I've recently found myself reaching for some of my favorite philosophy books as I enter another year of navigating a chaotic, painful world, and navigating my own depression and quest for meaning within it. Exploring philosophy really helps give me the language and mental framework to make sense and meaning out of an existence that often overwhelms me with fear and meaninglessness.

One big problem, though: a lot of philosophy books absolutely suck to read. They're overlong, impenetrably dense, and often awkwardly translated from another language.

TL;DR:
Can anyone recommend approachable, readable philosophy (or philosophy-adjacent) books that can help me navigate the world, find reasons to live, and develop a durable sense of meaning?

Some more background info: The philosophies that have resonated most with me over the years are the works of Camus, the broader world of existentialists and existentialist-adjacent philosophies, stoicism, and utilitarianism. While I recognize that things like logic, epistemology, and religion are important branches of philosophy I'm more interested in things that help me navigate the daily questions of existence such as meaning, suffering, purpose, and so on.

The most impactful philosophical ideas I've ever encountered are those of Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus' conception of the absurd and the challenges of navigating it resonated so deeply with me that it essentially kickstarted my entire interest in philsophy. Before that I had never done any philosophical reading that felt like it really applied to me. Suddenly it felt like Camus had taken what was in my brain and put it on the page. However, I still consider the Myth of Sisyphus not an approachable, readable philosophy book, and not really a good book at all. I found his philosophy impactful despite the fact that it's overly long, often boring, and weighed down by an English translation that may have been good in the 1950s but in the 21st century is extremely stilted and hard to read.

For that reason my favorite philosophy book is At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell. It's half biography of Sartre, Beauviour, and Heidigger, and half overview of the wide world of existentialist philosophies. It's an smooth, pleasant read written in plain English that both helped me understand more philosophical concepts than any other single book I've ever read and introduced me to tons of things I want to learn more about. I highly recommend it.

Some other books I've read:

• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin is tremendous. I know this isn't technically philosophy, but it definitely feels philosophy adjacent to me since it fit the bill of "help me make sense of the world" and as a bonus is a very smooth read. I plan to re-read this soon.
• Man's Search of Meaning by Viktor Frankl was a solid 4/5 for me.
• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande is another philosophy-adjacent book that is a tremendous exploration of how we cope with death. It really impacted how I think about end-of-life issues.
• Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments is a collection of essays meant to make philsophy and ethics approachable for normal people - hence why I picked it up. I read most of it, but the essays were just too hit and miss so I ended up putting it down about 2/3rds of the way through.
• The Stranger by Camus. I did not necessarily enjoy this book (and I have no desire to re-read it) but I do appreciate it for being thought-provoking. Plus it was a way smoother read than The Myth of Sisyphus.

Some I'm considering reading:

• The Rebel by Camus. This is the other Camus text I'm considering picking up given that both his general philosophy and the subject matter here are of interest to me ... but the idea of actually having to sit down to read it is giving me pause, given what a slog The Myth of Sisyphus was.
• How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Bakewell is the second most well-received of her books. I don't know anything about Montaigne but obviously with a title like "How to Live" it's hitting upon exactly the sort of questions I'm asking...
• The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. We have a copy of this lying around and the passages I've read over the years have been both insightful and readable.

I deeply appreciate breadcrumbs anyone can provide as I try to learn how (and why) to keep living in this world and to develop a sense of meaning within it.

Voiceover: In space, there is SPACE WAR. Once there was a king or something, but he died. Honestly, it doesn't really matter. The Space War continues.

[We open to shots of bucolic farmland -- in SPACE.]

Village Chief: Everyone! We have to make love so the harvest gods make our crops grow! (This is a real line from the film.)

Village Chief: I am going to talk for a bit about religion. It will never come up again in any way for the rest of the movie, and our folksy ways will seem a lot weirder when the main characters walk to a spaceport that's, like, 20 miles away. But that doesn't happen for like another 30 minutes of screentime, so I'm going to go for it.

[Suddenly - Nazis in SPACE. They were presumably mentioned in the opening narration.]

Admiral Noble: Everything about me screams evil. Give me your grain.

Village Chief: Oh, uh, we don't have any.

