edit: I’ll be writing about my thoughts in the comments of the original post

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/9648876

A stroller walk and a 1.5 nap bought me a precious two chapters into these exciting new books.

#Language of Climate Politics

The “Language of Climate Politics” caught my eye because the author quote posted a comment on Bluesky that her book is the best of the genre. As someone trained in philosophy, psychology, and biology at a graduate level and now working in the field of science & institutional communication, I’ve always been fascinated by the way concepts/conceptions/words move people.

If you already know a bit about the reality of man-made climate change and the different ways people react to it (from denial to alarmist to optimistic to neutral to doomist), it’s useful to skip directly to the final pages of chapter 1 “How to Talk about the Thread of Climate Change-- And the Fight to Phase Out Fossil Fuels”. Threading the tight line between despair and evidence-based optimism, the author suggests redirecting our attention from the facts around the projected future to the “people maintaining the systems that are destroying the human future” and the way their political language achieves this goal. “Keeping the language and the actions of all these people in view will help stoke a healthy outrage over fossil-energy interests’ depraved indifference to the destruction of the only world known to support life.” The goal is to END the languages that are silencing climate change action.

I look forward to seeing her exposure of propaganda and politik-talk in the next chapter.

#Careless People

Like most people, the Streisand Effect of loud censorship bringing attention to the censored led me to this now best-seller. I bought the audiobook off of Libro.fm, which is my current source of audiobooks (that I will truly own as mp3 and mp4 files). From a story-telling perspective, the author really nailed this down. The first two chapters are fun, outrageous, but also relatable stories. Excellent story-telling. I’ve never been this engaged with a straight narrated audiobook before (I usually listen to poetry and performances). My mind usually wanders when someone is droning about in the background of whatever it is that I’m doing… but this strollerwalk with the book was excellent.

Offline gadgets:

“Language” PDF ebook: Quaderno A5 e-reader

“Careless” Audiobook: Yoto player & card

Microjournaling: L!FE B6 notebook

Baby status: evening stroller walk and nap

Reading location: walk (audio), cafe (ebook)