The Art Of Gathering by Priya Parker

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker illuminates invisible social dynamics that neurodivergent individuals like me often struggle to perceive. It offers insights into how we can attend social gatherings or host our own. Building horizontal relationships and communities is an effective form of resistance against authoritarianism and fascism, and it’s a skill that we can learn and teach each other.

The Art Of Gathering by Priya Parker

The book also offers valuable advice on hosting events for diverse cultural backgrounds and redefining social conventions that cater to all attendees.

The Art Of Gathering by Priya Parker

I used to host unconferences where we taught people how to use open-source technologies and build communities. The book was particularly useful when hosting tech and unconference events with colleagues.

The Art Of Gathering by Priya Parker

Nowadays, I sometimes host gatherings in my home and try to prioritize guests who are single, live alone, queer/trans, or not part of privileged heteronormative couples. The book offers helpful tips and validations for community development and hosting gatherings in personal or professional life.

Your Art Will Save Your Life by Beth Pickens

Your Art Will Save Your Life by the Queer writer Beth Pickens is a guideline and slim handbook about surviving fascism by creating art and sharing it with your community and community building as an antifascist tool and means of staying politically engaged.

The author wrote the book in 2008 during the first period of Mango Mouselini’s presidency. The book also provides additional guidelines for artists to sustain their practices of creating art, navigating the art world, residencies, and funding.

It’s time we reclaimed the cyberspace

Coming from the Y2K era of open-source innovations, the Internet could’ve been enjoyable and beneficial, but the tech Broligarchy ruined it for everyone! It’s time we reclaimed that space. I miss the Un-conferences and other community events where we built tools for the goodness of humanity!

Fascism is here, it’s time to wake up

Y’all, fascism is here now, and those of you who are still in denial better wake up and participate in taking action before more people get hurt and more of your democratic and scientific institutions are destroyed.

Also, it’s time to do some soul-searching. Suppose you have been harbouring any ideas that align with fascist ideologies. In that case, it’s time to purge those before your humanity is lost.

Shape — The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else — by Jordan Ellenberg

Geometry and Graph Theory were two of my favourite topics at University. I particularly enjoyed solving physics mechanics problems using geometry proofs rather than writing a long list of equations whenever possible.

Shape—The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else—by Jordan Ellenberg was a particularly satisfying read despite my only understanding of about 60-70% of the material and skipping over the mathematical works and proofs in the book.

Shape covers recent and relevant topics, such as epidemics, the spread of infectious diseases, artificial intelligence, and democracy. The book’s final chapter explains how gerrymandering votes work in Republican states and how Republicans redraw the electoral maps whenever they take office to change the outcomes in their favour without facing legal consequences.