7858

@7858.eth

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Introducing Nash: The easiest way for crypto natives to create personal AI agents. Everyone should have their own AI agents that work around the clock—even while they sleep. Nash makes that future accessible now, with an intuitive no-code platform designed for the blockchain world.

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I want Nash to be my own little AI degen buddy. I might even spin up a few different flavors and give them all their own cute little anime PFPs

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Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion Mark Twain effusively reports on Bermuda. If you have an hour and change to read today, just skip my review and read it yourself: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3182/3182-h/3182-h.htm I’ve never been to Bali, Vietnam, or Greece, so take it with a grain of salt. But in my opinion, Hawaii is the king of island experiences and Bermuda is the queen. Mark Twain would probably not object too strongly, if this short book is to be believed. It gives you a charming tour of a charming island, at a charming time. It’s every bit as funny as the rest of his work, but Bermuda manages to take some of the acerbity out of even Twain. If you’ve been to Bermuda, definitely read this. If you’ve never been, definitely read this and then visit Bermuda. This is the last of my Mark Twain travel book reviews, so I want to reiterate: these books absolutely slay. If you like Twain, Bryson, or Barry, don’t sleep on them. Five stars.

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A Tramp Abroad Mark Twain does Central Europe. It’s all the usual wit and humor, applied to the very low hanging fruit of Teutonic seriousness and bumbling tourists. He lays it on unusually thick in this one, telling patently fictional stories, including one about preposterously over equipped alpine adventure. He’s also a good deal more harder on “himself” (as a stand in for the prototypical tourist) and the things he encounters in this book. The idea is at least as much to parody the typical travel book as it is to report his own experience. But as always, between the lines there’s an excellent travelogue. The section on German academic fencing sticks with me in particular. The appendix on the German language slays and can be read independently. Highly recommended for anyone who has studied German at all: https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html Four and a half stars. It’s the weakest of the Twain travel books I read, but it’s still outstanding.

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Red Rising Oppressed poor boy who’s Ackchyually Super Awsome sneaks into the rich kids’ hunger games summer camp. He sees through the meta, crushes the game, and gets the girl, even though she’s not as good as his old ride or die poor girl. The writing at the end is mediocre, which comes as a huge relief after the atrocious writing at the beginning. The author was apparently figuring out how to write in real time over the course of drafting the book. God awful prose, even by the most tolerant standards. The storytelling, as distinct from the language itself, is passable, if unimaginative. The character development is laughable. The thesis is exhausted, the tropes are threadbare, and the relationships are entirely implausible. Absolute slop, a waste of attention, almost no redeeming qualities. My 5yo loved it. Two stars, only because I have a soft spot for Battle Royale stories.

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I’m not sure if you’re a bot or not 😅 But either way, for those following along at home, I’m hoping to get it into the hands of a good citizen of the Nouns community, ideally someone I know and respect Cc @toadyhawk.eth as a candidate or connector

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Anyone interested in a very good looking noun? It’s in the market for a loving home

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That seems exactly on point for me and I’ve somehow never heard of it. Thanks for the recommendation. I’m going to read it next

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Roughing It Mark Twain describes crossing the country, trying his hand as a prospector, and then sailing out to Hawaii. Just like yesterday’s review: great travel writing, hilariously written. The Hawaii section hits like a ton of bricks. It evokes the place modern visitors know and love, but at a time before it had become widely known as an earthly paradise. It will make you nostalgic for a time long dead before you were born. Like the rest of his travel writing, this book is a mainline hit of the distilled essence of the times and places it covers. Plus, of course, a heavy dose of Twain’s personality and perspective. Five stars for its class.

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Not often. I averaged one every three days or so during 2024 and now I’m trying to review one per day between now and May. But I see the ambiguity now. I’m going to stop labeling these with “Day n:” to mitigate the confusion

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Day 19: The Innocents Abroad A young Mark Twain makes fun of everything between here and Jerusalem. It works as a travelogue, but he also parodies contemporary travel writing, self deprecates hilariously, and evenhandedly roasts everyone he encounters. I originally meant to read a Bill Bryson book as a palette cleanser following The Magic Mountain, but I discovered I’d run out of them. So I read this instead and liked it so much that I binged five more of his travel books in a row. I can’t believe these books don’t get talked about more. They’re funny as hell, they’re delightfully anachronistic in their takes, and they’re peerless as time capsules of the travel experience of ~150 years ago. “In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.” Five stars for its class. Tender, irreverent, exotic travel writing at its best.

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It was one of the highlights of my 2023 reading experience. It still rattles around in my head constantly. The work matures with its main character. I encourage you to stick with it for at least a couple volumes. BTW super flattered to be tagged in a Proust post 😊 https://warpcast.com/7858.eth/0x6f1fdcf6

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I loved Cryptonomicon. What else?

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It’s incredible how well it holds up against its contemporaries. Even masterpieces that were well ahead of their times like John Ford’s works from that era look and feel quaint and dated in comparison. It’s the Citizen Kane of movies, really

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Paging @phil, @tldr, @july, @horsefacts.eth Did you guys like it? Do you know anyone who does? I really want to be initiated into the cognoscenti

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Day 18: The Magic Mountain A novel about time, illness, death, and the fight for the spirit of Europe. If you pick this up, you better be prepared to put your ass into it. Superficially, it’s ~1000 pages of the petty squabbles of affluent Europeans in a sanitorium. But it’s one of those books that professors love where actively decoding it transforms the experience. I read it primarily because Joseph Campbell treats it as a peer to Ulysses in Creative Mythology. It falls well short of that mark. You probably already know if you should read this. If you’re uncertain, read something else. I’m going to reject its classification as great modern literature and I’m still going to give it only three stars for its class. I did the interpretive work and it still fell flat for me. If you loved it, please reply to convince me that I’m a phillistine. Until then, I maintain that the only reason to profess fondness for it is to impress others who also think they’re supposed to like it.

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