Summa dem was dragons, ya, but dem other ones was flying Messerschmitts!
It’s reaching for what diagraming use to do; what does each word modify.
/shrug
yes
But then you would likely be Capitalizing Great Dragon as a Proper Noun.
I sent the family tree one to my brother-in-law.
I don’t really have a family tree, it’s more like a stick. Great shortage of last names.
I know it’s going to go over a LOT of people’s heads, but the last name of the responder is what had me choking. History FTW.
Oh, if you need a wedding dress in three to five years, send $500 to P.o. box I don’t have yet. D1 wants to make them for a living, but is not rapid delivery. If you need one in January, well, D1 needs models next fall; limited slots; travel three or so times (my guess) to where Barney Fife went on vacation, your expense, could perhaps result in one, no guarantees and modeling garment in public would be required. (This is an unauthorized parental officious announcement and might not be honored. Don’t get your hopes up.)
In related news, eldest was admitted to senior studio course next fall!!!
We need one in custom size for September, but….
the Annoy A Liberal bumper sticker is especially profound because it’s on a chrome bumper. Yes, liberals have been joyless party poopers for decades. Think of them as the people who think life should *always* be effortless or they’ll just burn the whole thing down.
Effort is a necessary part of the whole. When one does not sacrifice something in order to receive something else, the transactions becomes hollow and the one on the receiving end does not value the item/service properly.
The natural order of things demands it as well. No thing ever is “free.” Someone, something, somewhere paid the cost for it. Disrespect that balance at your peril, lest things older and crueler than mortal men wake. The Gods of the Copybook Headings are metal as heck when it comes to such unrepentant fools.
The Reader loves them both! Although with kerosene he thinks that drink should be a Manhattan with rye, not a martini.
I could see that, but I could also see going with 190 proof rectified spirits because dragon.
The ultimate Dragon Cocktail – The Manhattan Project
2 oz bourbon
1 oz rattlesnake venom
1 oz U-235
Pinch of boron bitters
Shake well with ice, garnish with Maraschino cherry
HT Iowahawk
With all due respect, the dragon can refer to its beverages by whatever labels it chooses, and I see no good reason to attempt to correct it, owing to a personal aversion to third degree burns and being dragon chow…
There can be dragon Martinis AND dragon Manhattans… whatever the dragon(s) say, thus it is. Even if not, say it is. It’s just safer that way.
The Dragon with the Flagon drinks the Brew thst is True…..
Okay.
🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵
Are we going to send the flamethrower robo-dogs to fight the Korean flamethrower squirrels?
And if we do, remember how all those picnickers went out to watch the First Battle of Bull Run? Because I think we’d have a repeat.
No, send both after the Biden* Regime and the socialist antisemite rioters. Many problems thus solved.
I like the way you think TheOtherSean… I might even pay to see that on PPV!
But are they -rooftop- Korean flamethrower squirrels? ~:D
And if so, how do I get them to come live at my place?
Nah, send them in with paintball guns and napalm-filled paintballs.
Oh, sure, California can spend money on, checks notes, “combat homeless”, and they’re the epitome of progressive compassion.
But when I do it, it gets called “bum fights” and I’m ‘low class’. not fair.
In a previous comments section, I noted the “controversy” created by the woke over the Korean video game Stellar Blade. It just released, and…
Stellar Blade is only available on the Playstation 5. On that game platform, you can also buy games that have graphically detailed full body nudity (Cyberpunk 2077), allow you to customize your character’s genitalia (Cyberpunk, Baldur’s Gate 3), and have a cutscene involving what appears to be sex with a bear (Baldur’s Gate 3 again; the explanation is that it’s a D&D druid who loses control of his animal form shape-shifting whenever he gets excited). None of these were forced by Sony to censor.
Stellar Blade has skimpy outfits, and a very attractive lead. But it doesn’t have any sex (human or animal), nudity, or customization of genitals. Despite this, Sony has forced the developer to censor some of the outfits to make them slightly less revealing (there was also something involving an accidental racial slur – via in-game graffiti – that is so obscure that I’d never even heard of it before).
Currently there’s talk of sending (polite) protest letters (physical letters work better than e-mail in Asian countries) to the developer and Sony Japan, e-mails and social media posts that tag Sony America, petitions to all three, the hashtag #freestellarblade, and even talk of cancelling Playstation Network subscriptions, with Stellar Blade’s censorship listed as the reason.
The game is fun, and well-made, imo. I’ve got it, and am enjoying it. Some of the cut-scene animations are a bit odd, but aside from that it looks good and plays well. There wouldn’t be any serious criticism about the game if it weren’t for the fact that the woke have latched onto it because the lead is an attractive woman. And I can all but guarantee that the woke attention is the only reason why the game is being censored.
