Your pointless thoughts & observations

  Quote

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
-- Marcus Aurelius

You can tell a lot from a person's bookshelf, or the lack thereof. I have about 40 shelf-metres of physical books and a few hundred electronic ones, and that's not counting comics and graphic novels, which add quite a bit more.

  On 9/8/2022 at 6:42 PM, dcom said:

You can tell a lot from a person's bookshelf, or the lack thereof. I have about 40 shelf-metres of physical books and a few hundred electronic ones, and that's not counting comics and graphic novels, which add quite a bit more.

I don't own much books anymore because I've either given away or sold most of them. I still have a few boxes of books stashed away in a storage room. The problem was that I've moved a lot and I didn't even have a permanent residence for a long time so I just got rid of hundreds of books. Mostly I read ebooks now. And even comics I read mostly electronically.

This week I went to drop off a book I just had finished to a book recycling point at a library and then ended up picking two books to go with me. I'm not sure how I keep accumulating more of them when I'm trying to get rid off them

  On 9/8/2022 at 7:46 PM, zkom said:

I don't own much books anymore because I've either given away or sold most of them.

Yeah, it's a choice. I've also tied myself down with a literal metric ton (actually over) of vinyl, so.

  On 9/8/2022 at 6:42 PM, dcom said:

You can tell a lot from a person's bookshelf, or the lack thereof. I have about 40 shelf-metres of physical books and a few hundred electronic ones, and that's not counting comics and graphic novels, which add quite a bit more.

re: electronic books. I tried that maybe around 10 years ago. read a few on a tablet. then I realized that this is not the way I want to enjoy this medium, by spending more hours starring at a screen. the tactile sensation and physical action of holding a book, page turning, and repeat, NOT starring at a screen, are important factors for me. funnily enough though I do enjoy reading comics on a tablet more so than the physical medium. perhaps the digital factor adds to the artwork, can present it more attractively or something. I dunno.

  On 9/4/2022 at 6:01 AM, cruising for burgers said:

so last night I had one of the most fucked up  dreams/nightmares I've ever had... something really Cronenberg...

 

I found a kind of purple plant made of something like gelatine/rubber with tentacles that when I touch them each one of them played a tone... so I entertained myself playing weird melodies which I thought to myself that sounded like afx cause they're not on a tempered scale or were microtonal or whatever and I thought that I needed to tell watmm about it... the thing is that everytime I touched the tentacles, they would try to envelope/glue/swallow me to so I was kinda afraid of playing to much because I didn't want it to melt with me... but I couldn't resist it so eventually the plant ended up merging with myself crawling up my arms... but what comes next is pretty embarrassing... the gelly plant or whatever developed some kind of genital organs and started talking and got aroused... and I did too... so the plant's belly started to fold inside recalling the form of an hotdog bun or a taco and I really wanted to stick my cock inside it, I was very horny... but the plant kept saying, we can't do this, stop, but I couldn't resist so I placed my cock inside it and told the plant I was gonna come... I whispered a countdown in her ear, 3, 2, 1, and then I woke up, with a boner... what's wrong with me...

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“What are you doing *step afx plant*?”

  On 9/8/2022 at 8:17 PM, zero said:

re: electronic books. I tried that maybe around 10 years ago. read a few on a tablet. then I realized that this is not the way I want to enjoy this medium, by spending more hours starring at a screen. the tactile sensation and physical action of holding a book, page turning, and repeat, NOT starring at a screen, are important factors for me.

I concur, but then again, although we have quite a bit of real estate (for an apartment), something's got to give so I've scaled down physical media acquisitions to a bare minimum, and to make up for my voracious appetite for both books and music, I've turned to the digital domain. I still prefer books as dead tree editions and music on petroleum byproduct, but with a family and restricted space (and a spouse who's not happy about piles of books, records, comics, music equipment and other detritus accumulating) I've made a choice.

I'm always happy to take a good book that was discarded by its previous owner. Last time I found Neitzsche's Thus Spoke Zaratustra, someone left it in a box on top of a dumpster. A couple of months ago I salvaged a crate of books, among them big color art books, folk arts decoration patterns collections, a book about Cossacks and some construction DIYs. People just give them away? I am happy to take it. It would be so good to have a place for a big study room of my own.

  On 9/8/2022 at 8:33 PM, cichlisuite said:

I'm always happy to take a good book that was discarded by its previous owner. Last time I found Neitzsche's Thus Spoke Zaratustra, someone left it in a box on top of a dumpster. A couple of months ago I salvaged a crate of books, among them big color art books, folk arts decoration patterns collections, a book about Cossacks and some construction DIYs. People just give them away? I am happy to take it. It would be so good to have a place for a big study room of my own.

The two books I randomly found in the book recycling shelf are set in some kind of cyberpunk alternate history/future where the Ottoman empire never disappeared. I've never heard of them. Might be shit but the premise sounds interesting at least.

