze'"(p. xiii).
Dr. Joy Buolamwini (The "Dr." is important, because this is in part the story of her PhD) is a researcher in the field of AI and the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, a digital advocacy group dedicated to exposing bias in algorithms and AI and providing counsel and support to people experiencing algorithmic bias. In this memoir-slash-primer on AI & algorithmic bias, Buolamwini shares her journey in digital advocacy, beginning with her childhood fascination with robotics. Her interest in algorithmic bias began as a graduate student at MIT, when she realized a face-tracking program she was working with wouldn't follow her face–until she put on a white mask. After this experience, she grappled with conflicting instincts: keep her head down and finish her degree in the way she planned to, or change directions and see where researching and exposing algorithmic bias would take her.
Buolamwini's stated goal is to provide laypeople, particularly those marginalized by algorithmic bias (or "excoded"; the opposite of encoded) with the knowledge and resources they need to identify and expose algorithmic bias within their lives. I think this book succeeds at being an accessible and very readable primer. It's as much a memoir and introduction to who Buolamwini is as a person as it is a clear explanation of how algorithmic bias affects marginalized people and why it functions that way. Chapters about Buolamwini's foray into poetry, her experiences with burnout and exclusion in the echelons of research and academia, and the other researchers Buolamwini supports and is supported by fit right in alongside chapters deftly explaining her research, such as the chapter about her seminal paper Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification.
If you want to learn more about the potential harms of AI and algorithmic bias written in an accessible way, Unmasking AI is a great start. It's as much the memoir of a determined young woman as it is a book about research, so it's a welcoming and fresh read....more