The War On Fun

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Recently I learned something I could have gone my whole life without knowing: the war on fun is a bipartisan affair.

What do I mean by that? Oh, this week on Twitter, several Voices of the Right TM came out breathing heavy about how not just the Malfoid fan fic trend, (which honestly is THE MOST WHOLESOME trend we’ve seen in fanfic ever) but in fact all of fiction, including people like Larry Correia and John Ringo are a sign that everything is corrupted, and evil, and we’re putting bad things in children’s heads and the left is winning.

Look, guys, I got my antique partner’s desk refinished and up in the new office. I don’t want more dents on it, again.

That the left are ridiculous scolds who had their sense of fun ablated at birth, we knew. As we can tell from the game, movie, book companies they control, they think everything should serve the Marxist agenda or be worthless. Which is why every game, movie, book company is in the crapper. BUT apparently the right looked at that and went “That’s why they’re winning!” and they want to do that too. I’ve actually come across an article complaining about the Hardy Boys. Which I grant you have gotten rewritten, but the solution is not to eliminate it, but to find the old ones used. (I never saw the attraction of that or Nancy Drew, because I preferred Enid Blyton, but I knew most American raised readers grew up on those forever.)

Here’s the thing: The left isn’t winning the culture war. It looks like it, because it’s all you can find in the grocery book shelf (WHY are you buying books in the grocery store?) or even at most bookstores, but that’s because yes, the left owns the cultural pathways, and that’s what they’re pushing.

However, from the inside, each year the print runs are smaller and sell less. You know what’s winning? Indie authors. Okay, most of us ain’t making a ton (most tradpub authors didn’t either) but in aggregate, we’re making a huge dent. And a lot of us are doing pretty well. BECAUSE WE WRITE FUN STUFF. Or at least fun for us, and apparently some people agree.

This got into the whole ridiculous debate of art. “But just because you enjoy it, it’s just cheap thrills, it’s not art.” Well, let me tell you, just because you suffer to consume it, it ain’t art, either. It’s JUST suffering.

So, let’s talk about it: When I was tutoring, I got girls in who were failing at everything. Inevitably, I found their parents allowed them to read two things: The lives of saints and the Bible.

Now, it is possible to write the lives of saints in a riveting manner (Because my brain is broken I’m writing the story of the first Ellyan saint, which is mental as I have…10? books in the world to publish first.) However, most of it isn’t written in a riveting manner, and also, frankly, after a while you kind of know the pattern.

Do I read lives of saints? Sure, but not as my whole reading diet, because that would be boring.

What I inevitably found is that if I convinced their parents to let them read other stuff, their reading AND EVERYTHING ELSE went up grade wise.

Now, I’m not a utilitarian when it comes to reading. I don’t think you should be a good reader because it’s good for you. But there is no denying that being a good reader gives you a massive advantage in life, but no one — NO ONE — has ever become a great reader by reading only the required stuff for school and maybe 2 very holy books. No, not even in the middle ages. Did you know that until the eighteenth century, people moved their lips when reading? Because there wasn’t enough reading material for most people to get past that point.

But besides all that, and because this is not just about reading: Who died and told you that humans should never have fun?

In the dystopian hellscape the left is trying to herd us toward, there is enough worry. In our economy cacked by multiple government interventions, there is enough struggle to stay afloat. And even for those of us who see opportunity everywhere? We’re working harder than we ever did. You want us to never let up? That’s not how humans live.

Look, I can understand disapproving of some people’s way of decompressing: those that are bad for themselves and others: alcohol, drugs, gambling, unbridled sex. (Yes, sex is better with bridles. Seriously? Can you be serious for ten seconds?)

BUT movies, games, books? Because they’re fiction and don’t have a “deeper message” (to your mind.) That’s crazy cakes.

First, if you want to sell your message, it best be wrapped up in a sh*tload of fun. When the left was actually winning the culture war, 40 or 50 years ago they knew how to do that. People will swallow poison if it’s wrapped in fun.

And now you’re saying that fun is evil. No. Fun is fun. The message you load it with might be evil, but then again it might be good, too. Removing the fun is not the way to improve things. The way to improve things is to make it GOOD.

Second- BUT! FUN ISN’T ART! Well, guess what? Peanut butter isn’t chocolate! Music isn’t painting! Shoes aren’t boats! Purple isn’t yellow! And other news of the obvious.

Sure, fun books/movies/games MIGHT NOT be art. And? Is only “art” allowed? WHY? Because we’re only allowed to create and consume “worthy” things? Worthy according to who? Exactly?

