Libb

Buy a lot of toothpaste and toothbrushes.
And I would ask those hordes of zombie to brush their teeth before they try to bite me as I would not want to get sick and maybe contagious right before I’m eaten alive.

Had anyone ever come across a single place that holds this kind of info over a wide range of subjects? (Books specifically)

Without info on what you have already tried, it’s a but difficult to suggest anything:

• Have you tried your public library? Edit: it’s a great place to get info on almost any topic, and to find books (1).
• Look up whatever topic you’re interested in on Wikipedia and borrow the references they mention? There are a lot of books referenced there and you can borrow them from your public library, buy them from a used book shop, from online…
• Ask people?
• Read an Introductory book and from that use the references they should provide to read further. Which also means books without references have close to no interest unless you’re looking to learn more about their author’s opinion on whatever the subject is more than about the subject itself ;)

I’ve quit university many, many decades ago what I tend to do is search for people knowing the topic and see what book they consider interesting. I will pick one, or two, read them and from there pick other books they reference.

I will also use references suggested by persons I admire. I just read that French writer (I’m French) saying good things about two other French authors on a topic I’m interested in, whose names I had never heard of. I noted their names and the title of their books and will find a copy of each of them.

1: as long as your public library is not censoring stuff, obviously.

Thx for sharing (and thx to the two that suggested other communities) :)

I don’t know what you consider fun, but I like to read those daily:

• !calvinandhobbes@lemmy.world
• !thefarside@sh.itjust.works
• !peanuts@midwest.social

Then there are more niche communities I’m interested in, but deciding if they’re interesting to you really depends the type of content you’re looking for.

I’ve not tasted many American beers so I could not tell if they all taste like crap, and I also do not drink at all anymore. But being French, I can say that our Belgian neighbors have some exceptionally good beers, as well as Germans do. I loved a few of those, back then. But then they may also be a tad too… tasty for an uninitiated palate ;)

I’m pretty confident there must some local breweries in a few US places that can make quality beer too, the issue would then mostly be to find enough customers willing to drink it because it’s no use to make the best beer ever if most your customers prefer Budweiser or stuff like that.

Here in France it’s probably the norm the moment it’s some other person you vaguely know. Or if there is no ‘power’ or authority relation involved.

That said, things may be different for younger people (I’m in my 50s) as I’ve noticed they don’t talk that much in person.

Edit: typos. Cooking at the same time I’m trying to post a comment is not the best idea ;)

Indeed. That’s kind of what Tuta, Proton and others are trying to do alas without worrying much about being compatible with one another.

I don’t, I rely an ready made sentences that require no effort on my part are that are not lies at all. Depending who’s asking when someone is asking me how well I’m I will answer (it’s in French)

• ‘Je vais bien, pas le choix!’ (I’m doing well, no choice!) or more often ‘Je vais toujours bien, c’est défendu d’aller mal!’ (I’m always well, It’s forbidden to feel bad!'). Edit I will more often than not smile, saying that.
• ‘Bien sur et toi?’ (sure, and you?) and, yep, I purposefully do not answer the question.

I don’t lie (I may even hint that I may not be doing that well, in the first type of answers) but I also shamelessly use the fact that most people don’t give the slightest crap how well I really am when they’re asking. That’s small-talk 101. Like saying ‘the weather is nice today, isn’t it?’

The less interactions I have with the kind of persons who rely on small-talk, the happier I’m. So, it never bothers me to be ‘polite’ as I know how efficient it is to shorten the time and energy I waste with them.

I was reading a book, The Victorian Internet, which talked about how connected the Victorian era was, with wires stretching everywhere above the roads. It’s probably exaggerated,

Why do you think that would be exaggerated? Just curious to know.

Suppose you had a civilization. Maybe it’s on a planet whose environment interferes with the capabilities of a classic internet,

Don’t mix the Internet (which is the willingness to interconnect people through some communication means) and the technology by which it’s achieved.

I mean, if people on that planet can even think of ‘an Internet’ like ours they

1. must at least have devised a way to build their own type of computers (and those needs power and some kind of wiring in order to work) and digital data storage.
2. must have thought about connecting those computers together in order to do things faster/simpler or remotely and in a decentralized way (that’s how the Internet was created: to be decentralized, not in order to exchange cat pictures ;))

If they can’t imagine anything like our computers, then they probably can’t imagine ‘an Internet’ anymore than say a pre-Bell human being could wish to use a smartphone with 5G connectivity. They may be dreaming of some sort of ‘portable means of communication’, sure, and many scifi writers did back then, but it would not be something as specific as the Internet and that would be, well, scifi.

