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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 17
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      I do think we’ll see an equally sharp acceleration of artistic trends and it will be similar in tone, from expansive neoliberal romanticism of 1997-2015 to a post-Covid unsentimental interiority. And an equally studious avoidance of explicit and direct engagement.

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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 17
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      Spinney mainly surveys literary fiction and poetry around the world as indicator species. From T. S. Eliot outwards. Freud thrown in (clever to include him and his death drive theory in art chapter). Plausible case that mood shift was sharpened by flu. Today I’d track memes+TV.

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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 17
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      Interesting insight into Hindi literature of the period (Premchand, Nirala) of the progressive movement of the time as a break from Tagore romanticism. Not something I expected to see in a book by a British writer. She reads it right but again I doubt flu was a decisive driver.

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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 17
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      In general this chapter and the previous one could both be full books. They read like speculative teasers of richer possible treatments that leave you looking for closure/resolution of the hypotheses being casually floated.

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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 18
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      Finally close to the end of this book. A retrospective from modern view. 2016 report by Commission on Globsl Health Risk Framework (GHRF) estimated 20% chance of >4 pandemics in the next century, 1 being flu. Well 1 down, 3 to go. Hopefully this is last big one in my lifetime

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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 18
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      The big flu candidates are H5N1 and H7N9. They’re under surveillance. I guess viruses are like terrorist orgs. Gotta monitor them. One 2013 model estimated if something like Spanish Flu emerged today, there’d be 21-30m dead. Relatively lower, but absolutely higher.

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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 18
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      If the exact same strain of H1N1 emerged today, she says it would likely be mild. I wonder how you get to that conclusion. Most people exposed to it are now dead. How are the rest of us immune primed? I still don’t get some basics here. 🤔

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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 18
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      This conclusion and afterword is mostly forgettable speculation in light of Covid. Comments on WHO and CDC that seem charmingly simplistic in 2020. Still some interesting thoughts on using social networks for surveillance etc. Just... obsolete.

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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 18
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      Afterword has interesting insight that pandemic memories take longer to develop and stabilize than other historical memories. 80,000 books on WW1 but only 400 on Spanish Flu. But latter are recent/exponential increase.

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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 18
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      Spanish Flu is finally entering popular memory. 3 characters in Diwnton Abbey got it and 1 died. Black Death wasn’t even called that till the 16th century. It was called the blue death before. First works on it from 19th century.

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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 18
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      That delay effect is over I think. Covid has been live-blogged and tweeted vastly more broadly and deeply than anything in history. I bet there will be a crop of solid books within a decade.

      11:38 PM - 18 Oct 2020
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 18
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          Alright done. I skimmed the last 5 chapters rather fast because the book was beginning to drag tbh. But it’s overall a very well done heavy lifting that does its global multi-level spiral South African grandmother storytelling shtick well. The diverse anecdotes help a lot.

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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 18
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          This concludes the pandemic reads live-tweeting book club.

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        4. End of conversation

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