The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Again... your declaration of services being "objectively useless" does not actually make them so. It only means that YOU find them useless. If you'd take a step back, you might realize that you, me, and uncle Pete aren't the arbiters of what's useless for anyone but ourselves.

So you find some objective usefulness in astrology? Any of the other divinatory practices? I have been careful to distinguish between objective and subjective usefulness.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The very fact that millions of people find them useful refutes your hypothesis that they are objectively and universally useless. I would suggest that "many people" should probably get over themselves. The world's full of people who find many different things more useful than many other people do.

Yawn. See argumentum ad populum and/or argumentum ad numerum as logical fallacies.

Possibly, explain how you jumped from objective usefulness to "objectively and universally useless".

And how many of those "things" have proven objective usefulness? You may believe that ivermectin is a magic bullet for treating COVID-19, that smearing cow dung on your head will help cure baldness or consuming powdered rhinoceros horn will help with everything from cancer to gout. That does not imply any proven objective usefulness.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DNSB

And how many of those "things" have proven objective usefulness? You may believe that ivermectin is a magic bullet for treating COVID-19,

Misinformed horse uses COVID-19 vaccine to treat worm infestation

[Uncle Robin]

I just had the experience of finding a 5-star Goodreads review VERY helpful. The first review listed for a Regency romance was a 5-star review by the author That pushed me toward avoiding the book, and my reaction was confirmed by a 1-star review calling it out for anachronistic language (anathema for me in historical fiction of any genre). Note to authors - giving your own work 5-stars will NOT make me rush to read it

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I just had the experience of finding a 5-star Goodreads review VERY helpful. The first review listed for a Regency romance was a 5-star review by the author That pushed me toward avoiding the book, and my reaction was confirmed by a 1-star review calling it out for anachronistic language (anathema for me in historical fiction of any genre). Note to authors - giving your own work 5-stars will NOT make me rush to read it

A five-star review by the author begs for an offsetting one-star review, giving that as a reason. That’ll learn ‘em, or it should.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by DNSB

So you find some objective usefulness in astrology? Any of the other divinatory practices? I have been careful to distinguish between objective and subjective usefulness.



Yawn. See argumentum ad populum and/or argumentum ad numerum as logical fallacies.

Possibly, explain how you jumped from objective usefulness to "objectively and universally useless".

And how many of those "things" have proven objective usefulness? You may believe that ivermectin is a magic bullet for treating COVID-19, that smearing cow dung on your head will help cure baldness or consuming powdered rhinoceros horn will help with everything from cancer to gout. That does not imply any proven objective usefulness.

And your argument is just weird. Enjoy whatever smug satisfaction you derive by pretending to be the arbiter of what is useless for anyone but yourself.

Also... you clearly seem to be conflating "useless services" with "ineffectual home remedies" or pseudoscience.. But whatever. You clearly know best.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I just had the experience of finding a 5-star Goodreads review VERY helpful. The first review listed for a Regency romance was a 5-star review by the author That pushed me toward avoiding the book, and my reaction was confirmed by a 1-star review calling it out for anachronistic language (anathema for me in historical fiction of any genre). Note to authors - giving your own work 5-stars will NOT make me rush to read it

I'm surprised Goodreads allowed that.

[Quoth]

Goodreads is Amazon. Anything that helps to sell the books?

[Loosheesh]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Goodreads is Amazon. Anything that helps to sell the books?

Authors were giving 5-stars reviews of their books on Goodreads before Amazon took it over. It’s tacky and off-putting but it didn’t start with Amazon.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

And your argument is just weird. Enjoy whatever smug satisfaction you derive by pretending to be the arbiter of what is useless for anyone but yourself.

I am not pretending to be the arbiter of anything. That is the whole point of an facts/evidence based method of evaluation compared to statements that lots of people believe in something so it must be useful/valid. Someone may claim that anything is useful whereas an objective evaluation is based on the facts of the matter. If reproducible evidence is not available, what is your basis for saying that something is useful.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Also... you clearly seem to be conflating "useless services" with "ineffectual home remedies" or pseudoscience.. But whatever. You clearly know best.

As you said: "If it was useless, no one would be using it." though there seems to be considerable evidence that quite a few people are willing to abandon logic and reason in claiming that anything is useful. Now if you hadn't separated that sentence into it's own paragraph, we might not be having this discussion.

As for knowing best? I tend to take a facts/evidence based approach to evaluating usefulness. Perhaps a bit weird of me but that's my choice and it works for me.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by DNSB

As you said: "If it was useless, no one would be using it."

Still objectively true. Whether you choose to believe it or not. Especially RE the online service (specifically Goodreads) that was being discussed at the time I said it ("it" being Goodreads). If you want to mistakenly transpose that as "you said 'all things are useful'", well that's entirely on you. I didn't say or suggest any such thing. *shrug*

[spacepope]

I encountered a book this week that had indented paragraphs AND had two line breaks between each and every paragraph. Extremely obnoxious.

Please pick either indentation or double line breaks, not both... it looked pretty ugly on my ereader and felt like padding for space.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by spacepope

I encountered a book this week that had indented paragraphs AND had two line breaks between each and every paragraph. Extremely obnoxious.

Please pick either indentation or double line breaks, not both... it looked pretty ugly on my ereader and felt like padding for space.

Yes, though easily fixed especially in Calibre (or Sigil) if it's CSS margins and not actual blank paragraphs.
Potentially even rename file to zip, text edit CSS, rezip & rename.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by spacepope

I encountered a book this week that had indented paragraphs AND had two line breaks between each and every paragraph. Extremely obnoxious.

Please pick either indentation or double line breaks, not both... it looked pretty ugly on my ereader and felt like padding for space.

Sorry, but I now find it easier to 'track' with eyes with some paragraph breaks. (I use .5em). My eyes will never see like they did in the 50's (when I started reading). Fixing this 'my way' is usually not much of an issue as I use Sigil and Calibre for books that otherwise have decent formatting and CSS.

What I detest is (general) line-spacings above 1.5 (I use the normal 1.2). I had a book that had it at 300% (the worst I have seen for a typical audience target) Who are the trying to kid into thinking it is a larger (length) book???

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

Sorry, but I now find it easier to 'track' with eyes with some paragraph breaks. (I use .5em). My eyes will never see like they did in the 50's (when I started reading). Fixing this 'my way' is usually not much of an issue as I use Sigil and Calibre for books that otherwise have decent formatting and CSS.

What I detest is (general) line-spacings above 1.5 (I use the normal 1.2). I had a book that had it at 300% (the worst I have seen for a typical audience target) Who are the trying to kid into thinking it is a larger (length) book???

Make the paragraph space large enough and it looks like a section break.

I find 1.2em too large a line height.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Make the paragraph space large enough and it looks like a section break.

Either an indent or a paragraph space works for me. Both is overkill.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I find 1.2em too large a line height.

I tend to prefer a lower line height but I'm not that bothered by 1.2. I suspect that many others have also run into ebooks where the line height is set so high it reminded me of double spaced essays in school. Easy enough to fix and annoying enough to make me want to fix. Sometimes I wonder if the author thinks this will fool the reader into thinking the book is much longer than it actually is or if the belief is that KU will give more page turns and so more money without having to write more words.