So, considering they have some kind of computing machine already and that they can devise the idea of connecting them together, they should be able to develop their existing technologies (and the protocols to use them) to communicate farther and farther away (how long was the first ever phone line?).

If they don’t have that, they probably don’t need global means of communications yet.

Keep in mind it was not that long ago that most news people would read in their lifetime was local only—beside wars, major crisis news were local. There was no constant need to share cat pictures with people living on the other side of the planet either, or to cry out loud in front of one’s phone camera about whatever personal drama one’s going through. Drama were already a thing back then, as well as sharing cat pictures (and porn, btw) but we did it with our friends or our family (maybe not porn) or at best within some community members who, back when traveling the world was not obvious nor cheap to do, were all local to us. So why would one need a planetary Internet to begin with?

What you call the Internet is very recent tech—first email ever sent is 1971 (54 years old), TikTok is around 2016 (9 years old), Facebook was created in 2004 (21 years old), Apple in 1976 (49 years old) and Google is 27 years old (1998), the first ‘smartphone’ (iPhone 1, is from 2007. There were mobile phones before that but it was the iPhone that changed the deal), and so on. I’m older than all of them and I had been communicating with people all over the world before they appeared. And I’m not even that old. In fact, our entire species have been communicating for a few thousands years already.

The desire to communicate, to create a network of connections between people has not changed much, the tools (and the cost of using them) changed dramatically, obviously.

As well as the type of content we consider worth exchanging (which would be an interesting discussion in itself).

I never sent much cat pictures through snail mail back in the days, nor talked much about my outrage regarding anything because snail mail was slow (and outrage never lasts much) and was costly when done overseas and so were phone calls (and so was taking film pictures, btw) and I’d rather focus that time and money on things I considered worth it—ie, useful/interesting to both my correspondent and I.

Thinking about it, maybe your hypothetical internet-less alien civilization is much happier (and healthier) than we are today with our constant dramas and low, low effort contents that make up the essential of our Internet? Just wondering, obviously.

edit: typos

It’s a different app, made by the same company.

Bitwarden Authenticator

Which is why you you and your recipient (which makes it a lot more difficult) should learn to set up PGP

My spouse and I aren’t married but we’ve been together for almost 30 years. No wedding ring for us but so far none of us has tried to kill the other ;)

That’s a possibility, for sure.

I could/should have added ‘books’—good old quality print books. They won’t go anywhere, and no corporation will be able to delete them because of licensing issue and no one will be able to edit them in order to ‘improve their content’ by making it fit whatever trend/hysteria. And those books will stay unchanged no matter if less and less people are interested in reading or are even able to read.

My fountain pens (one was already inherited from my grand father).

A What if I could restart my life from scratch using a magical wand of some sort situation, or something more realistic like ‘I change country/name/job’?

I’m definitely interested in getting out of my routine.

That’s a great thing to do, imho ;)

Wishing you to get better soon

I’m not much of a reader, though I would like to get into the Star Wars lore. I had not even thought of that, thanks! 🙂

You’re welcome ;)

Do you have any recommendations for what to read?

I don’t know what you like so it’s a bit like i I asked you what should I eat tonight?

Imho, if you want to give Star Wars a try that’s a good starting point. I don’t know now much about Star Wars so I’m probably not the person you should ask. I do love scifi though and among my favorite authors I would say Ubik, by Philip K. Dick (the guy was the inspiration for films ranging from Matrix to Blade Runner, and many others). It’s fun, it’s not too hard to read and it’s not too long either. And it’s at least as pertinent today as it was when it was written in the 60s.

That said, allow me one advice if you’re not used to reading: don’t be afraid to not like and not finish a book. That’s OK. You have no obligation to.
I read a lot and I never hesitate to quit reading a book I don’t like. Also, I know that my tastes can change (I now love books I hated when I was a kid or a teen, or even a young adult). The Ubik book I suggested is not a difficult read, but you may also not like it at all, and that’s fine. Just look for something else to read ;)

There is no book you wanted to read?

the fourth one.

I mean, come on is it that hard to at least give us some context? What you’re looking for in your next phone, why you’re hesitating? Stuff like that so, you know, we can at least try to guess what kind of answer you may be looking for ;)