I will note, though, that the game’s boss fights usually end with very gory animations.
Eh. Perhaps I’m a bit biased, but they didn’t seem so bad to me, from what I recall. Bit bloody, some gore here and there, amputations. Didn’t seem gratuitous to me.
Agreed that it is a fun game though. Worth the time and the price.
That’s part of the reason for the complaints about the censorship. While I couldn’t pull up a list of the exact outfits that were censored, the censorship apparently revolves around things like covering up plunging necklines and cleavage windows. It’s not as if the outfits are barely there micro-bikinis (to the best of my knowledge).
Further, if Sony were consistent in this, it would be one thing. But they’re not. As I noted, there have been plenty of Playstation games where much, much worse stuff was allowed through without any censorship. Though note that the games that I listed were all multi-platform, meaning that players unhappy about censorship on the Playstation could always buy the game on a PC or possibly even an XBox instead. That might have influenced Sony’s decision to not censor them.
They’re also American made not Korean made. Though I’m not sure how that influences things. (I’m about 90% sure it DOES influence things jsut not sure of the exact ways.)
It’s likely that Sony’s responding as a result of the woke campaign against the game. An American developer probably would have avoided that campaign by hiring a woke “advisor” company – such as Sweet Baby Inc. (though that’s hardly the only such company) – to put sufficient stuff into the game to bump the ESG score up.
And Eve (the protagonist) would likely look overweight, about twenty years older, and androgynous.
I also suspect that if Sony Japan were still calling the shots, that we wouldn’t be seeing the censorship. But Sony transferred its headquarters to California a while back, and there’s been a noticeable shift in attitude…
End ESG!
Death to DEI!
Last week’s was the first meme set I recall with NO repeated memes. There’s almost always one. This time there’s two.
There is now balance to our farce.
what’s the book about Christians settling mars? I’d read that.
Here’s one for the authors out there; ‘Simon Templar on Mars’. 😇
I’m guessing it would be Out of the Silent Planet. It’s been a long time since I read it, so I can’t be sure, but there were definitely some non-human Christians, and I feel as though some of them might have been otter-like.
Yep, Out of the Silent Planet. The native Martians were somewhat otter-like, and had never fallen from grace. Note, the villains were humans who wanted to colonize Mars and exploit any native life they could find. They had kidnapped the hero, who opposed them and wound up representing the better part of humanity to the Orsya, or angelic guardian, of Malacanda (Mars). Earth is ruled by a fallen Orsya and more or less under quarantine.
Wow. I’m not sure how long it’s been since I read the trilogy, though I’m pretty sure Nixon was president. Time to take a look for Kindle versions.
As I remember, my reading order was Silent Planet, Perelandrea, then Hideous Strength.
(While I’m at it, maybe an ebook* version of TLotR books. I’m working on a lot of downtime until I recover from the to-be-scheduled “minor”(?) knee surgery**. Pre-op, I’m good for an hour or three upright a day, depending on painkiller intake.)
((*)) If I’m not feeling great, I do better with a Kindle than a paper book. Comfy chair FTW.
((**)) Seems I tore a meniscus in a January fall. Lots of diagnostic fiddle-faddle, but the good news is that it’s supposed to be a 20 minute procedure. Complicated by non-knee health issues that make for a delay getting insurance to say Get’r-done.
Oh, go ahead.
I have three hardcover editions, and I like to read in bed, so I bought the kindle version a couple years ago. Don’t need a bright light, so don’t bother my lovely wife.
There is a kindle Omnibus version of the Space Trilogy but it’s listing at $24.99 I think I got it on sale for half that in 2018. Really Harper $25 bucks for a book where the last volume was originally published almost 80 years ago? Paperback of the omnibus can be had for $15, single book copies used seem to run $3-4 each. I REALLY hate the big 5 and think they’re absolute idiots for not selling back catalog stuff for $4-5 a pop on Kindle or similar, Many heavy readers use the Ereaders and consume books like Popcorn. Most of my reading is confined to indies except for a few folks (Sanderson, Correia, Weber) who have some of their content tied to big 5 publishers.
it’s listing at $24.99
Not any more it isn’t. Currently $33.97, presumably because bits and pixels became so much harder to get from China, and the shipping problems are horrendous. /sarc
I have a firm eBook limit of $9.99 per volume unless it’s a book that I either really need (ARRL study guides fit there when I was going for my license) or really, really want to read in eBook. (Not sure if that’s been triggered. The Space Trilogy doesn’t push that button.)
Side note: While The Fellowship of the Ring is $12.99 from Harper (what is it with the Big 5. Suicidal, too?), a one-volume LotL omnibus is $15.99. That, I can deal with.
