How to Actually Change Your Mind

How to Actually Change Your Mind
Author: Eliezer Yudkowsky
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2018-12-14
Genre:
ISBN: 9781939311276

Human intelligence is a superweapon: an amazing capacity that has single-handedly put humans in a dominant position on Earth. When human intelligence defeats itself and goes off the rails, the fallout therefore tends to be a uniquely big deal. In How to Actually Change Your Mind, decision theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky asks how we can better identify and sort out our biases, integrate new evidence, and achieve lucidity in our daily lives. Because it really seems as though we should be able to do better--and a three-pound all-purpose superweapon is a terrible thing to waste.

Flipped

Flipped
Author: Wendelin Van Draanen
Publisher: Ember
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2003-05-13
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0375825444

A classic he-said-she-said romantic comedy! This updated anniversary edition offers story-behind-the-story revelations from author Wendelin Van Draanen. The first time she saw him, she flipped. The first time he saw her, he ran. That was the second grade, but not much has changed by the seventh. Juli says: “My Bryce. Still walking around with my first kiss.” He says: “It’s been six years of strategic avoidance and social discomfort.” But in the eighth grade everything gets turned upside down: just as Bryce is thinking that there’s maybe more to Juli than meets the eye, she’s thinking that he’s not quite all he seemed. This is a classic romantic comedy of errors told in alternating chapters by two fresh, funny voices. The updated anniversary edition contains 32 pages of extra backmatter: essays from Wendelin Van Draanen on her sources of inspiration, on the making of the movie of Flipped, on why she’ll never write a sequel, and a selection of the amazing fan mail she’s received. Awards and accolades for Flipped: SLJ Top 100 Children’s Novels of all time IRA-CBC Children’s Choice IRA Teacher’s Choice Honor winner, Judy Lopez Memorial Award/WNBA Winner of the California Young Reader Medal “We flipped over this fantastic book, its gutsy girl Juli and its wise, wonderful ending.” — The Chicago Tribune “Van Draanen has another winner in this eighth-grade ‘he-said, she-said’ romance. A fast, funny, egg-cellent winner.” — SLJ, Starred review “With a charismatic leading lady kids will flip over, a compelling dynamic between the two narrators and a resonant ending, this novel is a great deal larger than the sum of its parts.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred review

Brightness Reef

Brightness Reef
Author: David Brin
Publisher: Spectra
Total Pages: 679
Release: 2010-01-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307572722

David Brin’s Uplift novels—Sundiver, Hugo award winner The Uplift War, and Hugo and Nebula winner Startide Rising—are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction tales ever written. Now David Brin returns to this future universe for a new Uplift trilogy, packed with adventure, passion and wit. The planet Jijo is forbidden to settlers, its ecology protected by guardians of the Five Galaxies. But over the centuries it has been resettled, populated by refugees of six intelligent races. Together they have woven a new society in the wilderness, drawn together by their fear of Judgment Day, when the Five Galaxies will discover their illegal colony. Then a strange starship arrives on Jijo. Does it bring the long-dreaded judgment, or worse—a band of criminals willing to destroy the six races of Jijo in order to cover their own crimes?

Sea of Silver Light

Sea of Silver Light
Author: Tad Williams
Publisher: Daw Books
Total Pages: 922
Release: 2001
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780886779771

The epic conclusion of the Otherland saga journeys back to the bizarre world of virtual realities in which the characters discover a multifaceted pathways to immortality, which could be available if one is willing to pay a dangerous price. By the author of City of Golden Shadow, River of Blue Fire, and Mountain of Black Glass.

Amnesty

Amnesty
Author: Aravind Adiga
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-02-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982127317

An “urgent and significant book [that] speaks to our times” (The New York Times Book Review) from the bestselling, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The White Tiger and Selection Day about a young illegal immigrant who must decide whether to report crucial information about a murder—and thereby risk deportation. Danny—formerly Dhananjaya Rajaratnam—is an illegal immigrant in Sydney, Australia, denied refugee status after he fled from Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden accent and highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal life. But then one morning, Danny learns a female client of his has been murdered. The deed was done with a knife, at a creek he’d been to with her before; and a jacket was left at the scene, which he believes belongs to another of his clients—a doctor with whom Danny knows the woman was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: Come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported? Or say nothing, and let justice go undone? Over the course of this day, evaluating the weight of his past, his dreams for the future, and the unpredictable, often absurd reality of living invisibly and undocumented, he must wrestle with his conscience and decide if a person without rights still has responsibilities. “Searing and inventive,” Amnesty is a timeless and universal story that succeeds at “illuminating the courage of displaced peoples and the cruelties of those who conspire against them” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).

The Woman of Colour

The Woman of Colour
Author: Lyndon J. Dominique
Publisher: Broadview Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2007-10-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1460406133

The Woman of Colour is a unique literary account of a black heiress’ life immediately after the abolition of the British slave trade. Olivia Fairfield, the biracial heroine and orphaned daughter of a slaveholder, must travel from Jamaica to England, and as a condition of her father’s will either marry her Caucasian first cousin or become dependent on his mercenary elder brother and sister-in-law. As Olivia decides between these two conflicting possibilities, her letters recount her impressions of Britain and its inhabitants as only a black woman could record them. She gives scathing descriptions of London, Bristol, and the British, as well as progressive critiques of race, racism, and slavery. The narrative follows her life from the heights of her arranged marriage to its swift descent into annulment and destitution, only to culminate in her resurrection as a self-proclaimed “widow” who flouts the conventional marriage plot. The appendices, which include contemporary reviews of the novel, historical documents on race and inheritance in Jamaica, and examples of other women of colour in early British prose fiction, will further inspire readers to rethink issues of race, gender, class, and empire from an African woman’s perspective.

Neoreaction a Basilisk

Neoreaction a Basilisk
Author: Elizabeth Sandifer
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2018-03-29
Genre: Radicalism
ISBN: 9781986913997

A software engineer sets out to design a new political ideology, and ends up concluding that the Stewart Dynasty should be reinstated. A cult receives disturbing messages from the future, where the artificial intelligence they worship is displeased with them. A philosopher suffers a mental breakdown and retreats to China, where he finds the terrifying abyss at the heart of modern liberalism. Are these omens of the end times, or just nerds getting up to stupid hijinks? Por que no los dos! Neoreaction a Basilisk is a savage journey into the black heart of our present eschaton. We're all going to die, and probably horribly. But at least we can laugh at how completely ridiculous it is to be killed by a bunch of frog-worshiping manchildren. Featuring essays on: * Tentacled computer gods at the end of the universe * Deranged internet trolls who believe women playing video games will end western civilization * The black mass in which the President of the United States sacrificed his name * Fringe economists who believe it's immoral for the government to prevent an asteroid from hitting the Earth * The cabal of lizard people who run the world * How to become a monster that haunts the future * Why infusing the blood of teenagers for eternal youth is bad and stupid

Invisible Man

Invisible Man
Author: Ralph Ellison
Publisher: Penguin Books Limited
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780241970560

The invisible man is the unnamed narrator of this impassioned novel of black lives in 1940s America. Embittered by a country which treats him as a non-being he retreats to an underground cell.