🏵️ On Class, Corruption, & Fire

A review of The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. Plus, the dark underbelly of American poverty, and how control of fire is useful to man and birds alike.

July was a heck of a month! My brother died unexpectedly in the Philippines, and then I went on a lovely vacation to Colorado with a bunch of friends who also have kids. I had lunch with an old friend from middle school, my daughter learned how to escape her pack ‘n’ play at the worst possible time, and I somehow managed to burn pasta noodles. Then I came home, attended my niece’s baby shower, and promptly got sick.

I did manage to read a bunch, although writing was impossible, so here are some highlights from July.

🎓 3 Links I Learned From

Annie Normal

has been writing more book reviews and biographies lately, which has been delightful because she tends to read interesting things I don’t generally have the stomach for. The one that stuck with me most is about the Beans of Egypt, Maine — it’s dark, depressing literature with what I suspect is a grain of truth about generational American poverty.

They are some of the most repulsive characters I've ever read in literature. Drunk, violent, grotesque. The women stumble and curse over a naked brood of dirty babies. The men break each other's ribs and pass out under their trucks. Some are missing fingers, others grow their nails into claws so they can skin rabbits with their hands.

The article is short, and I recommend it for people who have become interested in the stories like Hillilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance and Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class by

Rob Henderson

. I haven’t personally read either book, but I enjoy Rob’s Substack and I read a lengthy review of Vance’s autobiography back in 2020, years before he ran for office.

Personally, I’ve always found discussions of American social class interesting, not least of which because of my family’s background and what my brothers and I made of ourselves. Law school was extremely eye-opening for me, and now I spend a lot of time in tech circles that are very different from the blue-collar guys I hung out with in my early 20s.

One of my favorites is The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class by

Alex Danco

— which uses The Office and metaphors from

Venkatesh Rao

to riff off of Michael’s Church’s summary of the American social class system. He discusses how the traditional metaphor of “climbing the ladder of social class” is wrong in an important way because there isn’t one single ladder; there are three — each with different values, norms and goals.

I started really thinking about this after reading Scott Alexander’s summary and commentary of Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through The American Status System, but truthfully the biggest impact it had on me was to make me a bit more sensitive whenever I see hydrangeas or azaleas in someone’s garden.

🌼 2 Remixed Highlights

On a somewhat lighter note, I recently learned that the earliest coin-operated vending machine was invented during the first century CE, in Alexandria — the actual Egypt. It dispensed holy water instead of snacks.

The coin fell onto a pan that was connected to a lever, which opened a valve on the other end where the holy water flowed out. The pan continued to move under the weight of the coin until, eventually, the coin slid off. The lever would then raise back to its initial state and close the valve, stopping the flow of water.”

I really enjoy reading about technology that is totally usable without modern materials. Things that are require clever, sideways thinking moreso than a complex series of systems to support the new emergent technology. My favorite example is the “kick to open” trunk. Motion sensors were invented in the 1940s, and the 1950s saw remote-open trunks, but we didn’t get the first “smart trunk opener” until 2011.

For a long time, I thought that control of fire was humanity’s first ‘technology’, and one that really differentiates us from other animals — as opposed to stone and wooden tools, which some animals definitely do use. Crows, for example, trim sticks into hooked barbs to fish grubs out of tree bark. Sea otters keep favored rocks to crack open shellfish. But

Ryan Dickinson

recently taught me something really cool about birds and fire. He said:

As a general rule, I think humans are unique more in terms of scale than in terms of type of ‘special’ thing. There are relatively few things that only humans can do at all. Other animals can form words, or communicate complex thoughts, or use tools, or whatever else — including, apparently, leveraging fire.

As far as I know, the main difference between these examples and early human tool use is that humans began modifying stones systematically. Flint knapping, basically; chipping rocks to create specific shapes with sharp edges. Most other animals use stones in their natural form, or modify things that are easier to manipulate, like sticks. Our initial innovation was probably shaping rocks. Now we use them to make lightning do our bidding. Wild stuff when you think about it.

📸 & A Photo From My Ramblings

The weather this weekend was beautiful in my area, so I took my son to a park and read a The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett on my Boox Palma (affiliate link, review) while he played with some of his friends.

It’s hard to get a good photo because phone cameras balance light differently than my eyes, but the text was crisp and pleasant despite the bright sun, and the book was well written. I picked it up because

Evan Þ

had it as the top book on his Hugo ballot and “clever detective in the tradition of Holmes and Hannibal — but fantasy with great worldbuilding” caught my eye.

As Evan says, it was well put together. I don’t generally read mysteries with the intent to solve them as the story progresses, so I don’t have much of an opinion about whether it’s a proper “fair play” mystery or particularly clever in that regard. However, I really liked the worldbuilding. Ever-growing leviathans constantly besieging the empire during the wet season tickles my love of tower defense games, and the leviathans being the source of the ~alchemy that allows for posthumanistic science as well as all sorts of other eldritch alterations was fun and hung together well.

But the last chapter really soured things for me. Not the part where the mystery got wrapped up, but rather the celebration and reaffirmation of friendship between the detective and her assistant… because it was so blasted hypocritical, and totally unnecessary. It felt tacked on and ill-considered in a thematic sense. Also, cops who break the law is one of my least-favorite literary tropes, and I hate it all the more when the narrative makes them out to be the good guys.

The ending where the assistant — who struggles to read or write and was apparently chosen for the position because he cheated on his aptitude test, demonstrating determination and and resourcefulness — procures illegal drugs (“moodies” which fill in for Holmes’ opium addiction) in some sort of bonding exchange that is supposed be a wholesome acknowledgement that some rules are better bent or something.

It would have been one thing if they were supposed to be morally grey (as with the cop in The Expanse books), but at no other point in the book were they presented as anything but upstanding, justice-seeking, loyal agents of a worthy emperor. A big chunk of the investigation centered around uncovering times when the wealthy and powerful bent the rules in ways that ultimately led to ruin. At one point, a character is revealed to have been pursuing vigilante justice, and is upbraided for having insufficient faith in the government officers to not be corrupt or toothless, even though the investigator and her superiors have gone out of their way to act as though the government is not in any way supporting the officers of the law in their efforts to stand up to the gentry.

In the end, as much as I loved the worldbuilding, I think The Iron Wyrm Affair by Lilith Saintcrow was a better book for when I’m looking for something with the investigator/sidekick dynamic. Emma Bannon is a “forensic sorceress” in the direct service of Queen Victrix, who is actually the living vessel of the spirit Britannia. Archibald Clare is a mentath—an exceptionally logical detective—and Bannon’s partner on several royal investigations. The milieu is distinctly steampunk — there are clockwork dragons, mechanized horses — but the fantasy elements have the upper hand in terms of plot relevance. If you’re into that sort of thing, it did a lot of things well. I plan to re-read it soon, as a palate cleanser.