Moses killing the Egyptian; breaking up a fight among Hebrews; discovering his crime is known and fleeing takes 650ish characters. Not words, characters. Holy Compact pro's Batman. #booksky #CriticalBible

On a separate note: reading Tolstoy makes one admire the ruthless compactness of Hebrew storytelling. #booksky #CriticalBible

Finished Everett Fox's translation of Genesis. I wondered "How did smart ppl read these stylized stories as history?". Then recall Galen kept people from seeing blood circulation; Ptolemy heliocentrism. Proof by authority is dangerous, folks. #booksky

The rape of Dinah told in Gen. 34 is awful because it is a rape and because her brothers respond with murder and a bunch more rape. But also they justify their violence by claiming to be defending their sister's honor. Nauseating. #booksky #critbible

"now spread a mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell of saltpeter and blood ... in every soul: 'For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?' ... they stumbled and panted with fatigue, perspiring and stained with blood and powder. ... flame of battle burned slowly out." #Tolstoy #booksky

For any Tolstoy scholars or fans, I wonder how close дух армии translated as spirit of the army is to esprit de corps. Esp. since French language plays such a role in War & Peace. #booksky

Guau, acabo realizar que "gu" es "w" en español. Guillermo, guerra, etc.

My Pre-School Geru life partner tells me exhaustion is a part of learning and a period of chaos is necessary for growth. But that doesn't make it any less exhausting!

Beloved is one of those books that haunts me. I read it as an adult. Not at any particularly meaningful period in my life, but it seems to lurk in my subconscious still. Which is frankly, kind of on the nose for that text. #booksky

An inspirational poster in need of being made.

Mortimer Adler assigned me Genesis in this year's Great Books reading list. Reading the story of Sodom and Gamora reminded me of Ezekiel s commentary on the story, "the sin of your sister Sodom ... They did not help the poor and the needy." Have we been using 'sodomite' wrong? #booksky

"Take no prisoners, but kill and be killed! ... [L]et war be war and not a game." Bolkonsky's justification for rage brought on by the loss of his family estate and vague premonitions of his own death. We would have less war if these were the rules, he rationalizes. #booksky

#CriticalBible reading the first book of 1 Enoch especially ch. 30, where the tree of wisdom is beautiful and fragrant, does this author feel ambivalent toward trading wisdom for paradise? I read no ambivalence in Gen. 2-3.

This description from Enoch of the beginning of his heavenly vision fascinates me especially because its writer never experienced flight. #BibleCrit

Ok, after reading lots of front matter -- Chs 1-5 of 1 Enoch is pretty interesting. The idea up top is obey since it is natural (teleologically?) to do so--sort of opposite if Jesus and the fig tree where he demands unnatural response. #CriticalBible Is it natural to be good?

Important to keep in mind when your in the customer (client) service business.

From Tolstoy: “The Russian is self-confident just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, believing that nothing can be known fully.” Maybe despite 23 and me, I'm a little Russian. #booksky

Listening to Tolstoy's descriptions of Napoleon, especial in the book of Part II of War and Peace keeps reminding me of Trump. #projection #booksky

Question: This is the next book in my theist meets an atheist in college and they read holy books series. Can I add my own marginalia to a book like this? That's how I usually show 💛 for a text. Pero, ¡está muy caro! 🏷️💵 #criticalbible #booksky

For year six of the reading list, I am finishing the second half of War & Peace. Adler suggests reading it at the end of the year, but I decided to start it today. Wow, Chapter 1 of Book 2 is a masterpiece. #tolstoy #booksky

I’m really proud to have helped set up a tiny, non-profit micro-press for activist books — and to publish Suicide by Roger Hallam. Written from prison, with a foreword by Chris Hedges. Every penny goes into making more books like this. rev21.earth/product/suic...

Well #booksky year five of the Great Books reading list is complete. I listened to a good portion of this year's list, but that worked well enough with the fiction and lecture style readings and provided time to dig into some of the more complex philosophical stuff. Yay 2025.

@aineyoremd.bsky.social this feels like some conversations weay have had once or a hundred time thirty years ago!

