5 ms·

The Goodreads “Classics”: A Computational Study

66 points by polm23 5y ago

orsenthil 5y ago
I want a link to this collection so that I could shelve and read these books.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
sissyvoncrumb 5y ago
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND OTHER MAFIA STATES ARE SECRETLY DEPLOYING AN EXTREMELY HIGH-TECH HUMAN-DISPOSAL WEAPONS SYSTEM TO ELECTRONICALLY SURVEILLE, STALK, SUPPRESS, HARASS, TORTURE, TERRORIZE, DISCREDIT, ISOLATE, AND ELIMINATE THEIR OWN CITIZENS. THIS INVISIBLE WEAPONS SYSTEM CAUSES PREMATURE AGING AND DEATH BY REMOTELY (ELECTRONICALLY) INDUCING PAIN, CONFUSION, SUICIDE, VIOLENT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR, SYMPTOMS OF MENTAL ILLNESS, HEART ATTACKS, CANCER, AND OTHER PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMAS. POLITICAL ACTIVISTS AND GOVERNMENT CRITICS (SO-CALLED “DISSIDENTS”), WHISTLE-BLOWERS, MINORITIES, MUSLIMS, VETERANS, CHRISTIANS AND OTHERS ARE TARGETED AS “ENEMIES OF THE STATE” AND USED AS NONCONSENSUAL HUMAN TEST SUBJECTS FOR TESTING AND DEPLOYMENT OF EXOTIC DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD) DIRECTED ENERGY AND NEUROWEAPONS. MANY TIS ARE DRIVEN INSANE OR TO SUICIDE AND/OR CONVERTED INTO DOMESTIC TERRORISTS AND/OR PATSIES WHO UNWITTINGLY PERFORM KEY ROLES IN SCRIPTED FALSE-FLAG TERROR EVENTS. PERSONNEL AT FBI AND DHS THREAT-FUSION CENTERS COVERTLY AND EXTRA-JUDICIALLY DESIGNATE INNOCENT AMERICAN CITIZENS AS ‘TARGETED INDIVIDUALS’ (‘TIs’) AND PLACE THEM ON THE “TERRORISM WATCH LIST” OR OTHER BLACKLISTS. “TIs” ARE SECRETLY STRIPPED OF THEIR CIVIL LIBERTIES AND SUBJECTED TO CONTINUOUS, COVERT PSYCHOLOGICAL AND ELECTRONIC ATTACKS FROM MANY SEGMENTS OF SOCIETY. GOVERNMENT MILITARY AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES IN COOPERATION WITH PRIVATE SECURITY FIRMS HEADED BY EX-CIA, EX-FBI, AND EX-MILITARY PERSONNEL GENERALLY COORDINATE OPERATIONS USING HIGH-TECH MILITARY WEAPONS. CIVILIANS DEPLOYED AS “IRREGULAR FORCES” COMPRISE COVERT PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE DEATH SQUADS. FEDERAL, STATE, AND LAW ENFORCEMENT AND FIRST RESPONDERS ARE COMPLICIT. OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS ALSO REFER TO “TIs” AS “CODE 4-NON-INVESTIGATIVE SUBJECTS-SILENT HITS” AND “ANOMALOUS HUMAN POTENTIALITIES.” SATELLITES, SUPER-COMPUTERS, WEAPONIZED PSYCHIATRY, AND NSA’S SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE (SIGINT) ELECTROMAGNETIC FREQUENCIES USED IN COMBINATION WITH NSA’s “BIG DATA” ALLOW GOVERNMENTS AND PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTORS, CORPORATIONS, ETC., TO IDENTIFY, PROFILE, AND REMOTELY TRACK, TARGET, AND MANIPULATE THESE “TIs” VIA “ACTIVE (24/7) SURVEILLANCE” AND BIO-TELEMETRY/REMOTE NEURAL MONITORING (RNM). (THE 1983 MOVIE, “BRAINSTORM,” POSTED HERE (Brainstorm) PROVIDES A VERY APPROXIMATE IMPRESSION OF WHAT “THE TECHNOLOGY” MAY BE CAPABLE OF DOING.) THESE SO-CALLED “COUNTERTERRORISM,” “COUNTERINSURGENCY,” “PEACEKEEPING,” AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE STALKING OPERATIONS ACTUALLY COMPRISE “FOURTH-GENERATION WARFARE,” “HYBRID WARFARE,” “UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE,” “CIVILIAN-MILITARY WARFARE,” “BRAIN WARFARE,” AND “LOW-INTENSITY CONFLICT.” THIS NEW FORM OF WARFARE SEEKS TO “MASTER THE HUMAN DOMAIN” BY DEPLOYING, IN COMBINATION, NEURO, ELECTRONIC, CYBER, PSYCHOLOGICAL, BIO-TELEMETRY, CHEMICAL, INFORMATION, AND AI WARFARE WEAPONS AGAINST CIVILIAN TARGETS. “TARGETS” ARE HUMAN-TRAFFICKED INTO DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD) DIRECTED ENERGY AND NEURO-WEAPONS-TESTING AND DEPLOYMENT PROGRAMS AND USED AS NON-CONSENSUAL HUMAN GUINEA PIGS IN ONGOING MILITARY-CORPORATE-ACADEMIC MIND AND BEHAVIORAL