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Daily Tech News 8 October 2024 Monday Overnight Open Thread (10/7/24) Love Is Blind Cafe Trump in Butler, PA: "As I Was Saying..." A CBS "News" Reporter Asked Black Supremacist Ta-Nehesi Coates Why His Book Blaming Israel For the Terrorist Attack of 10/7 Failed to Even Mention Hamas or Hezballah; Pressured by Woke Left, CBS Apologizes for Daring to Question Him Woke $200+ Million Joker Sequel Brings In a "Tragic" $37.8 Million in Opening Weekend Disaster James Varney: FEMA is Hoarding Billions of Dollars in Disaster Relief Money In the Wake of Helene, with the Harris-Biden FEMA Missing in Action, Ron DeSantis Refuses to Take Kamala Harris' Phot-Op Phone Call Major "A-List" Celebrity Horrified That Videotape of Him at P-Diddy's Sex Party Will Leak Absent Friends
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June 25, 2023
Sunday Morning Book Thread - 06-25-2023 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (solid thriller story with good people killing bad people doing bad things). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, especially if you are wearing these pants (wing sauce optional...) So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning? PIC NOTE The Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library has a very unusual design. The exterior is very reminiscent of the Colosseum in Rome. I'm pretty sure it was used for establishing shots in the television show Fringe to inform the audience when the setting transitioned to the alternate universe's "Fringe Division" exterior. It's unique architecture does lead me to believe some very strange stuff could be going on in there... QUICK NOTES I thought I'd try something a bit different this week. There were several interesting questions or points brought up in the comments last week, so I wanted to elaborate my own thoughts on some of them. Each of these could probably be the subject of a Sunday Morning Book Thread in the future. So please keep posting your thoughts and ideas in the comments! I really, really appreciate the nice things you say about my efforts to compile the Sunday Morning Book Thread. The truth, of course, is that I could not do this without the inspiration and support of the COBs who also spend a fair amount of their own time and effort to compile content for AoSHQ. Be sure to give kudos to them on their own threads from time to time! (Especially ace since this is his blog!) I had a pleasant week of reading planned out. Read more of TJM's Colonial Nightmare which is a fun read [NOTE TO SELF: Order this book-PS]. Get more into books on sketching with various media. Look at my Brambly Hedge book to enjoy the wonderful illustrations. Some other bits and pieces. Comment: This video popped up in my own YouTube video feed so I gave it a watch based on JTB's recommendation. It was well worth my time, as the presenter goes into the history of how Tolkien conceived of and created his maps. He was not a cartographer, so his thinking was the map was created by the Hobbits after their journeys had ended and they strove to put together a visual representation of their journey. Christopher Tolkien was the true cartographer, painstakingly drawing the map multiple times to correct for mistakes and to clear up some of the clutter. I have a large copy of this map hanging on the wall of my library. It's a reminder to me that the journey is as important, if not more so, than the destination. Perfesser, I want to suggest a regular question for the book thread: Comment: Don't let me down, Horde! I know you can list a lot of upcoming books that are of interest to you! As for me, I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Tad Williams' The Navigator's Children, the final book in the Last King of Osten Ard. Unlike certain other epic fantasy authors (*cough* George R.R. Martin *cough*), Williams knows how to finish off an epic fantasy series properly. He's not let me down yet. I'm also looking forward to the next volume in Jim Butcher's The Cinder Spires. The first volume ended on a suitably epic cliffhanger, and so I've been waiting for years until he could get around to working on this series again. Both of these are supposed to be released in November. Not herniatic door stops" Comment: I'll admit, I'm a bit of a sucker for "herniatic door stoppers." I'm not afraid to crack open a thousand-page book if I feel the story will keep me interested and engaged. However, over the past couple of years, I've been keeping track of my reading in detail. These days I tend towards the shorter end of the doorstopper spectrum as I seem to be more focused on reading quantity. That is, I've been trying to read well over a hundred books a year for the past couple of years. So far, so good, but doorstoppers tend to put a crimp in that plan for obvious reasons. I'll read the same amount of pages in a week, but finish fewer books. Full disclosure: I ordered Brandon Sanderson's Rhythm of War (1200+ pages) back in 2020 when it was first released. Still haven't opened it. Spenser's climactic battle with Phil, the gunman, in Book One is not to be missed, though.' Comment: This is a great topic for further discussion. Action scenes in a story can be difficult to write well. My favorite ones are where the action feels very "cinematic" as though I can watch it on a screen inside my mind, following the twists and turns as the heroes and villains battle back and forth. Clifford D. Simak is fantastic at writing western action scenes. You feel like you are a gunslinger in the old west as he shows you the action. Great stuff! The aforementioned Brandon Sanderson also does it quite well. I liken the climax of Stormlight Archive Book 1 -- The Way of Kings to a team up of Iron Man, King Leonidas from 300, and Maximus from Gladiator. Just incredible, emotional action in those last 100 pages. About one third of Robert Jordan's A Memory of Light is devoted to action sequences as it's the Final Battle for the fate of humanity. Think Avengers: Endgame but a thousand times bigger, better, and more badass. Who else does action right? BOOK SALES! Hans G. Schantz has an announcement for y'all: Bypass the cultural gatekeeping, support non-woke authors, and get yourself some great books from both established and emerging talent. The Big Based Book Sale runs through Tuesday June 27, 2023. The sale offers about 150 books for free or $0.99, including about sixty works new to the sale. The contributors include science fiction grandmasters, Dragon Award winners and nominees, established mainstream authors, and emerging indie talent. (click for larger image)
