Current / Recent Books

[Oldcarpy2]

Ian M Banks Culture series.

Loved the Ship Names, like, "Poke It With A Stick":


https://wiki-gateway.eudic.net/wikipedia...lture.html

[sahgwa]

Ian M Banks Culture series.

Loved the Ship Names, like, "Poke It With A Stick":


https://wiki-gateway.eudic.net/wikipedia...lture.html

Written by a Scot, has to be humourous.
The Culture series is a science fiction series written by Scottish author Iain M. Banks. The stories center on the Culture, a utopian, post-scarcity society of humanoids, aliens, and very advanced artificial intelligences living in semi-anarchist habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy. The main theme of the novels is the dilemmas that an idealistic hyperpower faces in dealing with civilisations that do not share its ideals, and whose behaviour it sometimes finds repulsive. In some of the stories, action takes place mainly in non-Culture environments, and the leading characters are often on the fringes of, or non-members of, the Culture, sometimes acting as agents of Culture plans to civilise the galaxy.

[sahgwa]

Kenneth Grant - Hecates Fountain

In katabasis descending
To greet the Ur-Self, the primal All 
Below the haze and accretions
Of the blind and idiotic Worm
Society

To propitiate at the old Altars
The last drop of selfish Blood
And dissolve the shell
Into the Pool of All

[UltraBudgie]

Ian M Banks Culture series.

Loved the Ship Names, like, "Poke It With A Stick":


https://wiki-gateway.eudic.net/wikipedia...lture.html

they are very very good! favourite ship name anticipation of a new lover's arrival, favourite weapon the lazy gun.

banks also has a non-fiction book about whisky.

[Oldcarpy2]

they are very very good! favourite ship name anticipation of a new lover's arrival, favourite weapon the lazy gun.

banks also has a non-fiction book about whisky.

And the Wasp Factory?

[UltraBudgie]

And the Wasp Factory?

that is good too it is his first book i believe and also very funny from the non-scifi-side of banks is whit, and since this is conspiracy board i will recommend the business which i've read twice too

heck they're all good writing

[Oldcarpy2]

For space nerds everywhere, a list of fictional space ships:

https://wiki-gateway.eudic.net/wikipedia...ships.html

[Ignorant]

Any lovers of non-fiction, particularly on economics and politics?

I enjoy presidential memoirs. Obama's has been my favorite so far, I'm eagerly awaiting the second part.

Most recently I finished nobel prize of economics winner "Why nations fail" by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. The theory presented is simple and powerful, and I really enjoyed all the history lessons, but the book could've been shorter. Anyway, 86/100 would recommend.

Before that, "The myth of the rational voter" by Bryan Caplan. I wrote a review when I finished it:

Bryan Caplan wrote a popular book called “The myth of the rational voter” in which he argues that voters have systemic (economic) biases that lead democratic governments to pursue bad economic policies. It's not exactly a far out position, but in presenting his case he shows his own bias, one that is pervasive in the study of economics. It's what I'll call growth bias. Ironically, it seems systemic: If this book is any indication (Caplan frequently mentions or implies that nearly all economists are aligned with him) economics is no longer the study of how to best distribute resources, it's the study of how to optimize for growth and efficiency. Economists apparently take for granted the rather extreme view that a healthy distribution of resources naturally flows from market forces. Often, it does. But when we spend 200 pages talking about voter bias, we should seriously entertain the idea that the pursuit of growth and efficiency above all doesn't always benefit everyone, and that this may be the reason voters are “biased” against policies that optimize for it at all cost.

One of the biases he mentions is the make-work bias, which is that voters erroneously prefer economic policy that protects their job or creates jobs. Caplan's argument is that conserving labor is necessarily good, because labor is in limited supply. If your only pursuit is growth and efficiency, this argument is easy to accept. But if you're a voter, and you and everyone else in your community relies on the value of human labor to make a living, a reduction in the demand for labor is not necessarily good.

It's easy enough to think of an extreme scenario that would pit the view of voters against Caplan's. Imagine a world where human labor is almost worthless, because machines are better than us at everything. In other words: A world where AI has taken over desk jobs, and robots have taken over physical labor. Here it becomes problematic to rely on the demand for labor to make a living; there is almost no demand, and whatever salary you can expect will not pay for basic necessities. The redistribution of wealth produced by machines to humans becomes necessary. But this limits growth and efficiency, for this capital could've been invested in R&D instead. Caplan would have us all starve because we are no longer needed to achieve growth and efficiency, and, even more ridiculously, he would argue that anyone saying we shouldn't let humans starve is biased.

He talks about pessimistic bias, which is that voters tend to underestimate how much things will improve in the future. One example he mentions is climate change. According to him, we are being pessimistic in not expecting the market to tackle this problem. He seems to forget that, due to the way business works (shareholders want to make money now), it's inherently short-sighted. He neglects the established fact that there can be genuine conflicts of interest between business and voters. His dogmatic belief that the free market will fix all of our problems comes across particularly ridiculous here.

In his analysis of the SAEE, a survey he uses to compare the public's views with economists' views, Caplan takes as a premise that voters and economists have the same goal, are optimizing for the same thing, but this isn't necessarily the case. In fact I would say it's probably not the case. What this book shows most of all is that there's a difference of opinion on what a “good economy” looks like. Caplan believes the economy is good when it's optimally growing and efficient, whereas voters think the state has a role in protecting the interests of people that the market would leave behind. Who is the biased one? Maybe it is the voters, but in “The myth of the rational voter”, Bryan Caplan didn't convince me.

62/100

[Sirius]

For space nerds everywhere, a list of fictional space ships:

https://wiki-gateway.eudic.net/wikipedia...ships.html

You could have made a thread on this. They don't have the Speranza in there very sad

The Speranza is an Ark Mechanicus vessel....A massive vessel the size of a continent.....

The vessel was discovered by the Mechanicum by accident at the Forge World of Palomar. After extensive explorations, it was revealed the vessel was incomplete. When activated, the vessels machine spirit unleashed a birth scream that saw the entire world of Palomar destroyed in a radioactive hellstorm. Its Machine Spirit became a gestalt entity, absorbing the many machines that made up its new structure. Complete with a deposit of knowledge from the Dark Age of Technology, the Speranza was equipped with radical weaponry which included temporal and black hole manipulation

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Speranza

[chivo]

Believe it or not, all of them are my favs after having ruthlessly purged recently and I just can't part with all of them, at this point in time.

Well, the 'Zen' pocketbook I keep handy, when the mood strikes. I have a few classic poetry and philosophy books.

But I really enjoy re-reading 'Medicines From the Earth' by Richard Evans Schultes.

In the past, I have summarized and combined data from this gem of a book into notes.

For example: Compost accelerator: Dandelion, Nettle, Chamomile and Oak bark.

Another e.g.:

Dandelion wine -

2.3 L (4 pts) dandelion flowers
4.5L (1 gallon) water
2 large oranges
1 large lemon
50 g (2 oz) raisins
2 Tbl yeast
1.6 Kg (3.5 lb) sugar

Hi! In case you don't know, urine is a great compost addition and accelerator. Cheers