Wouldn’t putting them in freezers waste FAR more energy, though? 🤔🤔🤔

;-)

We lost all our books to Hurricane Michael, but for me, this is not so much a problem as I struggle with books these days, but my phone works fine as a reader, so I have them all electronically. :)

Relevant

There’s definitely a lot in Foundation to aspire to. And Asimov’s writing in general - the zeroth law, for example. It’d be nice to have his robots with the three (yea four) laws, for sure.

I’ve always had problems with Heinlein. Early on, my problems were more that his dialogue just seemed… too pat. He couldn’t separate his characters in his mind, so they always had the perfect comebacks to what each other were saying.

And as I got older, I have more and more problem with his women. But then again, I adore Isaac Asimov, and he can’t write women well, either. But better than Heinlein.

I’d say benevolent dictators are absolutely possible, but they are impossible to plan for. If there is room for any dictator, there is no good way to filter that to only benevolent ones. I think the best practical political systems tend to assume people will not be benevolent, so try and set things up so that people are incentivized to act benevolently as much as possible.

On r/discworld, Mort, Guards! Guards!, and Small Gods were the three most recommended ones to start, besides those like me who argue for publication order (with the disclaimer about the first 2-3 or so)

Not that I’m an expert, but I did create /r/Discworld, so I got to see a lot of opinions.

There’s a couple of main philosophies. The one I agree with less is reading “subseries”. First of all, many books really imho cross thos lines anyway, so you’re going to miss stuff… but… that’s one option.

The thing is, Sir Pratchett himself wasn’t so happy with his first coupld of books. The Colour of Magic is a bit different - he was writing as a parody of fantasy. But as he went along, things kinda took off and it became a thing.

Frankly, my advice: Just suck it up. Colour of Magic isn’t bad. Commit to at least reading through Mort, which is IIRC the 4th novel.

If that makes you nervous, then choose one or more of the traditional starting ones: Mort, Small Gods, Guards! Guards!. If you read all three of those and like it, just go back to Colour of Magic and read in publication order. The world evolves as he writes and it’s a better experience.

But if you get enthralled with the night watch over the witches or whatever, the google “Discworld reading guide” and you’ll find it and can see the “subseries” and do as you please.

If you’re anything like me, though, starting at around Mort and from then on… I always read a novel when it came out and it was pretty good, but when I re-read it almost immediately, I noticed so many more things. That’s how I fell in love with the books. They are not one-time reads.

I’m on around my eighth or so full readthrough of the entire series - on Making Money right now. I don’t think everyone will do that many, but for me, almost all the books are old friends, and I still notice new little details.

His writing is so… compact. So many scenes with more than one subtext going on. He often writes scenes with dialogue happening that’s critical to the story, but something in the background that just adds to the world might be happening at the same time.

I think specifically where a couple of bumbling night watch are talking about something, but as they’re sitting there, they’re watching a man slowly paint the name of his boat on his boat, but instead of painting “PRIDE OF ANKH-MORPORK” he’s painted “PRID”, so they’re talking back and forth, anticipating the painter noticing… and at the end of the scene, he does. And it’s just so… so human, so delightful. The novels truly taught me the beauty of humanity.

There is, however, probably no real wrong way to read them. Someone on r/discworld claimed to be reading them in literally reverse publication order and enjoying them. So that’s probably valid. But I would say: publication order hands down. Or whatever way you’ll actually go out and get started. :)

In his Discworld novels, Sir Terry Pratchett gave me a love for humanity. He’s so good at writing, but especially at characterization. The people he writes are just so human, and for me, it increased my empathy for people overall.

Also, even though I’m an atheist, after having grown up fundie Southern Baptist, I’d like to think that if the spiritual and supernatural exist, that it works somewhat along Discworldian lines. Certainly there are two Deaths that I wouldn’t mind meeting: The Discworld Death, and the Sandman Death (Neil Gaiman).

But it was with Pratchett’s help that I’ve come to believe that there are no good people and no bad people. Just people, and all the choices they make. Which in some ways makes “evil people” more terrifying, because I believe they make those choices. But it’s also heartening: People can choose to be better.

The principles expressed in the novels helped me change my views on what’s important: I think the most important thing you can do is to make others’ lives a little better, if you can. Huge projects like social safety nets, but even making a stranger laugh for a moment and brightening their day.

This life is all we get, and anything that makes it better is the main thing that’s worth anything at all.

A very quick turn let’s you see the other half.

Okay, I’ve turned over the paper and the back side is blank.

I think you miss the point that with a globe, you can’t easily compare different parts of the earth. Do you truly not understand the advantage of being able to see all of the earth at once? Come on, dude.

Okay, you show a globe, or rather, represent a globe on a 2D surface.

Now you cannot have a single map that shows everything. And your 2D representtion is distorted anyway.

And it’s ironic that the “small-government” Republicans fascists always step up to recive “socialist” funding when it benefits them politically or personally.

That you and your daughter rock aside, anecdata alas does not trump statistics.

Well, this has the potential to positively impact a project I’m an active part of: Simutrans. Simutrans is FOSS, so if software became required to verify age, it would definitely cause issues for us. So this is potentially some good news.

While I personally dislike age verification, I’m only a little worried about government overreach. Not totally unconcerned, mind, but I’m not so sure it’ll generally be quite as huge of a deal as some seem to think. But I don’t particularly like it.

So to me, this is a potential positive step in pushing more to Linux/FOSS, which I think is generally a good thing. And if I’m right and age verification isn’t a huge deal, I still think this is good for that reason. And if some of the more worried folks are correct, then this potentially could be huge.

I dunno¹, they’re probably pretty decent quality guns…

¹ I do get the reference - nicely done

:waves hands furiously: YOU SAW NOTHING

I guess you don’t have enough… :puts on sunglasses:… Tenacity

I love articles like that - a nice break from the political realities. It’s relaxing to read, and the pics are nice :)

If you’d like, I can help you with the following:

• Research why he died
• Suggest alternative men to hire instead
• Alert you when more news is available on this story

I don’t.

…because I waste it on my desktop computer. :/