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bgainor

@bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy
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Programmer with a linguistics background, dad, trekkie. He/him Mastodon: @bgainor@mstdn.party 🌉 bridged from ⁂ bookwyrm.social/user/bgainor, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/06/2026
"Every year in custody reduces a person’s life expectancy by two years. Because of the massive numbers of people the U.S. puts into prisons, the overall life expectancy of the average U.S. resident is 1.8 years lower than it would be if the United States had incarceration rates comparable to its […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/06/2026
"The U.S. confines people to jail cells at six times its own historical average, five to ten times as much as other comparable countries, and imprisons Black people [at] six times the rate of South Africa during Apartheid." — Alec Karakatsanis: Copaganda, p. 331
bookwyrm.social
Copaganda - BookWyrm
From the prizewinning rising legal star, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract us from what matters "Alec Karakatsanis is a leading voice in the legal struggle to dismantle mass incarceration. . . . What he says cannot be ignored." --James Forman' Jr. "Copaganda," as defined by Alec Karakatsanis, describes a special kind of propaganda, employed by police and news media, that shapes our fears and influences the social investments we make to address those fears. In a country that incarcerates five times more people per capita than it used to, and far more than other countries, the sprawling punishment bureaucracy spends a lot of time and money to manipulate public perception. This results in a distorted version of threat, crime, punishment, and safety in the news, which, for example, highlights crimes committed by marginalized people while ignoring more significant harms like wage theft, environmental crime, and deaths that result from harmful behavior like corporate fraud or cigarette smoke (which make the number of violent crimes pale in comparison). The news also suggests to us that increased government repression through police, prosecution, probation, parole, and prisons is the best response, as opposed to addressing the root causes of harm. In the spirit of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, Copaganda includes chapters on "What Is News?," "Public Relations Spending by the Police," "Whose Perspective? How Sources Shape News," "How the News Uses Experts," "How to Smuggle Ideology into the News," and "Academic Copaganda." Recognized by Teen Vogue as "one of the most prominent voices" in contemporary discourse about the criminal legal system and featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club, Karakatsanis brings his legal expertise, humor, personal stories, and analytical skills to delve into one of the most critical topics in our society today.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/06/2026
"If people fight their cases, many of these cases will not result in conviction but will take extraordinary resources for court-appointed lawyers, motions, defense investigators, and jury trials—this combination would mean that even if only 10 percent of cases resulted in jury trials, it would […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/06/2026
"here’s the basic message: People dedicated to lessening inequality, saving lives, and creating more connected communities are pollyannish about safety. People who profit from surveillance and human caging deeply care about safety despite evidence that their approach decreases safety" — Alec […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/06/2026
"although every major police department that I have researched has in recent years had systemic scandals of abuse, lying under oath, and coordinated cover-ups, all of that misconduct pales in comparison to the scope of the daily violence of standard _lawful_ policing: one that subjects poor […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/06/2026
"So, we should interrogate whether initial, uninformed “popularity” of vague terms—as measured by people who have the money to conduct a poll that asks particular questions in a particular way—is the best gauge for deciding what change to advocate. For example, few people remember that Martin […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/06/2026
"Many of these “reforms” are fairy tales that make the problems identified by the critic _worse_. “Alternative sentencing” has led to the expansion of discredited programs such as lucrative privatized probation supervision and surveillance, a system that Georgia uses more than any other state on […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/06/2026
"By cultivating ignorance about what defunding police means and whether it happened, the paper manufactures a false narrative that progressives implemented their policies, which then failed. Most of the article is about Dallas, but it doesn’t tell readers that Dallas _did not reduce police […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/06/2026
"each article’s central theme is that the removal of the “progressive” prosecutor is a _natural_ response to inequality, homelessness, drug abuse, and mental illness. They all imply that the blame for those social and economic issues lies with the prosecutor for not punishing people enough. None […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/06/2026
"The Constitution wasn’t designed for mass incarceration. If all people could exercise their constitutional right to a fair trial and a zealous lawyer, the assembly line would grind to a halt because no society in modern history has attempted to arrest and prosecute so many people per capita." […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/06/2026
"Body-camera videos are now routinely used in every courtroom in the U.S. to convict people of things like drug possession and trespassing and are almost never used against police." — Alec Karakatsanis: Copaganda, p. 173