Gunnar: Even though it's been shown that the whole village loves and trusts the village chief, and he explicitly told me not to do this, I will publicly contradict him in front of Admiral Noble and suggest that we sell the Nazis some of our massive amounts of grain.

[Admiral Noble kills the village chief. He demands all of the grain!!! He leaves some Space Nazis behind for the purposes of terrorizing the village and then leaves while they.. grow the grain? I guess?]

Gunnar: Noooo the consequences of my actions!

[The Space Nazis are evil to the villagers and also each other. They have a robot. He is conflicted about things.]

Robot: Have you heard about the king?

Village Girl: No.

Robot: There was a king. All we combat robots had a prophecy about how he would have a daughter. Then he did. Then they both died. We decided to stop fighting because all the light had gone out of the world.

Village Girl: Well I think you're carrying the light inside you, Nazi Robot That I Just Met.

Robot: That's kind of a weird thing to say, but thanks.

[The concept of combat robots who prophesy, worship a human god-king, and can choose not to fight - by far the most interesting idea in the movie - is never touched again. The Nazis try to rape the village girl, in case the audience needs a reminder that they are evil.]

Old Villager: Kora, when I found you on that crashed ship being all badass and stuff, I thought you were a badass. Please help us!

Kora: No, I don't feel like it. I'm going to leave. If the Space Nazis learn I'm here, they'll kill all of you. Wait, are those guys going to rape that village girl? Well, if I don't help, it'll introduce some moral ambiguity to my character, and we can't have that, so....

[Kora beats the shit out of the Space Nazis, mostly in slow motion. The robot helps, then runs away. He is never seen again, which is very confusing for the watchers since he has had a significant amount of the dialogue thus far.]

Kora: Well, shit.

Gunnar: We have to go find some more fighters to protect the village!

[Gunnar and Kora walk to the spaceport.]

Kora: The Space Nazi Emperor found me as a child and raised me as his daughter. I had to become an assassin or something. Now you know my darkest secret.

Gunnar: Honestly, I'm not surprised at all.

[They go to a bar. A weird alien disses Kora. She shoots him and a bunch of his friends in slow motion, but not before giving them lots of chances to surrender because she's a good guy.]

Kora: Anyway, now that those guys are all dead, we're looking for the super secret rebel leader. You know, the one whose very name means death to mention. Does anybody know how to find him?

[Kai stands up. Kai is sketchy and rougish.]

Kai: Yeah, I do. Plus I have a spaceship, which is convenient. We just need to run some errands first.

Kora and Gunnar: Tight.

[They visit a variety of locales. At each one they find a new member for their crew. Each new character gets a five-minute fight scene in slow motion. None of this is relevant to the plot. None of them get any more lines in the entire movie, because we have a lot of exposition to dump.]

Kora: At one point I was the bodyguard for the princess. She had space magic. It was wild. Anyway, just wanted you to know.

Gunnar: Wait, didn't that robot imply that the king and his family got killed, like, a hundred years ago?

Kora: Nah. Well, maybe. Don't worry about it.

[The crew finds the rebel leader.]

Rebel leader: Fuck off, we don't want to help you and your shitty village.

Gunnar: ...please?

Rebel leader: Good point. Okay, I am going to go help these guys. Team, this is exactly what we have been working towards. Who wants to come with me?

[Basically none of the rebels go with him.]

Rebel leader: Fair enough.

[They go to somewhere. Suddenly, Kai betrays the crew! And the Space Nazis are there!]

Gunnar: What the hell, man? You've acted sketchy this whole time, and now you're just going to go ahead and do an obvious betrayal?

Kai: The space nazis didn't just destroy my planet. They tortured every man, woman, and child living on it first. (This is an actual line from the film.)

Kora: Okay...? You'd think that would make you hate those guys instead of work for them, but whatever I guess.

Kai: Anyway, the whole point of all of this is that I want to collect the bounties on all of these rebel fighters I took you to visit, and I figured they'd come with you when you asked. Because I know your secret identity as the adopted daughter of the space emperor!

Kora: Wait, so you knew where they all were the whole time? And instead of just selling that information you cooked up this insane plan to bring me to them so that they'd join my crew? Why?

Kai: Don't think about it too hard.

