WaDef7

joined 1 year ago
[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

To be fair when it comes to this kind of research comparison with modern hunter gatherer societies is the closest thing you can find to evidence, some things never enter the archaeological record.

Perhaps we'll never find conclusive evidence pointing to any one of the theories on these missing-finger handprints.

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 77 points 9 months ago (6 children)

I'm not sure I understand, epub is both the industry standard and an open format, as far as I know. Why not work on using it or build it around epub from the get-go?

I have to admit I'll have to wait for the project to start implementing epub to consider getting on board, but it's still a great effort.

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Any pointers on how to do this? I was thinking about doing something of the sort to some of my books which are too unwieldy to read comfortably but I can't imagine how to get a readable ebook out of this process, and pdfs always end up being too heavy for the devices I read on.

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Interesting article, the statistics section was quite surprising. I wonder if there were as many fantasy books in school libraries before harry potter came out.

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I resonate with a lot of what you're saying, and yeah, I don't think I'll feel too guilty about taking a break or two since I can get back on it whenever I want.

My one problem with the amount of footnotes is that they can be so dense and cumbersome that the stream of consciousness sections didn't even feel like a stream of anything: it was like when you repeat a word so often you start losing your grip on what the word itself is. Of course they're helpful to an extent, a considerable one on a work like this one, but if this book was so wild and innovative when it came out I want to feel some of that!

Also, thanks for the recommendation! It sounds like something I'd really enjoy

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Out of the three authors you mentioned I think Joyce is the least approachable to be honest: Proust's one difficulty is his very slow rhythm (and if you manage to adjust to it there's a nice payoff on the other side, I loved the first book of the recherche) and I generally find Woolf quite pleasant to read so I'm not the right person to ask on the account of any difficulties in reading her work.

To ge back to Dubliners you may encounter some difficulties with the things left unsaid or only to be understood thanks to a wider context; it is however a much simpler writing mechanism than all that happens in Ulysses. I got by with some introductory notes that didn't bog me down that much and I enjoyed the effect Joyce was aiming for in those works.

I hope I was helpful and I gave you enough context to judge my point of view relative to what your tastes may be.

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm slowly (although understandably, I believe) going through Ulysses by James Joyce and I'm trying to find a balance between the massive notes and engaging with the text itself.

I know that, especially in the English speaking literary world, it is customary to stand in the former camp but I can't really gel with that, it feels like I'm reading something other than the book, and I didn't really have this problem with Dubliners.

When I end up reading all of it I suppose I would then be ok going back to it later on reading all of the notes, but I've tried doing that as a first read and it didn't really work for me.

It's 's too early to even connect some thoughts, so I'm more looking for recommendations than able to give some to others!

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 64 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If I were a professional athlete I would feel in the right to refuse to shake the hand of an athlete coming from a country proven to have a state-sponsored doping program significant enough to warrant that country's flag being banned from the Olympics long before this war.

Clearly this was about the war, but let's not pretend sportsmanship was intact before this handshake debacle came to be.

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the recommendation, it was just the sort of thing I was looking for!

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Many people here are talking about buying an iPad and the pencil, but if all you're doing is reading papers I think this is a massive overspend. There are many inexpensive android tablets that come with pencils plenty good enough for handwriting or non-artistic drawing.

Of course, you say you have a job so you're likely not to need to buy the cheapest thing possible (even if you don't, you're not forced to buy an iPad, Samsung's tablet software is quite good), but I don't want someone with the same use case, who might just be a student, to get the impression they need to spend a grand to read pdfs.

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I agree, these systems are fundamentally a very good thing and the more cars they're in, the safer we are on the road.

I just don't think they'll be substituting human beings at the wheel of cars in the near future, and I personally think it's not so good of an idea to frame it like that.
I mean, we've only automated some, not all metros all over the world, and no passenger trains at all. If we haven't figured that out yet, I can't see how self-driving cars are supposedly just around the corner.

[–] WaDef7@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Sure we're talking about very few deaths, but it still is a design flaw, as it has trouble recognizing a specific kind of motorcycle. I would say that makes it more of a bug that hasn't been patched out rather than a mere statistical error, but I am not well versed in actual software development so someone else might come up with a better analysis.

As for human input, I agree, this is a very different case from, let's say, an experimental self-driving car. However I still believe Tesla's decisions play a part, for example the naming scheme they chose, autopilot rather than assisted driving or some other admittedly less enticing name.

Of course one might say that people with a car license should be able to see through basic marketing, but it might nonetheless influence people's behaviour, even if just subconsciously.

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