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Comment by kaycebasques | Hacker News Reader

My best books of 2024:

* Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Atkins. Now that I'm into physics I had a hunch that I would now also appreciate chemistry. This book delivered.

* Philosophy of Mind: A Very Short Introduction by Barbara Gail Montero. I recall it just being a really well-written overview of an interesting field.

* Systemantics by John Gall. Very entertaining musings on why systems fail.

* Hard-Boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami. Read this while in Japan. A very strange and interesting noir detective story.

* All Systems Red by Martha Wells. <3 Murderbot <3

* Desert Oracle Volume 1 by Ken Layne. American southwest folklore. Read it while in Joshua Tree.

* There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. Biggest brainfuck I've read in a long time, probably ever.

* Fundamentals: Ten Keys To Reality by Frank Wilczek. Physics musings from a Nobel winner.

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+1 to antimemetics. I don't usually enjoy sci-fi, but this one captured my attention. You can read it online too: https://qntm.org/scp

Thank you sooo much for posting!

I read it this year, too. It's a fun read, but I wouldn't recommend anything past the first group of articles (that is, don't bother with "Five Five Five Five Five"). The ideas are good, to be sure, but the overall arc past that is pretty weak.

Yeah, the first half or so is a blast, but there’s a point where I feel it drops off quite a bit. (For me, I think it was when the POV changed to Adam.) Still worth a read, though!

If you enjoyed that, the short stories are quite good. qntm = Sam Hughes, and some of their work is published under that name.

Sam Hughes is a man. Why are you referring to him as their?

There's nothing grammatically incorrect or ambiguous about the sentence. What's causing your confusion?

I no idea who Sam is, but I believe "their" is typically utilized to describe plurals while "his", "hers", "its" describe the singular.

My initial reading led me to believe that qntm was a group aliased as Sam.

It’s ideological. It’s using language that intentionally provides less information.

Their usage of "their" aligns with how English has been used for centuries (Wikipedia says 14th century), but more importantly the author's writing was the topic of discussion not their gender.

Policing other's pronoun usage is ideological, but that's your argument, not theirs.

Obviously, that is: statistically, all involved here (the SCP author, the HN commenters, you, me) are men, so saying "he" is very likely correct. If by chance someone here is nonetheless a woman she will probably speak up.

'Their' is practical not ideological - Sam could be Samuel or Samantha, and I didn't know which. Also, bring up the use of 'their' for unknown gender with Shakespeare and Austen, who both did it.

The only one being 'ideological' here is you, getting worked up over basic grammar that's been around longer than Modern English. Go out and touch some grass.

If I don’t know someone’s gender and can’t be bothered to look it up I’ll use “they”. And I know Sam’s of both genders.

Sam can be short for Samantha or Samuel. "Their" allows one to avoid mis-gendering someone when in ignorance of their gender.

I remember hearing about this before and meaning to read it, but for some reason completely forgot.

Thanks for reminding me.

It's not your first time reading the story.

You write a comment on Hacker News — but what you've written turns out to be hieroglyphs, and nobody can understand them, not even you.

and now in print too https://qntm.org/publ

> Hard-Boiled Wonderland

The English translation of a second book in the same universe (well, one of the two universes) was just released---The City and Its Uncertain Walls. I've only just started reading it, though, so I can't offer any commentary beyond that.

If you like Murakami, you might like Convenience Store Woman or Earthlings, both by Sayaka Murata. Mieko Kawakami is also great. Killing Commendatore (by Murakami, again) is my favorite of his. I have no idea why it's my favorite, though. To be honest I can barely remember the plot of any of his books; it's just a feeling.

Dr. John Gall was my pediatrician! When I was young, I was interested in astronomy and he gave me a membership in the astronomy book club. I only learned of his work on system theory after his death.

Wow, what an interesting guy. I have a big affinity for people who are interested in lots of different fields. Gotta love any story about someone who feels so strongly about some idea that they fork over their own money to self-publish the book. (IIRC Gall self-published the first edition himself after getting turned down by 20 publishers.)

Someone gifted me All Systems Red this year and I had never heard of the series and it may be one of my faves of all time. I’m on book 5 now it’s been such a joy

> “It calls itself ‘Murderbot,’” Gurathin said. I opened my eyes and looked at him; I couldn’t stop myself. From their expressions I knew everything I felt was showing on my face, and I hate that. I grated out, “That was private.”

It's only a 3-4 hour long audiobook. Definitely gonna try it on my run tonight.

Congrats on starting Martha Wells but how did you stop at one?

I think I read or consumed almost 25 of her books last year.

I only finished the first one a couple weeks back! And then had to wait for the next one to be available at the library. Definitely going to read the first 4 at least.

Oh man. Should have asked for some for Christmas.

They’re short reads and the series is still ongoing. I’ve seen indications she’s under contract for at least one more book. It’s useful I find especially if you read a lot of things, to be able to revisit the story shortly before the next book is published. The same way many people rewatched Ted Lasso each season. I think I managed to only reread the early books in The Expanse twice but Robert Jordan is slow and his books are loaded with foreshadowing, so when he was still alive there were a lot of people rereading those fat books many many times.

The most recent murderbot book I had to reread because I got my wires crossed on what the backstory was, I combined two different arcs and hallucinated a third one entirely. Never did figure out what I borrowed that story from. But they’re very short. I think I reread the entire thing in ten to twelve days, and not even working that hard.

Yooo you got the chemistry introduction by Atkins? He's the author of the "standard" undergraduate physical chemistry text and some others. I've got tons of those tiny "very short introduction" books but i have yet to see chemistry.

It was exactly the kind of overview I was looking for. You can tell that Atkins is someone that was writing out of pure intellectual love for his domain.

If you like Murderbot, you'd probably also like Bobiverse.

If you want more brainfuck, read Gnomon by Nick Harkaway

What book would you recommend for Physics?

That Fundamentals book by Wilczek that I mentioned is a good start. I'm also reading through the pop-sci classics now (A Brief History Of Time, Feynman's stuff) and they're not disappointing.

I really like the Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press. I've read 30 of them so far (just counted). At this point they basically have a book on every aspect of physics that has interested me at one time or another: black holes, gravity, quantum theory, waves, time, thermodynamics, chaos, etc. Really love being able to literally put the book in my back pocket and read a few pages whenever I have a spare moment. Each book can be very hit-or-miss, though. Some of them are badly written and fail at their basic value proposition (providing a concise and reasonably complete overview of a field).

A list of Very Short Introduction books

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Very_Short_Introduct...

qnmt is the gift that keeps on giving

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