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diagonalizable.bsky.social
@diagonalizable.bsky.social
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diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR/TBRA shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Title: On Global Justice. Author: Mathias Risse. Bottom of page: Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. The cover of this hardback book is blank. Hence the title page. The idea of this book retains local concerns and global concerns in the interests of everyone. If you think inconsistencies make it impossible, think epistemic paraconsistent logics. If that's obscure, think Federation of Planets.
November 8, 2025 at 2:43 AM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR/TBRA shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Author: Gregory Benford. (partially covered by an old B. Dalton price sticker of $2.95, but I bought it for less than 25cents at a library sale). Title: Timescape. Published in 1980, this printing is 1981 by Pocket Books of Simon & Schuster. I mention that because the cover is remarkable. There's Earth surrounded by 3 rings. The remarkable part is that Earth and the rings are raised (like it was impressed by an old notary public's metal tool), the countries on Earth are raised also. Tactile surprise & pleasure indeed. The context of the book's content is a message is sent from future sucky 1998 Earth to 1962 Earth with information on how to avoid the suckiness.
November 7, 2025 at 4:45 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR/TBRA shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
The circle in the middle is divided into fifths. Author: Manu Saadia. Title: Trekonomics. Between the author and title is: "Foreword by Brad Delong". Below the title is: The Economics of Star Trek. Below in the final fifth is a blurby prediction: "A Star Trek future might be closer than we think. -- New York Times --". (It's easy to "predict" mere possibilities (absence of inconsistency) which are easily true as possibilities -- & almost as easy to predict feasibilities (physical possibilities). Especially when "we" is left vague. So, yawn. But the enthusiastic optimism is cheery, yet had nothing to do with my motive for purchasing this first edition book (cheaply, added by cheap me).) Circle is encircled by, well, I can't be sure: ladders? frameworks of crates? schemas of filing cabinets? stacked, inserted? Squares and rectangles. From the inside: cover design by Jennifer Bostic, cover art by John Powers. "Economics" defined broadly as "art and science of managing, producing, and exchanging resources as a society". What "really matters" is the "social distribution" of Star Trek's utopian prosperity. The book contains excellent uses of fundamental Star Trek foundational principles and values. I'll read this book again (hence from my TBRA shelf).
November 6, 2025 at 1:22 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
top line (who cares): "Award-winning author of The Dispossessed and The Lathe of Heaven". Author: Ursula K. LeGuin. (There's a rectangle picture with white clouds blue sky, blue ridge, black trees outlined. Apparently it's supposed to be windy, a really clever play on the title (arggh). Title: the wind's twelve quarters, stories. The gold gear-circle with open book in center and words around it "National Book Award Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. At the bottom an unnecessary blurb: "Delicious...her worlds are haunting psychological visions molded with firm artistry. -- Library Journal." ("Delicious", really? As Q asked Worf: "eat any good books lately?".)
November 4, 2025 at 5:29 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Author: Kurt Vonnegut. Title: Timequake. Left corner is 1.50, library sale price. In the right corner the cover yells at us "The New York Times Bestseller". On the left in the middle cover spits "A New York Times Notable Book", "This is the indispensable Vonnegut -- San Francisco Chronicle", "Wry and trenchant ... highly entertaining --- The New York Times Book Review". Though there are 24 blurbs on the back cover and 2 pages inside from people I couldn't care less about, the picture on the front cover is not credited to anyone. It's a circle in space with a few stars. The circle is divided in the middle. Represents earth and clock I guess. Roman numerals XII and IX in appropriate clock places. Clock hands disconnected and laying haphazardly on circle. The tree on the right has one apple and a snake on it. Shiver me timbers, what could that symbolize? Two lions in front. Zebra at river. Some 4 leggeds in background. Vonnegut wrote it. It's about time. It's science fiction. Ergo I bought it.
October 31, 2025 at 3:14 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Title: montreal noir. Editors: John McFetridge, Jacques Filippi. Picture of rain clouds late afternoon perhaps shadows of jacques cartier bridge and la ronde.
October 30, 2025 at 12:50 AM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Title: Games Iteration Numbers, A Philosophical Introduction to Computability Theory. Author: Luca M. Possati. Top right corner: Studies in Logic. Background has shadowy words, numbers, symbols. Offhand the book's masquerading as something simple, yet it's not doing that as well. On first glance,there are relations between unbelievable and plain things that are fascinating and repulsive. To a casual observer the writing looks simple enough.
October 29, 2025 at 4:09 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Title: mexico city noir. Editor: Paco Ignacio Taibo II. Picture of a skeleton reminding us of something.
October 28, 2025 at 12:45 AM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Author: Crispin Sartwell. Title: Entanglements, a system of philosophy. There's a drawing of curvy lines with dots here and there (some dots darker than others). The whole seems to center on a center creating an interval or perhaps flow to a well-bottom. Routes with significant places (some more significant than others?) spiraling towards or not a center or bottom? Our journeys center around a time? Entanglements with others, with other parts of ourselves? Who knows? The drawing is not credited to anyone. This may be a book about the basics of philosophy and if it's just that I probably won't read it all, basics now often boring me, though I still like to glance at basics now and then to see what I may have missed along the way. I don't know the author but know of him, and respect him. My hunch is that there's a lot more than basics in this book, and that will be very interesting.
