There is no beating the Soviet gulag (good morning!)

Good morning!

Thank you all for sending over links last week - I have plenty of amazing material to work through, most of which I’d never heard of before.

I’m also back in SF briefly today/tomorrow because CNN is doing a piece about my startup Seis.

Have a great week!

Trevor

Coming Out of the Ice (book)

An American citizen goes to the Soviet Union with his family for his dad’s work as a young adult, gets arrested as part of Stalin’s Great Purge, and is unable to leave the Soviet Union for 45 years.

I’m a little more than halfway through the book and it’s painful to read. Countless stories like this guy exist - a “political” prisoner who did literally nothing wrong, but who’s life & body were treated in the Soviet bureaucracy like our DMV treats a driver’s license renewal.

Why The Culture Wins (article)

Uses Ian M. Banks’ book Consider Phlebas to talk about culture… Ian’s science fiction was less about technology, and more about - you guessed it - different types of cultures.

This is different from much other science fiction…

“Modern science fiction writers have had so little to say about the evolution of culture and society that it has become a standard trope of the genre to imagine a technologically advanced future that contains archaic social structures.”

You don’t have to have read the book (I haven’t) to enjoy the article.

Better Call Saul (tv show, netflix link)

This show has taken forever (2 years between some seasons) but the payoff has been great. I finally caught up to the most recently finished episode.

Unpopular ideas about social norms (article)

Julia Galef’s list of exactly what the title says.

Small World (tool)

Super fun & useful tool to see where what city your Twitter friends are currently in

Dall E 2 images combining Kermit The Frog & a movie/tv show (twitter thread)

My favorites are The Sopranos, The Matrix, and The Office

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