bookwyrm.social
Copaganda - BookWyrm
From the prizewinning rising legal star, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract us from what matters "Alec Karakatsanis is a leading voice in the legal struggle to dismantle mass incarceration. . . . What he says cannot be ignored." --James Forman' Jr. "Copaganda," as defined by Alec Karakatsanis, describes a special kind of propaganda, employed by police and news media, that shapes our fears and influences the social investments we make to address those fears. In a country that incarcerates five times more people per capita than it used to, and far more than other countries, the sprawling punishment bureaucracy spends a lot of time and money to manipulate public perception. This results in a distorted version of threat, crime, punishment, and safety in the news, which, for example, highlights crimes committed by marginalized people while ignoring more significant harms like wage theft, environmental crime, and deaths that result from harmful behavior like corporate fraud or cigarette smoke (which make the number of violent crimes pale in comparison). The news also suggests to us that increased government repression through police, prosecution, probation, parole, and prisons is the best response, as opposed to addressing the root causes of harm. In the spirit of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, Copaganda includes chapters on "What Is News?," "Public Relations Spending by the Police," "Whose Perspective? How Sources Shape News," "How the News Uses Experts," "How to Smuggle Ideology into the News," and "Academic Copaganda." Recognized by Teen Vogue as "one of the most prominent voices" in contemporary discourse about the criminal legal system and featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club, Karakatsanis brings his legal expertise, humor, personal stories, and analytical skills to delve into one of the most critical topics in our society today.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/06/2026
"What many people don’t know is that internal documents, public statements, and industry materials reveal that police officials and for-profit manufacturers of body cameras and related software had been clamoring for the technology for years. However, prior to Michael Brown’s murder, police and […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/06/2026
"There is a similar dissonance in how the _Times_ covered police violence against protesters in Cuba during the same summer as the George Floyd protests. The _Times_ treated police violence and surveillance in Cuba as an intentional and coordinated government effort to “send a chilling message” […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/06/2026
"It was in this context that the politician quoted in the news separated the horrific murder from the city’s “real public safety problems.” A human being stabbed another human being to death. But it somehow didn’t count as a “real” problem once we learned that it wasn’t committed by a homeless […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/06/2026
"research shows that simply expanding Medicaid reduces arrests for violence by 19–29 percent over the following three years, and all police arrests by 20–32 percent. Another of the most widely accepted empirical findings is the impact of early childhood investments on crime. Children excluded […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/06/2026
"Many people I know who work in, study, and critique the punishment bureaucracy point out that the central function of the punishment bureaucracy has never been to “reduce crime” but to preserve whatever social, political, and economic order exists at any given time on behalf of those who […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/06/2026
"Elite criminology is awash in this kind of de-politicizing drivel dressed up as scholarship. Any solution—especially those that would require organizing, building power, political education, changing hearts and minds, reshaping institutions, and mobilizing marginalized people to shift the […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/06/2026
"Experts are used to constrain the range of reasonable explanations, solutions, and policies on crime. Anyone with a view outside this range is explicitly or implicitly defined as too extreme to be credible." — Alec Karakatsanis: Copaganda, p. 90
bookwyrm.social
Copaganda - BookWyrm
From the prizewinning rising legal star, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract us from what matters "Alec Karakatsanis is a leading voice in the legal struggle to dismantle mass incarceration. . . . What he says cannot be ignored." --James Forman' Jr. "Copaganda," as defined by Alec Karakatsanis, describes a special kind of propaganda, employed by police and news media, that shapes our fears and influences the social investments we make to address those fears. In a country that incarcerates five times more people per capita than it used to, and far more than other countries, the sprawling punishment bureaucracy spends a lot of time and money to manipulate public perception. This results in a distorted version of threat, crime, punishment, and safety in the news, which, for example, highlights crimes committed by marginalized people while ignoring more significant harms like wage theft, environmental crime, and deaths that result from harmful behavior like corporate fraud or cigarette smoke (which make the number of violent crimes pale in comparison). The news also suggests to us that increased government repression through police, prosecution, probation, parole, and prisons is the best response, as opposed to addressing the root causes of harm. In the spirit of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, Copaganda includes chapters on "What Is News?," "Public Relations Spending by the Police," "Whose Perspective? How Sources Shape News," "How the News Uses Experts," "How to Smuggle Ideology into the News," and "Academic Copaganda." Recognized by Teen Vogue as "one of the most prominent voices" in contemporary discourse about the criminal legal system and featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club, Karakatsanis brings his legal expertise, humor, personal stories, and analytical skills to delve into one of the most critical topics in our society today.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/06/2026
