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Aleister Crowley - Diary of a Drug Fiend - 1922

I read this book decades ago and got the urge to read it again. It is autobiography, not a novel. The publisher wrote on the cover, "The book that invented Addiction Literature". I don't know about that but maybe. With Crowley's interest in the occult and so on it is not an average tale. I don't remember much about it now except I was quite impressed with it. I love the poetic writing. To take a somewhat random paragraph from the sixth page:

She was certainly not a pretty girl from the standpoint of a music hall audience. There was something indefinably Mongolian about her face. The planes were flat; the cheek bones high; the oblique; the nose wide, short, and vital; the mouth a long, thin, rippling curve like a mad sunset. The eyes were tiny and green, with a piquant elfin expression. Her hair was curiously colourless, it was very abundant; she had wound great ropes about her head. It reminded me of the armature of a dynamo. It produced a weird effect, this mingling of the savage Mongol with savage Norseman type. Her strange hair fascinated me. It was that delicate flaxen hue, so fine, no, I I don't know how to tell you about it, I can't think of it without getting all muddled up.
 

Innula Zenovka

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Innula Zenovka

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AI is indirectly ruining reading as well, apparently by going fake incel.

The popular book app Fable has come under fire for its AI-generated annual roundups, which some users say gave them offensive messages about race and gender, Wired reports.

These days, every app imaginable is deploying its own take on the wildly popular Spotify Wrapped feature by providing personalized end-of-year recaps for users' consumption habits. Hopping on the trend, Fable tried to stand out by using AI to "playfully roast" its readers.

In some cases, however, the AI veered into overly edgy territory — in what appears to be an all-too-common case of a large language model defying its guardrails.
The summary for Fable user Tiana Trammell, for example, praised her for being a "soulful explorer" of "Black narratives," before about-facing completely: "Don't forget to surface for the occasional white author, okay?"
One writer's Fable summary called him a "diversity devotee" and asked if he's "ever in the mood for a straight, cis white man's perspective." Trammell says she's also seen other people whose summaries snidely commented on "disability and sexual orientation."
 
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Innula Zenovka

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It’s a scenario that would make Tesla’s Ceo, Elon Musk, shudder: a future where self-driving cars are the norm but a catastrophic electronic breakdown traps thousands of people inside them.

This dystopian vision of the future was one sketched out by science fiction writers at an event this week where experts were asked to prepare Britain for threats ranging from pandemics to cyber and nuclear attacks.
Newman, who was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke award in 2017 with her novel After Atlas, emphasised the value of being able to imagine individual experiences in future scenarios.

“So when the power goes out for the first hour from, say, an electro-magnetic pulse incident, it means someone might not be able to make a cup of tea, but for others it’s about vital medical equipment,” she said.

“But then let’s think of a society in 2050 where you just have self-driving cars. What if you suddenly end up in a situation where there are thousands of those people trapped in their cars?”
 
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Caete

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I stumbled upon this entry. It is from a book called Virtually Dead by Peter May.
Crime-scene photographer Michael Kapinsky is a man whose first life is in a mess. But his second life is about to get a whole lot messier. Staggering under the financial burden bequeathed him by his recently deceased wife, Michael is also struggling to come to terms with her death. To help, Michael's psychologist persuades him to participate in a new kind of group therapy, a virtual world called Second Life. Once there, in the persona of his Brad Pitt lookalike, Chas Chesnokov, Michael soon discovers that murder is not just confined to the real world. Victims whose crime scenes he has attended in the wealthy Southern California resort of Newport Beach have had their avatars clinically executed in the virtual world. Co-opted into the Twist of Fate Detective Agency, Michael's Second Life alter ego embarks on an investigation with exotic dancer and escort girl, Doobie Littlething. Together they uncover a series of killings and a financial scam that is netting the murderer millions of dollars--real dollars. But when Michael is tempted by the money that mysteriously appears in Chas' Second Life account, both his real and his virtual lives are put in danger. In a thrilling denouement played out in the dark and secret worlds on both sides of the computer screen, someone will die, and a shocking secret will be revealed.
Sounds horrible but at $109 US it isn't going to be bought by me lol.
 

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I stumbled upon this entry. It is from a book called Virtually Dead by Peter May.

Sounds horrible but at $109 US it isn't going to be bought by me lol.
From a Review:
well researched suspense thriller that introduces and reveals the computer game/virtual world that is Second Life. He tells an excellent story of plausible intrigue and human disaster when the main character's real life crosses the digital boundary into Second Life and back again.
 
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Isabeau

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Some of you may know Sylvain Neuvel (he wrote the Themis Files trilogy among other things)
Anyway, he wrote à thread story you have to read.

 

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