@Ravix Also, apologies I probably was due to reply to you somewhere at some point about something (others too) but i've been christmassing a bit lately
No apology needed, enjoy your Christmas that's what it's there for. It's a little odd knowing people who do celebrate Christmas so early, but interesting at the same time. It adds to that already 'otherworldy' feel, like a time traveler of sorts. I did celebrate a couple of times in England and it was on the twenty fifth but it felt really strange.
I will say this though, I've been away for maybe two weeks already and I've been on and off writing a post to Tjuz. Is one hundred and fifty thousand characters a lot? Would it even fit? I'm writing parts each day while I sneak away. It's very boring here and I have another two weeks to go. I've been 'outside' too.
I.E. behold the new avatar. It was minus fifteen at the time, it's gotten warmer again it's only minus one.
Last night my Government decided they wanted to ban Whatsapp now too, I almost got cut-off from my friends on those other networks, then my discord dropped because that was banned last year too and I had to keep refreshing my VPN and virtual servers. Everything is banned now, all social media, all gaming networks. It's not even me I'm worried about, it's the other one hundred and fifty million people. I can skirt the restrictions and have help to crack any network but I'll be glad when I'm back on your side of the globe. It's gotten too V for Vendetta here.
Did Santa come? with another sword or possibly a shield this time so you can really work towards home defense. I imagine there was something game related.
If you were to read The Witcher books, you'd have my undying attention, of course
You mean these? I can link to my home server in real time and grab a book off the shelf. So technically I could, I only bought them because they are part of my gaming genre. I will try eventually.
@GirlVersusGame I've not been to any of the places you mentioned, outside of the UK, southern Europe and a couple of trips to the US (before it all fell apart), I'm not really well travelled. I keep returning to Scotland as I love both the place and the people there. I perked up when I saw you mention the Holy Grail, but you meant the "proper" one and not the Monty Python one, so I hadn't been to that place either. We visited a castle outside Stirling last summer because one in our party was a huge fan of Outlander and she had mapped out all the filming locations. This castle in Stirling was, apparently, one of them, but I found, when watching my 4K of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" recently, that that very same castle was the one used for most of the castle scenes in that movie as well
I finished 'The Thursday Murder Club' this morning. I will have to see what other cases they get involved in, but the first book was a lot of fun.
Next up I have 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius & 'Nausicaa of the valley of the wind' by Hayao Miyazaki. As I'm still waiting on 'The Last Wish' & 'Empire of the Dawn from my local library so they will no doubt factor into my January 2026 reads.
@FuriousMachine I'm only one behind you as 'The Thursday Murder Club' was my #49th book of the year but I've also read a tonne of collected comics/manga this year so my total is #66 but the reading community can be a bit snooty about such things, so I'm never sure to count them all as one or split them into groups. Same thing with audio if I were to start listening to a load of those.
I'll be sure to list everything I've read on here once we get to the final few hours of the year.
@MightyDemon82 I say count 'em all It's your experience that counts, not theirs or anyone else's when it comes to reading, if you ask me (and I do include audiobooks as "reading" for the sake of this argument). One of the books in my 50 was a 22 page short story, but, as I mentioned, seeing as the average page length was 350 I'd say I still average 50 novel length books and that counts for me, even if others would disagree.
Christmas has been very good; lots of relaxation, good food and, most importantly, time with family. Now I'm back in Oslo and will spend the weekend gaming, reading and watching movies and TV shows (I want to check out the adaptation of "Thursday Murder Club", as well as "Abraham's Boys", which I read the other day. Also need to finish off "Pluribus", which I've been enjoying).
@FuriousMachine I don't think most people have been to those places, but they do have a rich history once you can shove away from the politics of the region. So much of the world, natural history and just beauty is locked behind so much unnecessary arguments and flair-ups. Scotland is so very unique, it was similar to one of Ravix's posts on here, with the sheeps, and the hills. It was downtime for my Partner, he went fishing and seemed to enjoy it. I didn't see much of anything but I did enjoy the quiet. A couple of weeks later this arrived. They actually remembered my birthday. Really nice people. I need to go back.