Just finished reading Kant's discussion of the Transcendental Analytic. #booksky. It took a lot of work and I found a course on CoPR and that was nice. Importantly, in the last two days, I have had two nice conversations with the family triggered by the reading.

Kant would have done well to talk to some preschool teachers. Just sayin'

It is awesome that Kant uses the intersection of two parallel lines as an "impossibility" that can only be known through synthetic apriori reasoning. When in fact parallel line can (and do) intersect. He didn't know. #booksky

Finished listening to Animal Farm. Honestly really, genuinely upsetting. #booksky

So, Kant says all experience is mediates through the human construct of time. That seems right and 35 years ago i really should have stayed awake in that class 'cuz it would've been pretty relevant to my honors thesis. Oh well.

Failure to give constant attention to development of the intellectual content of experiences and to obtain ever-increasing organization of facts and ideas may in the end merely strengthen the tendency towards a reactionary return to intellectual and moral authoritarianism. -- John Dewey #booksky

"I have therefore no knowledge of myself ss I am, but merely as I appear to myself." Critique of Pure Reason, pt 2, Section 21, Kant. Checks out. #booksky

“What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information … if in the process the individual loses his own soul: loses … if he loses desire to apply what he has learned and, above all, loses the ability to extract meaning.” Dewey 🔥trad ed #booksky

Year 5 is down to Kant, Dewey, waddington and Orwell. I thi k Im going to make it. #booksky

Space and Time as concepts preloaded in the human mind seems right to me. Kant's categories of understanding seem less obvious but he promises to provide a deduction of them. #booksky

"How shall the young become acquainted with the past in such a wa that the acquaintance is a potent agent in appreciation of the living present." John Dewey, Experience and Education. #booksky

Maybe even more important than the Disciples and the UCC being in conversation. ;-)

Berkeley's insistance that reality os composed of ideas imprinted on the senses by God feels real real close the the simulation hypothesis. I assume many a philosophy undergrad has explored this in final papers #booksky

"I entreat [my reader] to make my words. The occasion of his own thinking and endeavor to attain the same train of thoughts in Reading that I had in writing them." George Berkeley Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge #booksky

"He must be very weak ... who shall reject a truth that is demonstrated, for no other reason but it is newly known & contrary to prjudices," + "We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see." Berekley's quotable. #booksky

Finishing Ethics II from Spinoza and ch 28 of Princ. of Psych. by James lead to the happy coincidence of getting their takes on the geom. "truth" re the interior angles of a triangle. #booksky

I am listening to selections of Darwin, William James, and next up is Dewey. I am reaading Plotinus, Spinoza, and next up Berkley. All sort of coming to a climax around reading Kant next week. Feels right. #booksky

"The 'experience-philosophy' has ... been the opponent of theological modes of thought. ... With scientific animus of anti-supernaturalism we ought to agree, but we ought to free ourselves from its verbal idols and bugbears." William James on not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. #booksky

"A body once in motion continues to move until it is determined to rest by another body; and a body at rest remains at rest unless it is determined to move by another.” Not Newton, but Spinoza Lemma 3 of Prop 13 of Part 2 of his Ethics. coincidental overlap of meta-physics & real-physics? #booksky

Note that description of the heliocentric universe [sic] and the circulation of blood by the heart were as controversial as evolution. But science cannot be denied when describing the extant world.

"Still the die is cast, and my trust is in my love of truth, and the candour that inheres in cultivated minds." Harvey, Motion of the Heart, ch. 8. #booksky Bless his 17th century heart believing there are enough cultivated minds.

Secondary Sexual Characters: what term applies equally in discussion of natural selection and casting for reality TV. #booksky #darwin

I agree but i doubt the family will

William Harvey figures out circulation without understanding gasses were dissolved in blood; Charles Darwin figures out natural selection without understanding genes. #booksky

William Harvey is writing in the early 1600s. Still a part of the wave of “let’s actually observe” what is happening rather than using the “and what else floats” reasoning. #booksky

“When we reflect on this struggle … the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.” Origin, close of ch. 3. #booksky

Listening to Origin reminds me that it is much easier to read modern works especially of science/philosophy bc you know what they care about. Reading ancients require a deliberate effort to learn what matters to them. #booksky