I take it back; a one-volume eBook is still $24.99, but you can buy the 3-volume set for the higher price. #headdesk
Perhaps the ’60s image reflects the mind of the Big 5 eBook marketing people. Assuming they have a mind.
Some of the LOTR price is that for many publishers certain parts of their back catalog are their money makers/Cash cows. LOTR and Hobbit are KNOWN to be that for Harper have been for eons. They use that to make the ludicrous 6 and 7 figure offers to various “famous” folks on the correct end of the political spectrum for their self fellating autobiographies (usually not actually self some ghost writer demeans themselves for probably a rather slim cut of that advance, I hope they aren’t stupid enough to take royalties) that never sell out the advance only to end up unwanted on the $1.99 table. This is the way the publishers keep in the good graces of those in power.
I think what you saw was the hardback copy of the omnibus. Basically my rule of thumb is to NEVER pay more for a kindle book than for the traditional small-form paperback. The going rate for those is 6.99-9.99. As noted there are exceptions but usually even there $13-14 is about my limit.
To this day I am confounded by the publisher’s reaction to the Kindle and its Nook/Kobo competition. They had a chance to sell something they basically already had (as anything published since ~1980 was set with a markup language) with little to no overhead and a cut to the EBook vendor. They KNOW their money making cudtomers are the voracious readers who scarf down upwards of 30+ books per year.
I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised having worked for DEC that made its money on stealing the bottom end of the Big Iron but missed PC’s and only dabbled in workstations because the profit on the VAX and the PDP-11 lines was so good that the infighting killed the internal competition.
I mean by satiating the voracious readers and their lesser cousins they could give Obumbles and his (alleged) wife four or five 7 figure advances a year and still be able to fund all their dumb literary (read DEI) fiction and 20 variants of I.X. Kendi nonsense a year. Not that much of that dreck would sell many copies anyhow but they get their positional goods amongst their peers.
“They use that to make the ludicrous 6 and 7 figure offers to various “famous” folks on the correct end of the political spectrum for their self fellating autobiographies”
Most of those are ways for various entities, like unions and NGOs, to launder campaign contributions. They either “ask” members to buy them, or just buy them by the box full and put them in swag bags or dumpsters. With electronic copies, they don’t even have to handle paper.
SNELSON134 said:
They either “ask” members to buy them, or just buy them by the box full and put them in swag bags or dumpsters.
I suspect that they do not even go that far. They ship some small percentage to book vendors and after a year or so they write the rest off as a business expense to reduce their taxes. The graft has been laundered in a totally legal fashion.
THIS
I think it’s a quirk of Amazon & Harper. I had searched for Silent Planet, and the ‘zon offered all three eBooks for the not-so-low price of $33.97. The one-volume omnibus wasn’t one of the suggestions. I’m guessing there’s a similar bad deal for the individual books of tLotL.
Once I looked for the Space Trilogy, I found the one-volume omnibus tor the $24.99 price. Didn’t look at any of the print prices; I’ve developed a strong preference for Kindle for various reasons.
I like the DEC analogy. HP was (still is?) notorious for making the least compatible of the IBM compatible PCs. Employee discounts lead me to get 3 HP computers in a row, until it was time for a Pentium 2, at which point I paid 1/3rd the list of an HP for a solid no-name box from an independent builder.
Why my only printer is a Brother is a separate set of issues (price of consumables being the biggest).
What a shame.
A few years ago, I picked up an ebook omnibus edition containing the Outer Space Trilogy, the Narnia books, and something over 15 other books by Lewis, for $2.99 (Canadian). This edition is still available in Canada, but not in the U.S.
I believe the difference is that copyright was still life-plus-50 in Canada when the collection was released, and our laws do not permit works to be clawed back out of the public domain.
Incidentally, if you ever want to read Lewis’s single greatest scholarly achievement, his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama is available for loan from the Digital Library of India via archive.org:
It’s a reference to ‘Out of the Silent Planet’, which is the first of C. S. Lewis’s Planet Trilogy books. The books are set in the early Twentieth Century, with an Earth seemingly identical to our own. One of the background ideas of the trilogy is that each of the planets in our solar system has a divine being that’s charged with overseeing the planet on behalf of Deity. The divine being charged with overseeing Earth has rebelled, and as a result Earth is known as the Silent Planet on Mars, where the bulk of the story is set. There are multiple intelligent races on Mars – I don’t remember whether one looks like otters – and their religious beliefs come from the same source as Christianity.
Venus is the focus of the second book, Perelandrea.
The third novel is “That Hideous Strength”, and is set entirely in Britain. It’s also creepily prescient about many of the things that we’re seeing in our present day.
