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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3620 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 14, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Kirilenko and Korshunova's What is Personality, from the USSR's Progress Publishers. It's a somewhat dizzying but fascinating application of dialectical materialism to individuals.

Just finished Philip Roth’s The Human Stain. Published 25 years ago, but plot – about a university professor who finds himself cancelled after using a word where the literal/dictionary meaning is perfectly correct but an alternative/colloquial meaning is disparaging/racist – feels totally current.

I am awestruck by Roth’s sentences. Almost every page has a great one. (If you enjoy technically brilliant long – sometimes page-long – sentences.)

There are some blind spots – a couple of characters’ stories just seem to stop without resolution – but overall a great read. Extremely perceptive, sort of culture wars years before the culture wars. I haven’t read much Roth. Will be checking out more.

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