So many great authors don’t make it big. So many mediocre authors do make it big. Same with musicians…really all artists. It’s depressing how many profound works and minds have been drowned and lost in the chaos of humanity and making a living.
The word my family uses for that is “mom”.
It’s a good book. I would argue that although he had a hard go of it, and long days, his life was much more fulfilling than 99% of the lives that people live these days; probably more fulfilling than the lives of the people that lived during his time as well. There’s a reason people love escapism.
Thomas Paine posited that if a man, unencumbered by society, could meet his basic needs (food, shelter, etc) in x hours of work per day, then society owed that same person the same basic standards of life for working that same x hours per day. Where I’m from, the Native Americans had to work about 2 hours a day to meet their needs, and so became really great artisans with their “free” time.
Closer to present, my parents were able to buy a comfortable suburban home while working relatively low paying government jobs. That includes my mom taking off approx 6 years to take care of my sister and I until we started elementary school.
When Europeans first came to America, there were schools of cod off the coast that you could literally dangle an empty hook into the water and catch fish. Passenger Pigeons darkend the sky for days on end with their migrations, and the thundering of huge buffalo herds could be heard and seen throughout a good portion of the continent.
[Life expectancy] fell to 77 in 2020 and dropped further, to just over 76, in 2021. That’s the largest decrease over a two-year span since the 1920s. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-life-expectancy-in-the-us-is-falling-202210202835
Sure it’s not all bad. But it’s far, far from all good as well. Sometimes bitching is just the sign of an unhappy person, but often there are some real truths behind the complaints.
I’m in northern OC. Along the route. I found this nursery, https://californianativeplants.com/, out on the Ortega Highway out of San Juan Capistrano and they have fantastic California natives and knowledgeable staff. They aren’t on the list, but they had the correct varieties last time I hit them up. I don’t own stock or anything, I just really like it, even though it’s a bit of a drive for me. They’ve set me straight on several things I had been doing wrong.
SoCal here too. A few years ago, the local nursery was giving out milkweed for people to plant in their gardens. We did that, then a couple of years later they apologized because they had given out the wrong type of milkweed, and it was actually worse than not having it at all. Pretty fucked up. Anyway, we used to see a ton of them come through, the last couple of years it seems like I see a couple dozen or so at best.
When I was a kid, I got pissed at my dad for something and reset all the stations, thinking it would throw him for a loop. He noticed what I had done almost immediately, fixed them all in about 5-10 seconds and looked at me like I was stupid.
Freedom’s just another word
I used to love going to the theater. I would go almost every weekend, and often during the week. I watched almost everything. Then cell phones came along. At one point, many, many years ago, I swore if some mother fucker took out their fucking phone during the movie I was seeing, I would never set foot in a theater again. Some piece of shit mother fucker did, and I haven’t. It’s been all the open seas for me since. It also helped that affordable larger screens became available for home. I haven’t been to a movie in a theater in probably a decade, and I doubt I’ll ever go again.
Slow Horses is so freaking good.
I need to emigrate.
Step 1: Have discretionary money
Step 2: Invest
I guess I’m stuck at Step 0.5.
We (in the US) just elected a grifting, criminal “billionaire”. I don’t think the animosity so loudly and gleefully displayed in the reactions to the murder of this asshole insurance ghoul is representative of a newly heightened consciousness of wealth inequality. I hope that it is the start of something, but I’ve been disappointed in the public way too many times.
This is one of the dumber news articles I’ve seen recently. What a bunch of tools all around.
Are you talking about the same book?
It was fun to spell aloud when I was 7.
Hotkey open terminal -> sudo apt update/upgrade -> done. Never had to touch the stupid mouse. Same with all sorts of tasks.
Hotkey open terminal -> neomutt -> quickly sort/delete/reply -> done. Never had to touch the stupid mouse.
Hotkey open terminal -> scp <info> -> done. Never touched the mouse.
and so on.
If you like using a GUI, use a GUI. I’m not saying you can’t, but you sure are missing out on a lot of command-line awesomeness. I’ve never heard anyone argue that a GUI is quicker than command line, just more comfortable for a lot of neophytes. I mean, sure, gaming, browsing the web, graphics stuff, GUIs are great, if not essential.
I would always laugh when he was being a dick. Just from every interview I’ve seen with the guy he comes across as a good one, and then here he was acting like he was. I kept imagining the director yelling “CUT!” and Wil immediately apologizing for the bullying.
Years ago, after one of my many moves, I realized about 1/3 of what I was moving was books. I had far too many for my lifestyle. I would love to have been able to buy a house and have a big book wall, or room, but that’s not how life played out. I got tired of moving boxes of books, so I donated all my books and have just stuck with ebooks now. With an eink screen, I find the reading experience to be exactly the same. Although I still occasionally miss the physical nature of books, I don’t miss it enough to give up the positives of my much larger electronic library.