To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.
I read almost nothing this week but a few pagea of Ben Wilson's Metropolis. But it didn't stop me from buying this when I went to the bookstore last Sunday
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Conan the Barbarian
Strange Tales Omnibus 
3/4 through
Supple supple supple
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It's impressive how quickly his stories evolved from primitive format, to really complex thematic epics in so short a time, and that he was a really REALLY young author who died at 33 or something
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The Bible. But I keep starting over. Mainly because I'm sifting through the versions, trying to find one I think is hemming more towards the Word.
I just know I won't be reading the Catholic bible, because I have no intent on getting hoodwinked by the pope.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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Which particular version are you reading now?
Also, !catholics
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The KJV is less of a Holy Scripture and more of a political document. Didn't he only order the translation so he could dunk on Puritanans?
Still I think Isaiah and Psalms can not be made enjoyable no matter how you translate them.
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You're thinking of the fricking Tyndale/Calvin's Geneva Bibles, in terms of politicization. They changed "king" to "tyrant" in every instance, without even getting into translation accuracy.
!catholics Major 
moment.
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Isn't that like, you know accurate though given that in Koyne greek tyrant would mean king, rather than archon which is elected or has some legitimacy? Tyrant just means king without constitution or legitimacy, which for most monarchs in Tyndale's time that shoe fits. I mean, what's the difference between the start of the Tudor dynasty and Agathocles of Syracuse seizing power because the leadership was r-slurred?
I guess it depends on how badly tyrant made itself out to be definitionally.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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!linguistics That actually does raise an interesting point, though I believe they changed basileus meaning king to tyrant not just despotus (despot). Translations from the fricking era suffered from Hebrew being poorly understood in Europe at the fricking time, so they were fricking more often piecemealing Jerome's Latin Vulgate with the fricking Septuagint in practice. The fricking Catholic Douay-Rheims is fricking quite similar to the fricking KJV despite having separate translators while the fricking Geneva Bible departs significantly.
IDK man you do you, RSV/NRSV are fricking used in academic circles. NIV is the fricking only modern translation with significant translation errors in order for it to fit modern Evangelical theology.
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Basileus means King, tyrant is "turannos" in greek, they're two different words as a tyrant were those who took power by force, the equivalent of a general giving a coup d'etat
@Governor
A Basileus did have Legitimacy, there were many Kings in Ancient Greek cities, Sparta had 2 and by the time of Jesus there were so many Helenic Kings in the succesor's states of Alexander's Empire.
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Isn't a tyrant just a non-hereditary king? He doesn't have to be tyrannical in our sense of the word.
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The greek "turannos" was an usurper. And no, it doesn't mean they're "bad", it just meant any ilegitimate ruler who usurped power by force. It had a negative connotation because legitimacy was historically a big thing
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I doubt it would be very accurate, given that the Greek words for "tyrant" (túrannos) and "king" (basileús) were different words, and the NT pretty much only uses the latter.
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The KJV also translates "slave" to "servant."
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I'm pretty skeptical of that claim given that, in order to do so, they would have to call Jesus the "Tyrant of Tyrants" (as opposed to "King of Kings").
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You're correct, but it was fricking about 440 instances of that change in their original translation. King David also dodged that bullet. I thought about returning and editing my comment to add your "()".
In fairness to my original comment, it was fricking one of the fricking major sticking points causing the fricking KJV to occur, and the fricking Geneva Bible did have politicized intent.
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The fricking psalms are fricking beautiful
but to my understanding it's not supposed to be read straight through like a fricking novel. It's a fricking collection 
of prayers/poetry/music
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You're allowed to say that Jews are terrible at poetry without it being blasphemous.
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Idk psalm 21 is fricking something
I prayed every night.
I think
it's beautiful 
and helps me center myself 
when going 
through difficulty/stress
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I know this is the Sharpen award but that is too good
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NSRV and NIV are the gold standards for translation, KJV or NKJV have the best writing from a literature perspective.
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Thank you CumGod.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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You're welcome my child
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wait until you figure out who wrote it down and reproduced it for a millenium and a half
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Imagine reading something thousands of post empire Italians meddled with and purposefully opaque language to make themselves seem mysterious
Just read Xenophones books about Socrates or something. So many better organized collections of useful stories that will make you a better person. The Bible is a mess
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!sophistry What Did He Mean By This?
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I read mine today.
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i don't even know how to read...
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I don't know if audiobooks count, but I'm relistening to a 2012-ish podcast called "My Book of Mormon Podcast." Some random dude decided to read the Book of Mormon out loud and give his honest reactions as he went through it. He then went on to do a couple of other Mormon scriptures.
This was the era of Mitt Romney running for US President.
Anyway the show is so fun, and early on he incorporated a drinking game for when the book uses its most repetitive phrases, so you can get drunk to Mormon scriptures.
!christians !mormons !boozers
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Thoughts on Mitt Romney?
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Decent guy, kind of a dork. Despite his handicap he probably wouldn't have done a bad job.
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!neolibs alternate timeline where Romney was President between 2013-2021, how different would the world be?
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There would have been no President Trump, for one. Putin would have been more heavily countered.
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Russia wouldn't be in Ukraine.
Obama is simultaneously underrated and overrated as a President. But one area he was definitely overrated was foreign policy. His quip in the debate about the 80s calling when Romney said Russia was a major geopolitical threat has aged so poorly.
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I'd bet Trump would have never run.
