I’ve heard of it, and I like Doctorow, but haven’t read it. I’ll put it in the list.

I haven’t! At least, I don’t remember reading it, but I just looked at the wiki Wikipedia entry and it looks good!

so often depicted from the perspective of humans.

You’re right; AFAICR, the economy is only ever depicted from a human perspective. Either in contrast to external cultures, or just describing daily life. Your Guinea Pig example is quite apt: humans in The Culture really are just pampered pets; or, maybe more like working dogs, although ship remotes could probably do all the stuff Contact agents do.

Have you ever read The Golden Oecumene trilogy, by Wright? The last chapter, in particular, is what I’m thinking of.

I’ve heard that, about that first chapter. He, and Iain Banks, are two writers I’m particularly sorry about having had their times cut short.

But the way you described it sounded more nefarious

Oh. Yeah, I don’t think they’re being malicious; I just get frustrated with that sort of behavior. The primary DNS servers for usps.com, neakasa.com, and vitacost.com all block DNS queries from Mullvad’s DNS servers, and one of them blocks all traffic from at least some of Mullvad’s exit nodes. It means I have to waste time working around these blocks, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to take down the house VPN just to visit their stupid sites. So, I hard-code DNS entries for them, and route traffic to the one through one of my VPSes. It’s annoying, a waste of my time, and I’m just generally offended by the whiff of surveillance state about it, even when that’s not the reason why they’re doing it.

Really, it boils down to the fact that I’m offended by the presumption that their (not OP, but VPN-hostile companies in general) anti-spam or whatever they’re trying to accomplish takes priority over my right to privacy. So, yeah; I generally have a bone to pick with any site that’s hostile to VPNs.

Maybe that’s just my perception.

I have no doubt at all that you’re right. And, they have no obligation to accommodate me (which I think is not true for companies I’m trying to do business with).

I’m just uppity about the topic, is all.

I enjoy these discussions. I sometimes gain some new knowledge out of them.

I’ll happily have a cordial disagreement with anyone arguing in good faith. It’s echo-ey enough, and these are good conversations.

Um. The wrong end will be floating, unless you can breath through your butt like a pig - except, even if you could, you’ve blocked the air-hole.

A president is only going to be awesome when they nearly 100% align with your values, which means that for at lest 30% of the country, they’re a terrible president. So the question is: should a president at least try to represent as much of the country as possible?

Honestly, I think the US should do away with the executive branch. I’m not sure what should replace it; maybe make the House proportionally representative, separate the Senate out of Congress, give it some of the executive powers and remove some of the congressional powers, and get 3 branches that way. But the Presidency was a bad idea back in the founding days, and it’s proving to be one of the biggest mistakes the founders made.

IMHO, post-scarcity is really the only way communism works. And it’s not true communism in the Culture; people still own things - artifacts, art, themselves. And it’s also not communism in the Marxist sense, where the workers own the means of production, because there isn’t a working class and production is largely automated. It’s some sort of post-Communism thing we don’t have a name for. Or, maybe we do, and I just don’t know it?

I agree.

I understand the purpose, though. It takes time and effort to develop ideas. Odin forgive me for sounding like I’m defending the pharmaceutical industry, but it can cost hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries, materials, and everything else to develop a product. Without IP, someone else will just take the result of your R&D and go straight to development and selling; you make the investment, they profit. So, what’s the alternative? How do you get people to dump vast amounts of money in research without giving them some mechanism for recuperating their costs? Or will everyone just suit around waiting for someone else to do the research, so they can snatch up the results and start selling product?

Personally, I think R&D should be done by public institutions and funded by the public, and then be IP-free. I’m not certain that it would be a complete solution that replaces the system we currently have, though.

Naw. I’m in the burbs, in a big house. The 5G signal doesn’t reach everywhere, and the 3G isn’t too strong in the far corners.

I can see three of my neighbor’s networks. Most of the channels are open and clear, so plenty for everyone and no congestion.

Hold on a tick.

Specifically blacklisting a group of users because of the technology they use is, by definition, “targeting”, right? I mean, if not, what qualifies as “targeting” for you?

And, yeah. Posting a sign saying “No Nazi symbolism is allowed in this establishment” is - I would claim - targeting Nazis. Same as posting a sign, “no blacks allowed” - you’re saying that’s not targeting?

I know we’re arguing definitions and have strayed from the original topic, but I think this is an important point to clarify, since you took specific objection to my use of it in that context; and because I’m being pedantic about it.

Nobody has yet mentioned A Gentleman in Moscow, so I will. It’s fairly recent, but I know I’ll read it again in a couple of years.

OMG, that’s going into this year’s list! Thank you!

Also, I keep meaning to make time to re-read some required reading books from HS: Where the Red Fern Grows, Call of the Wild, Flowers for Algernon. It’s probably all going to be painfully YA, but I’ve thought about the stories often over my life, and they deserve a re-read.

I liked Ender’s Shadow much more than Speaker for the Dead, which felt preachy to me. I just didn’t click with it.

Both Game and Shadow are great books, and excellent choices.

Yes. Another good series; some better than others - I personally liked the first the most - but I think they’re all important pieces of the story.

Definitely on my “read again” list, although I only discovered and read them all a couple of years ago; maybe next year.

Yeah. Ursula Le Guin always surprises me; when I re-read her books, they’re often better than I remember.

Several that others have already mentioned, and:

• The Golden Age Oecumene, by John C Wright
• The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, by Barry Hughart
• Any and all of The Culture novels
• The Hobbit, and TLotR trilogy. Used to read them every summer, for about twenty years.
• Armor, by John Steakley. Sadly, the only sci-fi novel he ever wrote, and one of only two books he ever authored, IIRC.
• The Jean le Flambeur trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi, which is on my list to read again this year.
• A Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, which I’m about to read again as soon as my wife finished them.
• The Chronicles of Narnia, which I used to read frequently when younger. I’m almost afraid to pick them up again now, for fear that they won’t be as good (for an adult) as I remember.

That’s a good series, too. Another set of books I used to re-read every few years, but got out of the habit.

Snow Crash

I should read that again, although I burned myself out in cyberpunk decades ago.

Rendezvous with Rama

Another classic to add to the re-read list! It’s been years.

Foundation

Yeah. This one is the one I most sympathize with. I used to read the original trilogy every few years; I don’t think any of the subsequent one(s?) were worth the first read. I need to read them again just to bleach the Apple abomination out of my mind.