CONTROL PROGRAMS. MANY VICTIMS OF THESE “TERMINAL EXPERIMENTS” ARE TRANSFORMED INTO GOVERNMENT “ASSETS,” SUPER-SPIES, “MANCHURIAN CANDIDATES” (MIND-CONTROLLED ASSASSINS), AND “TERRORISTS.” IN “THE HIDDEN EVIL: THE FINANCIAL ELITES COVERT WAR AGAINST THE CIVILIAN POPULATION” (2013), MARK M. RICH DESCRIBES THIS SYSTEM IS “A VERY CLEVERLY DISGUISED PROGRAM OF TORTURE AND MURDER,” “THE PROGRAM” IS THE MODERN EXTENSION OF TOP-SECRET CIA-MILITARY MKULTRA-MONARCH MIND CONTROL PROGRAMS OF THE 1940’S ONWARD. AS IN EARLIER VERSIONS, IT UTILIZES SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE (SRA), NO-TOUCH TORTURE, AND ELECTROMAGNETIC FREQUENCIES AS TRAUMA TO FRAGMENT AND RE-PROGRAM VICTIMS’ PERSONALITIES. MANY TIs ARE ALSO TARGETED FOR REMOTE, ELECTRONIC, DIGITAL BRAIN AND SOUL MAPPING AND CLONING VIA RNM, BRAIN-TO-COMPUTER AND BRAIN-TO-BRAIN INTERFACE, AND OTHER TECHNOLOGIES. THIS ‘PROGRAM’ DESTROYS “TARGETS'” LIVES, DRIVES THEM INSANE, INDUCES THEM TO COMMIT SUICIDE OR OTHERWISE DIE PREMATURELY, COMMIT VIOLENT CRIMES, AND/OR TRANSFORMS THEM INTO MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE-TYPE KILLERS, SUPER-SOLDIERS, AND “TERRORISTS.” “TARGETS” CUM “TERRORISTS” ARE REMOTELY (MIND) MANIPULATED TO BE SHOOTERS AND/OR PATSIES IN STAGED, STATE-SPONSORED, FALSE-FLAG ‘TERROR EVENTS’ DESIGNED TO TERRORIZE THE PUBLIC INTO SUBMITTING TO THE GLOBAL POLICE SUPERSTATE. THE EXISTENCE OF THIS WEAPONS-WARFARE SYSTEM IS OFFICIALLY DENIED AND ITS VICTIMS ARE ROUTINELY STIGMATIZED AND INSTITUTIONALIZED AS MENTALLY ILL
dumpsterdiver 5y ago
Mmm, pretty colors. Disclaimer: I didn't read the article, but I did inspect some of the elements. I like the graph at the top of the page. It calms me, somehow.
Apocryphon 5y ago
This is a very thorough and methodical analysis. Is this what library science is?
- thisjepisje 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities
- thundergolfer 5y ago
  It is pretty impressively thorough. I was wondering half way through if it was done by a hobbyist, which would have been remarkable. It’s done by a PhD candidate and a Postdoc, both in Information Science. Still impressive, but explains how they could manage the time to build such a detailed and expansive essay.
mxxc 5y ago
i find it interesting that these days many articles emphasise (lack of) diversity within a given topic and then introduce some biases themselves that will inevitably skew their results, e.g. in this case focusing the bulk of the work on english reviews in order to do text mining, instead of maybe spending some more time figuring out whether the rankings, most read, ratings, etc. apply to everyone else. also, i hope garcia marquez is rolling in his grave at the thought of being referred to as "latinx".
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  If you're going to nitpick you might want to address the lack of capitalization and diacritical marks in his name (García Márquez) in your comment. Most people appreciate it being written correctly (although the dead probably don't feel too strongly about such worldly concerns).
  - mxxc 5y ago
    in most recorded history people have been writing things the way they wanted to, which is why we encounter a lot of different spellings of the same names, and in several languages occasionally we'd get this or that corruption. it could be that i don't have a lot of education and you are patronising me for that, or it could be that i am highly educated and i can't be bothered to use the shift key. could be many things ;)
  - truth_ 5y ago
