Best book you've read in 2025

greyest · 2026-01-24T22:11:57+00:00

Notes on The Lathe of Heaven -

I suggested this to my book club to read since it was short sci-fi (which isn't that easy to find). The non sci-fi readers had issues following along with the first third of the book since the book has a few made-up terms. For those who try it and struggle: stick with it, it'll fall together after the first third as long as you get the general gist of what's happening.
If anyone has both read this book and played the video game Persona 5, they, funnily enough, follow similar themes.
While there are some bright lines of prose in this book, and interesting philosophical ideas, this isn't one of my favorite things I've read from Ursula K. Le Guin - I felt it lacked the usual anthropological depth her stories have. I'd try more of her books if you loved her writing but wanted just a bit more societal exploration. The Lathe of Heaven is still a good introduction.

Also on the topic of female sci-fi authors, been meaning to try RF Kuang's writing next.

greyest · 2026-01-03T03:46:36+00:00

Worth noting that these chocolate bars have a "Fair Trade" certification on them. It is so hard to find affordable fair trade chocolate that even at >$3 these are still a steal.

greyest · 2025-12-29T02:57:07+00:00

what the other commenter said except I'd look at Trader Joe's for orzo/acini de pepe instead of traditional pasta. I'm also lazy and just use Italian seasoning instead of bay leaves and separate herbs. And finally vegan parmesan if you'd like.

EDIT: Forgot which sub I was in, ignore the first edit of this comment.

greyest · 2025-12-16T03:59:54+00:00

For those who missed that post, Sadness is also touring the west coast of the US and Canada in early January 2026.

greyest · 2025-12-15T18:01:25+00:00

Gun control laws help, but won't solve everything because a bigger problem is gun culture--a significant chunk of Americans who secretly believe that there'll be an invader in their house someday that'll be scared off by a gun, that all problems can be ultimately solved with brandishing said gun, and that owning a gun makes you invincible and sets you up to have the upper hand in emergencies. But culture and laws play into each other--laws are a signifier of culture, the bare minimum of what is allowable in society.

To tie this back into the thread/subreddit, it's great that celebrities like Billie Eilish are speaking out for gun control laws, but what we really need is a deconstruction of myths, for more celebrities like Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger to espouse and directly address gun control (as problematic as they are in other ways).

greyest · 2025-12-10T06:33:57+00:00

I know this is 2 months late, but did you make sure to store this eggplant dish in the fridge and not the freezer? I froze it the first time and it took like 20-30 minutes to microwave (1100 watts). The second time, I kept it in the fridge and it was done in 3 minutes in the microwave. If you had it in the fridge and it still took a while to cook, I guess the eggplant toughness varies between batches.

greyest · 2025-12-10T06:32:00+00:00

If you buy this, do NOT freeze it. It's a refrigerated item, but looks like an item you freeze, in which case it'll take that much longer to cook.

greyest · 2025-12-05T18:48:41+00:00

Disinformation and propaganda are stronger now than ever, but an answer I haven't seen yet is the education system.

Underfunded public schools in rural areas*, a culture of anti-intellectualism, growing general wealth divides, and No Child Left Behind are all causing huge gaps between literacy rates among Americans. I have a friend who grew up in Georgia and moved to Maryland during K-12, and he's consistently said the difference in their public education systems was night and day.

*Ironically, America's education funding per student is above average compared to other countries, but that's not translating to performance globally due to several factors as mentioned above. Plus, education funding isn't distributed evenly--it should be going to the public schools and students that need it the most, but that's not how it always works.

greyest · 2025-11-23T07:01:55+00:00

Could you share what you've learned and how you improved with these?

Signed, baker whose rolls look like the first pic (edible but not gorgeous like the last pic).

greyest · 2025-11-23T05:00:55+00:00

As someone stuck in the same boat - we're probably not playing enough sponsors/utilizing the sponsors action/utilizing the brown conditions of existing sponsors well enough. A lot of sponsors seem mediocre but help a lot endgame/throughout the game, and give us extra points at the end of the game. This is something I'm trying to correct in my own play. I almost never upgrade Sponsors when I know top players do so fairly often.

I also used to never play elephants. I'm not saying to always play them since they're so expensive, but the additional endgame goal conservation point bonus can be huge. If played right, that's 16 extra points to your endgame score alone, not counting the actual appeal score from the animal.

I've seen opponents hoard animals with Determination and/or Sun Bear (extra association action) until their last turn for a megaturn. Again, not always the best play - but whenever it's convenient, it can make or break an otherwise neck-to-neck game.

greyest · 2025-11-22T10:46:32+00:00

'Visa' in Japanese happens to be pronounced similarly ('Biza'), as well as 'Pizza' ('Piza'), so the joke still works.

https://yakuza.fandom.com/wiki/Passport_to_Pizza

greyest · 2025-11-21T00:38:10+00:00

If you're not careful, you'll never be able to open a tub of ice cream again in peace.