[For inexplicable reasons, Kai and the Space Nazis force Gunnar to execute Kora instead of just doing it themselves. Or not doing it, since the whole point of the plan was to take her alive. But wait! Gunnar sets her free instead!]

Kai and Noble: Oh, bother.

[There is a fight. The good guys win - in slow motion. The rebel leader dies, but since he is one of a dozen minor characters, the audience doesn't really care.]

Djimon Hounsou: Guys, this is awesome. It could start a whole... rebellion! I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but actually it really IS. (This is an actual line from the movie.)

Djimon Hounsou: I am wasted in this film. Also, Snyder paid how much for me and gave me literally 35 words of dialogue?

[The Space Nazis get the body of Admiral Noble. They pump him full of juice and he has a vision of the Space Nazi Emperor. At one point the closed captions read "astral ice crepitates," which is just incredible.]

Space Nazi Emperor: I am going to briefly recap the backstories of all of the crew, since you probably forgot as they haven't spoken since they were introduced.

Space Nazi Emperor: Ok, now that that's over - find them!!!

[Admiral Noble comes back to life. The heroes ride horses through a sea of grain, despite this ostensibly being a movie about space. The last shot in the film is of a Nazi Robot in the grain holding a stick and wearing antlers on his head. It is unclear why.]

THE END

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

The results are in, and Dispossessed was the clear favorite with many strong contenders. It looks like quite a few people are interested in participating.

There was a tie for third place so we will start with four books.

Edit
We will discuss Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell in early March,
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke in Mid April,
The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin in Late May
And Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir at the end of June.

We will discuss Project Hail Mary in early March
Cloud Atlas in mid April
The Dispossessed in late May
and Piranesi at the end of June

At that point I plan to hold a voting thread for fiction and a voting thread for nonfiction and discuss/vote on how frequently to read nonfiction. Please feel free to renominate your favorites that didn't get chosen.

I'm looking forward to this. Thanks for participating.

This is Album of the Week #19 ~ This week's album is Portishead - Portishead

Year of Release: 1997
Genre(s): Trip Hop
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 50 minutes
RYM | Listen!

Excerpt from Vulture:

The album makes total sense, but how does it sound? One could argue that Portishead can be more admirable in theory than in practice. Created in direct opposition to the twinned principles of quick profit and easy pleasure, it’s a masterpiece of painful rigor. With the exception of “Undenied,” the album’s exhilarations, though plentiful, are inseparable from its harrowing politics and embattled nature. Utley’s riff on “Cowboys” is fit to saw through steel; Barrow’s beat on “Elysium” counts its measures with an alarming or bomb-adjacent urgency; Gibbons’s voice, shorn of comforting accompaniments, is charged with a kind of grievous purity throughout, reaching heights of agony unheard on Dummy.

Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

--

Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.

Missed last week? It can be found here.

Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~

Tildes Gaming Club is a monthly space to play and discuss games that fit a loosely defined theme.

I see it as a gaming counterpart to our current Album of the Week, Movie of the Week, and Book Club series. Instead of everyone focusing everyone on the same game, however, we're all focused on the same core theme, and we independently choose a game (or games) that fit the theme.

To participate, play at least one game that fits the monthly theme, and talk about it here. You can make one post summarizing your game(s), or you can make multiple posts as you make your way through the game(s).

This month's theme is: Legacy

The theme is open-ended, and it’s encouraged that you interpret the theme however you like. If you need some ideas to get you started:

My goals for the Tildes Gaming Club are the following:

1. I'm hoping this can be a fun way of choosing something to play.
2. I'm hoping this can bring a group/community aspect to people independently enjoying their hobby.
3. I'm hoping this can yield some interesting discussions about different themes.

Server host: tildes.nore.gg
Dynmap: https://tildes.nore.gg
Playtime counter: https://tildes.nore.gg/playtimes.html
Verification site: https://verify.tildes.nore.gg
Tildes website extension (shows online status & location): Firefox (Desktop and Android) - Chrome

The server operates on a soft whitelist. Anyone can log in and walk around, but you need a Tildes account to gain build access.

[SOLVED]

... well, this is in many ways very unsatisfying, because I have no idea why this worked, but I seem to have fixed it.