  On 9/8/2022 at 11:58 PM, zkom said:

 cyberpunk alternate history/future where the Ottoman empire never disappeared. I've never heard of them. Might be shit but the premise sounds interesting at least.

lol that sounds intriguing actually. does it have any ilustrations?

  On 9/9/2022 at 8:11 AM, cichlisuite said:

lol that sounds intriguing actually. does it have any ilustrations?

No, except for the quite minimalist cover. It's the first two parts of the Arabesk trilogy by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabesk_trilogy

why do ghosts fly?

in the topic of books, I read a lot of Wikipedia...

I've also listened to 2 twin peaks audio books...

  On 9/8/2022 at 6:42 PM, dcom said:

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
-- Marcus Aurelius

see, this sound extremely pompous and elistist... and honestly, for a quote that's supposed to idolate books, it fails miserably cause, from a literal point of view, it's cheap af...

  On 9/8/2022 at 8:19 PM, toaoaoad said:

I can't remember what thread it was in, but someone recently posted something describing this concept of "quiet quitting", basically just coming in and doing your specific job tasks and offering zero additional time or effort beyond that. I realized that I've been doing exactly this at one of my jobs, and tbh it has paid off, as the organization now seems to be self-destructing for the second time in the last year or so. Just glad I've stayed passively on the sidelines and haven't over-invested myself. Now I don't feel so bad about not replying to half the emails since most of it is irrelevant now (complete management overhaul). Is this happening everywhere? Can't hire anyone and no one wants to stay. And the rest of us are "quiet quitting". I don't like the sort of disparaging tone of the expression but I guess it works. Thanks, internet in 2022, for having little expressions for pretty much everything.

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nobody pays me/you to think, that's how we say it over here...

  On 9/8/2022 at 8:19 PM, toaoaoad said:

I can't remember what thread it was in, but someone recently posted something describing this concept of "quiet quitting", basically just coming in and doing your specific job tasks and offering zero additional time or effort beyond that. I realized that I've been doing exactly this at one of my jobs, and tbh it has paid off, as the organization now seems to be self-destructing for the second time in the last year or so. Just glad I've stayed passively on the sidelines and haven't over-invested myself. Now I don't feel so bad about not replying to half the emails since most of it is irrelevant now (complete management overhaul). Is this happening everywhere? Can't hire anyone and no one wants to stay. And the rest of us are "quiet quitting". I don't like the sort of disparaging tone of the expression but I guess it works. Thanks, internet in 2022, for having little expressions for pretty much everything.

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yeah I've too seen this term "quiet quitting" pop up in internet articles out there. it's totally relatable, and "they" seem to be tying this phenomenon to the pandemic, or at least another side effect from it.

fwiw, our company too is having issues similar to what you've described. but there was another factor at play not exactly related to the pandemic, which could explain a lot of performance / management issues going on right now where I work.

but yeah, the remote work thing IMO has perhaps led into a sea change shift in worker mentality...like the pendulum shifted toward the worker vs. management during, and now after the pandemic. or maybe the global fear of death that everyone experienced back in like 2020 shook enough heads out there to get people to wake up and see the forest for the trees. like there's other things more important in life than sitting at a fucking desk all day being frustrated at your job.

9/11 is coming up which means we should begin seeing some attention grabbing "insensitive" posts/comments/pictures/memes/videos from people that "don't mean to insult anyone" 

first stop is virginia so of course it's tacky as hell and yes, it's already been taken down and an apology issued AFTER the insensitivity was broadcast nationwide

  On 9/9/2022 at 9:46 PM, Nebraska said:

 

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  On 9/10/2022 at 12:52 AM, prdctvsm said:

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So for 12$ i get somewhere between 9-11 oysters, sir?

  On 9/9/2022 at 11:04 AM, zkom said:

No, except for the quite minimalist cover. It's the first two parts of the Arabesk trilogy by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabesk_trilogy

Can we get the image ai to crunch through "ottoman cyberpunk"?

  On 9/10/2022 at 12:58 AM, cichlisuite said:

So for 12$ i get somewhere between 9-11 oysters, sir?

" that's correct sir. can i interest u in our chef's special - building 7 vol-au-vent ? this is my last day here btw."

Hellraiser 1 & 3 were both released on 9/11

I'm a bit embarrassed to bring this up, but I think I might be turning into an arachnophile now.

NSFW reason

EDIT: JFC this is so embarrassing

The letters for the playlist "experimental electronics" look nicer in a lower resolution. I'm doing this so I can sort my 5000 youtube likes faster on this old laptop hardware. The shorter form of ecetera written without a dot felt more badass. That's the kind of rebel I am. I feel old.

Ever sleep so hard and so long you feel like you woke from a coma or out of a cryogenic chamber to the point that you are glad to be part of the human race and feel like you should call family members, Like you've been missing from time. Need to check the news and yell at the sky ?