"Your local government is spending a lot of money building an ecosystem of “conventional wisdom” that legitimizes the punishment bureaucracy as the primary solution to myriad social problems." — Alec Karakatsanis: Copaganda, p. 70
bookwyrm.social
Copaganda - BookWyrm
From the prizewinning rising legal star, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract us from what matters "Alec Karakatsanis is a leading voice in the legal struggle to dismantle mass incarceration. . . . What he says cannot be ignored." --James Forman' Jr. "Copaganda," as defined by Alec Karakatsanis, describes a special kind of propaganda, employed by police and news media, that shapes our fears and influences the social investments we make to address those fears. In a country that incarcerates five times more people per capita than it used to, and far more than other countries, the sprawling punishment bureaucracy spends a lot of time and money to manipulate public perception. This results in a distorted version of threat, crime, punishment, and safety in the news, which, for example, highlights crimes committed by marginalized people while ignoring more significant harms like wage theft, environmental crime, and deaths that result from harmful behavior like corporate fraud or cigarette smoke (which make the number of violent crimes pale in comparison). The news also suggests to us that increased government repression through police, prosecution, probation, parole, and prisons is the best response, as opposed to addressing the root causes of harm. In the spirit of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, Copaganda includes chapters on "What Is News?," "Public Relations Spending by the Police," "Whose Perspective? How Sources Shape News," "How the News Uses Experts," "How to Smuggle Ideology into the News," and "Academic Copaganda." Recognized by Teen Vogue as "one of the most prominent voices" in contemporary discourse about the criminal legal system and featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club, Karakatsanis brings his legal expertise, humor, personal stories, and analytical skills to delve into one of the most critical topics in our society today.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/06/2026
"Tweaks in punishment policy do nothing to remedy the root causes of criminal violence and pervasive “non-criminal” violence: inequality; poverty; trauma; lack of access to care, housing, early childhood education, and community programs; toxic masculinity; the number of guns manufactured […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/05/2026
"in many years fraudulent overdraft fees charged by banks total about the same as all burglary, larceny, car theft, and shoplifting combined." — Alec Karakatsanis: Copaganda, p. 22
bookwyrm.social
Copaganda - BookWyrm
From the prizewinning rising legal star, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract us from what matters "Alec Karakatsanis is a leading voice in the legal struggle to dismantle mass incarceration. . . . What he says cannot be ignored." --James Forman' Jr. "Copaganda," as defined by Alec Karakatsanis, describes a special kind of propaganda, employed by police and news media, that shapes our fears and influences the social investments we make to address those fears. In a country that incarcerates five times more people per capita than it used to, and far more than other countries, the sprawling punishment bureaucracy spends a lot of time and money to manipulate public perception. This results in a distorted version of threat, crime, punishment, and safety in the news, which, for example, highlights crimes committed by marginalized people while ignoring more significant harms like wage theft, environmental crime, and deaths that result from harmful behavior like corporate fraud or cigarette smoke (which make the number of violent crimes pale in comparison). The news also suggests to us that increased government repression through police, prosecution, probation, parole, and prisons is the best response, as opposed to addressing the root causes of harm. In the spirit of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, Copaganda includes chapters on "What Is News?," "Public Relations Spending by the Police," "Whose Perspective? How Sources Shape News," "How the News Uses Experts," "How to Smuggle Ideology into the News," and "Academic Copaganda." Recognized by Teen Vogue as "one of the most prominent voices" in contemporary discourse about the criminal legal system and featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club, Karakatsanis brings his legal expertise, humor, personal stories, and analytical skills to delve into one of the most critical topics in our society today.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/05/2026
"Consider, for example, the frenzy over “retail theft” that took over local and national news after the uprisings over police violence in 2020. The same editors and reporters who wrote thousands of stories about low-level shoplifting from chain stores chose for years not to cover the estimated […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/05/2026
"in many years fraudulent overdraft fees charged by banks total about the same as all burglary, larceny, car theft, and shoplifting combined." — Alec Karakatsanis: Copaganda, p. 22
bookwyrm.social
Copaganda - BookWyrm
