House of Leaves

furthermore, it’s reinterpreted as a false flag or something that never really happened - there is never accountability

ContraPoints did an excellent video on conspiracy theories recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teqkK0RLNkI

Question: what is the significance of /qa/, why was the board banned in the first place, and why did the hackers bring it back?

sorry, I should have clarified that I was talking about active communities (where users regularly visit and interact)

Meaning there isn’t an instance for women, nor are there multiple communities - as far as I know there’s just this one community.

this is a bit of how Blahaj works as I understand it, so it’s a good model - if anything I would think Blahaj might already be poised for this kind of instance-level protection of women

EDIT:

one of the Blahaj guidelines does include removing bigotry, including sexism, and would be a candidate for a safe space for women:

Inclusion and Acceptance

Embracing inclusion and acceptance means listening when people tell you who they are and what their needs are. It means not telling people that you know their experiences better than they do. It means not gatekeeping experiences of identities of others. It means no bigotry such as racism, sexism, anti LGBT commentary, ableism etc. It means doing your best to ensure that you don’t over-talk the voices of folk who don’t share your privileges.

That said, the women spaces on Blahaj are mostly for trans women, so a more general women’s community would be nice.

unfortunately I think this is the current answer, at least on Lemmy.

not familiar enough with libby or the narrators, but here are some fun non-fiction books that aren’t biographies, pop psychology, or self-help, but which might have general appeal:

• almost anything by Bill Bryson, e.g. At Home, A Walk in the Woods, A Short History of Nearly Everything, basically just science writing at its best
• 1491 and 1493 by Charles C. Mann, which debunks a lot of the common myths about Columbus, indigenous Americans, and American colonialism. Excellently written, these are enjoyable as well as informative.
• anything by Michael Pollan (I personally find him repulsive in his mindset, but he’s well liked by others): The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and How to Change Your Mind are all well received

less likely to have general appeal, but which I enjoyed and found important personally:

• The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart, a critique of business and management philosophy. I had no idea MBAs were some of the least successful at running businesses and that philosophy majors were some of the most successful - eye opening and particularly relevant if you’ve ever worked an office job.
• Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt, a physicist who was fired for writing this book which critiqued the academy for the way it socializes professionals
• A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart, this book radically changed my view of mathematics as a discipline and unlocked for me me ways to approach math in a way that was enjoyable and productive

sure, of course - I just meant my memory of the book wasn’t that it emphasized industrialization in particular - I remember the evils of poverty, and of company towns, and so on … automation wasn’t a theme I particularly remember from the book, even if it is certainly related. That said, I read the book decades ago, lol

Interesting, my experience was that it was more a critique of capitalism than about industrialization itself …

you may be interested in the book How to Read the Bible by James Kugel

most books I read impact and change me, lol

With regards to politics, reading Marx (especially the 1844 Manuscripts) and Chomsky initiated a major change in my ideological thinking, and from there it was mostly history books helping fill in the details.

Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, for example, was a history book that really impacted my way of thinking.

let me know what you think of it, it was something academic philosophers I know were using; it reminds me more of a reference book, though (it’s not really an intro book or anything)

Have you read The Philosopher’s Toolkit by Julian Baggini? Your book rec made me think of it 😅

Think and Being Good by Simon Blackburn

Think covers common topics an intro to philosophy class would cover.

Being Good is the same, but for an intro ethics class.

It’s written in an accessible way, not like a textbook. Both books are very short and digestible.

+1 to Ted Chiang, besides Exhalation there is also his original collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others.

rsync is not really comparable to syncthing, it’s like comparing Excel to C++ or something. I need to be able to get lay people to install and use it, and syncthing has a UI that allows this while even I would have to do some work to get rsync to do everything syncthing is doing for me right now.

is there a more efficient alternative that isn’t centralized?

Thank you, I do think this was mentioned in the article I linked, and it does seem like Harry Potter is a good example of a mixed system. In my mind what makes it a soft system more fundamentally is how the author is inconsistent and the way magic is never really restricted by rules, even if there is a lot of focus on classes and how the spells are conjured, etc.

https://habitwriting.com/hard-magic-vs-soft-magic/

Hard Magic System: A type of magic that has specific rules that the reader understands and which limit a magic user in what they can do.

Soft Magic System: A type of magic that–though rules may apply to it–does not have specific limits that are expressed to or known by the reader or audience.

Basically how much readers are exposed to the mechanics of the magic system, and thus how realistic or constrained-to-reality the magic seems. Harry Potter and LotR are probably more in the soft magic category, whereas Brandon Sanderson’s novels have good examples of hard magic.