I'd like to visit Boleskine House in Scotland. It was the home of Aleister Crowley, where he performed his six-month Abramelin ritual. That's why he bought it, for the direction each corner faced for the ceremony. I doubt you've read it but the The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage explains it all, six months because of the purity and purging that's needed to reach that state of 'place'. There's a very obscure movie called A Dark Song, it features parts of that Abramelin ritual. It's probably one of the most realistic portrayals of the Occult that you'll see. At least as far as the ceremony and perpetration goes. It requires extreme solitude, fasting, and prayer, so Boleskine worked perfectly. Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) is a former owner. He was fascinated with Crowley's work and a major collector of his material. It's near Loch Ness.
Isn't it great visiting locations like that Monty Python one? England seems to just preserve them that little bit more. I don't know if it was the same castle but I bought a script-book there and those coconut (horse feet sound) It's probably the same place. The proper Holy Grail is as equally interesting, but then The Da Vinci Code came along and almost ripped it off word for word. Baigent's book was one of the first English books I read, definitely one of the first five. Then I read the Nag Hammadi Scriptures, they are similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls, then it was onto Zoroastrianism. I saw you mentioning atheism before, I like seeing how other cultures perceive and project faith, how it shapes their culture. The Sumerian culture especially for it's anthropomorphic Gods and Goddesses, it was my first deep-dive into polytheism. You've seen my GR page, it's a little obscure. Anthropomorphic polytheism also figures into Norse mythology, they were also seen as flawless and absolute, not what I see with monotheistic beings.
That's why I hardly post in this thread, everyone seems to be reading fun fiction and I'm off to the side like Dean Corso in Polanski's Ninth Gate. Which by the way is based off a book too, The Club Dumas by Arturo Reverte, it's a very good read. If you hadn't noticed those five hundred books on Witchcraft are there because I did practice it for a time, I started where most people do with Wicca then left that behind quite early for a more advanced school of thought known as Enochian magic. It's based off of a very early Renaissance form, if you've heard of Edward Kelley and John Dee? It's ritualistic and ceremonial. I don't practice anymore. People already think we eat babies and all of those wild notions. Or perhaps it was adrenochrome.
@FuriousMachine That sounds good to me. Next year I have a load of chunky books lined up, that have been on my shelves for a few years now (War & Peace, Shogun, The Count of Monte Cristo, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, King Sorrow and Lonesome Dove being the main ones). So my overall total won't be as high as the last few years, but thst doesn't really matter. But like yourself I feel a sense of achievement once you hit the 50+ mark.
Christmas was great. Spent time with family, ate too much good food and got some new books and Waterstones vouchers.
I mentioned to family members and maybe on here that I fancied digging into the history on renaissance painters, mainly the 4 the TMNT were named after and what do you know, my sister-in-law gifted me a book on Michelangelo, I've been lucky enough to see his work when I visited Rome many years ago. My favourite Ninja Turtle is named after him so it's a good place to start.
@GirlVersusGame everyone loves heilan coo's. We want to hear about your books that are off to the side too. I like a good mix. My next read is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and i'll probably look into some of the titles you mentioned in your post.
@GirlVersusGame@Ravix 😂 Yeah, the two avatars definitely look alike. I figured Rav’s was the guy Henry from KCD. Mine is actually what was put out by ChatGPT when I said, “Make for me a picture of a wizard in a Santa hat”
Clearly AI used Henry of Skalitz as heavy inspiration, for some reason.
Now, you all can shame me for using generative AI.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@MightyDemon82 I never understood why farmers didn't cut their bangs or fringes, I do now. My Dad used to read Marcus Aurelius and Sun Tzu, he was big into military history and philosophy. I was probably more interested in Thomas Aquinas but I did listen, especially to Sun Tzu. Actual strategy seems to be a relic of the past, now it's all about how many drones you can use to blanket one area. Sun Tzu can be applied to business too, he teaches the importance of leadership, in understanding your competition and in understanding yourself. I can't think of many other military strategists that focused on attaining their goal with minimal causalities on either side. Nor can I think of many philosophers (Marcus Aurelius) who understood internal control.