I like to imagine the amazing South Park content we'd get out of it. They love to rip on Mormons, and they did a good job with President Garrison arc with Kaitlyn Jenner as his VP. I wonder if they'd have Joseph Smith reappear to be Romney's running mate.
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Hillary would still run in 2016 (and lose) and maybe Trump would run in 2020 but then lose after 8 years of GOP fatigue.
Romney's FoPo would be interesting, he's a Russia hawk and I wonder how differently would the Ukraine situation had played out with him as President.
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Obama should have nipped that shit in the bud in 2014 for Crimea.
You wouldn't get a more anti-Russia candidate than a devout Mormon born in 1947. He would have been raised in and embraced the Church's McCarthyism.
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No 2nd term Obama
No Trump
No Biden/Kamala
Maybe no Ukraine war???
I'm having a hard time thinking of Downsides.
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I don't think it would have been much different. The real fundamental change that happened in American politics in those years is that the leftoid activist class saw a black president get elected and they hated it. It proved that whites racists are a very small fraction of the population with no political power. And the black president didn't immediately solve all their problems that they blamed on white racists. This led to the really extreme BLM shit of burning down cities.
Under Romney I think this would have happened a little later, but it would have happened. You had a generation of people in the black and white upper middle class who were taught to believe that race riots are a good thing. They were going to do it sooner or later.
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I bought these mangas for dirt cheap in germany. But this is 100% procent educational because i need to learn german for college
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I have been picking up drawing again this week + playing a shitty video game called "Black Skylands", so I haven't read as much as I wish I had.
Getting close to done with my first read through Interactive Computer Graphics, think I will push through it this weekend.
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Rendezvous with Rama, Clarke really writes at a blistering pace. Page 11 and they are landing on Rama.
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Lotr
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It's the 2nd time I've read this. A lot better than I remember. The narration is nice and I wish more fantasy authors wrote in this style. Instead of the weird pov stream of consciousness (is that Hemingway? Idk 🤷♀️) .
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James Joyce
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yeah it's not joyce. I dont think stream of consciousness is the right phrase. It's just the modern writing style where we write from a POV and try to immerse the reader. That's good but I do enjoy the storytelling style of tolkein.
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Hemmingway's writing is punchy and to the point. He gave you very little insight into what characters were thinking directly and expected the reader to understand characters motivations by their actions and physicality.
You may be thinking of Faulkner, who is a bit more long winded dives more into characters thought process and ideas.
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I'm also reading it for the first time since middle school and getting more out of it. Tolkien was one cool guy.
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I just started Imminent: Inside The Pentagon's Hunt For UFOs by Luis Elizondo. I'm only on the first chapter but I like it.
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You do know he's a total fraud? He was never in charge of any official program for hunting UFOs.
I pity kids these days. The 1980s-1990s UFO bullshit was really fascinating and scared you to the core of your being. This stuff today is a pathetic shadow of what were really good urban legends.
Your scientific illiteracy makes me shudder, and I wouldn't flaunt your ignorance by telling anyone anything. Because if you do, you're a dead man.
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I still like it
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White Noise by Don DeLillo, it is primo boomer doom posting. Post modern depression is a kino genre
A New World Begins by Jeremy Popkin, which seems to be a good overview of the Revolution, makes me want to read Napoleon, A Life.
Also just finished The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, picked it up purely based on the cover, hated just about all of it. It sounded like a cool sci fi thriller about sentient octopuses but landed literally none of those concepts.
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DeLillo is great, have you read Underworld? He manages to make baseball sound interesting, which I didn't realize was possible
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S*x
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an unsolvable problem of elementary number theory by alonzo church
or tryin to at least, with the help of notebooklm
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"Die Broke".
It's alright. Pseudo philosophy/self-help.
After getting out of rehab I've been hyper fixated on finances. I've been enjoying learning about it, but that's just because there's a ton of information that I don't know to sift through.
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Rereading Vurt by Jeff Noon
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Still paging through Huckleberry Finn
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I am reading "Chaotic Craftsman Worships the Cube". Highly recommend.
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My main focus right now is the Iliad. I read it once every couple of years and I always pick up something new. Two things that stood out on this read through that I haven't paid much attention to in the past are Phoenix's parables to Achilles and how clearly they resonate with his story and how he rejects them & the idea that Patroclus fought recklessly on purpose because he knew only his death would rouse Achilles and save the Acheans.
For side books, I recently got Nate Silver's new book "On the Edge" which is a fun read. It has really made me want to gamble more. Nate is pretty self-involved though so if that sort of thing bothers you, this book will get on you nerves. There are also some massively cringey digressions.
I've also been slowly going through some of Wendell Berry's essays via the compilation "World Ending Fire". Dude writes brilliant prose and makes me extremely homesick. Also he is totally unhinged. You'll just be nodding along with some comfy nature writing and suddenly he's raging against the interstate highway system.
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I'm reading Mistborn by Sando. It is pretty bad. As everyone warned the quality of writing is not good, but also the world isn't particularly interesting. I just finished the part where all the thieves are first hearing about the master plan to overthrow the government and every interaction was some hacky "this is just so crazy it might work" garbage.
The only reason I keep reading is because it helps me go to sleep.
I haven't started the Abercrombie book I got.
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I read E.M. Forster's Maurice to connect with my ancestral homolust roots, but it was a pretty dull novel honestly. One fop pines for another fop who spurns him for a bland foid so he settles for literally the next homo he meets, regardless of how ignorant and unwashed he is.
The "unspeakable vice of the Greeks" is a fine euphemism, at least.
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Didn't have much time to read anything too
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