On occasion, we here do a thread of random positivity, where we start with a thematic prompt and talk about things that are enjoyable just for the fun of it. Past examples:

We have also had a couple threads of educational-resource recommendations. These are marginally more serious, since they’re about gathering actually good explanations of things that sneerable people like to pontificate ignorantly on. But I’ll list them here because learning is fun:

Feel free to comment in the old threads and/or suggest new ones in the comments here.

  • Soyweiser@awful.systems
    2·
    8 days ago

    It is also interesting (but looking at his bsky profile not shocking) how much he predicted re genai like bots. Even if they have a different source in the book. Having bots check bot output for example. Most of the book taking place in modern iran (after a revolution succeeded) is interesting

    • BioMan@awful.systems
      4·
      6 days ago

      Working in academia I have close friends who were born all over the world. A good friend of mine from Iran has told me that the two things he has read from Egan that take place in Iran - this novel, and a short story in a recent collection in which the main character is an afghan refugee woman trying to go through higher education - capture the essence of life in Iran better than any other english-speaking work he has ever read, to the point he was questioning Egan’s Australian origin to me.