Perelandrea should probably be read after Out of the Silent Planet. But That Hideous Strength is much more independent. There are references in it to the earlier novels. But ignorance of those references doesn’t change much in understanding the basic plot of the novel, and appreciating what’s going on in the story.
I should have read further down before posting my reply. *sheepish*
Out of the Silent Planet the first in his Space Triology series. The second is Perelandra and takes place on what we call Venus (and they call Perelandra) the third is That Hideous Strength and IIRC takes place on Earth.
Also consider ”The Tuloriad”, by Kratman and Ringo. (Posleen War / Legacy of the Aldenata)
Avoiding spoilers. Intriguing work. Not at all what I expected.
Would social security still be a Ponzi scheme if some 60+ million citizens had not been aborted, and instead had jobs and paid taxes? Would it just be a Ponzi scheme with a softer landing?
The beaker meme reminds me of my supervisor and I having a shorthand reference to substandard work products from other groups as being from Muppet Labs. Good times.
I need a Boris in my front hall. He should probably come with a blast shield on the back, though. I’d definitely want to control the direction of the tannerite.
The element of confusion brings to mind the definition of Um Friend. Someone you’re more involved with than you want to admit, so you introduce them as your um… friend.
There is noooo … Item 5.
The defining trait of a Ponzi scheme is that it pays earlier ‘investors’ with the money taken from later ‘investors.’ It’s this, not the failure, that makes it a Ponzi scheme.
The problem, of course, is that you eventually run out of investor cash faster than you can find new investors. Even when you forcibly enroll a nation-state of investors.
That first line is accurate, and why Social Security is not a ponzi scheme.
It was enacted specifically to collectivize the support of the existing elderly, and they were open that when the checks went out in five years, it wouldn’t be giving people back their own money.
That was the entire point.
The benefit was shifting the cost of supporting existing folks who could no longer work.
The sense of entitlement among those who were born into families that weren’t directly supporting grandma, and then didn’t have to directly support their own parents, to being supported now by the kids they didn’t have, does not make it a ponzi scheme or investment scam.
Actually, it worked with the demographics they had then. Its creators knew it would go bust with increasing life expectancy, but not their problem since they would be dead then.
A Ponzi scheme works fine if original investors die out and their payments can be redirected to the survivors.
So, like 0bamacare, only that one surprised them by imploding while 0bama was still in office.
Many, perhaps most, of the children aborted would never have been conceived were abortion still illegal in that time. People have a wonderful aptitude for avoiding things where there are consequences.
Need a tornado meme. It is dark in here!
I liked the goth Beaker in the experts meme.
The meme from 3256 looks a lot like some of the New Wave sci-fi and fantasy covers from the 1960s and 1970s.
I don’t recall book covers like that, but posters? Yep. Particularly from the more chemically-altered students.
The covers for Ballantine’s editions of LOTR.
When you said that, I knew exactly which of the books on my bookshelf you’re referring to. Can’t tell you exactly where it is, mind you, even one year after the move. But I know exactly which book cover you mean.
I was actually thinking of the Ace unauthorized edition, as well as the original Ballanti9ne covers, both of which can be seen here.
That cover was for the edition my mom had, that I read when I was ten or so.
I think it proves that Hieronymus Bosch was a time traveler from 3256.
“Good Nyborg, man.”
The few tweets I’ve seen from Eduard von Habsburg are all very witty. He has a great sense of humor about his family. (Technically he’s Eduard [lots of names] von Habsburg-Lotharingian, of the Hungarian branch of the family.)
Social Security is the only Ponzi scheme in which you are forced to ‘invest’ at gunpoint.
The meme from the future is readily explained. It simply was flipped left-right during the time travel. A duck, and a hat. Clearly: DUCK and COVER!
I thought the meme was from the Lensman future: “She’s so low she could put on a tall silk hat and walk under a duck.”
About that ‘meme hog’ — is that a bear in the background, or a panther? Looks like trouble, either way.
Gamorg, obviously.
The Tolkien Rules, for using certain techniques in your fantasy stories:
1. You can get away with that if you are Tolkien.
2. You are not Tolkien.
I may resemble one, or more, of these
So true:
So true.
Haven’t seen a bottle of this stuff since ’60s. It was used too.
This is one of those things has a curious “it’s not illegal but is” thing. Allegedly it’s no better than other infection preventives, but has the issue of containing a mercury compound. It’s not illegal to make. Or market. Or use. BUT… it cannot commercially cross state lines… so… why bother making it?
Definitely a different era:
“Mama, Great Grandma says in her day she did THREE times what you do.” “In her day, soda pop had cocaine in it.”
According To Hoyt 
Would it be possible to have a green great dragon if great dragons are a separate thing from regular standard dragons?
