ɯᴉuoʇuɐ, antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com

That whole website is incredible.

his publisher told him the descriptions of same-sex behavior in a book on animal sexual behavior were against the law

So it wasn’t legally or expressedly banned by the govt. But in authoritarian fear-based and legally unpredictable states it’s not unusual for people to individually take rules even further than technically necessary, to affirm their adherence to the system and to be safe from even the smallest suspicion or most ridiculous accusation.

Might be worth noting that the publisher (Eksmo-AST) is one of the biggest book publishers in Russia.

I love how this meme has been reappropriated in a gently self-deprecating way.

I’m not saying you should read them; and I already provided the reasons for reading them above. You can find those reasons compelling or not.

I never mentioned the reviewer being paid. There’s many interesting blogs and Goodreads profiles that are worth following too. My impression is, you’re drawing an overly sharp boundary between your style of reading and something you imagine is “professional” reading of those who care about reviews.

Analysis and discussion of literary works is only for those “inside” the literary world? But surely everyone who reads is inside the literary world.

It is reasonable to read a book and be interested in other people’s different thoughts on it, that hardly requires some sort of specialist knowledge.

That’s why I put the quotation marks ;)

Pterosauria is a branch of archosauria, together with dinos and crocodiles. Idk about those in the sea.

Two pterosauri ("fyling dinosaurs"), plesiosaurus, dimetrodon, and I don’t know the name of that other swimming dino, maybe mosasaurus.

Sorry but no. As profoundly unfair and undemocratic the US system is, it’s still more democratic than Russia where any serious opposition is literally murdered in broad daylight.

“The votes are for show” – do you mean to say that Trump’s victory in 2016, Biden’s in 2020 and Trump’s again in 2024 were prearranged by the central “powers that be”?

This is an important point in general. The old story of “voting with your wallet” is now more and more obviously mathematically absurd.

Reviews are supposed to be a place for analysis, evaluation and discussion, not just recommendation.

Except that being trans typically doesn’t entail a quasi-religious/magical understanding of gender.

What culture are we going to be for the aliens who discover our remains ten thousand years from now?

A Russian news site talks about Russia. If that distracts you from talking about Israel, you may have some cognitive issues.

The state is restricting innovation? This is literally communism!

Fighting over Simple Article Summaries is just the latest fumble by the leadership, a sizable commitment of resources that’s tossed in the dump almost as soon as its off the press.

It wasn’t off the press, it was announced and in the works but still not close to shipping. Maybe Wikimedia could’ve talked about this great innovative project with the actual Wikipedia community before investing so much money into it.

International language support is… meh (one area where AI would be a huge benefit, as LLMs really shine in this field).

What would international language support entail? Translating articles into other languages?

To all the people downvoting the above comment, when was the last time you’ve read a WP article of 10k+ characters from top to bottom?