As book hauls go, that's not too shabby for just under $40! On a side note, the library staff gave me a couple of paper bags in which to carry my purchases. Naturally, my cats find those bags highly interesting... Library book sales--Fun for the whole family! MORON RECOMMENDATIONS I picked up some used paperbacks last weekend and have been enjoying them a lot. Comment: This sparked a very interesting discussion in last week's Sunday Morning Book Thread about whether or not events in history would have happened if certain "Great Men" were not around to kick them off. Note that "Great" in this context does not mean "good" as many so-called "Great Men" did horrific things, but left a lasting impact on world history as a result of their actions. Happy Fathers Day, Morons! Don't laugh, but I've finally begun reading Moby Dick as I approach the 23rd anniversary of my 29th.birthday. My Dad had a unique career as a (non-hobby) farmer and high school teacher of English/World literature. I remember him once conversing with a friend who asked if he taught Moby Dick in class. He replied "oh no - young people don't deserve to read Moby Dick". That evidently left a mark on my mind.... but I now understand what he meant. Yesterday I had to pause and luxuriate in this phrase: ".....for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men." This maxim, like youth in general, would be wasted on the young. Comment: When I looked up Moby Dick on Amazon, I discovered that it has a Lexile level of 730L, which isn't terribly difficult. However, when I looked up Moby Dick on Lexile's own website, the level was all over the place, depending on the particular author who retold the story, ranging from 360L (as retold by Kathy Burke) to 1230 (the original author Herman Melville). I guess it's been dumbed down over the years...Or the readers have been dumbed down to accept a "retelling" of the story as the actual story itself. Naturally, a lot of important context and nuance is left out of these altered versions. Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker describes the evolution of schizophrenia research from seeking psychological cures to determining biological and, perhaps, hereditary roots. The primary subjects of the book are the Galvins, a family with twelve children (10 boys, 2 girls) of which six of the sons were diagnosed with the disease. It's a pretty fascinating and depressing book. One of the passages that stood out most to me was his discussion of how early psychiatric efforts to cure the disease were in part an attempt to wrest control from the eugenicists, who just thought they should all be elimintated. Unfortunately, some of that led to the deinstitutionalization movement, the effects of which we see all around us today. Comment: That's pretty wild that half of the kids were diagnosed with schizophrenia, all of them boys. I know schizophrenia seems to manifest itself at much higher rates in boys than in girls, though it's certainly not confined to one gender. Look at Ellen (now Elliot) Page. We saw an article here not long ago where she mentioned she started hearing voices that convinced her to transition to a man. Schizophrenia is a very, very weird condition. Unfortunately, treatment is difficult and there is no lasting cure. It also has be frightening and disorienting to those who suffer from it, as their perception of reality is distorted, making them unable to distinguish the imaginary voices in their head from the real voices of people who care about them and want to help them. Finally finished James A. Michener's Alaska. I've read 7 of his novels and enjoyed them all but Alaska was a challenge to finish. The tome is wordy, even for Michener, and when he spins a tale, it is detailed like no other. I skipped the first three sections on the geologic formation of Alaska, the mastadons and the first peoples across the Bering Strait and picked up the story in the days of the early explorers. The history of Alaska is fascinating and I have a new appreciation for the early settlers, both pioneer and indigenous. The land was plundered and largely ungovernable when the Russians were in charge but some civilized and religious progress was made. Once the vast wilderness was purchased by the U.S., plundering expanded and further progress was first squandered in favor of corruption by a small cabal of Seattle businessmen (and their D.C. lobbyists). A distant and disinterested government has been a constant problem and continues today. The indigenous peoples were ignored and shoved to the side, labeled as too ignorant to decide their own future. I now need the history on Alaska from 1988 to present to be fully informed. Comment: Speaking of doorstoppers, James A. Michener is no stranger to these. Pretty much all of the books of his I've seen fit this category. I do remember reading a couple of his books when I was in high school many moons ago and liking them somewhat. Perhaps when I've run out of my current selection of doorstoppers TBR, I will return to James A. Michener and give him another chance... More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (840 Moron-recommended books so far!) WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:
That's about all I have for this week. Thank you for all of your kind words regarding the Sunday Morning Book Thread. This is a very special place. You are very special people (in all the best ways!). The kindness, generosity, and wisdom of the Moron Horde knows no bounds. Let's keep reading! If you have any suggestions for improvement, reading recommendations, or discussion topics that you'd like to see on the Sunday Morning Book Thread, you can send them to perfessor dot squirrel at-sign gmail dot com. Your feedback is always appreciated! You can also take a virtual tour of OUR library at libib.com/u/perfessorsquirrel. Since I added sections for AoSHQ, I now consider it OUR library, rather than my own personal fiefdom... PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 06-18-23 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!) | Recent Comments
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The Morning Report — 10/8/24
Daily Tech News 8 October 2024 Monday Overnight Open Thread (10/7/24) Love Is Blind Cafe Trump in Butler, PA: "As I Was Saying..." A CBS "News" Reporter Asked Black Supremacist Ta-Nehesi Coates Why His Book Blaming Israel For the Terrorist Attack of 10/7 Failed to Even Mention Hamas or Hezballah; Pressured by Woke Left, CBS Apologizes for Daring to Question Him Woke $200+ Million Joker Sequel Brings In a "Tragic" $37.8 Million in Opening Weekend Disaster James Varney: FEMA is Hoarding Billions of Dollars in Disaster Relief Money In the Wake of Helene, with the Harris-Biden FEMA Missing in Action, Ron DeSantis Refuses to Take Kamala Harris' Phot-Op Phone Call Major "A-List" Celebrity Horrified That Videotape of Him at P-Diddy's Sex Party Will Leak Search
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