Because personally I don’t care. Yes, I’ve read “real literature” and even enjoy some of it, mostly Shakespeare and Austen, to be fair. BUT I also read fanfic. And everything in between. I read what interests me at the time, and I don’t care if it has the stamp of “art” or not.

Which brings us to “What is art?” And that got outright silly. I pointed out for most things the only real evaluation of “art’ is “that which has survived the test of time.” THAT’s IT.

And to survive the test of time, it needs to be FUN first. So it’s loved by a lot of people.

And then we got people arguing that’s not the only test, because you can look at something and know it’s art. (People, the Elgin Marbles, before being taken to England, were being used by the locals to make lime wash for their houses. No, seriously. And yeah, to me I look at them and they’re art. BUT obviously Greek villagers disagreed.) You can take reality apart and not find a single atom of “art” because that’s inside the human brain. And the “art” proclaimed by the elites is mostly stupid message bamf. And even the ‘test of time” thing, we won’t know until the decks are cleared, because in the age of mass media, it was easy to fake “popularity” and a lot of what’s now considered 20th century “art” your grandchildren are going to laugh themselves sick over.

So, the only test is “Has it survived the test of time” which means, to begin with, it was fun or enjoyable enough to a large enough group of people that it SURVIVED.

Oh, yeah, and let’s slap our foreheads for the people explaining to me that making a good screw is art (No, apparently phrasing is a dead art) and that making steel is an art and that… I had to point out that’s the OTHER meaning of art. Not worthy object/admirable product, but “art” as craft, as knowledge, and semantic confusing helps no one.

Though I suppose that person would love to go through a museum of art, admiring screws. (Start with la maja desnuda and… never mind.)

All of it to obfuscate that, as a wise rabbi once said “Not of bread alone lives man.” And btw, he spoke and taught in little fictional stories. Because it makes the “word of G-d” go down easier.

But fine, fine. If both sides of our utterly effed up political spectrum wants to make war on fun, let them come, they and their armies.

I’ll be standing here, holding stunt middle fingers aloft. Why stunt? Because otherwise it’s pretty hard to type and produce decent fiction that some people will find fun.

Probably not enough for me to ever be considered art. Which is fine. I don’t care. I’m having fun writing this stuff, and I hope my fans are having fun reading it.

In the end, that’s all that matters.

139 thoughts on “The War On Fun”

    2. Aha, that explains my late unlamented father’s many peculiarities. One of which was, when I was in my late teens and working outside the house, to go through my books and then hector me about how they were “demonic”. Because magic and fantasy and TOLKIEN and Narnia. Yes, he disapproved of Narnia, because he wouldn’t recognize an allegory if it bit him. (Something ought to have. Real piece of work, was Dad, and I did not weep at the funeral.)

      He must’ve been huffing polyurethane seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

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  2. “It’s comics, it’s not art!” Brother, Stratford Caldecott (may he rest in peace) had an article over at The Imaginative Conservative where he quoted an art teacher who had Jack “King” Kirby – comic artist champion – in his top three most influential artists ever. Comics are not picture books for kids – or they weren’t, before the Wokerati got their hands on them. Go back and read a 1960s, ’70s, or ’80s comics. Heck, pick up the Scrooge McDuck comics our hostess loves. Once you’ve read it, then you get to comment on it. Not before.

    Because here’s a secret: until recently, most comic writers and artists at the Big 2 were extremely well read. Most people were extremely well read for fun. You get nowhere with didacticism. You get everywhere with a “spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.”

    And as a friend likes to point out, all medicines are poisons. The only way to make sure they heal instead of kill is to measure out the dosage properly. And, brother, you’re measuring it way too darn high!

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    1. So many of those writers and artists at The Big Two taught so many kids about the wider world. My interest in Japan was borne out of 1980s and early 1990s X-Men comics, not the two days we spent on it in “World History” class.

      I’d add a note about the print runs Sarah mentioned in today’s column: in comics, the print runs are microscopic compared to what they once were. I worked on and off at my local comic book shop. The first year I was there, 2006 or so, the best-selling books the owner would order at a rate of 100-150 copies each month. When I came back in 2010 his orders had declined by a third, and in 2015 they were another third smaller. It is conceivable that today’s comics could appreciate into the future based on their rarity alone, however, they would have to be objects that people actually want, and it doesn’t appear that anyone wants joyless scolds lecturing them, even in a colorful medium like comic books.

      Bonus fun fact: a single Japanese manga outsold the entire American comic book market all by itself in 2020, a claim “journalists” have been working feverishly to discredit.

