Books

Title from the article. Interesting article, with some good words from our DRM-free favorite Cory Doctorow.

I know this is a children’s book but I bought it for me. It seemed very relevant to our present situation.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/9659718

I've had this book for quite some while. My presence in Austria and exposure to philosophers working on Nazi-era biologists made me realize that a few of the historical German biologists that I've come to know and admire are actually successful and/or famous because they collaborated or are part of the Nazi rule over science.

It was wonderful that this author decided to take a year of leave from teaching biology to conduct the research needed to write up this dissertation. And now, more than ever, is the time to read it.

"This study is an attempt to answer the question of how National Socialist politics and ideology influenced the development of biological research at the universities and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes in Germany." -- p.1

In the foreword by Deichmann's dissertation advisor Benno Müller-Hill, who supervised the work, and the author's introduction, we learn that 13% biologists were dismissed between 1933-38, mostly for racial reasons, that 75% of those were able to emigrate, and that many of them went on to become internationally successful scientists. A main conclusion of this book is that the inward-looking, self-isolating Third Reich biologists and the nationalistic turn of science (e.g., publishing only in German journals and conferences) better explains the substantial decline of the biological sciences during this period, more so than the antiscientific attitude of Hitler and the (horrible) brain drain.

I really look forward to learning more about what it is like to be a biologist during these times-- especially for those who stayed and thrived through collaboration. I'll be updating my reading notes in the comments.

Offline gadgets:

Physical copy of book, but see link for an archive.org loan copy

Writer deck: kinesis Freestyle 2 split keyboard plugged into an old smartphone ("distraction-less" compared to a laptop)

Situation: baby finally fell asleep, half an hour of reading before adult bedtime

Location: desk

edit: I'll be writing about my thoughts in the comments of the original post

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/9648876

A stroller walk and a 1.5 nap bought me a precious two chapters into these exciting new books.

#Language of Climate Politics

The "Language of Climate Politics" caught my eye because the author quote posted a comment on Bluesky that her book is the best of the genre. As someone trained in philosophy, psychology, and biology at a graduate level and now working in the field of science & institutional communication, I've always been fascinated by the way concepts/conceptions/words move people.

If you already know a bit about the reality of man-made climate change and the different ways people react to it (from denial to alarmist to optimistic to neutral to doomist), it's useful to skip directly to the final pages of chapter 1 "How to Talk about the Thread of Climate Change-- And the Fight to Phase Out Fossil Fuels". Threading the tight line between despair and evidence-based optimism, the author suggests redirecting our attention from the facts around the projected future to the "people maintaining the systems that are destroying the human future" and the way their political language achieves this goal. "Keeping the language and the actions of all these people in view will help stoke a healthy outrage over fossil-energy interests' depraved indifference to the destruction of the only world known to support life." The goal is to END the languages that are silencing climate change action.

I look forward to seeing her exposure of propaganda and politik-talk in the next chapter.

#Careless People

Like most people, the Streisand Effect of loud censorship bringing attention to the censored led me to this now best-seller. I bought the audiobook off of Libro.fm, which is my current source of audiobooks (that I will truly own as mp3 and mp4 files). From a story-telling perspective, the author really nailed this down. The first two chapters are fun, outrageous, but also relatable stories. Excellent story-telling. I've never been this engaged with a straight narrated audiobook before (I usually listen to poetry and performances). My mind usually wanders when someone is droning about in the background of whatever it is that I'm doing... but this strollerwalk with the book was excellent.

Offline gadgets:

"Language" PDF ebook: Quaderno A5 e-reader

"Careless" Audiobook: Yoto player & card

Microjournaling: L!FE B6 notebook

Baby status: evening stroller walk and nap

Reading location: walk (audio), cafe (ebook)

Fandom Link (not recommended)

Just wanted to recommend this series, the idea of a parallel book world and its execution is damn fun. The plot is nice too, even if it gets very outlandish toward the end.

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/mary-shelley/frankenstein

Sharing another book that is free to download and own, depending on your local public domain laws. Enjoy!

"Mary Shelley (then Godwin) and Percy Bysshe Shelley were visiting their friend Lord Byron in Geneva one rainy summer. With the weather against them, they decided to spend their time writing ghost stories for each other. Frankenstein is Mary Shelley’s submission to their contest, later published anonymously in 1818.

For me, I have very little in my life, so it's something of an escape into another world.

Finished Amulet series by Kazu Kibushi.

Love the story and art-style. Highly recommended for fantasy fans, specially younger audience.

Read Changes by Jim Butcher, book 12 of The Dresden Files.

I was expecting some "changes" due to the name and how people talk about the book, but wow, they changed everything. From the first line of the book to the last, it was fully captivating.

Wanted to start the next book right away, but held myself back.

Read Aftermath, the novella after Changes, from Side Jobs , short-story collection in Dresden Files world. This was the last story in the book, so I have officially finished Side Jobs too.

Many side stories are from point of view of different characters, and this was also from another character's point of view. So it was interesting to see how they view the world and hear their inner monologue.

Looking forward to where the story goes from here.

Started Streams of Silver by R. A. Salvatore, 2nd novel in Icewind Dale series, which is a subseries of Forgotten Realms series (D&D world).

Just started it, haven't even completed chapter 1, so can't say much about it.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

There's a Midyear Bingo check-in post, do take a look. Even if you haven't started this year's Book Bingo, you can still join, as there are ~~still 6 months remaining~~ only ~~5~~ ~~4~~ 3 months to go!

For details, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and it's Recommendation Post . Links are also present in our community sidebar.

Shroud is a really good piece of hard sci-fi that explores first contact with an alien intelligence. It has creative world building, good characters, and a creative take on alien life.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27050557

Just sharing another video, enjoy!

"Why set a novel on a train? The answer might seem obvious: it’s a narratively and atmospherically rich space, an enclosure in which strangers are cooped up, each with their own different reason for making the journey."

It was talked about like a really big deal, and that it dealt a blow towards the Controlled Digital Lending-scheme. IA also had to remove 500k books. But how is Internet Archive able to keep continuing lending out many books as they were before? What were the real consequences of Hachette v. Internet Archive?

Finally there are some more methods to tackle LCP DRM, but the messages to the creator from Readium consortium is so frustrating. Just read this:

"We were planning to now focus on new accessibility features on our open-source Thorium Reader, better access to annotations for blind users and an advanced reading mode for dyslexic people. Too bad; disturbances around LCP will force us to focus on a new round of security measures, ensuring the technology stays useful for ebook lending (stop reading after some time) and as a protection against oversharing."

Also on Mastodon

@[email protected] suggested that we should update our community icon. It was discussed here: https://discuss.online/post/16967486 , and some suggestions were provided.

Now, the time for suggestions is over. I am going to make a top level comments for each option. You can vote whichever one you like the most.

In a few days (or a week) we will choose the icon with most votes.

Note: Do not make a new comment in this post, any new comment posted will be removed. You can only vote.