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Did you decipher the footnote at the bottom of page 177? If there’s something fun/cogent there, I’ll keep bashing my head on it, but (this probably betrays my general feelings about the book) I don’t have a ton of confidence in that.

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Hey LSM, I had to pull my copy. I even put the numbers into perplexity AI to see if there’s significance. I think it has something to do with chronology based on the downfall of “the technocapitalist chrosophere” and western time.

For the text, I put the first half into the AI and using some assumptions about cryptography it came up with:

“"The time has come; and about the me the not and not of the not ... and the me the definition and until the definition is complete,"

Sounds like some Heidegger, honestly haha!

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Ha, ok, I took a similar approach but didn't get quite as far. Thanks!

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Your guess is as good as mine. I have to say I thought the book kind of petered out at the end, which I looked at again when researching that footnote. I guess I expected something bigger, rather than another essay.

When it comes to unorthodox narratives, I think there are probably books that do it better. Dictionary of the Khazars is one of my favorites, and House of Leaves also comes to mind. But this book also gets points for extreme sci fi theological weirdness. It's unforgettable, that's for sure.

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Agree with your assessment, with the caveat that I really started skimming at some point. I enjoyed House of Leaves, so I think I'll need to check out Dictionary of the Khazars. Thanks for the recommendation!

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Oh yeah and likewise if you have any recommendations of similar books would love to hear them. I’m always up for reading something unconventional.

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Good review, but how do you feel now about its time-bound framework in the wake of the Gaza war? It's not as time-bound as we thought it might be, is it?

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You’re right. The Middle East is a perennial cauldron of conflict, unfortunately. However, I will say that oil extraction has largely been unaffected by the current conflict. I think that’s because the USA has increased its production so drastically that the usual oil rich countries have much less sway. If I’m an oil company exec and I have a choice between building extraction capacity in the conflict ridden MENA economies or in the USA, I know where I’m putting my capital investiture.

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I haven’t read the book but i imagined that I had and i didnt like it

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That’s fair. It’s not for everyone including if you imagined you read it.

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