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Saturday, August 28, 2021

The Fascinating History Of Books That Claim You Can Learn To Think Smarter

There is no hierarchy in the web of life

“Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.”

— Lucretius, On the Nature of Things


Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough. 
-- Louis de Bernieres


 TIME - How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned Goodreads Into Many Authors’ Worst Nightmare: “Since its launch in 2007, Goodreadshas evolved into the world’s largest online book community. The social networking site now has millions of users who rate and review books, find recommendations for new ones and track their reading. But over time, Goodreads has also become a hunting ground for scammers and trolls looking to con smaller authors, take down books with spammed ratings, cyberstalk users or worse. With over 120 million members worldwide, Goodreads is far and away the most popular—and influential—digital book database. When the site was purchased by Amazon for$150 million in 2013, The Atlantic reportedthat: “When all is said and done, in the world of books, Goodreads is just about as influential as Facebook.” With few serious competitors, Goodreads’ influence has only grown. According to Erin Stein, an editor and publisher with experience heading Macmillan Children’s Group’s Imprint and working for Little, Brown and Company, the publishing industry views Goodreads as a “necessary evil.”…


Blog Herald: 8 Examples Of Home Improvement Blogs


 have a great excuse to spend time in bars since they collect coasters or beermats. They should probably team up with labeorphilists, or collectors of beer bottles

Helixophiles probably throw the best parties—they study and collect corkscrews.


20 Obscure Words to Describe Collectors


Ten Observations on Lullabies The Honest Broker


5 Commonly Used Idioms in the Tech Industrygitconnected


Back from the wilderness Times Literary Supplement.


Apes say hello and goodbye, just like people do, research shows CNN


Kim Stanley Robinson: a climate plan for a world in flames FT


Dissecting multi-stakeholder forums and how they shape forest governance Forests News


The Future of Wood in Electric Guitars Reverb. From 2020, still germane.




Getting To Know The Shocking Shirley Jackson

To one angry reader, Jackson responded with a single line: “If you don’t like my peaches, don’t shake my tree.”



The Fascinating History Of Books That Claim You Can Learn To Think Smarter

The idea of reading to help us think better (whatever that means) waxes and wanes with the times: "A decade ago, the fashion was to be pessimistic about the prospects of improving our thinking, and even about the value of thinking at all." - The Guardian 


The Harvard Gazette: “In March, Batsaki, executive director of Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks research institute, library, museum, and garden in Washington, D.C., and a group of colleagues launched the Plant Humanities Lab — a digital repository of information and narrative storytelling on the historical and scientific lives of plants like the peony, turmeric root, and the banana. The project is part of a broader movement in humanities research that engages with critical questions of climate change and knowledge production. Researchers come from the social sciences, biology, botany, and other disciplines that rarely converge in academia. Through collaborative storytelling and information-gathering, they hope to shed light on the historical relationships between humans and their environments — and improve our current and future relationships with nature…”


Do Women Philosophers Do Different Philosophy?

Underlying this question is a sense that our voices are not seen as philosophers’ voices, but primarily as women’s voices. It is as if women would necessarily have a distinctive point of view, as a group. - Aeon


Why you need and how to work with a book indexer: a guide for authors


I have been an editorial freelancer for nearly 20 years and seen many changes in the publishing industry. A major one is the amount of indexing I now do directly for authors. Fewer publishers now commission indexers, so their authors are told to do their own index or to find an indexer. The author is therefore now more often responsible for paying for the index. Some authors can get grants from an awarding body to pay for their index, e.g. universities for academic authors. I have heard of authors who refuse to pay for the index, putting the responsibility back onto the publisher, but this could risk the book having no index at all. Nobody wants that outcome, so the decision is then whether to index the book yourself or find an indexer



   

Are you interested in mastering Rust? Have you been scrolling endlessly to find just the right set of tips and tricks? Fret not! Your search is over. Read along.

Rust is a multiplayer-only survivalist video game that rapidly gained popularity. It has no purpose, no objective, and there is no correct way of playing it. Players choose however they want to advance and what “guidelines” they wish to follow. As a result, it is a very successful and enjoyable multiplayer game. Not to forget the stunning landscape that each player is accompanied by …

Rust