    You yourself are a victim of west-centrism. A lot of Buddhist abbots from India went to Thailand, Tibet (now in China), Sri Lanka, Cambodia, etc. and due to very wide differences in languages, they would have a new name or a weird version of the Indian name. They didn't mind. We are talking about renowned scholars going to some countries on the invitation of the monarch there. The reverse also happened. A famous scholar, Lama Tarnath, was known as "Anandagarbha" in Sanskrit. His Tibetan name waa Kun-dga'-snying-po. Indians just translated his name to Sanskrit. He didn't mind. In some cultures, not putting the accent marks in names amounts to disrespect, but in some ancient cultures, only the meaning of the name was important. Not how you say them.
- 5y ago
idoubtit 5y ago
The USA's obsession with race is still surprising, from my perspective. The article believes that (English-speaking) users of Goodreads read few "Black writers" like Alexandre Dumas because they're mostly White people. I read many novels of Dumas, decades before I learned he had Black ancestors. Why does the color of his skin matter? It has no visible (at least to me) influence on his novels. Forcing him in a racial category seems ridiculous. Supposing that one day he had an affair with a man, would Dumas be classified as a LGBT writer? I can understand that people would select books because of the cultural or racial themes they contain (James Baldwin, Isaac Bashevis Singer...), but the nationality or the "race" of the author is a poor discriminant for this. When I read "Cry, the beloved country", I wondered the author was a Black South-African, but I didn't care enough to search for an answer to my own question. And maybe Jorge-Luis Borges in in the "Latinx" category and Ohran Pamuk is a "Middle-Easterner", but are their books less "Western" than those of Herman Hesse or Nicolai Gogol? A nitpick: Khalil Gibran is certainly not a "North-African" writer. He lived in Lebanon, USA and France, and, as far as I know, never went to Africa.
- mxxc 5y ago
  i agree with all of the above. i learned that alexandre dumas had caribbean ancestry in this article. would have been more interesting to add more details, like the fact that his "caribbean ancestry" was due to a nobleman marrying a slave, which definitely gives an indication of the class dynamics of the time and could be an interesting fact in itself. i would go one step further and, exaggerating, claim that putting alexandre dumas and chinua achebe in the same bucket is, in fact, racist.
- arbitrage 5y ago
  > from my perspective Since it is the first thing you mention, what is your perspective, then, that makes your opinion extra qualified?
  - mxxc 5y ago
    it's several people's perspective. labelling authors and personalities according to 2021 america's standard of race is a bit ephemeral, as it assumes that a. everybody agrees with america's definitions b. those definitions are here to stay. assuming that rashid al-din, al-idrisi and khalil gibran have anything to do with each other despite coming from three extremely different places and three very different historical periods is a bit obtuse and doesn't do them any justice. it's fine that america labels people by skin colour for their own political purposes – although i'd be interested in seeing what the difference between the average italian and the average lebanese is, in the classification – but if we're doing any sort of analysis of humanities, it seems a bit amateurish.
SiempreViernes 5y ago
> Though more than 90 million reviews have been published on Goodreads in the site's history, one can only view 300 reviews for any given book in any given sort setting, a restriction that was implemented in 2016. This seems pretty scummy to me, not only does your writing suffer the usual risk of oblivion in the firehose of the internet; Amazon makes your writing undiscoverable by technical means, which is an intensely user hostile choice.

