Or maybe it just seems that way. Hi, Hermetic. I'm reading Lexicon by Max Barry. A mysterious group is training gifted individuals in the secret and ancient arts of persuasion. Certain words have the power to drop "recipes into people's brains to cause a neurochemical reaction to knock out the filters. Tie them up just long enough to slip an instruction past. And you do that by speaking a string of words crafted for the person's psychographic segment." In some respects this feels like it's right out of the headlines about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, but then Barry introduces some jarring metaphysical note that pushes things off kilter. It almost feels like the meaning was changing for the author as he wrote it. And it does come to a crisis in Broken Hill, Australia. The book opens with our hero getting a needle jabbed into his eye by an unknown assailant and sustains momentum pretty well despite being one of those stories told by several observers until it all merges at the end. It's an entertaining read. I'll probably finish it in 4 sessions. 
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