From the prizewinning rising legal star, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract us from what matters "Alec Karakatsanis is a leading voice in the legal struggle to dismantle mass incarceration. . . . What he says cannot be ignored." --James Forman' Jr. "Copaganda," as defined by Alec Karakatsanis, describes a special kind of propaganda, employed by police and news media, that shapes our fears and influences the social investments we make to address those fears. In a country that incarcerates five times more people per capita than it used to, and far more than other countries, the sprawling punishment bureaucracy spends a lot of time and money to manipulate public perception. This results in a distorted version of threat, crime, punishment, and safety in the news, which, for example, highlights crimes committed by marginalized people while ignoring more significant harms like wage theft, environmental crime, and deaths that result from harmful behavior like corporate fraud or cigarette smoke (which make the number of violent crimes pale in comparison). The news also suggests to us that increased government repression through police, prosecution, probation, parole, and prisons is the best response, as opposed to addressing the root causes of harm. In the spirit of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, Copaganda includes chapters on "What Is News?," "Public Relations Spending by the Police," "Whose Perspective? How Sources Shape News," "How the News Uses Experts," "How to Smuggle Ideology into the News," and "Academic Copaganda." Recognized by Teen Vogue as "one of the most prominent voices" in contemporary discourse about the criminal legal system and featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club, Karakatsanis brings his legal expertise, humor, personal stories, and analytical skills to delve into one of the most critical topics in our society today.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/05/2026
"Consider, for example, the frenzy over “retail theft” that took over local and national news after the uprisings over police violence in 2020. The same editors and reporters who wrote thousands of stories about low-level shoplifting from chain stores chose for years not to cover the estimated […]
bookwyrm.social
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/05/2026
"wage theft by employers dwarfs all other property crime combined—such as burglaries, retail theft, and robberies—costing an estimated $50 billion every year. Tax evasion steals about $1 trillion each year. That’s over sixty times the wealth lost in all police-reported property crime." — Alec […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/05/2026
"If the U.S. had imprisonment rates comparable to other countries today or like those the U.S. itself had before 1980, U.S. life expectancy would be almost two years longer than it is now." — Alec Karakatsanis: Copaganda, p. 7
bookwyrm.social
Copaganda - BookWyrm
From the prizewinning rising legal star, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract us from what matters "Alec Karakatsanis is a leading voice in the legal struggle to dismantle mass incarceration. . . . What he says cannot be ignored." --James Forman' Jr. "Copaganda," as defined by Alec Karakatsanis, describes a special kind of propaganda, employed by police and news media, that shapes our fears and influences the social investments we make to address those fears. In a country that incarcerates five times more people per capita than it used to, and far more than other countries, the sprawling punishment bureaucracy spends a lot of time and money to manipulate public perception. This results in a distorted version of threat, crime, punishment, and safety in the news, which, for example, highlights crimes committed by marginalized people while ignoring more significant harms like wage theft, environmental crime, and deaths that result from harmful behavior like corporate fraud or cigarette smoke (which make the number of violent crimes pale in comparison). The news also suggests to us that increased government repression through police, prosecution, probation, parole, and prisons is the best response, as opposed to addressing the root causes of harm. In the spirit of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, Copaganda includes chapters on "What Is News?," "Public Relations Spending by the Police," "Whose Perspective? How Sources Shape News," "How the News Uses Experts," "How to Smuggle Ideology into the News," and "Academic Copaganda." Recognized by Teen Vogue as "one of the most prominent voices" in contemporary discourse about the criminal legal system and featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club, Karakatsanis brings his legal expertise, humor, personal stories, and analytical skills to delve into one of the most critical topics in our society today.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/05/2026
rated _Homegoing_ : 4 stars
bookwyrm.social
Homegoing - BookWyrm
A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival ofa major new voice in contemporary fiction. Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows ESi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul ofa nation. Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer. --back cover
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/05/2026
"on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Le petit prince, pp. 65-65
bookwyrm.social
Le petit prince - BookWyrm