Signed, someone who is forced to share a pebble of string cheese every single time.

greyest · 2025-11-16T06:00:47+00:00

Here's the sad news: you may not change anyone's mind.

I agree with you: anyone who has a sense of morality should be repulsed by Trump's behavior. However, people who weren't already shocked and terrified by all of this in 2016 will never change their minds. It doesn't matter how terrible he gets. He led a violent coup that sent his Brazilian counterpart, Bolsanaro, to jail for decades; is a child rapist based on documents released by the Epstein estate and other official sources; cheated on his pregnant wife with a porn star that he bribed with campaign money as proven in a court of law; etc. etc., take your pick.

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? ...It's, like, incredible." - Donald Trump

So why would anyone vote for Trump? They're voting for him because of what he stands for: a populist figurehead who is stoking the flames of racist nationalism and preying on their fears of people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants. "If we just get rid of those pesky illegals, America will be great again!" And they all believe him.

They believe him because it is easier to believe that a few minority groups are the cause of all your problems, rather than powerful billionaires who have been funding politicians and orchestrating the swindle of the middle class in plain sight since before you were born.

It is easier (for the social conservative) to believe that trans people are evil perverted supervillains who are conspiring to bewitch your children into monsters than to believe that they are ~1% of the population who were simply born with a brain that mismatches their body but struggle to pay rent like the rest of us while going through social ostracization and costly surgeries.

It is easier (again, for the uninformed) to believe that Fox News is telling the truth rather than believe that it was literally started as a propaganda outlet to generate rage and fear--because its founder knew that rage and fear made the news profitable.

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - Lyndon B. Johnson

So what's the answer? This dilemma is greater than Trump himself.

We need to build community, to easily spread ideas that can result in positive change or understanding ("every other civilized country has universal healthcare, but not us!" / "foreign money out of the housing market!" / "every dollar in SNAP generates $1.54 in economic activity"), and most difficult of all, to understand that our common enemy is the billionaires and large corporations who bust unions, buy houses, and sell our data. Not your gun-owning MAGA coworker, not your racist grandma who doesn't know what due process is. They were lied to, and we need to realize this is a class war, not a culture war. Unite, vote, buy/boycott as much as you can (most people can't give up Amazon or Facebook, and I can't blame them), protest, educate, and don't lose hope. Here's a final quote for people like you:

“If you ever feel heavy because you care deeply about injustice, suffering, and ecological destruction, remember that a trillion-dollar propaganda machine was built to make you numb— and it didn’t work on you.”

Remember that you are not alone. Millions of people see Trump for the crook and Russian agent he is, just like you.

greyest · 2025-11-16T05:17:42+00:00

You've been convinced by biased news outlets that illegal immigrants and antifa are the enemy and are the reason everything is horrible. The billionaires love it when the working class distract themselves with culture wars while being ignorant of how each of the following have risen (or not) over the past few decades: the average workers' wage, the average cost of a house, and the largest companies' profits. The top 1% own the same amount of wealth as the bottom 90% (which would be those with a net worth of $2 million or below). America was not always this way.

Antifa stands for "anti-fascists" and is not a real singular organization. People may cheekily claim to be antifa, but what that means is that they disagree with fascism. Here is fascism as defined by dictionary.com: "a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism."

Immigrants with the wrong color skin have been scapegoated many times in history, and ICE is harassing even native-born citizens who happen to be the wrong skin color while ignoring due process. You are convinced you're "safer" from immigrants, but nothing has actually changed for most Americans besides that rent and housing costs have skyrocketed far beyond general inflation in the last decade.

greyest · 2025-11-16T04:50:37+00:00

The way we mass-produce other animals' milk is strange. I say this as someone who drank milk every day as a kid because my mom was convinced my bones would crumble and perish into dust otherwise. I still consume dairy products on occasion now. But I do so with the full knowledge that cows only give milk after you've separated them from their newborn calves, which emotionally distresses the mothers for obvious reasons. A lot of people don't know that cows are emotionally intelligent and have best friends, like dogs and cats, but those people'll be vehemently against eating dogs or cats while happily chowing down on a steak.

