141–144 of 144 posts
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There's always nostr.
That's designed for nerds. Like Matrix and the other platforms that will never see mainstream adoption because they lack product management and crazy distribution. Normie design and hyper distribution always win.
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We live in a world where surveillance tech is named after Tolkien fantasies. Fight them, not my words.
What does that have to do with the quality of Tolkien's fiction?
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I don't know how anyone can read her and not feel the overt reader manipulation. Her skill, if any, is to break the 3rd wall without seeming to acknowledge that 3rd wall and constantly tell the reader they are one of these special people that are borne better than others. Rand is a clear intellectual trap for lazy thinkers. If you like her, you're not thinking.
I think reading philosophical arguments masquerading as novels, or any sort of fiction, is an intellectual trap in general. Anything can be made to work in a fictional work simply by saying that it works. It means nothing. "Genghis Khan the 73rd, who got high on some really weird drugs in the fifth year of his reign, decided that everybody in his empire should be tortured for at least 73 minutes every day. And everyb…
Only if you take the work as-given. Whenever I read a fiction book I take it as a starting point for thinking about things. The book provides a what-if. It's up to the reader to figure out if that what-if makes any sense, and if the conclusions in the book follow from that.
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I liked reading Rand much as I liked reading Tolkien. Now if I try to read either, the fantasy just doesn't work anymore. Oh and even back then Atlas Shrugged was too damn preachy.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers