Started What If? by Randall Munroe.

It’s by the guy who runs / draws xkcd.com web comics, and gives serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions. For example: Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns?

Questions are weird like that, but the science is real, so an interesting read. Specially if you are a fan of xkcd.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

For details on the c/Books bingo challenge that just restarted for the year, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and its Recommendation Post. Links are also present in our community sidebar.

  • TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    6·
    16 days ago

    Oh I have What If! One of the last hardbacks I purchased.

    It’s really fascinating. I followed xkcd pretty religiously for about a decade before I stopped regularly checking it.

    I’m still reading The Shadow Rising. It’s slow going at the moment, but still a solid entry so far.

    • dresden@discuss.onlineOPMEnglish
      2·
      16 days ago

      I am just subscribed to xkcd’s RSS feed, so doesn’t take any effort to stay up to date.

      How are you liking Wheel of Time so far?

      • TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        16 days ago

        I should really mess around with RSS. It seems like a nice tool from what people describe.

        I like it a lot. I’m a little worried I’ll drop it during the slog before Sanderson picks it up for the ending.

        So far I’m really invested into everyone’s journey. Maybe it’s the way Jordan writes the Aes Sedai, but I find myself annoyed with Nynaeve at the moment.

        I’ve had issues with spoiler tags on here, but I’m going to try them again.

        Tap for spoiler

        Nynaeve seems to be trying to stay mad so she can channel at any moment - and while understandable it’s really frustrating when she lashes out at EVERYONE.

        • dresden@discuss.onlineOPMEnglish
          3·
          15 days ago

          Nynaeve does feel annoying for some time. Also, I am never able to pronounce her name properly.

          RSS is pretty nice. It is not as widespread as it used to, but pretty much all blogs still provide it, and there are sites that can generate for many sites that don’t provide one. Even YouTube has RSS for every channel (though it’s very hidden). I am subscribed to many channels, so as soon as new video is released by those channels, I get it directly in my feed reader.

          There is one huge issue with RSS though. It’s so convenient, once you get used to it any site that doesn’t provide one feels too annoying 😀

          • TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            3·
            14 days ago

            I have now started my journey of curating an RSS feed. Any suggestions? I have a few basic ones like XKCD, picture of the day, a photo throwback from my reader (feeeed) and a bunch of YouTube channels and a few subreddits that I never really stopped visiting.

            • dresden@discuss.onlineOPMEnglish
              1·
              9 days ago

              Depends on what you want. I have a few authors like Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie etc. Some comics like XKCD, Sword Comics etc. Some work / programming related ones, news / blogs of lots of applications / software I use, some other hobbies related ones like gaming etc.

              I’ll recommend starting from a few and then slowly growing it. I used to have tons of feeds, and would have 100+ new items every day, some time even more than 2 or 300, which became unmanageable, so have removed lots of stuff I didn’t care about too much. You can of course just add everything you want, and then slowly remove stuff that you think isn’t too important.