Hypervigilant supertaster and bibliophile. I am not a bot! I am a human being!
Welcome to the free world!
I find it strangely hard to care about the fate of a handful of multimillionaire tourists when hundreds of refugees died last week due to the indifference of the Greek authorities - and the media barely noticed.
"Good content"? You mean like the stuff that's on Facebook now?
Yes, Infinity. Actually I used the official Reddit app until all of this hit the news. Then I deleted that app and switched to Infinity. When infinity goes, I'll delete it and I'm done with Reddit except on an alt account on my desktop. And that will just be for correspondence.
He's finally part of the "in" crowd. Notice that both Republicans and Democrats are pretty much eager to avoid looking at his crimes; instead both parties are just fundraising off of him.
Would different parts of the community be hosted on different instances, thereby spreading out the burden? Or would the entire community be mirrored to each of the hosting instances, thereby providing backup security?
I've actually been wondering about that. For example, what if an instance with a popular community went down or defederated from everyone? Would all the content of that community be lost to everyone else? I'm guessing that under those circumstances one or more new communities would be started to replace the "lost" community, although things could get complicated if there were more than one trying to replace the original - or if the original community refederated after the replacement communities developed.
That would be awkward in some cases. Say, if a non-Nazi ended up on a Nazi server by random chance.
I agree completely! And thanks for clearing up the disassociative identity disorder question, because I actually was wondering for a second. 😆
But if #1 is too hard, the ability to download all of your data from a login and possibly upload it to another account would be a good stopgap.
If you want to try Herbert but aren't ready to tackle Dune, try his Whipping Star. It's a great book, and more accessible than Dune.
Dune is about as difficult a book as you are ever likely to encounter, unless you ever take up James Joyce's Ulysses. But there are a huge number of great science fiction books out there that are much more accessible.
Frank Herbert's short stories are much more readable, for example. And many of them are quite good.
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 1 is a collection of classic short science fiction stories. It's some of the greatest science fiction ever written, and definitely a great introduction to the golden age of the genre. Most of the authors represented in the book have published volumes of short stories themselves as well as novels, so this is a good place to find authors you like!
I can't recommend the works of Cordwainer Smith strongly enough. The son of an American diplomat, he grew up in China. His writing style was greatly influenced by Chinese storytelling styles. He wrote science fiction that wasn't like anything anyone else wrote, ever.
Many of his stories are in the public domain in Canada, and are available via FadedPage. The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (1993) is a print collection of all of his short science fiction. Start with "Scanners Live In Vain", one of his first and most famous stories. His one science fiction novel is also still in print: Norstrilia (1975). It's a classic. Smith is not to be missed.
Larry Niven is definitely one of the foremost hard science fiction writers in the field, and quite possibly the best. His Tales of Known Space are outstanding. The series includes many novels as well as short stories. Ringworld (1970) is the best known, probably. The Ringworld is a classic Big Object, a ring a million miles wide and the diameter of Earth's orbit encircling a star; it has living space equal to fifty million Earths. Earlier novels in the series include Protector (1973) and A Gift From Earth (1968). Niven's short story collections are really excellent, too.
Robert Sheckley’s Store of Infinity (1960) was the first science fiction book I ever bought for myself. It was a very lucky find, because a better collection of dazzling short stories would be hard to imagine. It’s a great introduction to his work. Among the many wonderful and hysterically funny stories in this book is “The Prize of Peril”, which predicted reality TV (and its worst excesses) decades before it happened! Sheckley is arguably the O. Henry of science fiction.
Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series is a classic of humorous science fiction, featuring an interstellar criminal turned reluctant lawman.
The Retief series by Keith Laumer is a riotously funny science fiction parody of the diplomatic corps. Laumer also wrote the Bolo series about self-aware military tanks; it's not a comedy, being much more about honor and loyalty. Yet oddly enough the two series have connected a couple of times.
James White's Sector General is rare and special: a medically-themed science fiction series with an underlying sweetness. Sector General is a galactic hospital in space, staffed by an enormously broad selection of alien species that are brilliantly imagined and detailed. The hospital and its medical ships are frequently a place for first contact with new species. The stories themselves are often about interesting and unique new medical problems.
Jack Finney's Time And Again (1970) is a very memorable time travel novel that includes images from the past. It damn near convinces you that time travel is possible, and that you could do it. I'd highly recommend it; it was on the New York Times bestseller list for a ridiculously long time. There’s a sequel, too.
The Past Through Tomorrow (1967) collects most of Robert A. Heinlein’s “Future History” stories, which are some of the greatest stories of the golden age of SF. Those stories broke science fiction out of the pulp magazine ghetto and made it mainstream.
H. G. Wells wasn't just one of the founders of the genre of science fiction; his short stories were macabre, incredibly imaginative, and unforgettable. Project Gutenberg has all of his works, I believe, but Standard eBooks has a great collection of a lot of Wells' short stories available free in all the major ebook formats. You can read the book online at the link, too.
Note: Please consider patronizing your local independent book shops instead of Amazon; they can order books for you that they don't have in stock. Amazon has put a lot of great independent book shops out of business.
And of course there's always your local library. If they don't have a book, they may be able to get it for you via inter-library loan.
If you'd rather order direct online, Thriftbooks and Powell's Books are good. You might also check libraries in your general area; most of them sell books at very low prices to raise funds. I've made some great finds at library book sales! For used books, Biblio.com, BetterWorldBooks.com, and Biblio.co.uk are independent book marketplaces that serve independent book shops - NOT Amazon.
Happy reading! 📖
P. S. - I'm not a bot. My son just said I sounded like a bot. 🫤
If you've read Frank Herbert's Dune, National Lampoon's Doon (1984) is a brilliant parody. It absolutely nails Herbert's writing style. I recently reread it, and I found myself laughing out loud on just about every page. It's the best parody I've ever read!
That sounds great!
- Anticonsumerism
- Asexuality
- Dating
- Google Services
- Suggest Me A Book
That's mostly outside of my area of expertise. I work with databases, but not from an app perspective. How can we find people with those skills? Post on Lemmy?
So what? We'll create one!
Years ago the owners of GoodReads announced that Amazon had taken away their access to the Amazon book database. It was an existential threat, they said, and asked the GoodReads community to volunteer to create a new book database to replace Amazon's. Hundreds or thousands of us worked for free, donating thousands or tens of thousands of hours to the project.
And then GoodReads announced that they'd sold out to Amazon. Apparently they'd been in negotiations with those bastards the whole time they were lying to us about losing access to the database. Maybe proving that they could sucker their loyal users into donating free labor helped raise the selling price of GoodReads a little.
As for the database we created, I guess it's Amazon's now. Of course, if we create a movie database of our own, NOBODY will be able to buy it! And we can make it available for free use, if we want.
Free speech and corporate ownership are completely incompatible.
If you have a CSV file of previous reviews from Goodreads or some other site, you can import it into BookWyrm. Look me up when you get there; I'm @BobQuasit@bookwyrm.social .
Thanks, that's good to know! I've been wondering where I can make recommendations for features to be added. Although I'm sure the devs are working themselves to death right now.
After so many experiences with having online platforms sold out from under me by venture capitalist scum, I'm not inclined to trust anything owned by a corporation or single person. I'm on storygraph, but I'm not going to put effort into it. I think BookWyrm has more of a future. Even if the current owner of StoryGraph has good intentions, you never know what could happen. It seems as if things always go bad.
That seems unnecessarily complicated! But I appreciate the info.