That book won a lot of awards, but it really didn’t do it for me. I don’t think it’s because it’s so slowly paced; I’ve thoroughly enjoyed lots of books at least as slowly paced. Maybe it’s that I sat down to read a SF book and for half of it it just feels like we’re reading a journal, with nothing especially noteworthy happening. Or maybe I just wasn’t in the right place to enjoy that one.

I read those Dispossessed and LHoD in the 80s, and then reread them more recently, and I’m amazed at how well they hold up. So often stories and sensibilities feel dated when you get to many decades from when they were written, but those two books could have been written yesterday. Both masterpieces, for sure. I’m not sure who you feel they’re inappropriate for teenagers though.

I never read City of Illusions - at least I don’t think I have. I’ll add it to my list. What do you think of Three Body Problem? I read the book and didn’t really care for it (I know I’m in the minority there).

I read a stupid amount of SF and fantasy (up to 60 books so far this year), and I keep notes, so if there’s a particular kind of thing you enjoy I might be able to make a more focused recommendation.

I believe I’ve read everything recommended in reply to you, and most are excellent. Some books I’ve read recently that really pulled me in, and that I didn’t see mentioned elsewhere, are:

• Sleeping Giants, Neuvel
• Ammonite, Griffith
• Spin, Wilson
• The Space Between Worlds, Johnson
• Service Model, Tchaikovsky
• The Tainted Cup, Bennett

Lots of others of I go further back. I hope you find something you love.

Try Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s a wonderful story and has an underlying sense of humor in the way that Pratchett’s books did.

Practically speaking, there’s no good way around it. If you could block them seeing you, they could just make another account to follow you with.

COVID/flu symptoms are the same symptoms as a lot of things, so hard to say anything about what they have based on those symptoms. If their doctor is decent, your best advice is to just let them do their thing. You’re not going to get a useful diagnosis from the Lemmy community.

I should stop there, but I came here to answer the title of your post. Yes, my dad died of something they never figured out. Was very strange.

Good info for the five cat owners who don’t already know this.

She and Dolph were quite a striking pair.

I’m not sure I completely understand the question. It sounds a bit like “How do you enjoy a nice meal” - there’s no way to instruct someone how to appreciate or enjoy something, you just have to take a moment.

The thing with the “before it’s gone” part is that we don’t always know which things are temporary, so you just have to cultivate an attitude of appreciating things in your life, including the people in it.

It for sure sounds like the right decision for you. And to be sure I was clear, when I eventually went up a leadership ladder, I was more motivated by the job than by the money, it’s just that the money was nice too. I was at the same company for just short of 40 years. I moved around some within the company to keep things interesting, and then realized my experience would be pretty useful for strategic leadership, and that I’d enjoy that kind of thing.

That’s a big quality of life change. I wasn’t super enthused about going up the chain for a long time, but then found I really enjoyed the strategic planning and organizational stuff, so went up a couple levels of management. The money was a quality of life change, too, of course.

I’ve had a weird arc. A number of months after I graduated college and started working, it finally sunk in that there wasn’t always something I needed to be studying or working on, as had been the case for like my whole academic career. I had a job that I wasn’t allowed to do outside the plant, so when I went out the gates I was done. Over the years I got promoted to positions of more and more responsibility and, even though I tried hard to keep work and home separate, at some point it was unavoidable and there was always something I needed to be doing, always emails I should be answering.

Then, after 40 years, I retired earlier this year. I had a lot to go through with selling a house and stuff, but it’s just starting to get to the point where I don’t have something I need to be doing, as had happened 40 years ago.

It’s similar to Reddit, but one of the defining features is that it’s not owned by a company, or by anyone at all. Anyone can stand up a Lemmy instance and participate as a part of the distributed system. All the instances can interact (federate) with all of the others, or choose not to with specific instances.

Currently there is only a fraction of the user base on Lemmy as on Reddit, so there’s less content. There are also a lot fewer bots and trolls, so conversations tend to be more civil.

Because getting started on Lemmy is slightly more complicated than Reddit, more of the user base tends to be technically inclined, and they tend to be more liberal, so you’ll find Lemmy is more left leaning generally.

I believe the browsing style defaults to “local,” which means only content on your local instance. Change that to “all” and you’ll see more. The other selector let’s you see different sorting views - if you’re new you might start with “top week” or similar to see what has they most upvotes over they last seven days.

Welcome!

I think that’s normally the garage…

Good point. Also worth noting that, since Lemmy isn’t owned by a company trying to make a profit, there’s no incentive to put up with outrageous jerks who drive up engagement.

Looks like American/Southern food: https://www.crackerbarrel.com/menu

I just use the browser interface

Sorry to hear your experience was so bad, but welcome back.

The situation with bots and trolls on Reddit is horrific. Do you remember that time a few years back when Russia disconnected their whole country from the Internet? That day there was a dramatic decrease in assholes and trolls. Like, night and day, it was unmistakeable and widely commented on.

So hopefully Lemmy doesn’t catch on so will that those folks come here in force, too. For now at least, it’s much better.

The world is a pretty depressing place lately.

Yeah, it is that. I’m way left leaning, but I actually wish Lemmy was more of a cross section. I’m not sorry to see the total assholes on the far right not here (or not very vocal), but I don’t prefer an echo chamber.