7.5 years later, this post of forwardslash deserves a revisit.
Last day of work before I take another week off to go houseboating on the Murray. Four days of perfect silence, except for flowing water, currawongs, and persistent deafening tinnitus in my left ear.
Man, I loved Empty World. Read it so many times. I grew up in the bush, with no neighbours, without electricity. Never travelling anywhere except the closest country towns. But every time I read Empty World it was as though I was travelling overseas. The way John Christopher described London I felt I knew it better than Melbourne. He also had a knack for writing protagonists who had a strong streak of bastardry in them. It was refreshing to read as a kid.
A Memory Called Empire is a great fucking book. I'd held off A Desolation Called Peace because the reviews I saw seemed to be more restrained. It's good to hear you liked it. Have you tried the Broken Earth Series (starting with Fifth Season)? Check out Ancillary Justice, as well.
"Shrubsole estimates that “the aristocracy and gentry still own around 30% of England”. This may even be an underestimate, as the owners of 17% of England and Wales remain undeclared at the Land Registry. The most likely owners of this undeclared land are aristocrats, as many of their estates have remained in their families for centuries." Source Edit: Another interesting take here. "On average, Britain’s 600 or so aristocratic families are now as wealthy as their Victorian forebears at the height of Britain’s imperial expansion."
Peter Schilling - Major Tom Coming Home
How did it go?
Would you recommend it? Lately I've gotten into the habit of alternating between "quality literature" (most recently, Percival Everett's James) and scifi (finished Banks' Hydrogen Sonata this morning). I'm due for something literary again. Awesome to hear from you btw. Hope you're keeping well.
I had never heard that about Borges before. Thanks for sharing.
That was an interesting read. Thanks for sharing @b_b.
Just to clarify, are you telling me you've never heard of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds? That cannot be true. I've been worshipping at the alter of Nick Cave for 30 years.Embarrassed I'd never heard of these guys before.
Beautiful.
His guilty verdict was announced at pretty much the exact time I got out of bed this morning. I was late arriving at work because I was busy watching the reactions unfold on live television.
I am at that part of the year where I have to produce a lot of work (in the form of two whole-of-institution reports) in time to meet a very significant deadline. You would think, after almost nine years of working for my current employer, that I would have broken this habit of procrastination by now.
Post something here, dude!
That was an excellent read. Thanks for sharing.
Where US goes, Australia inevitably follows. The excitement around Gaza unfolding on US university campuses has now arrived in Australia. And now a Sydney council is trying to ban books featuring same sex marriage from local libraries.
Yeah, fair enough.
Any chance of him just ordering a hit on Trump and then claiming presidential immunity? Not even sure I'm being sarcastic anymore. Edit: I'm being sarcastic. Edit 2: Although
Still no word back from the agent on the chapters I sent to them. Par for the course, I suppose. I'll keep going.
Good to hear. What's the job?
How is it that, this far into my career, so much of my work output still comes down to a last minute cram?
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 have yet to read a single Douglas Coupland novel. Which one should I start with to get maximal wowage?
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.