For readers who would like a quick reminder of the book and its main storyline, here is a summary of The Little Prince’s travels and those he met along the way. If Saint-Exupéry is to be believed The Little Prince is a book for children written for grown-ups. It can be read on many different levels to provide pleasure and food for thought for readers of all ages. The author, an aviator, crashes with his aeroplane in the middle of the Sahara desert. While he is trying to repair his aeroplane, a little boy appears and asks him to draw a sheep. The author learns that The Little Prince comes from asteroid B-612 where he has left behind three volcanoes and a rose. Before reaching Earth, he has visited other planets and met some very odd people: a king, a conceited man, a drunkard, a lamplighter, a geographer… Since arriving on Earth, he has spoken to a fox who has taught him that to know someone or something, you must « tame » them, and that makes them unique. « What is essential is invisible to the eye, says the fox. » In order to return to his planet and his rose, The Little Prince allows himself to be bitten by a poisonous snake: his planet is too far away, he cannot take his « shell ». The aviator, who has succeeded in repairing his plane, also quits the desert. He still hopes The Little Prince will return one day and asks us to write and tell him if ever we should meet his friend.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/05/2026
"Tu n'es encore pour moi qu'un petit garçon tout semblable à cent mille petits garçons. Et je n'ai pas besoin de toi. Et tu n'a pas besoin de moi non plus. Je ne suis pour toi qu'un renard semblable à cent mille renards. Mais, si tu m'apprivoises, nous aurons besoin l'un de l'autre. Tu seras […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/05/2026
"-Où sont les hommes? reprit enfin le petit prince. On est un peu seul dans le désert... -On est seul aussi chez les hommes, dit le serpent." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Le petit prince, pp. 52-52
bookwyrm.social
Le petit prince - BookWyrm
For readers who would like a quick reminder of the book and its main storyline, here is a summary of The Little Prince’s travels and those he met along the way. If Saint-Exupéry is to be believed The Little Prince is a book for children written for grown-ups. It can be read on many different levels to provide pleasure and food for thought for readers of all ages. The author, an aviator, crashes with his aeroplane in the middle of the Sahara desert. While he is trying to repair his aeroplane, a little boy appears and asks him to draw a sheep. The author learns that The Little Prince comes from asteroid B-612 where he has left behind three volcanoes and a rose. Before reaching Earth, he has visited other planets and met some very odd people: a king, a conceited man, a drunkard, a lamplighter, a geographer… Since arriving on Earth, he has spoken to a fox who has taught him that to know someone or something, you must « tame » them, and that makes them unique. « What is essential is invisible to the eye, says the fox. » In order to return to his planet and his rose, The Little Prince allows himself to be bitten by a poisonous snake: his planet is too far away, he cannot take his « shell ». The aviator, who has succeeded in repairing his plane, also quits the desert. He still hopes The Little Prince will return one day and asks us to write and tell him if ever we should meet his friend.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/05/2026
"Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours et toujours leur donner des explications." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Le petit prince, pp. 2-2
bookwyrm.social
Le petit prince - BookWyrm
For readers who would like a quick reminder of the book and its main storyline, here is a summary of The Little Prince’s travels and those he met along the way. If Saint-Exupéry is to be believed The Little Prince is a book for children written for grown-ups. It can be read on many different levels to provide pleasure and food for thought for readers of all ages. The author, an aviator, crashes with his aeroplane in the middle of the Sahara desert. While he is trying to repair his aeroplane, a little boy appears and asks him to draw a sheep. The author learns that The Little Prince comes from asteroid B-612 where he has left behind three volcanoes and a rose. Before reaching Earth, he has visited other planets and met some very odd people: a king, a conceited man, a drunkard, a lamplighter, a geographer… Since arriving on Earth, he has spoken to a fox who has taught him that to know someone or something, you must « tame » them, and that makes them unique. « What is essential is invisible to the eye, says the fox. » In order to return to his planet and his rose, The Little Prince allows himself to be bitten by a poisonous snake: his planet is too far away, he cannot take his « shell ». The aviator, who has succeeded in repairing his plane, also quits the desert. He still hopes The Little Prince will return one day and asks us to write and tell him if ever we should meet his friend.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/04/2026
"The vulgarisation of modern life has come from the governing class; from the highly educated class." — G. K. Chesterton: Utopia of Usurers
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Utopia of Usurers - BookWyrm
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/04/2026
"The plutocrats will be only too pleased if we profess to preach a new morality; for they know jolly well that they have broken the old one. They will be only too pleased to be able to say that we, by our own confession, are merely restless and negative; that we are only what we call rebels and […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/04/2026
"This Capitalist is an ingenious person, and has many polished characteristics; but I think the most singular thing about him is his staggering lack of shame." — G. K. Chesterton: Utopia of Usurers
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Utopia of Usurers - BookWyrm
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/04/2026
"What happens when everyone is asleep is called Evolution. What happens when everyone is awake is called Revolution." — G. K. Chesterton: Utopia of Usurers
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Utopia of Usurers - BookWyrm
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/04/2026
