The Dilemmas of Lenin Book Review

Tariq Ali
Did this book make me more sympathetic toward Lenin? No. Did it help me understand the historical context of the revolution he helped bring about? Yes. From an explanation of Lenin’s terrorist lineage, to the final chapter revealing his failure to root out corruption and authoritarianism, Ali is not kind to the Bolshevik leader. The book manages to explain the Russian revolution in terms of its relationship with various political movements that came before it. Lenin sought to avoid the mistakes of those failed movements, but in doing so he re-created some of the hierarchy and brutality of the aristocratic world he had set out to destroy.

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The Importance of Being Earnest Book Review

Oscar Wilde
Wilde is just so much fun. This whole play is one big elaborate pun, exposing the absurdities of formal high society. In a world where style is valued over substance, a flippant attitude toward it all is just what you need to stay sane.

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Island Book Review

Aldous Huxley
Sorry, but this book does not live up to the hype. Marketed as a utopian counterpoint to Huxley’s Brave New World, it instead perpetuates the most boring tropes of mid-century scientific colonial thought. This book was written in the early 1960s, when former colonies around the world were freeing themselves from centuries of European tyranny. And yet Huxley’s vision of utopia is one where the colonizer influences and “modernises” Indigenous culture. But that’s not the worst part of the novel. Island really falters by violating the principle of “show, don’t tell”. Instead of immersing the reader, this story scrapes along with second- and third-hand accounts from characters who are far removed from the action.

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Other Side of the Game Book Review

Amanda Parris
A short play that pulls the history of Black Power activism forward to modern-day Toronto. The police and prison system are ever-present threats as the scene jumps back and forth between the 1970s and today. A great jumping-off point for learning about Canadian Black political activists — and for realizing how far back the fight for justice stretches.

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Bylines

Subscribe to your favourite Canadian writers no matter which publication they appear in.

https://bylin.es

Contexts

Slides from a presentation I prepared about software architecture in the real world. Tech isn’t a bubble. It’s affected by, and affects, a user’s environment, social biases, business models, and the other software it interacts with.

http://samnabi.github.io/contexts

Traction

A self-hosted, file-based solution for mass email campaigns. Traction was developed for Hold The Line Waterloo Region’s campaign against Bill 66. We coordinated with dozens of local advocacy groups. Community members sent over 18,000 emails to local mayors, councillors, and members of provincial parliament. In less than a month, Bill 66 was amended to respect our demands.

https://github.com/samnabi/traction

Walk on Gaukel St.

In September 2019, Gaukel Street in downtown Kitchener was transformed into a fun pop-up park. Now, working with a group of downtown community members, neighbourhood associations, businesses, and city staff, we are working on a long-term plan for redesigning Gaukel St. as a pedestrian-first urban park.

https://gaukel.ca