@artcollisions @catzilla Jon Stewart really, really liked it.
So, I dunno, it might be okay?
@catzilla Lee Cronin's Lord of the Rings - about a Lord who is haunted by some demon rings, but he defeats them by making another ring to rule all the others. Happy ending, it's fine.
Right-wing Rules:
Depressing: how stupid they must think we are
More depressing: the fact that so many people apparently are, in fact, that stupid
@AvaJoseph I've commissioned a couple of artists for this one, but I'll be happy to keep you in mind for future work! I'll bookmark your Carrd (I assume that's the best place to find your portfolio).
Thanks for asking!
@DemocracyMattersALot Remove them from office. They won't understand as long as they're being paid not to.
@riley @gildilinie I have one paperback which was falling apart so badly that an entire section was missing. (I later found an intact copy in a used bookstore.)
RE: https://syzito.xyz/@OccuWorld/116931255803930406
The Voidbringer CEOs have brought upon us the Everstorm, with its characteristic red light, as foretold in the archives of legend. ...and yet the powerful refuse to believe. We are not ready.
Proposed bill could make New York the first U.S. state with universal healthcare
WAVERLY, N.Y. (WENY) — The League of Women Voters for The proposed ‘New York Health Act’ (NYHA) would provide every New York resident with comprehensive health insurance with no copays, deductibles or out-of-network costs…
Okay, so I went on a brief book-sniffing expedition just now.
First, I sniffed a nice thick hardback we bought just this past year. It smelled of clean paper.
Next, I sniffed an English paperback from the 1950s. The scent was only a little stronger, but immediately sent me into a used bookstore flashback.
I guess the fact that it's that strong even after many decades is evidence that paperback books used to smell a long stronger than hardbacks do now.
I could dig up an old hardback for comparison, but what should my target year be? How long ago do we think this chemical change took place?
With regard to the idea that the chemicals were contributing to the paper aging -- two things:
I do know that "low-acid paper" is a thing which exists and lasts longer than cheaper paper; I think maybe it used to be a lot more (relatively) expensive than it is now.
When I first started collecting paperbacks, I acquired a bunch from my dad's collection and many of the older ones were seriously starting to fall apart. The glue was crumbling, the paper was fragile.
I always assumed that this meant (a) those books would continue to get steadily more fragile and might crumble to dust in another few decades; (b) paperbacks I bought new would start to look like those older paperbacks in a couple of decades.
Neither of these things has happened. The 1940s & 1950s paperbacks from my dad's collection are in pretty much exactly the shape they were in when I got them. The paperbacks I bought new in the 1970s maybe aged a little bit, and then stopped. The ones I bought in the 1980s and later mostly look unchanged.
I find this interesting, and I guess I came to the conclusion that they had to use super-cheap paper in the early postwar years but the quality improved significantly over the next 2-3 decades.
[This has been a Probably Unnecessary Rambleâ„ brought to you by Ritalinâ„¢ and Woozle's Brainâ„¢.]
@isaackuo Viri succeed because of evolved traits, so I think the analogy (rough as it is) still applies ;-)
Society is a kind of meme-virus too -- just usually more symbiotic than parasitic.
@isaackuo It's part of how the power-base maintains its power, yeah.
@isaackuo I mean, yeah, their ideas are ludicrous -- but there's got to be some kind of underlying cognitive-emotional structure that makes people not only believe those ideas but defend them against reality.
It's not that there's any excuse or justification for this; I'm thinking more in more practical terms -- I've been finding it really hard to deal with the fact that so many people are like this. I feel like I'm surrounded by monsters, an angry mob looking for any target on which to vent their rage.
Understanding what made them that way, and thinking that maybe they're not inherently monsters but have basically been infected by a very successful meme-virus, gives me some hope that there's a solution -- that human civilization doesn't have to be like this.
Even if we can't change any minds today, we can at least understand the patterns that we need to fight against -- the molecular signatures that our cultural antibodies need to learn to recognize.
