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.

===

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,

=>gemini://gemlog.blue/users/NetCandide/1615042807.gmi (see)

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!