Server A has two Ethernet ports, an Intel I219V and a Killer E3100. Several months ago, when trying to debug sporadic btrfs errors (I had my RAM installed incorrectly!), I had disabled some unused devices in BIOS, including the Killer Ethernet port.

Since I had no other ideas, and it seemed like this was somehow specific to this server, I just re-enabled the Killer port and switched the Ethernet cable to that port. I'm now getting 300 Mb/s transfers from my wireless devices to my server, exactly as expected.

I'm gonna like... go for a walk or something. Thank you so much to everyone who helped me rule out all of the very many things this could have been! I love this place, you all are so kind and supportive.

Original:

I'm trying to debug a perplexing networking situation, and I could use some guidance if anyone has any.

Here's my setup:

• UniFi Security Gateway
• UniFi Switch Lite
• Two UAPs
• Two servers, A and B, connected to the USW-Lite with GbE
• Many wireless devices, connected to the UAPs

Here's what I'm experiencing:

• Network transfers from the wireless devices to server A (as measured by iperf3 tests) are very slow. Consistently between 10 and 20 Mb/s.
• Network transfers from server A to all devices are expected speeds. 900-1000 Mb/s to server B, 350-ish Mb/s to wireless devices.
• Network transfers between server B and all devices (in both directions!) are expected speeds.
• Network transfers from the USG to server A also seem slow, which is odd. Only about 60 MB/s.
• Network transfers from the USG to server B and the wireless devices is about 300 MB/s

So, specifically network transfers from any wireless device to server A are slow, and no other connections have any issues that I can see.

Some potentially relevant details:

• Server A is running Unraid
• Server B is running Ubuntu
• Wireless devices include a Fedora laptop, an iPhone, and a Macbook Pro
• UniFi configuration is pretty straightforward. I have a few ports forwarded, a guest WiFi network (that none of these devices are on), a single default VLAN, and two simple "Allow LAN" firewall rules for Wireguard on the USG. No other firewall or routing config that I'm aware of.

If anyone has any thoughts at all on how to continue debugging, I would be immensely grateful! I suppose the next step would be to try to determine whether it's the networking equipment or the server itself that is responsible for the throttling, but I'm not sure how best to do that.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

I've got time now to browse tildes again, until I broke my arm last week, been busy with life otherwise.
It's a nice thought to get time off work, but not a nice thought when most my hobbies involve my hands.
Of course appreciate the support by my partner, family and friends. Very thankful I have them.
But with my independence floundering, I hate spending my days either sleeping or eating or mindlessly scrolling though social media.

Looking to hear stories of broken limbs and how you've coped and adapted, and advice on physically navigating with one arm. Carrying a cup of tea and then needing to open a door, how to open a jar with one hand, cooking (or not cooking) and all else

How do you make sure that your Docker containers don't go rogue and start snooping around or contacting external servers that they shouldn't be talking to? Is there a network traffic monitoring program that I could use? Or a service that would notify me about vulnerabilities in containers that I have installed?

Some background:

Last year, I asked help setting up my new Synology NAS, and many of you wonderful people offered some really, really good advice. I have recently started to play around with Docker containers more, and I am a little uneasy about the idea that my NAS is home to my files, my own scripts, and Docker containers made by other people, and that it is always on and these containers have constant internet access. I don't have the time (or frankly the skills) to verify the contents of the containers beyond making sure that they come from reputable sources, but I would like to have a bit more peace of mind and make sure that things remain private and secure.

My setup at the moment is the following: I have a Synology DS923+ and I manage Docker containers with Synology's Container Manager, using docker compose files. I have so far put all containers into the same virtual network (perhaps something I need to think about), which is a separate IP range from my other devices, and has internet access through my DNS. I use Synology's DNS Server (for everything in my home network) and Reverse Proxy so that I can use local domain names and HTTPS. For HTTPS, I have made myself a certificate authority and created the necessary certificates and installed them on my devices. No ports are opened on the router and things like UPnP are turned off. I use Tailscale to access my home network when not at home. And while I have not yet done so, I have been considering setting up some firewall rules, for instance to restrict access to the DSM. I use 2FA for the NAS and its SSH is turned on only when I need to use it.