October 27, 2025 at 1:24 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
(Starting at top) The letter 'B' backwards and forwards, then "U2346 A Ballantine Science Fiction Original". Title: To Live Forever. Author: Jack Vance. Then comes a pos blurb from the New York Herald Tribune: " . . . an exciting specimen of science fiction in the grand manner". Then below is a square with a picture and it is not credited to anyone. This particular paperback cost me 25 cents at a library sale. It was printed in 1966. The novel was originally published in 1956. Who doesn't want to live forever?
October 24, 2025 at 3:33 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
[On this cover] #1 New York Times Bestseller [I don't give a fk]. Author: R. F. Kuang. Award winning author of the Poppy War trilogy. [Another not given] A masterpiece --- Rebecca Roanhorse. [There's another I get to keep.] Title: Babel, An Arcane History. Background picture probably supposed to be Oxford of 1800s, big tower, white-ish birds spiraling upward round the tower. What does any of this mean? It means I'd like to live there for awhile. This is a First Edition and is probably going to be worth a gazillion whathaveyous eventually.
October 23, 2025 at 8:22 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
(At top is a kind of announcement) Celebrating 40 years of Star Trek. (The words "Star Trek" are in the original TV show 1966 font. On the upper right is a gear-like thing that says:) GREAT BOOK! GREAT PRICE! (At bottom is title:) Vulcan's Glory. (Under title is) A classic novel by D.C. FONTANA with a new afterword by the author. (Fontana is a Star Trek Hall of Famer.) From the inside of the book we find "Cover art by Cliff Nielsen".) The cover art includes in background something that looks like ribs in the top half background and two skeleton hands placed over the ribs as if bones placed in a grave, or whatever. The pear shaped object is something like a jewel I guess. The two men in the jewel are Leonard Nimoy and Jeffrey Hunter (I think), Spock and Christopher Pike from the 1966 pilot episode. This particular book was published in 2006 though it feels like 1980s paperback and indeed it was originally published in 1989. The book's price in 2006 was 4.99. That's not a "great price" is it? A great price would be say 25 cents.
October 23, 2025 at 4:05 AM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Title: Somewhat Deeper Thoughts. Author: J. Hayes Hurley. "Cover art by Richard Saba" says the back cover. The picture can be described I suppose, but all I can say at the moment is colors, shapes, somewhere or other. (A note. Like the previous book by Hurley I intend to read sometime, this too contains, six in this case, for lack of a better word, novelettes, though the back cover calls them "novels". Well, definitely short novels. But then what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a novel? I have no idea. Well, wrong, I have or could have numerous ideas but at the moment lack the energy to argue for one or another. But the back cover also indicates this is an example of "Philosophy Fiction" (my term), like the other book Falling Through Time. And I realize I have broken the rule by adding more than merely the cover etc.. I acknowledge at this point my fondness for paraconsistent logics, just so you'll get where I'd go to explain this alt text.)
October 21, 2025 at 1:03 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Author: J. Hayes Hurley. Title: Falling Through Time. Cover image by Douglas Leichter (according to back cover). Small green and brown triangles pointing up (they're not equilateral); small red, yellow, black triangles pointing down. There are 2 multicolor circular triangles pointing down. White spots and lines all over the framing rectangle. It is more complex; I cannot work up the energy to describe it further.
October 20, 2025 at 6:15 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
#readingchallenge #readersky💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Title: The Spirit of Democracy: the struggle to build free societies throughout the world. Author: Larry Diamond. The "o" in "Democracy" is not a letter but a picture of the earth made up of jigsaw pieces, 90% blue shades, some white-ish, & one tiny piece red. (The small print mostly above the title reads: meticulous [and] gleaned from his experience . . . Diamond is at this best when he recounts how ordinary people affect the democratic process.)
October 18, 2025 at 11:37 AM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge #readingchallenge #readersky💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Author: Bruce Chatwin. (The word "Picador" above his name indicates the London publisher of this 1990 pb.) Title: What Am I Doing Here. The square in the middle is a photo taken by Chatwin of two doors in a shanty town in Nouchott. (Says the back cover.)
October 17, 2025 at 1:31 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
#Booksky #bookchallenge
#readingchallenge #readersky💙📚
Choose 20 books on your current TBR[A] shelves. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no expectations, just covers.
Title: The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability. Editors: Mark Bovens, Robert E. Gooding, Thomas Schillemans. Picture: Allegory of Good Government) (Cycle of frescoes The Allegory of the Good and Bad Government) by Lorenzetti, Ambrogio (ca 1290-ca 1348/Palazzo Pubblico, Torre del Mangia, Siena
October 16, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Reposted
afterdinnerconversation.com
Just got a grant that allows us to offer a free sample philosophy ethics short story fiction books for educators. No strings attached. And yes, we pay for shipping too.