I latched onto many of his ideas like, real happiness doesn't come from power or physical attainment, it's what you find in yourself. He understood a kind of balance between self and nature that translates directly into that first form of Witchcraft that I did study. He had a certain reverence for nature, that's Wicca. My approach was never attainment, or power over others or things, magic is very transactional. I looked at it more like a system of direct gratitude to whoever or whatever put me here, along with a reverence to those who went before me, what they call ancestor worship. Every Occultist I met saw it differently, so I moved away from direct involvement and finally just stopped. Santa Muerte was easier to agree with, there is a focus on healing, acceptance and protection there that gets ostracized by mainstream religion. Protection being something I saw as more important but it's a system of constant reverence and it's not my culture, nor does my Partner want statues of giant skeletons around our home. I can't blame him.
Those same qualities of stoicism and virtue are more common in White Witchcraft. The idea is that you use it to benefit others and harm none. Have you heard of Aurelius's Inner Citadel? That's something I often apply to daily life, it's a kind of system of emotional reliance and inner strength. I see it as right now I can look at the window, wait maybe thirty minutes then watch military vehicles fly past, that's external, it's conflict. I can then go into another room and just focus on the quiet and the calm then internalize that peace. A kind of meditation, when it does work I find that inner peace, which I don't think people try to find often enough. It feels like we more often turn to something electronic to fill that void, which is more noise and distraction. If you saw me mention permission to speak when I was talking to Tjuz, that's an extension of that inner peace and calm. It fits that dynamic and relationship but it also allows for a lot of quiet reflection and the time needed to formulate an opinion without just bluttering it out. I can go a whole day without saying a word and feel nothing but that Inner Citadel. Aurelius understood solitude as necessary for self improvement, growth and of course self reflection. I take his teachings literally. I prefer that strict level of thinking, study and learning.
That's one thing agoraphobia reinforces in you, absolute quiet and calm, which when channeled correctly leads to that same inner peace. I'm not thinking about what's 'outside', I'm focusing on what's internal, it keeps my mind free of clutter, it allows me to hyper focus on my studies, books and such. Do you know this quote 'nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul'. These are words I live by, I see the world outside as that battlefield, constant movement, shifting politics and geopolitical destabilization. Real peace is internal.
Thomas Aquinas also believed in solitude as being a key component of self reflection and study, he practiced meditation. He saw solitude as being something that was needed to really gain an understanding of life. He did mix with people, but he was selective. Descartes followed the same line of thinking, he was able to understand the balance and difference between solitude and loneliness which I think are very different. Nietzsche saw solitude as one of the most important virtues of real learning, he talked about it as if to suggest that in order to become an individual with free thought you had to remove yourself from the herd.
I understand his views on social duty too, what my Dad called philanthropy. It was his idea that if you have, you must give back. I see the same thing with Marcus Aurelius. It might also be where I adopted the idea of certain things losing their sparkle, he talked about it as a kind of seduction, one that if left unchecked would blind man to his true purpose. Something I see everyday. That also leads back into what he called selective association, I do try to find other avenues of association simply because I don't always agree with those who do focus on that seduction.
I'm not all that familiar with his views on faith but I also adopted his Mementi Mori, I don't look at death as something to be feared. It's natural, I think it's unhealthy to hide it away. I understand a more traditional view of death, I knew from a very young age that it was part of the life and noticed that with Marcus Aurelius too. I never agreed with his views on promiscuity though, I don't believe in moral judgement. I see it as live and let live, without tolerance I'm blind. I do agree with his views of intellectual equality, but I have very old world views on all of the rest. My thinking there would be more in line with the philosopher Rousseau, but not projected onto others or society. More-so as something that works hand in hand with that Inner Citadel. But ninety nine percent of women on the planet wouldn't. Possibly the men too, but again live and let live. I'd argue that stoicism is deeply rooted in that same thinking, Aurelius understood this by not imposing his will on others journeys. He was also a strong believer in living in the now, something I can definitely get onboard with.