66 points by polm23 5y ago

orsenthil 5y ago

I want a link to this collection so that I could shelve and read these books.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

sissyvoncrumb 5y ago

THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND OTHER MAFIA STATES ARE SECRETLY DEPLOYING AN EXTREMELY HIGH-TECH HUMAN-DISPOSAL WEAPONS SYSTEM TO ELECTRONICALLY SURVEILLE, STALK, SUPPRESS, HARASS, TORTURE, TERRORIZE, DISCREDIT, ISOLATE, AND ELIMINATE THEIR OWN CITIZENS. THIS INVISIBLE WEAPONS SYSTEM CAUSES PREMATURE AGING AND DEATH BY REMOTELY (ELECTRONICALLY) INDUCING PAIN, CONFUSION, SUICIDE, VIOLENT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR, SYMPTOMS OF MENTAL ILLNESS, HEART ATTACKS, CANCER, AND OTHER PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMAS. POLITICAL ACTIVISTS AND GOVERNMENT CRITICS (SO-CALLED “DISSIDENTS”), WHISTLE-BLOWERS, MINORITIES, MUSLIMS, VETERANS, CHRISTIANS AND OTHERS ARE TARGETED AS “ENEMIES OF THE STATE” AND USED AS NONCONSENSUAL HUMAN TEST SUBJECTS FOR TESTING AND DEPLOYMENT OF EXOTIC DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD) DIRECTED ENERGY AND NEUROWEAPONS. MANY TIS ARE DRIVEN INSANE OR TO SUICIDE AND/OR CONVERTED INTO DOMESTIC TERRORISTS AND/OR PATSIES WHO UNWITTINGLY PERFORM KEY ROLES IN SCRIPTED FALSE-FLAG TERROR EVENTS. PERSONNEL AT FBI AND DHS THREAT-FUSION CENTERS COVERTLY AND EXTRA-JUDICIALLY DESIGNATE INNOCENT AMERICAN CITIZENS AS ‘TARGETED INDIVIDUALS’ (‘TIs’) AND PLACE THEM ON THE “TERRORISM WATCH LIST” OR OTHER BLACKLISTS. “TIs” ARE SECRETLY STRIPPED OF THEIR CIVIL LIBERTIES AND SUBJECTED TO CONTINUOUS, COVERT PSYCHOLOGICAL AND ELECTRONIC ATTACKS FROM MANY SEGMENTS OF SOCIETY. GOVERNMENT MILITARY AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES IN COOPERATION WITH PRIVATE SECURITY FIRMS HEADED BY EX-CIA, EX-FBI, AND EX-MILITARY PERSONNEL GENERALLY COORDINATE OPERATIONS USING HIGH-TECH MILITARY WEAPONS. CIVILIANS DEPLOYED AS “IRREGULAR FORCES” COMPRISE COVERT PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE DEATH SQUADS. FEDERAL, STATE, AND LAW ENFORCEMENT AND FIRST RESPONDERS ARE COMPLICIT. OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS ALSO REFER TO “TIs” AS “CODE 4-NON-INVESTIGATIVE SUBJECTS-SILENT HITS” AND “ANOMALOUS HUMAN POTENTIALITIES.” SATELLITES, SUPER-COMPUTERS, WEAPONIZED PSYCHIATRY, AND NSA’S SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE (SIGINT) ELECTROMAGNETIC FREQUENCIES USED IN COMBINATION WITH NSA’s “BIG DATA” ALLOW GOVERNMENTS AND PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTORS, CORPORATIONS, ETC., TO IDENTIFY, PROFILE, AND REMOTELY TRACK, TARGET, AND