Yes but then Grammarly would want you to hyphenate great-dragon (as opposed to say a mere-dragon?)
True, but it’s not a universal rule. If I talk about a black Army Jolly Green Giant coming in to land, that still works in English.
That’s the error that makes it a true meme. They left out allegiance. It’s
allegiance-opinion-size-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun
Jolly black Army green-giant.
Or were-dragons?
Summa dem was dragons, ya, but dem other ones was flying Messerschmitts!
It’s reaching for what diagraming use to do; what does each word modify.
/shrug
yes
But then you would likely be Capitalizing Great Dragon as a Proper Noun.
I sent the family tree one to my brother-in-law.
I don’t really have a family tree, it’s more like a stick. Great shortage of last names.
I know it’s going to go over a LOT of people’s heads, but the last name of the responder is what had me choking. History FTW.
Oh, if you need a wedding dress in three to five years, send $500 to P.o. box I don’t have yet. D1 wants to make them for a living, but is not rapid delivery. If you need one in January, well, D1 needs models next fall; limited slots; travel three or so times (my guess) to where Barney Fife went on vacation, your expense, could perhaps result in one, no guarantees and modeling garment in public would be required. (This is an unauthorized parental officious announcement and might not be honored. Don’t get your hopes up.)
In related news, eldest was admitted to senior studio course next fall!!!
We need one in custom size for September, but….
the Annoy A Liberal bumper sticker is especially profound because it’s on a chrome bumper. Yes, liberals have been joyless party poopers for decades. Think of them as the people who think life should *always* be effortless or they’ll just burn the whole thing down.
Effort is a necessary part of the whole. When one does not sacrifice something in order to receive something else, the transactions becomes hollow and the one on the receiving end does not value the item/service properly.
The natural order of things demands it as well. No thing ever is “free.” Someone, something, somewhere paid the cost for it. Disrespect that balance at your peril, lest things older and crueler than mortal men wake. The Gods of the Copybook Headings are metal as heck when it comes to such unrepentant fools.
Need more coffee before I can comment.
found one for you dude
https://i.imgflip.com/8o8q2h.jpg
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The Reader loves them both! Although with kerosene he thinks that drink should be a Manhattan with rye, not a martini.
I could see that, but I could also see going with 190 proof rectified spirits because dragon.
The ultimate Dragon Cocktail – The Manhattan Project
2 oz bourbon
1 oz rattlesnake venom
1 oz U-235
Pinch of boron bitters
Shake well with ice, garnish with Maraschino cherry
HT Iowahawk
With all due respect, the dragon can refer to its beverages by whatever labels it chooses, and I see no good reason to attempt to correct it, owing to a personal aversion to third degree burns and being dragon chow…
There can be dragon Martinis AND dragon Manhattans… whatever the dragon(s) say, thus it is. Even if not, say it is. It’s just safer that way.
The Dragon with the Flagon drinks the Brew thst is True…..
Okay.
🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵
Are we going to send the flamethrower robo-dogs to fight the Korean flamethrower squirrels?
And if we do, remember how all those picnickers went out to watch the First Battle of Bull Run? Because I think we’d have a repeat.
No, send both after the Biden* Regime and the socialist antisemite rioters. Many problems thus solved.
I like the way you think TheOtherSean… I might even pay to see that on PPV!
But are they -rooftop- Korean flamethrower squirrels? ~:D
And if so, how do I get them to come live at my place?
Nah, send them in with paintball guns and napalm-filled paintballs.
Oh, sure, California can spend money on, checks notes, “combat homeless”, and they’re the epitome of progressive compassion.
But when I do it, it gets called “bum fights” and I’m ‘low class’. not fair.
In a previous comments section, I noted the “controversy” created by the woke over the Korean video game Stellar Blade. It just released, and…
Stellar Blade is only available on the Playstation 5. On that game platform, you can also buy games that have graphically detailed full body nudity (Cyberpunk 2077), allow you to customize your character’s genitalia (Cyberpunk, Baldur’s Gate 3), and have a cutscene involving what appears to be sex with a bear (Baldur’s Gate 3 again; the explanation is that it’s a D&D druid who loses control of his animal form shape-shifting whenever he gets excited). None of these were forced by Sony to censor.
Stellar Blade has skimpy outfits, and a very attractive lead. But it doesn’t have any sex (human or animal), nudity, or customization of genitals. Despite this, Sony has forced the developer to censor some of the outfits to make them slightly less revealing (there was also something involving an accidental racial slur – via in-game graffiti – that is so obscure that I’d never even heard of it before).