buff.ly/xreh14w
October 4, 2025 at 7:57 PM
Reposted
debhaalandnm.bsky.social
Military service is about courage and sacrifice. That’s what my father, a Marine, and my mother, a Navy veteran, taught me.

But awarding medals for the massacre at Wounded Knee is cruelty, not honor. And reaffirming them today only deepens the injustice. (1/2🧵)
September 26, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Reposted
ericswalwell.bsky.social
Donald Trump wants to normalize violence and he wants to wash his hands of his own responsibility. Democrats are going to make sure it’s always TRUTH over Trump. Watch my full interview with @chuck_rocha at substack.com/chuckrocha
September 15, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Reposted
defector.com
Setting aside the incorrect claim about herd immunity:
Setting Aside The Incorrect Claim About Herd Immunity | Defector
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, largely concerning U.S. vaccine policy, which the infamous anti-vax conspiracy theorist oversees in his role as…
defector.com
September 6, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted
authorstuartmiller.bsky.social
Video credit: itsjuliencohen

Description: "11 and 8-year-old prodigy sisters played Vivaldi Winter with me"

This is serious musical talent 🎻🎻🎹🎶🎵

#VivaldiWinter #Song #music #Piano #Violin #Instruments #Instrumental
September 2, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Reposted
lucagalletti.bsky.social
The voiceover is like a bedtime story 🛏️ 🤣

Zingerman's Bakehouse
Ann Arbor, Michigan
August 30, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Reposted
ericswalwell.bsky.social
Who’s the secretary of agriculture?
August 25, 2025 at 6:40 PM
diagonalizable.bsky.social
💙📚 #booksky #bookchallenge #books Choose books (or their similars) that significantly contribute to a well-lived life. Just covers.
Two paperback covers. On the left, title: The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity. Author: Nicholas Rescher. One large square divided into 4 squares, 2 of which are some kind of blue, 2 are deep purple. There's s small square in the center: a diagram of triangles, curves, hexagon tiles, maybe golden ratio diagram. Book on right, title: The Philosophy of Need. Edited by Soran Reader. Cover is mainly brown with cloudylike wispy whatevers. Small white square is old library tag for a Dewey Decimal designation. It was withdrawn from circulation and purchased at a used books store. (Long may they live.) Way over among foundations where we find solidarity, dignity, human recognition, freedoms, there are vital needs (Wiggins), needs, capabilities. . . .We have vital need for cogent cognitive values, and a vital need to increase our capabilities to meet our vital needs. We need to expand our vital capabilities, and protect particular “freedoms and possibilities of ongoing adaptation” [Alkire], cogently adopted cognitive and epistemic values, orientations, predispositions for “how we make sense of our experience”, our “explanatory paradigms”, our “principles of interpretation”, our fundamental “metaphors”, our “styles of argumentation or logics” (Rescher). We have a vital need for cogent cognitive axiology and cogent phenomenological axiology and vital capabilities to meet such need. We need probatively cogent reasoning.
August 15, 2025 at 2:24 PM