Today is Easter Monday, which is a holiday in the UK. I wanted to spend this morning reading Joe Carlsmith's Otherness and Control in the Age of AGI sequence. The playlist banner taking up space at the bottom of at the bottom of my Kindle Fire screen is annoying, especially because it doesn't quite hide the text behind it, just makes it very faint and blurry. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get rid of it and now I'm angry, not relaxed. I am not amused. Just tell me how to get rid of it, please.
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1So you're the same person who wrote that Magic: The Gathering Colour Wheel article. I really loved it and I thought about it a lot (then I mostly forgot about it until today).
For your next Substack post, maybe you should just post links to the best stuff you've written, so new readers know about it.
This was a really interesting read. I am definitely a person who instinctively wants to categorise everyone as either male or female, and seeing transgender people makes me feel uncomfortable (I don't know any personally, although I do know a nonbinary person). But I enjoy reading about people's internal experiences relating to their sex or gender.
This comment really explains your idea better than the original post
This was a useful review, thank you
Some books I liked this year:
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change by Charles Duhigg
Maximum Willpower: How to Master the New Science of Self-Control by Kelly McGonigal
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee
The New Few: A Very British Oligarchy by Ferdinand Mount
The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better by Tyler Cowen
The God Species: How Humans Really Can Save the Planet . . . by Mark Lynas
and
Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction by Damien Keown
I think the titles are self-explanatory . . . if I had to recommend just one book it would be The Power of Habit
The two things I really enjoyed watching this year were The Queen's Classroom, a Japanese Drama serial from 2005 about the elementary school teacher from Hell, and WataMote, an anime serial which is a black comedy about a high-school student with social anxiety disorder. I loved both of them, and would happily watch them again.
Some novels I really enjoyed this year:
A Song of Fire and Ice. This is the series of books that the TV show Game of Thrones is based on. I read if for the second time this year and enjoyed it more than I did the first time.
The OreImo light novel translations by NanoDesu (online). This is a Japanese light novel series - a comedy about a teenage brother and sister with a love-hate relationship. If you like anime and manga, you might like it.
Wool by Hugh Howey and its prequel Shift. Wool is a dystopian science fiction novel set in an underground community (I mean, literally under the ground). I'm looking forward to reading the third book in the trilogy, Dust.
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder and its sequel Little House on the Prairie. These are children's books about life on the frontier in North America in the late 19th Century (I think?). I found them very interesting in their portrait of what life was like for a mostly self-sufficient frontier family.
The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella. This is a fluffy but entertaining British chick-lit comedy-romance about a high-powered financial lawyer who messes up big time at work, runs away, and becomes a maid to a middle-aged nouveau riche couple.
I read Yotsuba&! (all volumes) for I think the fifth time this year. It's a gentle comedy about a five year-old girl and her single-parent father. It's currently Japan's bestselling Manga.
Great, thank you :-)