tripu
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Old books are in the public domain, which means publishers and authors don't make money on them, which means they don't get promoted as much, which means fewer people hear about them and read them.
Also, people may want to read about what they are most familiar with, which is recent/current events. Also, very old works are written in a style that takes more work to read or that requires more training to understand. Even English works that are over a century or so old have many unfamiliar words because language changes and things that were once familiar have now become esoteric.
Some people like that challenge of figuring those things out, but many don't and would rather just breeze through some popular novel.
#Pocket says that in #2021 YTD I read > 1,100,000 words using the app, and that I'm in the top 1% of readers 🤷
Has everyone seen the exact same message? 😆
#Books written “recently” (say, within the last decade or two) are still being evaluated by critics and readers. Their apparent merits might prove exaggerated in the end. There might even be plagiarism or falsities that haven't been detected yet. No-one has had the time to fully digest them and grow up with them. Very few parents have passed them along to their children as a precious thing. The values or the insights they contain may not survive one generation.
**Read old.**
#Goodreads has been pestering me about “the best #books of 2021”; first to vote, then to see the results — but I couldn't care less.
I try to read the best there is since writing exists. That often means reading works written half a millennium ago, and sometimes even as far back as the 8th century BCE. How could it be otherwise?
The year 2021 alone represents < 0.04% of time elapsed since humans started writing and reading. Even if we assumed that book production, or even book “quality”, increase over time somehow (questionable), I can't understand the disproportionate interest in novelty most people seem to have.
tripu
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@ElMichel Es una maravilla :)
tripu
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I just heard a little honk and was like, What notification was THAT, I do not recognize it, and turns out there was a literal goose outside
tripu
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Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know
#MichelDeMontaigne
I just finished reading the first volume of the #Essays by #MichelDeMontaigne, arguably [the most important non-fiction work in all of world #literature](https://thegreatestbooks.org/nonfiction).
Here are all my highlights (in 🇪🇸 #Spanish):
tripu
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The best reason to follow political trends (maybe the only one) is to prepare yourself for the future.
Do you live where you would like to live if/when this happens?
https://mobile.twitter.com/balajis/status/1467060990751621120
Speaking of #socialmedia… another beautiful #dataviz by #VisualCapitalist
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-social-networks-worldwide-by-users/
Go, #fediverse, go!
tripu
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🇳🇱
Hi everyone, as you know I broke my leg and am not the type of person who asks for prayers. So if you can please sacrificial a goat for me in the name of Beelzebub I'd really appreciate it, thanks. I can use all the goat sacrifices I can get.
tripu
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Mildly #NSFW
You know how #socialmedia distort our perception of reality and our expectations, and make us feel frustrated and miserable, because many individual users, most algorithms, and everyone who's trying to sell something routinely script, set up, pick, filter, retouch and tweak what they share so that their lives seem amazing…?
Well, something like this might be the epitome of that — at least for guys.
tripu
boosted
+1
You can suggest that in a [comment for Boghossian & Shellenberger](https://boghossian.substack.com/p/woke-religion-a-taxonomy/comments)