It's a long reply but I like Marcus Aurelius and philosophy in general.
@Th3solution I'd only shame you if you were aiming to make money off it and should have hired proper artists instead. This is harmless, in my opinion (well, aside from the fact that it helps bolster a rapacious technology that will consume natural resources at a truly alarming rate, but that's another discussion for another thread another day)
@MightyDemon82 That looks like a good list! Wish I could read "Shogun" for the first time again; fantastic novel! "King Sorrow" is also on my list for next year. I'm a big fan of Joe Hill and I'm currently reading novellas from his "20th Century Ghosts" collection between novels.
That's a cool gift from your sister-in-law, sounds like she's paid attention and put some effort into it. Tell her some random Norwegian on the internet approves
@GirlVersusGame I echo @MightyDemon82's sentiments, I'd absolutely want to hear about what you're reading and what you take away from the experience (whether you liked it or not, if you felt you learned anything meaningful, etc) if you'd be interested in sharing Not all topics will be of equal interest to me, but I will always be interested in reading what you think no matter what.
As an example, @BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN and I have very different interests and tastes, but I really enjoy following the reading journey and every now and then our interests align.
Like the "Malcolm X" autobiography which I just added to my reading list, for example. How are you liking it so far, @BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN?
@Th3solution You got further than I did with that one.
They pawned me off with an emoji the second time.
@FuriousMachine I'll make sure to leave out the over one thousand books on Ufology and the seventy on psychology, I'll just say that when you spend a lot of time in the clouds you see things and learn to be a trained observer, that's part of studying aviation too. You have to understand what's in the sky. I've seen so many things over Eastern, Northern European, and Russian airspace that no one could explain. That's why I started reading those books, I got tired of being told it was 'something else'. We were in very remote airspace many times and nothing else should have been up there, it was the same when I visited a certain military base with my Dad. Something showed a lot of interest in that place. It was just up there just sitting in the sky, then shot upwards in a straight line. So I started writing to people like Nick Pope (former Ministry of Defence) and that's why one of my few friends on GR is Whitley Streiber. He wrote Communion, the same book that was made into a movie with Christopher Walken. I've talked to him about all his books and his work.
I started writing to those people maybe ten years ago, then the disclosure movement happened and I found a way to fund the movement. I've probably written maybe three hundred letters to different figures, scientists, physicists, witnesses, current and former NASA employees. It's not something I've only seen one or twice, ever since the invasion I always see things up there and they aren't ours nor are they anyone else's. I think the message is 'stop doing that'. Commercial pilots can't report what they see, our guys talk about it with me and I spend more time in the cockpit than I do in my seat.
Seeing those kinds of things really does change your life, I didn't read all of those books out of curiosity. I'm trying to figure out what I'm seeing up there, it doesn't matter what time of day it is either. We were still flying when air-space was originally restricted, it was diplomatic. The invasion had just happened and there were so many strange lights up there and even following us along. We were followed by something over the Mediterranean once, really fast and we were probably traveling at about 1,100 km/h. It was right there the whole time. People were nervous, I just wanted to know what it was. Then we were then met by F-15s or F-16s and it just accelerated and was gone. The jets are common, it's protected airspace, that thing wasn't. It might sound insane but I think whatever that, or they are, is drawn to areas of conflict. I never see them over England or parts of mainland Europe. It's very strange.
It gets even stranger too. When we landed I went to sleep, I was exhausted it's a really long flight. I had a vivid dream that a certain family member died and they were saying goodbye. When I woke up I was told they did, right around the same time that thing followed us. I instantly emailed Whitley and asked if he ever heard of any kind of connection between what's up there and what I experienced. He said this.
