Something many may not know is that beyond his own novels, Tracy was also deeply involved in Jonathan Harr's book, "A Civil Action." He and Harr were friends, and he told Harr about the courtroom case. Later, when Harr would get stuck, he worked with Harr to edit and give feedback on his drafts.
He always spoke more about "Mountains Beyond Mountains" than his other works, I think because of what he had to endure to write it. It caused him severe illness and health problems due to the locations he had to go to.
He was extremely proud of the other work he did, like "Mountains Beyond Mountains," but I'll always remember the bookcase where he kept every edition of "The Soul of a New Machine" in every language it was printed in. I think seeing that his work was worth being translated into so many languages was for him the biggest achievement of all.
I feel like I've been waiting for this to mature for a decade. I love that the vision has been realized despite the enthusiasm for functional programming languages cooling off somewhat.
That's actually brilliant! Most of my classes only taught what tools were needed to accomplish coursework, not generally useful tools. Even our OS class focused on the workings of the kernel, not the Unix philosophy and how it influenced what tools were included, and how to use them. Then again, 20 years ago the year of the linux desktop was much farther away than it is today...
While Russia is not quite a western country, the European upper classes around St. Petersburg and Moscow were no less "western" in philosophy and thought than people from nearby Latvia, Ukraine or Finland.
Tolstoy delighted in Schopenhauer, a western philosopher who he based much of his later ideas on. And yes, Tolstoy was later influenced by eastern thought, and was famously a Sinophile, but that is, again, a western tendency common among upper class europeans of the period (along with Japonisme).
Furthermore, "War and Peace" is often called one of the greatest works of "western literature". It's even included in Encyclopedia Brittanica's "Great Books of the Western World".
Just because the Russian Empire wasn't universally western doesn't mean large groups of people within were not. My own great grandparents came to America from St. Petersburg and considered themselves western.
The only thing that can make Russia "western" is if you equate white and western.
MAGA is western, because it is American. Russia is not western, because it is neither europe nor america. And they themselves consider themselves east. And did for over a hundred years.
If you have traveled a bit around the world, and first hand experienced different cultures, you will recognize that Russia of Moscow/Petersburg and other big cities is much closer to 'west' than to 'east' of China/India/Japan/Mongolia/Indonesia.
Maybe not western enough for you, it does have a distinct flavour (but then Sicilia is also distinctly different from Sweden), but still much closer to Europe than to Asia proper.
> The only thing that can make Russia "western" is if you equate white and western.
The thing that makes it western is similarity of culture, philosophy, religion, social structure, historic exchange and cross-pollination. [0] All of which exist well within the range set by countries that you would have no qualms of calling western.
It is very similar to the rest of Europe on all those axes, in a way that Indian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, Native American, African[1], Polynesian culture, philosophy, and structures are not.
Yes, there are some peculiarities about it that the anglosphere finds alien. The same can be said for any distinct culture within the western sphere.
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[0] Keep in mind that when I am speaking of Russia, my claims cannot be generalized among all of the ~100 ethnic and cultural groups that compose it. Just of the ones that make up the country's political center.
[1] I am speaking from a position of incredible ignorance when I just roll up an entire continent into 'African'. It's quite likely that people who know their ass from their elbow would be able to tell me why I'm wrong to do so.
Live in ex-urban MA and it’s not common but have had a couple of multi-day power outages in both winter and summer over the decades I’ve lived here. Don’t remember the details of the summer outage but the winter one was a massive ice storm.
The major ice storm I remember might have been 2012 or 2013. There was also a different snow storm (maybe that was 2010?) at the end of October when all the leaves were still on the trees. My parents lost power for something like 6 days (so much damage the crews were swamped). I had been visiting them, and gtfo as the snow was falling, and never lost power 2 hours away.
I think this comes back to the framing of the article, stated as universal truths when it's really just someone who was woefully unprepared for a snow storm and subsequent power outage. Life threatening and horribly inconvenient for them yes, but nowhere near a universal experience.
Prepare a few days ahead getting groceries, gas, etc. Make sure firewood totes are full. It starts snowing. Do a little shovel work to keep fire fed, if power goes out (rare, but always possible of course) a little more shovel work to set up generator. Wait for snow to stop, clean up with snowblower/tractor/shovels/etc, taking a variable number of sessions depending on how much snow fell.
The main lesson is "be prepared", not all the little things the author got surprised by due to a wholesale lack of preparation.
Going wholesale generator prep takes a lot of effort and money. Never gone quite that far. I did have a major outage in, I think, 1998. Ice storm was bigger in Canada than where I live in Massachusetts although still ended up with power being out for multiple days.
I'd say the cost highly depends on what you put into it. 2-pole breaker ($30), OFBRND transfer lockout ($20), 20ft of NM-B for inlet right next to service entrance ($35), OFBRND inlet and extension cord ($100). Then a small synchronous generator $250? So that's <$500 total? Of course you'll find yourself saying I want a bigger generator, I want non-OFFBRAND electrics, I want this other extra, and the total cost creeps up.
As an adolescent in Fayette (Maine), I had great fun helping out our neighbors with summertime tree-pruning parties. FWIW we had few power issues during winter, and our winters frequently featured 4-6 feet of snow cover.
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