Reading

Currently Reading 3/16/2021

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The Book Buddy app

As usual, the library has my desired titles on hold for weeks, and then seems to release them all at once. If I don’t check them out promptly, they’ll go to the next patron and I’ll need to wait for even more weeks.

This week, there are four titles that I am reading all at once. I just finished one so make it three more to go.

Side note: I’m enjoying the Book Buddy iOS app that allows me to log what I am reading and have read. More on this later.

RSS, Read It Later and Newsletters

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This is the sixteenth year I have had the internet deliver me updates using the website feed aggregation protocol and it just keeps getting better. RDF Site Summary, or Real Simple Syndication, helps me stay up to date with my favorite websites, blogs, podcasts and some social media channels. Instead of visiting a hundred different websites to find new articles, or posts, I subscribe to their RSS feed which is then aggregated into an RSS reader.

This is old school internet technology, much like the e-mail client. They’re still around because they are the best, most secure way of getting information (the internet’s first function.)

I am in control of the content I want to see, not a publisher force feeding me anything I don’t want. I choose topics of my interests and nothing more. Unless, I am forced to go to a website for a news piece or weather, sports etc, I can’t be bothered.

Throughout the years, I’ve tried most of the RSS feed aggregators and currently I have settled on Reeder. Yes, it was $10 for the Mac and another $5 for iOS, but I am getting what I am paying for- features, privacy, security and the convenience. Thanks to the iCloud, all my feeds and articles are synchronized across all my devices. There is also a built-in read-it-later service that allows you to save an article for future reading or reference. No more web clippings or bookmarks on your desktop all over the place. For me, I’ll save the articles and then have the option to share outside the reader with a share extension. In my world, it’s either being shared via text or to my stand alone read-it-later app, Goodlinks. More on that one later.

For a clutter-free reading experience, I’ll usually have the web article render in Reader View. No advertisements bombarding your screen, no privacy violating trackers watching your every move. Gone. It’s just you and your text and images. I have never, ever clicked on an advertisement from the web. I do not want Google or Facebook or 40 other trackers knowing my interests. They don’t get to do that anymore. I don’t care if that is how they get paid. I won’t pay it anymore and you don’t have to either. (please tell me you use content blockers and reader view on all your websites you visit.)

Back to the RSS reader. Some websites will generate their feeds in truncated mode, which means they’ll give you a snippet of the article, then force you to press “More” which promptly takes you to their website and to the aforementioned ads, trackers and sponsorship links. Well, thanks to the built in Reader View, 95% of the articles are pulled up in the app instead, again with only text, photos and no bullshit. That’s a win.

I’ll just click that Reader button and stay right in my cozy little app instead, thank you.

YouTube

I like the idea, hate the advertisements and trackers. I’ve left Google awhile back and it has been such a relief to be out of that evil ecosystem. I digress. Thanks to a recent update, I can watch YT videos from creator’s channels. No advertisements, no algorithms, no suggested videos. Just content I want and no more all inside the feed reader. Brilliant.

Youtube subscriptions on the left, video on the right screen inside Reeder. No bullshit YT interface or ads.

Read-It-Later

Again, I can save the articles I want to keep for future reference inside the app, but I always like to have a dedicated RIL app. For years I used Instapaper, but they moved to a subscription service. No thanks. I went with GoodLinks as a one time purchase of $5 instead.

Using the share extension tool in Reeder, I’ll just pass my saved article to Goodlinks, ideally tagging it under a category for organized reference and it’ll be there waiting for me when needed. I say ideally tagged because saving articles can stack up quickly. It started off organized but…yeah, I haven’t kept up. Goodlinks is also accessing iCloud so I can enjoy my articles on all devices.

Share, organize, read it later

Requested feature

I tried another RSS reader called FeedBin and I loved it because it gave you a generic e-mail address where you can subscribe to newsletters. Newsletters are created by bloggers, thinkers that will create articles of interest all in one letter and push it out to your e-mail inbox. I like my inbox uncluttered and am very protective of it. My subscriptions would be redirected into the FeedBin app alongside the other blog posts, articles and YT videos. A perfect all-in-one solution but at $50 annually, I balked because those same subscriptions were delivered to my inbox for $0. I’ve already invested one time purchases equalling $20 for Reeder and Goodlinks and I am pretty pleased with this setup. I’d like to see more feed readers incorporate this feature and make it standard as opposed to an add-on.

Finally, do yourself a favor and get an RSS reader. Subscribe to all your favorite news sources and make them come to you instead of scrolling through their websites. Say no to advertisements, cross-website trackers and privacy invasion. Say yes instead to a more pleasant reading experience that you control.

When you do, be sure to add this humble little website’s RSS feed and enjoy

@ https://chrisdenbow.website/feed/

A Gentle Madness

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Here I go again. I borrow or place books on hold from the library and they are available all at once. I’m in over my head again because I want to savor and learn as opposed to rushing through them. I need a book budget.

These are in my digital nightstand:

Two fiction, two nonfiction

Now Reading: The Peripheral

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Gibson’s science fiction is so prophetic that it seems as if he is creating the future instead of imagining it.

I just found out this is book one of a three part series. Even better.

Care to peruse my Library? These are books I’ve read in the past or will read soon.

Now Reading- To Hold Up The Sky

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Having recently finished Liu’s mind-bending Three-Body Problem, I was pleased to discover his short story anthology.

I don’t read a lot of science fiction unless it ties in with modern or near future technologies but Chinese science fiction takes it to the next level.

Curate To Create

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If you are like me, hoarding content for future use, it can give off a false sense of knowledge. In my experience, the best way to understand something is to create or produce my content in my style and then share it with the world. I’ve accomplished this throughout the years here and through my photography. I’m still working up the nerve to share my creative writing, however.

To close the loop from curator to creator I go from collecting my notes, snippets from the web and personal thoughts to connecting ideas and application of these ideas. Only then do I find I am ready to create and share.

The Anti-Library

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The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

As a reader, I can tell you that I have been back and forth between paper and digital books. I’ve been kicking myself lately for selling or donating 85% of my library in the past.

It gives me joy to see physical books on the shelf again knowing that I have read a few or have something to look forward to.

Taking the idea of an anti-library further, it dawned on me that I am also curating a digital library of knowledge with links to web articles, books using PDF or everything I have saved as “read-it-later.”

As if I didn’t have enough to read, I recently subscribed to Apple News that includes newspaper and magazines.

The idea that the knowledge that comes from this anti-library is always available and readily accessible in both digital and analog form is beneficial and comforting. The fact that this library is an extension of my research tools is an added bonus.

Siddartha

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One of the best books that I have read recently is Siddartha by Hermann Hesse of how the title character pursues a spiritual quest and search for understanding.

Siddartha was young, wise and loved by everyone in his village, but he and his friend leave the village searching for answers by living a spiritual life. However, the time spent with a group of fellow truth seekers, he realizes that he will not find what he is looking for.

Not long after leaving both his village and these seekers, they come to meet the Buddha and has a brief conversation with him. But after a time, realizes that the Buddha himself offers a message of truth, but only the truth as he sees it. As long as others accept it, that is enough for Buddha, but not so for Siddartha. His companion decides to stay and learn from the Buddha, and so he travels alone.

After a time, he discovers a rich woman named Kamala who shows him the ways of love and pleasure for the first time because that was her role in her life. Siddartha learned more than he expected and wanted to offer her gifts but had no money. He then went into the city and found a shop owner who was kind enough to give him a job. He prospered at this job and made even more money than all the other shop owners.

Having tasted the benefits of spiritual wisdom, love and money he wondered what else was left? Soon, he began to gamble and drink for the first time. He would win at every game he tried and gambled even larger amounts and could soon buy the whole village. After betting, drinking and whoring he began to lose and lose big. He lost so much that he was tired of his wealth and possessions and gave them all away only to go back to Kamala and say goodbye.

The book ends when his long-lost friend returns and asks for wisdom. Siddartha replies that for every true statement there is an opposite one that is also true. That language and time lead people to stick with me belief that does not account for the full extent of truth.

To summarize the lessons learned in Siddartha;

Follow Your Path

Don’t Be Afraid To Experiment

Riches Will Not Make You Happy

Every true statement we accept, we must accept an opposite statement that can also be true.

This book offers more lessons that we can apply and I rate this as highly as I did the Alchemist or the retelling of King Solomon of Israel.

Khmer Empire Hypothesis

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Since my research on the Khmer empire of Cambodia seems to be in a bit of a lull right now and have been unable to articulate it into text properly, I want to go ahead and put my hypothesis out in public. I have yet to read any archeologist’s research or conjecture about this and I think it could be enlightening for the ancient history of this empire.

High up in the Kulen Hills, northeast of the Angkor province there is a river flowing through it with a unique archeological feature called the Valley of the 1000 Lingas. The stream bed has carvings representing Hindu deities along with thousands of phallic-shaped stones. Along with the are a few yonis, representing females and wombs.

The thinking here is this valley is an underwater temple and that the water flowing through this temple would bless or fertilize the fascinating water features of the Angkor temple complex below. The water would also flow into the lake called Tonle Sap and the surrounding rice fields. Here, the Khmer civilization itself would thrive and grow into an empire of at least one million around Angkor Was alone.

My theory is that the original kingdom started in these hills and then migrated down into the plains below. The Angkor Was temple site was built around this idea of a blessed kingdom.

A yoni, representing a womb with eggs and a birth canal bears an amazing resemblance to the Angkor Was temple site itself.


The five tower spires representing the five eggs inside a yoni above Angkor Wat

It is a hypothesis to be sure and I would love to prove it on-site in the near future.