MANIPULATE THESE “TIs” VIA “ACTIVE (24/7) SURVEILLANCE” AND BIO-TELEMETRY/REMOTE NEURAL MONITORING (RNM). (THE 1983 MOVIE, “BRAINSTORM,” POSTED HERE (Brainstorm) PROVIDES A VERY APPROXIMATE IMPRESSION OF WHAT “THE TECHNOLOGY” MAY BE CAPABLE OF DOING.) THESE SO-CALLED “COUNTERTERRORISM,” “COUNTERINSURGENCY,” “PEACEKEEPING,” AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE STALKING OPERATIONS ACTUALLY COMPRISE “FOURTH-GENERATION WARFARE,” “HYBRID WARFARE,” “UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE,” “CIVILIAN-MILITARY WARFARE,” “BRAIN WARFARE,” AND “LOW-INTENSITY CONFLICT.” THIS NEW FORM OF WARFARE SEEKS TO “MASTER THE HUMAN DOMAIN” BY DEPLOYING, IN COMBINATION, NEURO, ELECTRONIC, CYBER, PSYCHOLOGICAL, BIO-TELEMETRY, CHEMICAL, INFORMATION, AND AI WARFARE WEAPONS AGAINST CIVILIAN TARGETS. “TARGETS” ARE HUMAN-TRAFFICKED INTO DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD) DIRECTED ENERGY AND NEURO-WEAPONS-TESTING AND DEPLOYMENT PROGRAMS AND USED AS NON-CONSENSUAL HUMAN GUINEA PIGS IN ONGOING MILITARY-CORPORATE-ACADEMIC MIND AND BEHAVIORAL CONTROL PROGRAMS. MANY VICTIMS OF THESE “TERMINAL EXPERIMENTS” ARE TRANSFORMED INTO GOVERNMENT “ASSETS,” SUPER-SPIES, “MANCHURIAN CANDIDATES” (MIND-CONTROLLED ASSASSINS), AND “TERRORISTS.” IN “THE HIDDEN EVIL: THE FINANCIAL ELITES COVERT WAR AGAINST THE CIVILIAN POPULATION” (2013), MARK M. RICH DESCRIBES THIS SYSTEM IS “A VERY CLEVERLY DISGUISED PROGRAM OF TORTURE AND MURDER,” “THE PROGRAM” IS THE MODERN EXTENSION OF TOP-SECRET CIA-MILITARY MKULTRA-MONARCH MIND CONTROL PROGRAMS OF THE 1940’S ONWARD. AS IN EARLIER VERSIONS, IT UTILIZES SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE (SRA), NO-TOUCH TORTURE, AND ELECTROMAGNETIC FREQUENCIES AS TRAUMA TO FRAGMENT AND RE-PROGRAM VICTIMS’ PERSONALITIES. MANY TIs ARE ALSO TARGETED FOR REMOTE, ELECTRONIC, DIGITAL BRAIN AND SOUL MAPPING AND CLONING VIA RNM, BRAIN-TO-COMPUTER AND BRAIN-TO-BRAIN INTERFACE, AND OTHER TECHNOLOGIES. THIS ‘PROGRAM’ DESTROYS “TARGETS'” LIVES, DRIVES THEM INSANE, INDUCES THEM TO COMMIT SUICIDE OR OTHERWISE DIE PREMATURELY, COMMIT VIOLENT CRIMES, AND/OR TRANSFORMS THEM INTO MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE-TYPE KILLERS, SUPER-SOLDIERS, AND “TERRORISTS.” “TARGETS” CUM “TERRORISTS” ARE REMOTELY (MIND) MANIPULATED TO BE SHOOTERS AND/OR PATSIES IN STAGED, STATE-SPONSORED, FALSE-FLAG ‘TERROR EVENTS’ DESIGNED TO TERRORIZE THE PUBLIC INTO SUBMITTING TO THE GLOBAL POLICE SUPERSTATE. THE EXISTENCE OF THIS WEAPONS-WARFARE SYSTEM IS OFFICIALLY DENIED AND ITS VICTIMS ARE ROUTINELY STIGMATIZED AND INSTITUTIONALIZED AS MENTALLY ILL

