Why not read something?

Hey! Do you like reading? I do! Wanna read some free short stories? Why not? Here:

Theatre of Cruelty by Terry Pratchett. A fantasy short story that is better if you read the first City Watch book. Typical Terry Pratchett style - funny, crazy, serious. All at the same time.

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT by Terry Bisson. It consists of a dialogue between two aliens discussing humanity. Might be considered a story about discrimination. There are also audio versions on the internet, because the story got pretty popular and was adapted quite a few times.

Bonus for X-COM players (since this is a video game forum): Things X-COM Operatives are not allowed to do. Funny, collaborative project of X-COM fan-fiction. Only read this if you played the game, otheriwise you won't understand the references.

If you like reading stuff that's more serious, then I would recommend reading the (longer, but in-depth and serious) two three following blog posts on the Wait But Why website:
The AI Revolution - a long (2 parts) post about the future of AI and why Stephen Hawking and a lot of other scientists are scared of it. The post was so long that it's available also as a paid pdf, but you can read it for free on the website. I like the author's method of writing, because he first reads a lot of books on a subject and then he writes a (shorter) explaination of it and of what he thinks about it. This article is also a bit connected to the Humans Need Not Apply video, which is also interesting.

The second blog post I recommend reading on that website is about Cryonics. The author explains why at first he thought that people who pay for it are crazy, but after researching the subject he decided to sign up for it himself.

Oh, there's also a third one called What Makes You You? - the three main theories being, of course: The Body, The Brain, and The Mind. The article describes quite a lot of thought experiments, because this is a... more philosophical topic.

And... that's it. I just wanted to throw in some of the more interesting (at least to me) things that I've read recently. I hope that it wasn't annoying to anyone (the length of the post or the texts that it links to). If anyone read any of these and found it interesting then I think it was worth it.

Now... Do you have any recommendations?

EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot. I wanted to also share the short science fiction story by Isaac Asimov: The Last Question. It's about an AI trying to answer the ultimate question: how can entropy be reversed? Is the universe to die at some point? Can we prevent it? The author himself says that it's one of his favorite stories, and there's even an audio version of him reading it himself: here