Currently there’s talk of sending (polite) protest letters (physical letters work better than e-mail in Asian countries) to the developer and Sony Japan, e-mails and social media posts that tag Sony America, petitions to all three, the hashtag #freestellarblade, and even talk of cancelling Playstation Network subscriptions, with Stellar Blade’s censorship listed as the reason.
The game is fun, and well-made, imo. I’ve got it, and am enjoying it. Some of the cut-scene animations are a bit odd, but aside from that it looks good and plays well. There wouldn’t be any serious criticism about the game if it weren’t for the fact that the woke have latched onto it because the lead is an attractive woman. And I can all but guarantee that the woke attention is the only reason why the game is being censored.
I will note, though, that the game’s boss fights usually end with very gory animations.
Eh. Perhaps I’m a bit biased, but they didn’t seem so bad to me, from what I recall. Bit bloody, some gore here and there, amputations. Didn’t seem gratuitous to me.
Agreed that it is a fun game though. Worth the time and the price.
That’s part of the reason for the complaints about the censorship. While I couldn’t pull up a list of the exact outfits that were censored, the censorship apparently revolves around things like covering up plunging necklines and cleavage windows. It’s not as if the outfits are barely there micro-bikinis (to the best of my knowledge).
Further, if Sony were consistent in this, it would be one thing. But they’re not. As I noted, there have been plenty of Playstation games where much, much worse stuff was allowed through without any censorship. Though note that the games that I listed were all multi-platform, meaning that players unhappy about censorship on the Playstation could always buy the game on a PC or possibly even an XBox instead. That might have influenced Sony’s decision to not censor them.
They’re also American made not Korean made. Though I’m not sure how that influences things. (I’m about 90% sure it DOES influence things jsut not sure of the exact ways.)
It’s likely that Sony’s responding as a result of the woke campaign against the game. An American developer probably would have avoided that campaign by hiring a woke “advisor” company – such as Sweet Baby Inc. (though that’s hardly the only such company) – to put sufficient stuff into the game to bump the ESG score up.
And Eve (the protagonist) would likely look overweight, about twenty years older, and androgynous.
I also suspect that if Sony Japan were still calling the shots, that we wouldn’t be seeing the censorship. But Sony transferred its headquarters to California a while back, and there’s been a noticeable shift in attitude…
End ESG!
Death to DEI!
Last week’s was the first meme set I recall with NO repeated memes. There’s almost always one. This time there’s two.
There is now balance to our farce.
what’s the book about Christians settling mars? I’d read that.
Here’s one for the authors out there; ‘Simon Templar on Mars’. 😇
I’m guessing it would be Out of the Silent Planet. It’s been a long time since I read it, so I can’t be sure, but there were definitely some non-human Christians, and I feel as though some of them might have been otter-like.
Yep, Out of the Silent Planet. The native Martians were somewhat otter-like, and had never fallen from grace. Note, the villains were humans who wanted to colonize Mars and exploit any native life they could find. They had kidnapped the hero, who opposed them and wound up representing the better part of humanity to the Orsya, or angelic guardian, of Malacanda (Mars). Earth is ruled by a fallen Orsya and more or less under quarantine.
Wow. I’m not sure how long it’s been since I read the trilogy, though I’m pretty sure Nixon was president. Time to take a look for Kindle versions.
As I remember, my reading order was Silent Planet, Perelandrea, then Hideous Strength.
(While I’m at it, maybe an ebook* version of TLotR books. I’m working on a lot of downtime until I recover from the to-be-scheduled “minor”(?) knee surgery**. Pre-op, I’m good for an hour or three upright a day, depending on painkiller intake.)
((*)) If I’m not feeling great, I do better with a Kindle than a paper book. Comfy chair FTW.
((**)) Seems I tore a meniscus in a January fall. Lots of diagnostic fiddle-faddle, but the good news is that it’s supposed to be a 20 minute procedure. Complicated by non-knee health issues that make for a delay getting insurance to say Get’r-done.
Oh, go ahead.
I have three hardcover editions, and I like to read in bed, so I bought the kindle version a couple years ago. Don’t need a bright light, so don’t bother my lovely wife.
There is a kindle Omnibus version of the Space Trilogy but it’s listing at $24.99 I think I got it on sale for half that in 2018. Really Harper $25 bucks for a book where the last volume was originally published almost 80 years ago? Paperback of the omnibus can be had for $15, single book copies used seem to run $3-4 each. I REALLY hate the big 5 and think they’re absolute idiots for not selling back catalog stuff for $4-5 a pop on Kindle or similar, Many heavy readers use the Ereaders and consume books like Popcorn. Most of my reading is confined to indies except for a few folks (Sanderson, Correia, Weber) who have some of their content tied to big 5 publishers.