"Wearing a mask, a basic public health protection, became a politically charged decision. Many of the same people who publicly pushed for an end to legal abortion, including many Republicans in Congress and antiabortion terrorists like John Brockhoeft, now championed their right to choose what […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/04/2026
"Abortion is, at its core, about life, just not in the way that abortion opponents claim. Everything that surrounds getting an abortion—from the decision to the cost to travel and getting in the door—is about someone’s life, the course of that life, the value of that life. That’s why I never […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/03/2026
"The decreasing number of supportive states may end up becoming sanctuary states for legal abortion, but they can also become increasingly easy targets for harassment. If abortion opponents can’t hinder access legislatively in states like New York and California, they can do it where they’ve […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/03/2026
"Outside the clinics, however, it was easy for patients to assume—at least initially—that nothing had changed at all. Protesters were still at Capital Care in Toledo and at Your Choice Healthcare in Columbus. Almost none of them wore masks." — Lauren Rankin: Bodies on the Line They claim to be […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/03/2026
"But while abortion may be electorally unpopular in the state, it’s not uncommon. In 2017, about 2,500 abortions were performed in Mississippi,47 and the state is one of the few whose abortion rates are actually rising—a 13 percent increase between 2014 and 2017, in the years after the state […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/03/2026
"For many years, the only thing that kept those doors open and access available were clinic escorts and defenders. They showed up, not knowing what to expect, without a playbook or a script, and figured out on their own how to keep the clinics open. They used what they had—their arms, their legs […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/03/2026
"Mr. Bogart liked to have a little more formality at dinnertime, to keep from becoming savages, he joked. The British colonizers had adopted this custom when they traveled to the more remote corners of the empire, dressing in their finery to eat lentils and stewed tiger meat under a canvas tarp […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/03/2026
"[S]he didn’t care about politics one way or the other; no matter who was in charge at the top, nothing would change for people like her, struggling to earn a living on the bottom." — Isabel Allende, Isabel Allende: _Wind Knows My Name_, p. 167
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Wind Knows My Name - BookWyrm
No, we're not lost. The wind knows my name. And yours too. Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht - the night their family loses everything. As her child's safety seems ever harder to guarantee, Samuel's mother secures a spot for him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin. Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Duran, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita's mother. Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make, and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers - and never stop dreaming.
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/03/2026
"“But we can’t just open the floodgates and let millions of immigrants and refugees in. What’s the solution, Selena?” “Well, putting up walls and building new prisons has not helped at all. And ripping children away from their parents is clearly not the solution, Frank. The immigration system […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/03/2026
"I just saw the most ridiculous case yet. The judge looked straight at my client and asked if he wanted to be voluntarily deported back to his country. The client was one year old! He hadn’t even said his first word. How did they expect the baby to respond?" — Isabel Allende, Isabel Allende […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/03/2026
[CW: suicide] "In the four years the war lasted he lost everything that gave meaning to his life: his only son, who died on a battlefield at age nineteen; his beloved wife, who, stricken with grief, committed suicide; and his faith in his country, which in the end was nothing more than an idea […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/03/2026
"“The situation is utterly untenable. It will have to get better soon,” said Peter, without much conviction. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Things will only get worse. It takes selective blindness to think that we Jews will ever be able to live here with anything resembling normalcy. Violence is […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/03/2026
"To clarify: defunding the police doesn’t mean abolishing the police, though there are more radical calls for that, too. It instead means redirecting money from police budgets to other government agencies funded by the city. Defunding the police could mean more money for underfunded schools, for […]
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/03/2026
"One in three black men born in 2001 can expect to be incarcerated in his lifetime, compared to 1 in 6 Latino men and 1 in 17 white men." — Emmanuel Acho: _Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man_
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Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man - BookWyrm
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bgainor @bgainor.bookwyrm.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/03/2026
"When people proclaim that black lives matter, it’s not about saying white lives don’t matter. It is a given in this country that they do. What black people are really and truly saying is that black lives matter as well as white lives." — Emmanuel Acho: _Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black […]
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