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This is another thing I wrote in an email thread using my SDF email. This
is a different person than the previous time I shared one of these emails,
someone I had known previously but am gently trying to get into the SDF fold.
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Well, the email works! You are now communicating with someone writing on a
minimal email. In theory, I could just do the whole thing in the shell,
but instead I go through a flow that opens a minimal text editor called
Pico. I can't even place the cursor using a mouse -- it only accepts
arrow keyboard commands (which include arrow keys).
I am trying to sit out the entire Culture War from here on. This is not
an option that most people realize they have. Just locate information
that isn't the news. Sources include work, sensory information from the
environment, books on other topics. If you look at my old blog, it has
become a kind of smokescreen for my earlier writing. I am now averaging
more than a post a day, but they are about what things like the weather
or what Wikipedia entries I have read that day.
You mentioned the searchers internet versus the feeders internet,
and I would say that points the way toward finding interesting content to
while away your endless nights. Start building up questions or projects
of study. If you go back to my old blog and follow stuff on the side bar
you can see what I have read this year, last year, and the one before. I
have been following a historical studies arc. I thought I was going to
start in the 1450s (with the printing press) and read at least 4 books on
each 50 year period -- 1450s, 1500s, 1550s, etc. Doing so, I noticed that
the printing press also pulled in the previous 100 years as well, which
made sense once I thought about it, so I ended up reading about Petrarch
and the goings on of the Holy Roman Empire of the time.
I am not saying you should do that project or one like that, but this is
the best way I can "teach a man how to fish" when it comes to what is
interesting.
So I think the first step is for you to generate a list of questions or
interests and then I can look it over and see if I have a book that fits
the bill. Or, the reverse could work. You could look over my list and
ask questions like "X book. . . was that any good?" The surprise gem I
found for 1650-1700 was a biography Theodore Roosevelt wrote about Oliver
Cromwell. It's on Project Gutenberg, and was written the year before
Roosevelt became President. I think for a person to like it, there would
have to be certain other hooks, such as an interest in the growth of the
British Constitution, the development of American Imperialism, or even
an interest in where Menius Moldbug is both correct and incorrect in his
historical gloss.
I think reading is a very personal thing -- at least what we end up
enjoying is. That's not to say I don't mind sharing ideas, just
that I think there are very few universal "good books."
Happy hunting!