Fair warning: I kind of despise Jacobin, and Balthazar is a shitty writer... but this novel sounds amazing!

"It's something of a truism to say history does not reveal the past but rather the present: the refracted light of dead stars, to use the French philosopher Daniel Bensaïd’s image of the gone revolutions, will disappear in a daylight of mere facts if not recognized as a “concern of the present.” Annie Kaufman’s new translation of Ben Gold’s 1944 #Yiddish language #proletarian #novel Your Comrade, Avreml Broide: A Worker’s Life Story is one of those events, in which a seemingly lost footnote of left-wing #American #history suddenly brushes against the grain of the present."

https://jacobin.com/2025/07/ben-gold-communist-jewish-literature/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

So I did a deep drive, and found a web version of the book I presume they're referring to, giving this definition;

"A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.

, 2022

thenetworkstate.com/the-networ

So ... it's a distributed diplomatic entity, whose population consists entirely of landlords?

(2/?)

@strypey
They appear in Neal Stephenson's dystopian SF novel Snow crash.
As does much else.

#NealStephenson #dystopian#SF #novel #snowcrash

I just read @sarenaulibarri 's #solarpunk #novel Another Life. I really enjoyed it. Like the best solarpunk stories, it focuses on a close-knit, supportive community, one that is complex and subtly flawed, but deeply hopeful and inspiring.

When the story begins, the community is well formed, with a compelling origin story that shapes its culture and social structure. It has a form of communalism that is pretty well thought through, both in the internal distribution of resources and effort, and in the community's external relations. But the community isn't finished evolving, as real living ones never are.

1/2

#books #climatefiction #bookstodon

I just read @sarenaulibarri 's #solarpunk #novel Another Life. I really enjoyed it. Like the best solarpunk stories, it focuses on a close-knit, supportive community, one that is complex and subtly flawed, but deeply hopeful and inspiring.

When the story begins, the community is well formed, with a compelling origin story that shapes its culture and social structure. It has a form of communalism that is pretty well thought through, both in the internal distribution of resources and effort, and in the community's external relations. But the community isn't finished evolving, as real living ones never are.

1/2

#books #climatefiction #bookstodon