Not any more it isn’t. Currently $33.97, presumably because bits and pixels became so much harder to get from China, and the shipping problems are horrendous. /sarc
I have a firm eBook limit of $9.99 per volume unless it’s a book that I either really need (ARRL study guides fit there when I was going for my license) or really, really want to read in eBook. (Not sure if that’s been triggered. The Space Trilogy doesn’t push that button.)
Side note: While The Fellowship of the Ring is $12.99 from Harper (what is it with the Big 5. Suicidal, too?), a one-volume LotL omnibus is $15.99. That, I can deal with.
I take it back; a one-volume eBook is still $24.99, but you can buy the 3-volume set for the higher price. #headdesk
Perhaps the ’60s image reflects the mind of the Big 5 eBook marketing people. Assuming they have a mind.
Some of the LOTR price is that for many publishers certain parts of their back catalog are their money makers/Cash cows. LOTR and Hobbit are KNOWN to be that for Harper have been for eons. They use that to make the ludicrous 6 and 7 figure offers to various “famous” folks on the correct end of the political spectrum for their self fellating autobiographies (usually not actually self some ghost writer demeans themselves for probably a rather slim cut of that advance, I hope they aren’t stupid enough to take royalties) that never sell out the advance only to end up unwanted on the $1.99 table. This is the way the publishers keep in the good graces of those in power.
I think what you saw was the hardback copy of the omnibus. Basically my rule of thumb is to NEVER pay more for a kindle book than for the traditional small-form paperback. The going rate for those is 6.99-9.99. As noted there are exceptions but usually even there $13-14 is about my limit.
To this day I am confounded by the publisher’s reaction to the Kindle and its Nook/Kobo competition. They had a chance to sell something they basically already had (as anything published since ~1980 was set with a markup language) with little to no overhead and a cut to the EBook vendor. They KNOW their money making cudtomers are the voracious readers who scarf down upwards of 30+ books per year.
I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised having worked for DEC that made its money on stealing the bottom end of the Big Iron but missed PC’s and only dabbled in workstations because the profit on the VAX and the PDP-11 lines was so good that the infighting killed the internal competition.
I mean by satiating the voracious readers and their lesser cousins they could give Obumbles and his (alleged) wife four or five 7 figure advances a year and still be able to fund all their dumb literary (read DEI) fiction and 20 variants of I.X. Kendi nonsense a year. Not that much of that dreck would sell many copies anyhow but they get their positional goods amongst their peers.
“They use that to make the ludicrous 6 and 7 figure offers to various “famous” folks on the correct end of the political spectrum for their self fellating autobiographies”
Most of those are ways for various entities, like unions and NGOs, to launder campaign contributions. They either “ask” members to buy them, or just buy them by the box full and put them in swag bags or dumpsters. With electronic copies, they don’t even have to handle paper.
SNELSON134 said:
I suspect that they do not even go that far. They ship some small percentage to book vendors and after a year or so they write the rest off as a business expense to reduce their taxes. The graft has been laundered in a totally legal fashion.
THIS
I think it’s a quirk of Amazon & Harper. I had searched for Silent Planet, and the ‘zon offered all three eBooks for the not-so-low price of $33.97. The one-volume omnibus wasn’t one of the suggestions. I’m guessing there’s a similar bad deal for the individual books of tLotL.
Once I looked for the Space Trilogy, I found the one-volume omnibus tor the $24.99 price. Didn’t look at any of the print prices; I’ve developed a strong preference for Kindle for various reasons.
I like the DEC analogy. HP was (still is?) notorious for making the least compatible of the IBM compatible PCs. Employee discounts lead me to get 3 HP computers in a row, until it was time for a Pentium 2, at which point I paid 1/3rd the list of an HP for a solid no-name box from an independent builder.
Why my only printer is a Brother is a separate set of issues (price of consumables being the biggest).
What a shame.
A few years ago, I picked up an ebook omnibus edition containing the Outer Space Trilogy, the Narnia books, and something over 15 other books by Lewis, for $2.99 (Canadian). This edition is still available in Canada, but not in the U.S.
I believe the difference is that copyright was still life-plus-50 in Canada when the collection was released, and our laws do not permit works to be clawed back out of the public domain.
Incidentally, if you ever want to read Lewis’s single greatest scholarly achievement, his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama is available for loan from the Digital Library of India via archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.239254
Offer not valid where prohibited by Nosey Parker.
It’s a reference to ‘Out of the Silent Planet’, which is the first of C. S. Lewis’s Planet Trilogy books. The books are set in the early Twentieth Century, with an Earth seemingly identical to our own. One of the background ideas of the trilogy is that each of the planets in our solar system has a divine being that’s charged with overseeing the planet on behalf of Deity. The divine being charged with overseeing Earth has rebelled, and as a result Earth is known as the Silent Planet on Mars, where the bulk of the story is set. There are multiple intelligent races on Mars – I don’t remember whether one looks like otters – and their religious beliefs come from the same source as Christianity.
