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I came to say that my favorite book read this year is her "The Birthday of the World and Other Stories". Very nice to read science fiction that is about people rather than things.
I also like Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith for people-centered science fiction.
https://www.amazon.com/Stronghold-Mans-Quest-Worlds-Salmon/d...
Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. Changed my life and my perspective on doing business, building company and understanding luck. Such a classic. Also honourable mention: Super Pumped by Mike Isaac. Great read on the legendary Travis' journey.
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Your post is basically my problem with how people talk about bad trips. You made the term "bad trip" ambiguous, scary and sound random. You're saying something might happen but no one can tell you what. Yeah that's horrifying, what is this horrible thing, Ill let my imagination run wild. But if you can be clear about the risks and how to avoid them I think you'll come out fine. I don't think if psychedelics were play…
Maybe I can give an anecdotal example that is less ambiguous. I have a fair amount of experience with psychedelics. I have had both uncomfortable trips and once what I would characterize as an actual bad trip. In the case of the bad trip it was a normal dosage, less than 2 grams of mushrooms (cubensis), and wasn't mixed with anything else. In terms of effects I would describe it as feeling like you are losing your mi…
So is it still appropriate to consider this a “bad” trip? It’s a serious question; psychedelics are experiencing a resurgence in clinical interest precisely because of their persistent effects, quite apart from the acute trip experience itself. One might assume that a trip saturated in negative affect might leave a person worse off than before, but it is clearly more complex than that. Perhaps it is akin to the difference between post-traumatic stress vs. growth, and proper management of set/setting/aftercare can promote the latter over the former.
Unsong by Scott Alexander A delightful, completed serial that tells an alternate story of the world since 1968, when Apollo 8 crashed into the crystal fabric of the sky and fundamentally broke the machinery of the universe. Now science no longer works, the old ways have power and sometimes people go to bed on Monday to wake up on Wednesday. I loved the way the fiction intertwined with reality.
This year i didn't read as much as i wanted but between the two books i really liked* i choose to post the above.
* The other one is Digital minimalism by Cal newport.
This years best book is the brothers karamazov. An excellent book with a deeply human and philosophical viewpoint. This is the last bool I read from dostojewski and after crime and punishment his best work. Atm I read „against the day“ from pynchon. Also very excellent and compared to gravitys rainbow sooo easy to read. That could be a good start to the pynchon universe for beginners. Whish you all a good time at the…
I read Sapiens by Yuval Harari this year. It was long and fascinating, incredibly well researched, and easy enough for "light reading" that I had time for between writing research papers. A couple things that stuck with me were stories of giant land mammals that used to exist, many more than I realized, alongside humans. Wherever humans colonized, the large mammals were killed off soon after. This happened in Austral…