|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Member
Also, as an aside. You really need to watch out relying on amazon for books via Kindle. They can reach out and edit the content without notifying you. iTunes has also been pulling content/lost licenses to songs that I had purchased. They were automatically deleted from my library with no warning and I had to call to figure out what happened.
Site Sponsor
That's why I don't have any kindle books or music from itunes. I saw people get content snatched 10 years ago.Originally Posted by ryanm
It's hard to be a ACLU hating, philosophically Libertarian, socially liberal, fiscally conservative, scientifically grounded, agnostic, porn admiring gun owner who believes in self determination.
Chuck, we miss ya man.
كافر
Site Sponsor
Yes. Congrats on getting all the way through Atlas. Much as I love Rand as a political thinker, her books were painful and she desperately needed an editor. She would express the same idea presented twenty different ways and believe she had presented twenty distinct ideas. She also should have avoided fiction and simply wrote about world politics, she didn't do fiction with the same expertise or impact as Orwell. She understood many, many things...but sadly she was a terrible writer and her stories bordered on the absurd. And that left her vulnerable to critics who could then dismiss her politics along with her ideas and books.
The books that really made me understand things in the last 20 years are:
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Pl...2336146&sr=8-1
Really gives you an understanding of the eventual outcomes that are gonna happen no matter what despite what we do or don't do concerning global warming.
https://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Co...s=books&sr=1-1
Same authors with why we aren't constantly being visited despite the Drake Equation.
https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-St...s=books&sr=1-1
Why Europe conquered the Americas and not the other way around. Diamonds only failure is the recognition that after civilizations are born, culture is a very limiting factor as well and even we suffered a "dark ages" despite access to domesticated crops and animals.
And Sapiens really put everything else into perspective.
Haven't followed up with Diamond's "Collapse" because once you mention global warming you kind of lose me and while he has a good grasp on how things began I don't think he see's the big picture enough to divine the future. I think he caved to some of his critics when he pointed out some basic truths in Guns, Germs and Steel, which is ironic because he overlooked a big factor of why so many cultures arrested.
Also haven't followed up with Homo Deus because it seems like exactly the same thing happened, Harari wrote something profound but a lot of people's feelings got hurt so he wrote a "me too" book about how humans will probably destroy themselves via the usual suspects. Stating the average American is 1,000 times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda is a non starter because humans have a choice about eating at McDonalds which doesn't in any way make it a greater threat.
Seems we are still shouting down critical thinkers when they express unpopular, "but you know it's true" viewpoints. But this is nothing new...Socrates, Galileo, Razi, Copernicus and even Alan Turing.
It's hard to be a ACLU hating, philosophically Libertarian, socially liberal, fiscally conservative, scientifically grounded, agnostic, porn admiring gun owner who believes in self determination.
Chuck, we miss ya man.
كافر
Senior Member
Yes.
I have lost a few digitally purchased albums I bought to replace cassettes and a movie or two somehow.
They are on an old IPAD and my desktop but ITunes won’t let me put them in my library on other devices.
I have all my books on two older IPADs I only take out of airplane mode one at a time to put new books on them.
Edit- I only buy hard copy books now if they are old stuff not on kindle, or I am a huge fan. I have hundreds of books I will not get rid of. I have not thrown out CDs I loaded into ITUNEs either. I still have a stero with huge speakers they sound better on.
Last edited by ramairthree; 02-21-20 at 22:13.
“Where weapons may not be carried, it is well to carry weapons.”
Site Sponsor
I have a massive library. People are selling off print books for pennies as they switch to digital. I've scored some rare old hardbounds for less than $10. I can't read anything on a kindle / ipad, it drives me nuts and hurts my eyes. I can't imagine trying to read an entire book on a computer or worse a phone. I'm usually reading 4-5 books at a time and they are in a pile on my nightstand, I usually read for a half hour when I go to bed.
I have a large digital music library but only because I like to burn custom CDs. I have a metric shit ton of vinyl I'll never part with. I only had to learn from one hard drive crash that if it's important it better be on something besides a drive.
Photos are the only thing that is a current challenge. It's getting harder and harder to find a high quality photo printer, most everything is a disposable inkjet box that produces shit grade pics regardless of what high gloss photo paper you might use. Nothing worse than taking a fantastic picture with a Nikon and printing out something that looks like a comic book.
One of the secrets of the digital age is everything has become "disposable." Your music, your books, your photos they will not outlast you very long. No one has to worry about becoming the caretakers of the family photo albums and a couple upgrades after you pass even your facebook page (or whatever it will be in the future) will stop being supported.
Photos taken in the 1930s will probably outlast everything taken in the last 10 years. What's really frightening is how easy historical revisionism will become once the internet is centralized and controlled.
It's hard to be a ACLU hating, philosophically Libertarian, socially liberal, fiscally conservative, scientifically grounded, agnostic, porn admiring gun owner who believes in self determination.
Chuck, we miss ya man.
كافر
Senior Member
Download, then Calibre plug-in to remove the encryption and you have them forever.
You bought them, not a license to read.
Senior Member
I was that way.
I could not imagine not having books.
I could read a book in the semi dark without thinking about it.
It drove me nuts reading on Kindle.
Then I needed really good light.
Then I needed reading glasses.
Then I needed really good light AND reading glasses.
With an iPad I could get away without either and it became my main reading venue.
“Where weapons may not be carried, it is well to carry weapons.”
Banned
Y’all boomers hijacked dafuq outta this thread. Hahaha, no worries.
Steyr: I DL’d a sample of Sapiens for the kindle app. Read a chapter: it’s interesting but I can’t shake the observation that the author takes some guesstimates for granted, and passes them off as fact.
Obviously much of early humanity is impossible to know much about. We have some skeletons, we have some artifacts and drawings, we try to fill in the blanks from there. But, I’d rather have someone tell me “I don’t know” than “here’s probably what happened” in those situations.
Site Sponsor
I'm doing both and can't imagine not having books. I look at a screen too long and my eyes hurt.
I really didn't get that from any of his stuff. It's not like Forbidden Archeology or something where it's all just "this is what I think." And like the Hoffman video, you have to take it in it's totality to understand what is being presented. If people just watched the first 15 minutes without any of his supporting ideas, it would be easy to reject.
It's hard to be a ACLU hating, philosophically Libertarian, socially liberal, fiscally conservative, scientifically grounded, agnostic, porn admiring gun owner who believes in self determination.
Chuck, we miss ya man.
كافر
Banned
Alright, I’ll keep it on the list.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks