Sorry man. Feels like 2024, no more no less. Friendship and willingness to be around people (in person) is an old fart thing. Nowadays I only invite or make plans with my really close friends. Friends that are more family than friends.

Those casual friends we used to have are gone for good between laziness and socializing on-line, whatever that is.

If you were my neighbor and invited me I would’ve totally attended and decimated those delicious quesitos!

Ping just to see if you found something relevant/interesting! :)

Fair point lol I don’t find the “discover” feature attractive, so I’ve been using the Openreads app just to keep track of what I’ve read year to year (a great app, by the way!)

Edited to add that maybe different instances of bookwyrm have different ways to review your books? I may be wrong about this, but I think it is worth checking if you really want to try an open alternative.

https://bookwyrm.social/ is what I’ve been using. I’m not an avid tracker though.

I tried thestorygraph, liked the idea but I don’t like my readings to be guided by an algorithm and also I don’t feel like paying for a platform, especially if I’m not using the main feature (the recommendations)

You could read Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson. It’s an essay(ish) book about taste in music, funny to read and not too long (~200pg I’d say).

About the comfort zone, you could try and read something about contemporary problems and predicaments. A poison like no other talks about plastics in our everyday life (not fun), or something really old like Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (~100pg)

It’s so much easier for common folks to read this articles (written by the actual researchers of course) than the actual papers.

When I learned about tipping points and collapse of ecosystems I instantly thought about the time when I was into fish tanks and helped other people on the hobby. If you let that thing go sideways in any way for too long, you were facing catastrophic consequences, be it plagues of snails, algae, etc. At some point it just goes downhill, and most of the time the buildup is unnoticeable and when you do notice that something is off, it’s already almost impossible to save the ecosystem.

We visited NY last year for the first time and it’s so sad to see the pictures. I hope the people is taking care of themselves and masking up despite whatever bs fox news and others say.

This is not only unhealthy but, life threatening in the short term for some people.