Open Thread 239

1. I’ve decided to publish ten more book reviews the next ten Fridays. The new finalists are . . . haha, just kidding! The 2022 Book Review Contest is over. Please vote for your favorite here. No fancy voting system this year, just pick one. In case you’ve forgotten your options, they are:

• Consciousness And The Brain

• Making Nature (history of the scientific journal Nature)

• The Anti-Politics Machine (how development aid goes wrong)

• The Castrato

• The Dawn Of Everything (ancient hunter-gatherers)

• The Future Of Fusion Energy

• The Internationalists (treaty to make war illegal)

• The Outlier (biography of Jimmy Carter)

• The Righteous Mind

• The Society Of The Spectacle

• Viral (was COVID a lab leak?)

• Exhaustion (chronic fatigue)

• God Emperor Of Dune

• 1587: A Year Of No Significance (Ming China)

• Kora In Hell (William Carlos Williams poetry)

2: The ACX podcast team is involved in a new project, Radio Bostrom, broadcasting works by futurist philosopher Nick Bostrom.

3: In case you missed it, Astral Codex Ten is having in-person meetups in about two hundred cities worldwide. This coming week’s biggest meetups include Canberra on Wednesday, Helsinki on Saturday, and Tel Aviv next Sunday - but there are also many more, check here for the full list.