I can't explain that evening at all. no one else did either, or the countless other things I've seen up there. That was a kind of spark of interest, I couldn't just say 'I didn't see that', everyone else did.
These two then showed up above where I was staying. The soldiers just watched them, we all did. They were beside each other with a little distance, they started to move together then move apart. But fully together like when you hug someone and became one, then separated. I watched them sit in the sky for thirty minutes then they just blinked out and were gone gone. I do not sleep for ten hours, I did that night. Then I had that dream.
I think the strangest was a kind of carnival wheel? in the sky, it was off to the left as we were over Siberia, it had lights on it, a kind of violet, it seemed to go behind or become? clouds and then it was gone. I sent that one to Bob Bigelow (Aerospace and original owner of Skinwalker Ranch, I've talked with his consciousness research group too) I saw a string of lights over Turkish airspace once, they weren't drones nor aircraft flying in formation and they were much too high for flares, they were like a string of twinkle lights that danced around in the sky. That was maybe two years ago, another was a green light that showed up one night, and seemed to dart from one corner of the horizon to the next, that too was over a body of water. Whitley told me if you do give 'it' notice you'll see it more, sure enough he was right. I do think it's conflict though, it's interested in conflict, maybe it wants peace. It's really strange. I want peace too. I half expect to see something else when I fly back to England.
@GirlVersusGame it seems you're well versed in philosophy already, I'm only at the beginning of my journey in the field. I have only read Plato's The Rebuplic and tonight will start Meditations.
"Do you know this quote 'nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul'. These are words I live by". I wasn't aware of the quote, but it's a wise one and something I do quite often myself.
@Ravix Ok, that helps make a little more sense of that interaction at the end of the book. I like that explanation of what the wish was - a sort of binding of their fates to save her life. I know enough about the series to know that Yennefer is a love interest, but I had no idea their relationship was so complex and nuanced.
As far as The Last Wish discussion in general, I am really glad that I was so wrong about Geralt and about the world at large. I was turned off my him in my initial exposure in the game, not realizing what the setting was and what a Witcher really was and did. In a way, he’s the classic “grumpy protagonist with a heart of gold”, not that different from Joel in TLoU, or Kratos, or even John Marston and Arthur Morgan. It’s probably my favorite hero archetype, actually.
The difference I’m seeing so far with Geralt is there’s a little more moral ambiguity to what he’s doing. I mean, Joel and Arthur were previously bad men who have a redemption arc trying to navigate morally grey areas, but Geralt strikes me as someone who lacks a redemption arc, per se, and really doesn’t necessarily need a redemption, rather the world he lives in is in need of major moral change. And he’s something of a torn character, not only imperfect but heavily swayed by this imperfect world.
My favorite aspect of the book is how it challenges the thought of what separates human and monster. And it often subverts that notion where the humans are the real ‘monsters’ and vice versa like the very first story about the … striga (? …I’m not going to be very clear on character and creature names here but I’ll give the jist…) and how it’s actually an innocent child victim of itself. And the story about the desirable princess with all the suitors being in love with the monstrous looking guy who shows up at the feast to cash in on the promise he received for saving her father. Or the story of the other beast at the cabin and his wandering lady lover who was killing people in the woods and it was hard to really determine who’s the bad guy here. I’m starting to feel Geralt’s struggle to do the right thing in a world that has no place for him. Like the story about the wizard who wants him to hunt the lady who is after him, only to find out she’s just trying to kill the wizard because of the horrible things he’s done and she tries to get Geralt to actually help her take down the wizard, who’s clearly the bad guy, but he has to tell her he’s not a hitman for hire and he has a moral code of not killing humans, no matter how horrible they are and that he’s just a monster killer. The way he sticks to his guns on what he is ‘allowed’ to do or not do was really interesting and in a way, frustrating and I think he wants to do what’s morally right but is often caught in the middle, and I can understand that it’s a slippery slope that if he makes an exception and starts to hunt down bad or evil humans, what does he become? He ceases to be a Witcher and essentially becomes a vigilante. And then, who’s to say who is right and who is wrong? Can he trust himself be the judge of who should live and who should die?
