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1 month ago

Am I crazy or does the "you may also like" section recommend Ayn Rand a weird amount? on Blood Meridian, Pale Fire, Blindsight, Annihiliation... maybe she is just *objectively* the best recommendation 🧐

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As someone who was a Randroid the correct Objective(ist) answer is: Anthem > Ideal> We the Living > Fountainhead > Atlas Shrugged. The funny part about objectivism is that if you follow its base steps (acknowledge objective reality exist, we use our mind to navigate objective reality, and it is through the two that one develops self esteem), and take some liberties with definitions, it supports socialism over capitalism. Will say Rand, for her many, Many, MANY flaws, is the only person I have ever read (key word "I") that has described this certain feeling of the joy of being conscious of the fact that you exist and life is beautiful and the acknowledgment of that recognition as well as she does in her writing. Rest In Piss bozo.

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1 month ago

Probably b/c it's a very rudimentary (read: shitty) rec algorithm. It's the exact same one used to openlibrary. It just searches by subjects. So if book A has subjects X,Y,Z, then it just searches books in subjects X,Y,Z. Improving this will probably be a long term and difficult effort. Probably hard to do working with an external API. Thankfully, the site is geared towards discovering books not through algos (not that I am ideologically opposed to it).

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1 month ago

Yeah I figured something like that, no shade was intended to our glorious leader. And I have definitely loved discovering books through people and not algorithms here so far, so totally makes sense not to be a priority

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1 month ago

Hahaha no worries at all. No shade was implied or taken. But yea, sad realities of not being Amazon 😭

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1 month ago

Is this /lit/? If so, you gotta keep in mind who has an active interest in shilling posts there: -Intel Agencies, using Dyncorp and other contractors -Silicon Valley VC/PE firms representing companies in AI image & text generation space. Sadly, in the age of the maturing Internet & its botnets just because something is the most frequently posted opinion on a static forum, doesn't mean that it is the most common opinion held by the human posters and viewers (ie bots reflecting various corporate interests can be automated so as to artifice 'consensus').

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1 month ago

Oh no I meant the "you may also like" section at the bottom of books here on lit.salon, so pic only tangentially related. It does say its a work in progress, and I think it just found a few books it really likes that show up everywhere--thought it was funny that one is The Fountainhead on such a commie forum

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1 month ago

Oh I see.