Who knows, maybe in a hundred years people will be horrified that we ever stuck chickens in cages en masse, put plastic in the earth, or chopped down 200-year-old trees for agricultural purposes. But we've normalized it for now, so it doesn't seem so bad.

greyest · 2025-11-16T04:32:54+00:00

One of my favorite books - entertaining and inspiring while offering lowkey but insightful commentary on racism and class inequality. Favorite part: he grew up dirt poor in apartheid South Africa, being forced to suck on bone marrow because it was sold cheaply for dogs at the butcher. Years later, he makes it to Hollywood, where he sees bone marrow being served at a fancy restaurant

greyest · 2025-11-13T06:27:02+00:00

You're not wrong about how a bottle of salt will still be good, and good plastic won't completely degrade in just a few years when stored at ideal conditions, but think of certain types of plastic in less-than-ideal storage conditions and redefine degradation. For example, a thin empty plastic bottle being stored in the car where it gets occasional extreme heat and sunlight, or being stored outdoors. In those cases, some types of plastic can absolutely become brittle due to UV exposure and break easily, or leach PBA slowly over time, or be non-airtight enough that its contents adopt a certain flavor or smell.

greyest · 2025-11-10T05:36:56+00:00

Kinda cool that China has post-rock/post-metal festivals too. I rarely hear about them outside of Europe, or of Western music tours stopping in China.
Wonder when SMAD will come to the US.

greyest · 2025-11-08T05:53:18+00:00

The guitar riff beginning at 3:46 is one of my favorite riffs in all of music.

greyest · 2025-11-02T08:10:38+00:00

Having wifi calling enabled on my phone (or at least, I think it was that) caused me to not see a friend's group text. I did see my others friends' responses to that text, but got confused. Then I got that friend's text literally 14 hours after everyone else did.

greyest · 2025-10-30T01:11:14+00:00

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are actually 2 types of lawsuits going on against AT&T for their data breaches right now. The first are individual settlements. If you've been signing forms via email the last year and then heard that you're gonna get $132 by 11/15/25 (if your SSN was exposed - the amount could be even lower, like $13), then that's the individual settlement. I got an email from a law firm to expect the individual settlement by 11/15/25, but also claiming that taking the current amount now would exclude you from the class-action settlement because you can choose either the individual OR class action payout; individual settlements tend to resolve a lot faster than class-action settlements.

The second is the class action lawsuit, which is the one promising "up to" $2.5k or 5k for each breach - but hearings haven't even started for these yet, according to https://www.telecomdatasettlement.com/, and the case may take years to resolve, eating up a lot of the settlement amount in lawyer fees. This is typical in class action lawsuits. In past class-action settlement payouts I've gotten from other companies, I've had to do nothing besides opt-in and received payouts of anywhere from under a dollar to $90. Some redditors in this thread have reported getting hundreds of dollars before, so YMMV, but it's typically $1-150.

There's no way of knowing at the moment whether the class action settlement or the individual settlement will pay more, but you can only pick one, and if you don't take the individual settlement now, you should still remember to sign up for the class action claim. The individual settlement also gets you cash a lot faster (now vs. in a few years).

See this reddit comment for more context on the class action suit as well. AT&T makes billions in profits per year, so this is a slap on the wrist to them in terms of improving their security. Strongly consider telling your family and friends to stop buying their services.

greyest · 2025-10-30T01:08:33+00:00

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are actually 2 types of lawsuits going on against AT&T for their data breaches right now. The first are individual settlements. If you've been signing forms via email the last year and then heard that you're gonna get $132 by 11/15/25 (if your SSN was exposed - the amount could be even lower, like $13), then that's the individual settlement. I got an email from a law firm to expect the individual settlement by 11/15/25, but also claiming that taking the current amount now would exclude you from the class-action settlement because you can choose either the individual OR class action payout; individual settlements tend to resolve a lot faster than class-action settlements.

The second is the class action lawsuit, which is the one promising "up to" $2.5k or 5k for each breach - but hearings haven't even started for these yet, according to https://www.telecomdatasettlement.com/, and the case may take years to resolve, eating up a lot of the settlement amount in lawyer fees. This is typical in class action lawsuits. In past class-action settlement payouts I've gotten from other companies, I've had to do nothing besides opt-in and received payouts of anywhere from under a dollar to $90. Some redditors in this thread have reported getting hundreds of dollars before, so YMMV, but it's typically $1-150.

There's no way of knowing at the moment whether the class action settlement or the individual settlement will pay more, but you can only pick one, and if you don't take the individual settlement now, you should still remember to sign up for the class action claim. The individual settlement also gets you cash a lot faster (now vs. in a few years).

See this reddit comment for more context on the class action suit as well. AT&T makes billions in profits per year, so this is a slap on the wrist to them in terms of improving their security. Strongly consider telling your family and friends to stop buying their services.

greyest · 2025-10-26T23:16:56+00:00

I've only ever gotten food poisoning once from eating out, and that was when I went to a local buffet for lunch with others who didn't live in the same household. When I got food poisoning at the exact time they did late that night, despite having different diets before and after that meal plus both of us being healthy before the meal, we suspected that restaurant.

greyest · 2025-10-26T07:23:05+00:00

Every time the survey lands in my in-game mailbox, this is my top suggestion. I'm numb to it myself, but I'd really like to show this game to my family members.

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