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YC's Winter Reading List
- michaelchisari 10y agoI'll second "A Guide To The Good Life", and would like to suggest "What's The Matter With Kansas" by Thomas Frank as a companion piece to "Strangers In Their Own Land."
- _sentient 10y ago"Art of Living" (Epictetus) is another great introduction to stoicism. Highly recommended.
- CptJamesCook 10y agoHere is a great primer on stoicism: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/3a2bl4/stoicism_101_a_primer_on_how_to_be/?st=iwdybs1v&sh=c5214988 https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/3a2bl4/stoicism... I love the practice of stoicism, but I cannot do the negative visualization. It just gives me anxiety! This is a great booklist. Thanks YC.
- davidw 10y agoIf you like "The Rent is Too Damn High" and really want to dig in, I've been reading this: Zoning Rules!: The Economics of Land Use Regulation - http://amzn.to/2gZQtqg http://amzn.to/2gZQtqg It's pretty dry, but very thorough. Some groups that are good for people who want to get into this stuff more: * http://www.strongtowns.org/ http://www.strongtowns.org/ * http://marketurbanism.com/ http://marketurbanism.com/ It's an area where people can really make a difference: I've managed to chat with a couple of city councilors and our state representative here in Bend, and recently kicked off https://bendyimby.com/ https://bendyimby.com/
- tbihl 10y agoHave you read Marohn's two books? I keep putting them off, but I haven't gotten a recommendation yet.
- davidw 10y agoNo, I haven't. They look like "the blog's greatest hits" and I tend to be less enthusiastic about books like that. I'm curious too, because they might be good to recommend to people. Maybe I'll see if I can get the library to get them.
- hyperpape 10y agoFlagged, as there is clearly political content here that doesn't comport with new Hacker News rules.
- davidw 10y agoIf you read the guidelines, politics has always been considered off-topic.
- hyperpape 10y agoWhat it says is "most stories about politics", which is deliberately vague, but not the same as the current experiment.
- davidw 10y agoPeople seem to think that previously, politics was an ok thing to post. Mostly, it was not.
- DanBC 10y agoNo, the current experiment is just a reminder of the existing rules with added encouragement to flag.
- hyperpape 10y agoCompare the announcement (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404) and the guidelines. It seems completely obvious to me that they're saying different things.
- idlewords 10y agoExactly. Shameful attempt to smuggle politics onto a tech site.
- nathcd 10y ago> If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rcavezza 10y agoFor a "Winter Reading List", there is a ton of titles. I'll be lucky if I get to 5 books in the next few months. Can someone recommend a top 5 from this list?
- jmduke 10y agoIn light of HN's (edit: temporary) ban on political content, I find it interesting that so many of YC's favorite books relate to: - religion (Going Clear, Zealot, Finding God in the Waves) - war and oppressive policy (War in a Time of Peace, Silence Once Begun) - conservative lifestyle (Strangers in Their Own Land, Hillbilly Elegy) The first two are explicitly prohibited topics of discussion on this site, and the third is implicitly discouraged.
- davidw 10y agoCompartmentalization is the name of the game.
- idlewords 10y agoYou'll notice this post got (correctly) flagged off the front page.
- dang 10y ago> In light of HN's ban on political content Please don't forget to mention this is just for one week. The intention is not "ban political content". It's to take a one-week breather from political stories that tend to result in flamewars.
- azyback 10y agoI'd add this permanent reputation loss to the cost of the "experiment". It's useless to say it's temporary since it could at any time be imposed again. The users clearly don't get a vote here. Transparency at HN seems like an absolute necessity at this point, if there's any desire to maintain the nature of this place. Every mod action on this very public forum should be very public on a special page people can watch. Short of something like this the conversation is just going to start slowly migrating to a new host(s). I think reddit needs the same upgrade. It's like a missing component of a 2016 social site.
- tbihl 10y agoIf you want a list of fiction and textbooks, I think you could reasonably expect that this was the wrong list for you. If you want contemporary nonfiction, you will find yourself wading into something at least moderately political. We argue about them for the same reasons we read and write books about these things: they're important. Unlike this forum, a book is a really good length for experiencing those political arguments. So read a book to understand why someone would support something so backwards, to see if their thinking stands up to scrutiny, or read it just to 'know thy enemy.' But if the book is good, you'll probably get something out of it. If it's bad, it'll be slow and painful. Arguably the recommendation is twice as valuable when you disagree with the author's thesis: far better to hear only the best counterarguments to one's own perspectives, given limited time.
- geofft 10y agoI find it interesting that this list of books includes a scholarly look at a man I believe to be God incarnate, written by a non-believer. Does that not violate the temporary ban on "the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet"? I'm sure it's an interesting book, and I'm all for people reading it, but is that really the sort of thing we should be discussing this week? Next week would be totally fine.