So in a sense it asks the reader the question: What really makes a monster? Is it the creature with fangs and claws, or the human whose is cruel, spiteful, greedy, and conceited? How does a man stay maintain his humanity when his job is to be a killer? I think Geralt is a man perpetually caught between two worlds.
We’ll see if I’m on the right track about the narrative direction. I’m hoping that the future stories can uphold these themes though.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@GirlVersusGame Hmm…. That’s interesting. The only rejection I got from asking ChatGPT to make pictures for me was asking it to make a picture of Han Solo wielding a lightsaber and it said the request did not follow their content policy. Then I asked for Indiana Jones with a lightsaber and it gave me:
Not sure what the difference was. Maybe just ask it “can you make some pictures for me based on my descriptions” and see if it will even try. If it says yes then ask what are the parameters. Maybe there’s some region blocking of the function.
And, just to clarify, I don’t sit around asking AI to generate art for me. I literally have had it make like 5 or 6 pictures over the last year when I was trying to think of some interesting avatar profile pics for my account. I’m not a soulless AI using monster! 😅 😜
Edit: I just asked it why the Han Solo thing was rejected and it said because I asked for a copyrighted character, but my Indiana Jones request was for an ‘adventurer who is dressed like Indiana Jones’ which was allowed.
@FuriousMachine Yeah, that might be my bigger concern with the resource consumption. Each AI inquiry consumes some crazy amount of energy compared to a normal google search. So one my issues is people using it for things that they can just as easily google. But now we have the AI assistants automatically enabled when doing a simple web search, so you get AI whether you want it or not.
But yeah, in addition to kids having ChatGPT do all their homework every day, and people using it to fix their facets when they can just do a simple YouTube search, or people sitting there creating dozens of pictures and videos in one sitting, along with routine usage at almost every form of business and creative work… I think that’s where we run the risk of sacking our world into oblivion with energy and resource consumption.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@MightyDemon82 - it seems you're well versed in philosophy already
I've spent pretty much every day of my life since six years old reading all day, I do game of course but it's almost been a month since I've played one. I've never not read. It might sound ridiculous but I think we're here too learn, and knowledge is the only thing we can take with us whenever we do go. When you're cut off from normal society books become a kind of life-line, a connection to that perceived normality.
That's why I joined this site last year, I was curious. I couldn't tell you one thing that's happened in the news in the last maybe three years but I can talk at length about philosophy, science, history and so many other topics because I'm learning after the fact and developed a technique to do it at an accelerated rate. Time is real luxury, one I'm very aware of, if I don't use it properly I'm failing myself.
Pretend I'm Swartzentruber Amish and I have a library card, it's a lot like that. I still have tutors too, I'm catching up on having not been actually schooled. If it wasn't for books I'd probably have lost my mind years ago, or coked it out like my peers.
Here's my news. It's not CCN or RT (Russia Today)
I just found out Chris Rea passed away, if it wasn't for my friends I'd have found out maybe a year or two from now when someone wrote his autobiography. Books might be slow news but it still counts, they are probably better because the information has to be fact checked and compiled cohesively. If you can't change the world is worth really knowing or worrying about it?
When you left Facebook I understood the reasoning, I doubt frequent exposure to so much negativity is good for a person or for personal growth. Social media from what I've seen of it is one big echo chamber, they need some Marcus Aurelius.
When my friends do bring that news in I ask for only positive news, Chris Rea was an exception because they know I like music. I look at it as a kind of extreme version of Marcus Aurelius's inner citadel, you can't imagine the kind of calm and quiet that comes from not knowing. It's real freedom.
Freedom like that is not to be mistaken with loneliness like I said about Nietzsche. He knew the difference between loneliness, isolation and solitude. Solitude became self-mastery, for example 'In loneliness the lonely one eats himself, in a crowd the many eat him. Now we must choose'. It's all about self balance. You can't feel the influence of societal pressure when you aren't part of society. That's probably why I never feel the need to follow socially acceptable standards.
