Reading fiction and non-fiction (I assume this is what you mean by 'hard) are effectively different activities.

Reading fiction is about getting caught up in an imagined world. The stakes are lower and the expectations are lower. This makes it easier. If you miss the paragraph where a character is described as having a beard, you won’t feel the need to go back to reread when you find out they do four chapters later when they scratch said beard.

Reading non-fiction is about building new conceptual structures in your mind. It requires more attention. If you fail to understand Nietzsche’s ressentiment in ‘Geneology of Morals,’ you are unlikely to be able to understand the later concept of the ‘priestly’ morality. You will not be able to fully construct the conceptual structures the book attempts to generate.

Because of this, reading non-fiction is a process of doing whatever is necessary to get all the parts and relations into one’s mind in order to produce a mental tool and then, hopefully, learn to use it. If notes help, write them. Rubber ducking can help. Simple repetition can help. Slowing down can help. Talking to other readers (as in a study group (shoutout to @DGQC on YT)) can help. Concept mapping can help. Sleeping on it can help. Highlighting can help. Cross referencing can help.

It’s study. What helped you learn in school? Do that.

No one said art is creating facts. Perhaps I was not clear.

A memoir can be written with great skill, craft, eloquence, sensitivity and/or care, but it cannot be an act of creation and a non-fiction work at the same time. If you write a memoir and are creating events, making them up, you are not writing non-fiction. If you write a memoir in which you have not created anything, simply reported the events, it is non-fiction, but not a creative work. It is productive, produces an artifact, not creative, creating something new.

I draw the distinction between art and craft. One can be a craftsman, very skilled in the techniques of a process, without being an artist, a creator of expressive works. A woodworking craftsman can make perfectly dimensioned copies of a table, using great skill, and they might be beautiful, but unless they design the table they haven’t necessarily done anything artistic. In writing non-fiction, one can have great craft (making eloquent, precise, and concise word choices, making phrases that are memorable or entertaining without compromising verity, etc.) but being creative is the departure point from non-fiction. If you create facts and put them into your non-fiction, you, at best, are mistaken, but are likely simply falsifying evidence or lying.

And revanced on android.

‘Mein Kampf’ isn’t art. It’s non-fiction, at least insofar as the writer believed it to be describing the real world. ‘Separate the art from the artist’ doesn’t apply to non-fiction.

It should be ENTIRELY public info. If you are going to be handed the power to inflict your views on an entire constituency, you lose the right to hide anything you do. There can be no place to hide malfeasance or they will use it. If they are unwilling to sacrifice their privacy, they can stay home. They are not being forced to seek public office.

The line, ‘My job is not to fix things; it is to be the only one who could,’ is entirely too good.

Gayness is as real as Canadianness. It’s an imaginary line someone with political power tries to tell people they have to be entirely on one side or the other of. Don’t let other people’s imaginary lines define you. Go hug your partner.

The difference is the difference between civil asset forfeiture and theft, or capital punishment and murder, or imprisonment and false imprisonment. While analogous in almost every way, the distinction is in whether it is being done legally or illegally. Slavery is legally accepted and enforced. Trafficking is illegal.

Businesses have enough trouble keeping people from vandalizing their toilets. I can’t see this making it less likely or less expensive for them to repair.

Thank you for revealing yourself. I block children.

Is she the one who got caught giving a guy a handjob in a public theatre or was that one of her republican doppelgangers?

A big part of moderation is enforcing what makes you (the moderator) uncomfortable. The moderator(s) probably have not come to terms with their views on eating meat, so the question makes them uncomfortable, so they ban the discussion to preserve their own feelings.

In a less selfish view, it also probably helps preserve the community because many others are also uncomfortable with their unresolved views on eating animals and might be discouraged from participating if it is discussed. You are probably a microminority in wanting to discuss it and the number of free speech absolutists who will die on the hill of your right to talk about eating roast mareep is also a microminority. As the discussion does not really add anything to the community it costs them almost nothing to keep people comfortable.

I have heard of very few sources of energy that do not rely on turbines. Solar is the big one but one of the ones that might be most interesting in future is ‘plug flow.’ Much like with solar and other non-chemical systems, the challenge seems to be scale, because there is just an insane amount of energy density in hydrocarbons, so much that we can run our society on them while wasting huge amounts of it. But if we could find ways to scale these kinds of effects, it would pull energy from natural cycles, like a dam, but with fewer moving parts. It’s still using solar energy with conversions but maybe it’d use less REM.

Can we petition to make the day of his death (March 9) a holiday where we all celebrate by burning him in effigy? It seems fitting.

From the last time this was asked: seek professional medical advise. It should not be painful. There are non-medical reasons it might be less than amazing, but it should not be painful.

I don’t. Your question is leading. Next question.

This triggered a memory. I was headed to work. I pull up to a red light. It was legal to turn on a red there but I choose not to. Guy wangs on the brakes behind me and is pissed that I’m not turning on the red. I take the turn calmly and safely. He slams on the accelerator and takes the turn wide to go around me. He is absurdly pissed about having to wait all of fifteen seconds. I don’t even have time to roll my eyes. Siren and lights go up behind me and he’s being pulled over because the vehicle behind him at the light was a cop. If waiting fifteen seconds threw him into such a tizzy I can only imagine he burst a blood vessel at losing however much time the cop took.

Next week’s news:

NYC teenager in hospital after attempting to have sex with his school’s robot

The robot, though manufactured by a sex doll manufacturer, was not designed for sexual interactions. The school, various signs around the robot, and several of the student’s friends warned him it was not designed for sexual interaction. One was reported to have yelled. ‘You gonna shred your dick. Not in a good way.’ Another was heard to shout, ‘You’re going to die, you fucktard.’ However, undaunted, the student was reported to have said, ‘I don’t care if I die. At least I won’t die a virgin,’ and then proceeded with his plan.

LLM chatbots are, not as conspiracy but de facto, collecting and using as training data, interactions, including nude photos, from underage users. And the worse part is how it victimises kids who then have no victimiser to confront for psychological growth, just their formative experiences of romantic relationships being the distorted reflection of socialization built to promote engagement over growth or reciprocity.