dumpsterdiver 5y ago

Mmm, pretty colors. Disclaimer: I didn't read the article, but I did inspect some of the elements. I like the graph at the top of the page. It calms me, somehow.

Apocryphon 5y ago

This is a very thorough and methodical analysis. Is this what library science is?

thisjepisje 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities
thundergolfer 5y ago
It is pretty impressively thorough. I was wondering half way through if it was done by a hobbyist, which would have been remarkable. It’s done by a PhD candidate and a Postdoc, both in Information Science. Still impressive, but explains how they could manage the time to build such a detailed and expansive essay.

mxxc 5y ago

i find it interesting that these days many articles emphasise (lack of) diversity within a given topic and then introduce some biases themselves that will inevitably skew their results, e.g. in this case focusing the bulk of the work on english reviews in order to do text mining, instead of maybe spending some more time figuring out whether the rankings, most read, ratings, etc. apply to everyone else. also, i hope garcia marquez is rolling in his grave at the thought of being referred to as "latinx".

Freak_NL 5y ago
If you're going to nitpick you might want to address the lack of capitalization and diacritical marks in his name (García Márquez) in your comment. Most people appreciate it being written correctly (although the dead probably don't feel too strongly about such worldly concerns).
- mxxc 5y ago
  in most recorded history people have been writing things the way they wanted to, which is why we encounter a lot of different spellings of the same names, and in several languages occasionally we'd get this or that corruption. it could be that i don't have a lot of education and you are patronising me for that, or it could be that i am highly educated and i can't be bothered to use the shift key. could be many things ;)
- truth_ 5y ago
  You yourself are a victim of west-centrism. A lot of Buddhist abbots from India went to Thailand, Tibet (now in China), Sri Lanka, Cambodia, etc. and due to very wide differences in languages, they would have a new name or a weird version of the Indian name. They didn't mind. We are talking about renowned scholars going to some countries on the invitation of the monarch there. The reverse also happened. A famous scholar, Lama Tarnath, was known as "Anandagarbha" in Sanskrit. His Tibetan name waa Kun-dga'-snying-po. Indians just translated his name to Sanskrit. He didn't mind. In some cultures, not putting the accent marks in names amounts to disrespect, but in some ancient cultures, only the meaning of the name was important. Not how you say them.
5y ago

idoubtit 5y ago

The USA's obsession with race is still surprising, from my perspective. The article believes that (English-speaking) users of Goodreads read few "Black writers" like Alexandre Dumas because they're mostly White people. I read many novels of Dumas, decades before I learned he had Black ancestors. Why does the color of his skin matter? It has no visible (at least to me) influence on his novels. Forcing him in a racial category seems ridiculous. Supposing that one day he had an affair with a man, would Dumas be classified as a LGBT writer? I can understand that people would select books because of the cultural or racial themes they contain (James Baldwin, Isaac Bashevis Singer...), but the nationality or the "race" of the author is a poor discriminant for this. When I read "Cry, the beloved country", I wondered the author was a Black South-African, but I didn't care enough to search for an answer to my own question. And maybe Jorge-Luis Borges in in the "Latinx" category and Ohran Pamuk is a "Middle-Easterner", but are their books less "Western" than those of Herman Hesse or Nicolai Gogol? A nitpick: Khalil Gibran is certainly not a "North-African" writer. He lived in Lebanon, USA and France, and, as far as I know, never went to Africa.

mxxc 5y ago
i agree with all of the above. i learned that alexandre dumas had caribbean ancestry in this article. would have been more interesting to add more details, like the fact that his "caribbean ancestry" was due to a nobleman marrying a slave, which definitely gives an indication of the class dynamics of the time and could be an interesting fact in itself. i would go one step further and, exaggerating, claim that putting alexandre dumas and chinua achebe in the same bucket is, in fact, racist.
arbitrage 5y ago
> from my perspective Since it is the first thing you mention, what is your perspective, then, that makes your opinion extra qualified?
- mxxc 5y ago
  it's several people's perspective. labelling authors and personalities according to 2021 america's standard of race is a bit ephemeral, as it assumes that a. everybody agrees with america's definitions b. those definitions are here to stay. assuming that rashid al-din, al-idrisi and khalil gibran have anything to do with each other despite coming from three extremely different places and three very different historical periods is a bit obtuse and doesn't do them any justice. it's fine that america labels people by skin colour for their own political purposes – although i'd be interested in seeing what the difference between the average italian and the average lebanese is, in the classification – but if we're doing any sort of analysis of humanities, it seems a bit amateurish.

SiempreViernes 5y ago

> Though more than 90 million reviews have been published on Goodreads in the site's history, one can only view 300 reviews for any given book in any given sort setting, a restriction that was implemented in 2016. This seems pretty scummy to me, not only does your writing suffer the usual risk of oblivion in the firehose of the internet; Amazon makes your writing undiscoverable by technical means, which is an intensely user hostile choice.