That book won a lot of awards, but it really didn't do it for me. I don't think it's because it's so slowly paced; I've thoroughly enjoyed lots of books at least as slowly paced. Maybe it's that I sat down to read a SF book and for half of it it just feels like we're reading a journal, with nothing especially noteworthy happening. Or maybe I just wasn't in the right place to enjoy that one.

I read those Dispossessed and LHoD in the 80s, and then reread them more recently, and I'm amazed at how well they hold up. So often stories and sensibilities feel dated when you get to many decades from when they were written, but those two books could have been written yesterday. Both masterpieces, for sure. I'm not sure who you feel they're inappropriate for teenagers though.

I never read City of Illusions - at least I don't think I have. I'll add it to my list. What do you think of Three Body Problem? I read the book and didn't really care for it (I know I'm in the minority there).

I read a stupid amount of SF and fantasy (up to 60 books so far this year), and I keep notes, so if there's a particular kind of thing you enjoy I might be able to make a more focused recommendation.

I believe I've read everything recommended in reply to you, and most are excellent. Some books I've read recently that really pulled me in, and that I didn't see mentioned elsewhere, are:

• Sleeping Giants, Neuvel
• Ammonite, Griffith
• Spin, Wilson
• The Space Between Worlds, Johnson
• Service Model, Tchaikovsky
• The Tainted Cup, Bennett

Lots of others of I go further back. I hope you find something you love.

Try Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's a wonderful story and has an underlying sense of humor in the way that Pratchett's books did.

Practically speaking, there's no good way around it. If you could block them seeing you, they could just make another account to follow you with.

That's the name for your upper canine teeth.

Dude must be so sick of hearing "Did they use an eye tooth?"

I had a very similar suit, in the same color, but it was Levis and it had a matching vest.

COVID/flu symptoms are the same symptoms as a lot of things, so hard to say anything about what they have based on those symptoms. If their doctor is decent, your best advice is to just let them do their thing. You're not going to get a useful diagnosis from the Lemmy community.

I should stop there, but I came here to answer the title of your post. Yes, my dad died of something they never figured out. Was very strange.

The gun is likely a laser. White doesn't absorb much light, but black does, so the laser is passing through the white balloon without it heating significantly, but the black balloon is popping because it's absorbing the light and getting hot.

It kind of depends on the reason for the boycott and how widely it's understood. Like I for sure judge anyone who buys a cybertuck today.

I read a lot of science fiction, and a younger friends at work frequently asked me for recommendations, and he liked talking about the books after reading them. At some point I found out that he exclusively consumes them as audiobooks, which is fine and I didn't think much about it. Some years down the line, when I was getting ready to retire, I had to pass on things to him. There was enough of it that, in addition to working elbow-to-elbow with him, I documented all the details in some long emails. When we meet, I'd say "The details are in the email," and focus on explaining the big picture.

It became obvious that he never read the emails. When I talked to him about it, he admitted that he really struggles with any long block of text. The guy is really smart, and he knows a lot about a lot of things, but he gets all his info from audio and video because struggles to consume text. There's clearly some kind of learning/mental issue going on there. It's going to make the job tough for him, but I hope he works it out.