Venus is the focus of the second book, Perelandrea.
The third novel is “That Hideous Strength”, and is set entirely in Britain. It’s also creepily prescient about many of the things that we’re seeing in our present day.
Perelandrea should probably be read after Out of the Silent Planet. But That Hideous Strength is much more independent. There are references in it to the earlier novels. But ignorance of those references doesn’t change much in understanding the basic plot of the novel, and appreciating what’s going on in the story.
I should have read further down before posting my reply. *sheepish*
Out of the Silent Planet the first in his Space Triology series. The second is Perelandra and takes place on what we call Venus (and they call Perelandra) the third is That Hideous Strength and IIRC takes place on Earth.
Also consider ”The Tuloriad”, by Kratman and Ringo. (Posleen War / Legacy of the Aldenata)
Avoiding spoilers. Intriguing work. Not at all what I expected.
The defining trait of a Ponzi scheme is that it pays earlier ‘investors’ with the money taken from later ‘investors.’ It’s this, not the failure, that makes it a Ponzi scheme.
The problem, of course, is that you eventually run out of investor cash faster than you can find new investors. Even when you forcibly enroll a nation-state of investors.
That first line is accurate, and why Social Security is not a ponzi scheme.
It was enacted specifically to collectivize the support of the existing elderly, and they were open that when the checks went out in five years, it wouldn’t be giving people back their own money.
That was the entire point.
The benefit was shifting the cost of supporting existing folks who could no longer work.
The sense of entitlement among those who were born into families that weren’t directly supporting grandma, and then didn’t have to directly support their own parents, to being supported now by the kids they didn’t have, does not make it a ponzi scheme or investment scam.
Actually, it worked with the demographics they had then. Its creators knew it would go bust with increasing life expectancy, but not their problem since they would be dead then.
A Ponzi scheme works fine if original investors die out and their payments can be redirected to the survivors.
So, like 0bamacare, only that one surprised them by imploding while 0bama was still in office.
Many, perhaps most, of the children aborted would never have been conceived were abortion still illegal in that time. People have a wonderful aptitude for avoiding things where there are consequences.
Need a tornado meme. It is dark in here!
I liked the goth Beaker in the experts meme.
The meme from 3256 looks a lot like some of the New Wave sci-fi and fantasy covers from the 1960s and 1970s.
I don’t recall book covers like that, but posters? Yep. Particularly from the more chemically-altered students.
The covers for Ballantine’s editions of LOTR.
When you said that, I knew exactly which of the books on my bookshelf you’re referring to. Can’t tell you exactly where it is, mind you, even one year after the move. But I know exactly which book cover you mean.
I was actually thinking of the Ace unauthorized edition, as well as the original Ballanti9ne covers, both of which can be seen here.
Link.
https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-covers-of-lord-of-rings.html
That cover was for the edition my mom had, that I read when I was ten or so.
I think it proves that Hieronymus Bosch was a time traveler from 3256.
“Good Nyborg, man.”
The few tweets I’ve seen from Eduard von Habsburg are all very witty. He has a great sense of humor about his family. (Technically he’s Eduard [lots of names] von Habsburg-Lotharingian, of the Hungarian branch of the family.)
Social Security is the only Ponzi scheme in which you are forced to ‘invest’ at gunpoint.
The meme from the future is readily explained. It simply was flipped left-right during the time travel. A duck, and a hat. Clearly: DUCK and COVER!
The Quack of Doom?
I thought I would get an image…. WPDE!
https://wallsdesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/darkwing-duck-Widescreen-.jpg
Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a 1.2 Century !!!
I thought the meme was from the Lensman future: “She’s so low she could put on a tall silk hat and walk under a duck.”
About that ‘meme hog’ — is that a bear in the background, or a panther? Looks like trouble, either way.
Gamorg, obviously.
The Tolkien Rules, for using certain techniques in your fantasy stories:
1. You can get away with that if you are Tolkien.
2. You are not Tolkien.
I may resemble one, or more, of these
So true:
So true.
Haven’t seen a bottle of this stuff since ’60s. It was used too.
This is one of those things has a curious “it’s not illegal but is” thing. Allegedly it’s no better than other infection preventives, but has the issue of containing a mercury compound. It’s not illegal to make. Or market. Or use. BUT… it cannot commercially cross state lines… so… why bother making it?
Definitely a different era:
“Mama, Great Grandma says in her day she did THREE times what you do.”
“In her day, soda pop had cocaine in it.”