Good to hear. What's the job?
Everybody drop what you're reading and go pick up Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
So accidental injury as a side effect of attempted high-tech bugging? That is interesting. Thanks for linking.
This is wild. "A consensus has formed among the growing community of AHI sufferers that the U.S. government — and the CIA in particular — is hiding the full extent of what it knows about the source of Havana Syndrome. The victims offer two general hypotheses as to why. The first is that releasing the full intelligence around Russian involvement might be so shocking as to convince the American people and their representatives that Moscow has committed an act of war against the United States, thereby raising thorny questions as to how a nuclear power fond of showing off its hypersonic missiles ought to be made to pay. The second is that acknowledging Havana Syndrome is caused by a foreign adversary could put a damper on recruitment to the CIA and State Department." Hell of an indictment either way.
How is it that, this far into my career, so much of my work output still comes down to a last minute cram?
Sent a couple of chapters from my latest experiment in novel writing to an agent. Haven't heard back, which may be par for the course. I'll keep going with it regardless and try again once it's closer to completion. Had a great long weekend visiting Beechworth, land of Ned Kelly and the place where I was raised but haven't returned to in years. Perfect weather. Excellent wine. Great food. Astonishingly friendly people.
I DREAM'D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dream'd that was the new City of Friends; Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest; It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words.
In Australia, we're all wondering who this is.
Great novels I've read recently: - Prophet Song by Paul Lynch - The Trees by Percival Everett - Plains of Promise by Alexis Wright Currently back on the Everett wagon with Erasure, which may well be the best of his I've read yet.
I don't believe I've heard that proverb before, so thank you for sharing it. Sorry to hear you're in a slump. I hope you find yourself in higher climes, soon.
Seems more like white people still aren't having sex. What's going on, white people?
Would that not sit under task aversiveness? That is, due to the fuzziness / scariness / complexity of the task, one to seeks to avoid it until it can be put off no longer? I can relate to your description completely, btw. (In fact, it's the reason I found myself looking up procrastination.)
> I recognize I'm the only person here who knows what "rotoscope" means which is part of the problem Nah, man. Everybody who played Prince of Persia on the Apple 2E remembers rotoscoping!
So I take your argument to be: - the division between the two sides today is not essentially about competing economic systems (at least not existentially so) so the factors that tore the country apart 160 years ago aren't there; - each team hates the other side, but not enough to kill the game; - until and unless people are no longer able to buy their groceries and get care etc when they need it, these points will hold, and the improving economic outlook suggests this to be so. Which yeah, makes sense. And obviously you're living and seeing all of this up close while I just get to watch from (mostly) a safe distance. Just, from over here, it feels as though there's a lot of ... something. Call it intergenerational wealth, call it rural resentment, call it frustrated white male entitlement, call it a Russian cabal - or whatever you like. But it feels like there is something that is trying very hard to wreck the country rather than give its power up. And when it came to the fore six years ago it started off headless and a bit of a joke, but since then it's woken up to its power and to the huge reserves of resentment that it can leverage to support its power, and to the frailty of the structures that were thought to keep it in check, and it's become organised, insidious and it is actively pursuing an agenda that is malign to the democratic United States.
Just finished American Desert by Percival Everett. I loved it though I gather Everett afficionados don't rate it among his best books. Next is to read Plains of Promise by Alexis Wright. After that, I'll be jumping into the latest Booker winner.
I have yet to read a single Douglas Coupland novel. Which one should I start with to get maximal wowage?
US politics is a source of considerable anxiety to me and many of my friends here. That said, and with the caveat that I'm speaking as an outsider, I get the impression the rift in American society is largely urban versus rural (with the discord being exploited by wealthy interests, of course). How do you see the map looking were it to split? Richard Morgan's book Black Man envisions a future US split into the Republic (Jesusland), the North Atlantic Union and the Pacific Rim, although I gather he based this distinction on existing literature about the topic.
Welcome aboard sogre. Gmail seems like a big obstacle to getting new subscribers to this site - and for old subscribers who've forgotten their password and need to renew it. #bugski
Wild that trade networks in the British Isles extended at least as far as Iran even then.
> Based on an abstract of the new study provided to me by the American Heart Association [...] the researchers did not ask people if they were following time-restricted diets. What they did was look for people who only ate for a short period of time during the day based on two reports to the survey of what they ate. Yeah, that seems like a caveat that deserves more attention.
This surprises me. I practice 16:8 (actually, probably closer to 20:4) four days a week. The idea that I've been (potentially) damaging myself the last couple of years of doing so is counterintuitive to how I've felt over the same period.
This article suggests the draft age in the United States was extended to 64 during World War Two (?), although I note that military service was to remain capped in the mid-40s.
Hi mk. There are good discussions on here that I value. On occasion I direct friends to them (originally in the hope that they would create a username and get involved in the discussion). I feel like it would be a loss if those conversations were no longer visible to people who drop by. Just my thoughts.
>For others in the same white Christian theocracy movement, it's because they know that limiting access to those things will disproportionately impact non-whites poorly. How does that work? If people of colour are reproducing at a higher rate than white people, then surely that disproportionately impacts the racists interested in maintaining a white majority.
Congratulations, dude.
Australia seems to be full of ignorant, opinionated arseholes, who vote for ignorant, opinionated arseholes. I feel like we were not always like this, but we have become like this. This old post from a thousand years ago seems relevant. I think the Palawa people would disagree with John Howard. I would like to ask them, but they were exterminated.
You're in Europe, aren't you? Are you launching from there?
Tom Lehrer can come out of retirement!
Excellent read. So much of what is written here applies exactly the same to Australia and New Zealand. Except for this part: > More than a fifth of our national wealth is tied up in housing. In Australia, it's closer to two-thirds.