For most people if you said 'this one time I never left my home for a year', they'd think oh my God that sounds so lonely. It's absolutely brilliant, I think Nietzsche would have agreed, he did the same thing. I think even Heraclitu embraced solitude and isolation, a lot of Eastern Philosophers certainly did. Solitude was a big part of why I gravitated to philosophy, I kept seeing that recurring theme of self-improvement, deeper thinking, self-discovery and the space to be your true self without outside influences. I'd probably have become a horrible person without it, I owe philosophy, it makes a person humble. Socrates said that 'The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing', He's not wrong.
There is philosophy in the lifestyle dynamic I live too, such as autonomy and how it relates to consent, the human connection, ethics, the negotiation of communication, articulation of boundaries and the underlying issues that motivate such an exchange of Power. Stoicism is incompatible by it's nature because virtue becomes deeply ingrained in the freedom to choose for oneself, rather than fall into line and follow the every whim of Another. Marcus Aurelius would argue that there is nothing virtuous in such an arrangement, however I'd argue that there are varying degrees of freedom. At the end of the day I couldn't make that argument had I not actually read his work, nor could I agree with Rousseau had I not read his. Philosophy may be very old but it still applies to modern life. I think you'll find that when you do start to dive deeper into those books. You'll start to see so many natural connections and branching paths, it becomes another layer of nature, perhaps the nature of reality itself.
@Th3solution I found out why, it's banned. I noticed Youtube was slow again (they blocked my Lady Gaga) then I refreshed my VPN and I was hit with a notice. I didn't even know ChatGPT was banned, I followed the notice (before using yet another VPN to get it to work again) and saw that it's because we now have restrictions to A.I. too. I imagine it can tell the news too. Of course YandexGPT isn't blocked, I kind of have to laugh at it at this point. At least they gave me the emojis.
And, just to clarify, I don’t sit around asking AI to generate art for me
That's the first time I tried it. One more try.
The I did my best looks like something Ravix would say, the emoji too.
Is this even A.I.? I can't stop laughing at that low effort excuse for a cat.
@FuriousMachine Well, as a BAME man in the UK, who considers himself to have received a good education in early life and adolescence, affording him the opportunity to attend University, I think it is important reading, the next generation, in a broad sense, may not be taking an interest in such lofty matter as books, especially those who are of the scrolling Tik Tok/Instagram user kind, and particularly not books that deal with racial and social issues for BAMEs that are of course still relevant today. I think that books that make you think about your life and role/place within society are equally important as consuming the biography of a WWE wrestler or some such person or watching something like The Simpsons as opposed to an ArtHouse film, in short, I feel like pursuing enlightening hobbies and interests and consuming intellectual material should be valued and balanced with the consumption of more 'lowbrow' content - I believe @Th3solution, who appears to have recently begun a process of transmogrification into a regular PushSquare bibliophile on here, and I, have had this conversation before.
I think, whoever you are, regardless of race, age, culture, religion etc. reading about the racial and social injustices and the lives of those who have helped to shape society, for better or worse, is indispensable for intellectual survival in today's climate. That's my takeaway from the book so far.
"Preoccupied with a single leaf, you won’t see the tree. Preoccupied with a single tree, you’ll miss the entire forest. Don't be preoccupied with a single spot. See everything in its entirety...effortlessly. That is what it means...to truly "see." "
@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Yeah, books are an excellent source for learning about lives that are different from one's own and I would argue that extends to fiction as well. I've always said that people who travel and expose themselves to different cultures will often be less prone to being racist and intolerant, but one doesn't really have to travel to experience and explore different lives from one's own. Books will do a great job of it if one can't travel physically; they are gateways to all manner of experiences and impressions.
Looking forward to reading that one, provided it is good (and I'm assuming it is, based on your response )
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Topic: Books You're Currently Reading?
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