For nonfiction, I’d have to say How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair. It’s a memoir of a woman who grew up in a strict Rastafari household in Jamaica. Safiya is a poet and she has a beautiful command of language that makes her descriptions lyrical, haunting, or painful as needs be. However, if you generally need content warnings I would highly recommend looking them up for this book because she does not pull any punches.
For fiction, my favorite would probably be Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (Storygraph went down in the middle of me writing this lol, will edit the link in later). It’s a lovely fantasy novel set in an alternate Earth where fae are real. You follow a Dryadologist as she works on documenting a rare type of fae while she works on her encyclopaedia of faeries (hence the title lol). I enjoyed being in Emily’s head as she worked through the problems presented to her, and as she interacted with her colleague.
Just finished reading something and want to share some thoughts, but don’t want to start a brand new thread? Feel free to post your mini-reviews here!...
I recently finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, and while I can see why other people enjoyed it, it was not for me.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow spoilersI’ve heard that the people who love this book tend to not play many video games, and those who dislike it do, and that holds true for me. While the characters are interesting at times and their development was done pretty well, I just could not get over how the video game design itself was described. Like, take Ichigo for example. It was the first game they developed together and described in the most detail. They talk about the art design, and the story, and the gender of the protagonist, but never once do they say what genre it is. Is it a platformer? Action? RPG? The genre of a game is the most important aspect of it, because all gameplay and mechanics play off of it in order to tell the story. Not to mention the fact that some of the games did things that are really just not possible in gaming storylines, like that Pioneers chapter towards the end of the book. You can do that sort of thing in a text-based roleplay forum, but not in an MMORPG as described in the book. Also, while I was very young when some of these games were developed and wasn’t in tune with technology then, some of the descriptions of it struck me as odd. Several times there were references to “burning out” several graphics cards and processors in a short amount of time trying to create certain visual effects in a game engine, for an indie PC game designed in 1997. Maybe computer components were just more delicate back then but… that just feels weird. Finally, Sadie’s vendetta against Sam really bothered me. Not that she found some things that Sam did a betrayal or wrong - I might as well if it were me! What bugged me the most was that she forgave Dov, her abusive ex, much more readily than Sam, her well-intentioned (if misguided at times) friend. And what she was initially upset about was Sam wanting her to speak to Dov! I just don’t understand that, and it wasn’t well justified to me at all. Also, the shooting was unnecessary and only served as “haha gamers are violent” to me.
Yeah of course the comment on who likes/dislikes it isn’t universal, it’s just something I heard mentioned at some point.
I’m someone who can struggle with minutae like what I mentioned in the spoiler section, so that’s probably a big part of why I disliked it. Like I said, I do understand why so many people like it - Gabrielle Zevin has great prose and the overall character development is interesting and compelling. I just struggled with some parts.
Just finished Aurora, gonna work on Vision and then Conflux. After that I will have all legendary runes, sigils, armor, and trinkets for my main. Still deciding if I’ll do legendary weapons for my main after that or if I’ll do other legendary armor weights.
Gender expression and gender stereotypes are societal constructs. A person’s sense of their own gender is (probably) not. There have been many times where people have tried to raise their child as a different gender than the child was assigned at birth, and the child 99% of the time identifies with the gender assigned at birth, at the same rate as the general cisgender population. There have also been studies of identical twins where if one twin is trans, the other twin often is as well, at a much higher rate than fraternal twins.
There is a genetic component and a constructed component to gender.
Edit: wording.
Edit 2: See my comment below with sources on the twins study - it’s possible I was misinformed on this. The results of studies are mixed.
I was actually repeating what was said in a video I watched yesterday so I went to look at their sources - here is a relevant study that supports this conclusion - www.sciencedirect.com/…/S1743609515339060
However while looking it up in google scholar I did find another study that concluded the opposite, that there’s no significant difference between identical and fraternal twins. That study is here. www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-17749-0
So it’s possible that I was misinformed.
As a bonus, here’s an interesting analysis about what even is gender and gender identity in an academic setting. academic.oup.com/analysis/…/7204699
That portion is anecdotal. These stories come from either before there were ethics guidelines in psychology so people were studying their own children, or reviews of child abuse cases where the parent was forcing a different identity on their children. This is not something that is possible to (ethically) run an empirical study on, unfortunately.
although this is unlikely to substantially and directly impact us and is a more immediate concern for Mastodon and similar fediverse software, we've signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact as a matter of principle. that pact pledges the following:...
Yeah, as someone with ADHD I find the idea that gamification is inherently exploitative to be outright offensive. It’s an absolutely necessary accessibility tool for many people with executive function issues. Hell I need gamification to remember to brush my damn teeth every day.
Sure some corpos can take it too far, but this article is way off the mark.
[Image decription: A round, light-reddish-brown loaf of bread on a wire cooling rack. There is a split down the center of the bread where it expanded in the oven while baking, called an "ear". The top of the bread is lightly dusted with flour except in the split area.]...
The main dev was harrassed off of the project, basically. He said he passed the source code on and it should be coming back to test flight under a different link soon, theoretically.
With the recent news that the r/blind community has migrated to a lemmy instance, I thought now would be a good time to post a quick PSA on image descriptions....
What was your favorite read of 2023?
Any format counts (audiobook, physical book, ebook, graphic novel, article, essay, etc).
Recent finishes & Mini-Reviews
Just finished reading something and want to share some thoughts, but don’t want to start a brand new thread? Feel free to post your mini-reviews here!...
What are you currently working towards?
What kind of goal are you working towards? Legendary weapon or specific skin, please share! I’m kind of looking for new inspirations😅
What are you reading?
Hey Beehaw (and friends)! What’re you reading?...
Gender isn't real: it's just an idea (sopuli.xyz)
cross-posted from: sopuli.xyz/post/6893359
What are you reading? (August 2023)
Hey Beehaw (and friends)! What’re you reading?...
Chuck Tingle Goes Mainstream...ish (themillions.com)
cross-posted from: kbin.social/m/books/t/223208...
What are you reading? (July 2023)
Hey Beehaw (and others)! Whatcha reading?
Announcing Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure (www.guildwars2.com)
My first read on this is to be pretty excited; the new dailies system looks interesting, more accessible skyscale will be good for newer players, etc.
non-stickied PSA: Beehaw has signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact
although this is unlikely to substantially and directly impact us and is a more immediate concern for Mastodon and similar fediverse software, we've signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact as a matter of principle. that pact pledges the following:...
Gamification Is Exploitation (jacobin.com)
Fresh bread! [Recipe inside] (i.imgur.com)
[Image decription: A round, light-reddish-brown loaf of bread on a wire cooling rack. There is a split down the center of the bread where it expanded in the oven while baking, called an "ear". The top of the bread is lightly dusted with flour except in the split area.]...
Kbin Blue Theme
Hey all,...
UPDATED: There are now multiple iOS / Android apps in development for kbin & lemmy!
More up to date and more detailed information at: https://beehaw.org/post/683217...
PSA: Image posts and blind accessibility.
With the recent news that the r/blind community has migrated to a lemmy instance, I thought now would be a good time to post a quick PSA on image descriptions....