Naomi SaphraThe most fun I ever had on the birdsite was making a recommendation thread. So I'll try it here!
Recommend me something, anything! I will reply with a recommendation back.
Biplab P.
A Flock Of Seagulls - I Ran (So Far Away) (Video)
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Architecture In Helsinki - Heart It Races [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO]
Jeremy Kahn@nsaphra A Memory of Empire by Arkady Martine
Good, queer, complicated diplomatic SF about cultural/military/love affairs, hegemony and the secret knowledges of the colonized
@trochee I recommend Samuel R Delany, a queer black man who wrote New Wave scifi in the 60s/70s. You can start anywhere depending on your taste, but I really like his trashy pulp sword&sorcery novel Tales of Neveryon. At one point, he throws shade on all of fantasy worldbuilding by like
"I'm not going to describe their gods because then you'll ascribe their culture to their metaphysics. Your behavior is barely informed by your metaphysics, so neither is theirs." https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/6debe3f5-e43b-46c9-b116-c251b63447ed
@nsaphra oh hell yeah Delany is the best
Andrey Kurenkov@nsaphra here's something random: Yacht's album Chain Tripping https://youtu.be/Exgd6AW-NKg
They used AI to compose lyrics and music for it in a pretty groundbreaking way - https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/press-play-with-madeleine-brand/using-a-i-to-make-a-music-album/how-yacht-used-a-i-to-make-their-album-chain-tripping
They even gave a talk at the Neurips 2019 creativity+AI workshop about it. Also, YACHT is just generally awesome.
YACHT — (Downtown) Dancing
@andrey That is really cool! Have you heard of Giuseppe Arcimboldo? He was a really popular renaissance painter who did very surreal art that looks like it would fit better into the 20th or 21st century. Seeing his work made me think: humans have always been into weird art! It seems obvious, except that that's just not how you think of tastes from hundreds of years ago.
@nsaphra ooh super interesting, thanks for sharing!
NJ 🌵@nsaphra my favorite internet animal https://youtu.be/QKj0xzFF_xk
Red birb 4K 60fps wuewuewuewuewue
@njjiang my favorite for many years now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxc_55ur-J4
Jascha Achterberg@nsaphra If you haven't come across them yet, read one of Borges' short stories - they are fascinating! "The Library of Babel" is very well liked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel
https://maskofreason.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-library-of-babel-by-jorge-luis-borges.pdf
@achterbrain I love Borges! Everyone in language modeling knows about The Library of Babel, but he has dozens of stories about structured sampling from infinite distributions. My favorite is actually The Lottery in Babylon.
My current favorite short story writer is Sarah Pinsker; I recommend this one, a mystery set at a convention for Sarah Pinskers from different timelines. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/and-then-there-were-n-one/
@nsaphra Thanks so much for the link - I will make it my Sunday morning read tomorrow!
Grzegorz Chrupała@nsaphra One of the best dinosaur books out there. Reconstructions of what they and related creatures looked like based on exceptionally preserved fossils.
The Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost World https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57392598-the-dinosaurs
The Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost World https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57392598-the-dinosaurs
@gchrupala wow you really know my taste. I recommend Cuckoo: Cheating by Nature. It is about the evolution of brood parasites. They are engaged in an arms race with their hosts, who develop increasingly distinct eggs to detect parasites. Best fact: European cuckoos specialize in particular species, and they make sure their mate has the same host by imprinting on their host's mating call. So cuckoos imitate their adoptive parents! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22529402-cuckoo
The Data Therapist@nsaphra @gchrupala I guess I should recommend Dinosaur Train (at least the opening song) to both of you !
@datatherapist @gchrupala Do you know the They Might Be Giants song I Am a Paleontologist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7zo2zY1Zqg
Thomas Knoll 🌊@thomasknoll I can't stop eating dried mango, I think half of my calories have come from dried mango for a few months now. My favorite brand is this SOLELY, which you can find at REI. I like it because it's soft and tart and not too sweet. https://www.rei.com/product/189771/solely-dried-fruit?CAWELAID=120217890011337026
Luisa Zintgraf@nsaphra Love it! Also I couldn’t decide so here’s a list: the board game “Pandemic Legacy”, the documentary “Disclosure”, music by Nils Frahm (watch a concert on YouTube!), having a “giveaway” box at home with things you no longer need (but that are too nice to throw away), and every time you have guests over they can pick something 😊🎁 Also a gazillion books but here’s two: “Quiet” and “Blueprint for Revolution” 📚
@zintgraf I'm not going to read your introvert propaganda but blueprint for revolution sounds cool! Since you enjoy pandemic, have you tried other cooperative games? Specifically have you tried Spirit Island? It's a coop game where you play as the spirits who are trying to drive out european colonists and protect your island. The crowdfunder for the next expansion just wrapped up and it looks AWESOME.
https://www.backerkit.com/c/greater-than-games/spirit-island-nature-Incarnate
@nsaphra I only tried it once, but am going to take this as a sign to play again! The expansion looks amazing 🤩
Gabriele Sarti@nsaphra the Unsongs project and music album by Moddi is cool as hell: http://www.unsongs.com/
@gsarti Wow, these are incredible. The covers of Ashdot and Jara? 🤌💋
Ok, this is ... gentlepunk, so I'm going to recommend DIY Mosul, an episode of the Rough Translation podcast. It's about how, after the Iraqi government abandoned Mosul for being "ISIS collaborators", ordinary residents took on the work of repairing infrastructure and clearing corpses for their communities. It's a beautiful vision of how the world can work through mutual aid and local organizing. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/16/713962747/d-i-y-mosul
Adina Williams@nsaphra I'm a section and a half into the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius, it's reminding me of the trippiness of old, which is pretty fun: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14328/14328-h/14328-h.htm
@Adinawilliams I really enjoyed Four Futures: Life After Capitalism by Peter Frase. I think it's good to think about what kind of future we would like to live in, and he provides two axes (scarcity, hierarchy) and what kind of future each quadrant entails. Four Futures and Capitalist Realism and The Dawn of Everything have all been giving me some kind of feeling about what kind of alternate worlds we are capable of envisioning, and how limited imagination is right now. https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/4f9c0332-0f43-418b-975a-25d149cfe500
