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What are you reading Chapter 4

Just finished. meh. I liked Harlem Shuffle a bit more.
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The past few days I've been working on the "Blackcollar" series by Timothy Zahn. It's his first series of books, originally published in 1983, 1986, and the most recent one in 2006. So far, I've read the first two this week, and while they're good for pulp sci-fi with some realism and pseudo-science thrown in, they're nowhere near as good as his later stuff from the 90's onwards. I'm intrigued to see the change in his writing when I start the third one tomorrow, since there's a 20 year gap between him writing those novels. Hopefully it's even better than the last ones!
 
I'm in the midst of Max FIsher's The Chaos Machine. This is absolutely horrific reading. All kinds of insights. A lot of it I had heard, but the book brings together the full scope of how social media and youtube algorithms shape our thinking and behavior, and none of it in good ways. Part of it is the nature of the algorithms themselves. But also in the background of it is Silicon Valley culture, with this kind of false meritocracy that the only good is efficiency and whatever produces more efficiency must of necessity be a good thing to have. It makes me VERY glad, as a moderator here at TB, that we have and maintain rules and boundaries, because it shows how everything goes haywire without them.
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Just finished "Night Train To Rigel" from Timothy Zahn, the first of his Quadrail series. A fun mystery on a sci-fi "train", with plenty of twists and turns. Some of the action was a bit predictable, but only because I inadvertently read the 4th book in the series a few months ago, so I knew some things I shouldn't have. Otherwise, it was a great book, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.
 
I'm in the midst of Max FIsher's The Chaos Machine. This is absolutely horrific reading. All kinds of insights. A lot of it I had heard, but the book brings together the full scope of how social media and youtube algorithms shape our thinking and behavior, and none of it in good ways. Part of it is the nature of the algorithms themselves. But also in the background of it is Silicon Valley culture, with this kind of false meritocracy that the only good is efficiency and whatever produces more efficiency must of necessity be a good thing to have. It makes me VERY glad, as a moderator here at TB, that we have and maintain rules and boundaries, because it shows how everything goes haywire without them.
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On a related note, watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix is what got me to delete my FB account ...
 
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Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - The Inhabited Island (aka Prisoners of Power)

I've read this book 10 times or more since I was in my early twenties. It's one of my favorite books ever. Now I'm reading it in English just for the fun of it. The translation is good, too - though I've found a couple of bugs.
 
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