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        1. I’m just guessing, but I’m guessing that the Demon Slayer movies have outsold Hollywood movies the same year.

          Considerably cheaper to make, too.

          I mean, I’ve seen Kimetsu no Yaiba – Mugen Train, and I am an old guy. Not hip with the kidz, you know. (I’m saving Infinity Castle for a rainy day.)

          But good news this week my friends, three triple A gaming studios either bit the dust or laid off 10+% of their pink-haired, nose ringed pronoun people, and Netflix laid off some more after firing the weenie in charge of movies.

          Back at the beginning of Gamergate, a woman named Leigh Alexander wrote that “‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over.”

          But here we are, 2026. It’s been 12 years now. And it seems that Ms. Alexander and her fellow travelers were super-duper wrong. Gamers ARE the audience for games. Just like readers are the audience for books. And you can tell because Ms. Alexander’s latest game title, Aphelion, bombed so hard there’s a crater where the studio used to be. The studio is Don’t Nod Entertainment, and they are going to be out of money in November. Because the gamers decided they weren’t going to pay money to be scolded by Leigh Alexander and friends.

          Go chuds.

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    2. I remember the first (that I saw) of a Warner Brother’s theater release of Bugs Bunny and company movie. Would have been ’90s. We did not have the only kids, son, and nieces, who could not understand why their parents were laughing hysterically. Not new material, exactly. Which made it even more fun. Just subtle enough that it was slapstick going over the younger audiences head. But their parents and guardians got it.

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      1. Every single time I show one of the Disney or Bugs Bunny WWII cartoons at Day Job, I catch some new detail. The language flips, or the pinup in the background, some sign on a wall, nods to then popular culture … Especially the use of German, and how the characters change from formal to informal for insults. Subtle, but funny and apt.

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        1. I learned to love classical music from watching cartoons as a kid.

          And also, because I was a great reader and loved historical stuff, fairytales, science, etc. I got many of the jokes.

          The more “adult” stuff I got later.

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          2. Carl A. Stalling (the musical director for most of the Warner Brothers Cartoons) did more for classical music than all the long hairs supporting the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Philadelphia Philharmonic and the New York Symphony ever did. And he did it because he needed music fast and without worries of copyright. There are bits and pieces of some classical stuff ( e.g. William Tell Overture, Griegs Peer Gynt suite) that are just scattered about as incidental music. And of course Wagner (Kill the Wabbit!) and the Bunny of Seville.

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    3. I’m going to disagree on a point here.

      Comic books back then *were* picture books for kids. But they were also for adults. It was the same with things like Looney Tunes and the Disney shorts.

      What’s changed with the comic books is that they’re now exclusively for adults, and only a particular kind of adult. It’s all edgy, trashy, and LGBTQ+. Biff bang pow action got replaced by trivia about how many members of the Bat Family experience same sex attraction (hint: it’s not just the character that was explicitly created as a lesbian).

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  3. This has been a thing for a while, with certain non-leftist killjoys in the past five years inveighing against video gamers (and possibly tabletop war gamers, from the number of people posting rebuttal memes of celebrity wargamers). Their counterparts on the left included a bunch of wine mom boomers complaining that young women were insufficiently “sex positive” in their tastes in media. (Might have been a straw(wo)man, or an elaborate way of sideways complaining abt certain non-Western cultural norms). And every so often you get some stuffy, pole-up-backside Catholic or Christian apologist who’s offended by the continuing popularity of GKC and the Inklings. They’re spiritually not very different from the hard sci-fi people who diss space opera, the table top gamers who proclaim that Gaming System X is for pussies, and a zillion other forms of virtue signaling that have comparatively little to do with the signaller’s core values and a lot to do with their personalities.

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  4. I’m currently sitting in Florence Italy, and just spent a goodly chunk of my day touring the Uffizi Gallery. There is a vast amount of art contained in that building, much from the 14th through 16th centuries. In that era, “fun” was pretty much what you could put in a church (I started saying “Everyone wants an Annunciation painting” after seeing the vast number of them in the gallery). So the art HAD to have a message. However, even with that restriction the painters and sculptors took plenty of risks in both subject matter (using classic Greek and Roman mythology to display Christian ideals) and presentation (nudity was quite common, but only for the non-humans…who looked amazingly human). Violence and gore were prettycommon too – there was an entire room showing beheadings.

    It all survived (sometimes just barely, the flood of 1966 was of biblical proportions in Florence) because people along the way enjoyed it. There’s fun for ya!

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    1. for some of us, Images of The Annunciation, The Nativity, The Passion (series of 12), and the Assumption are not just ‘pretty paintings,’ but reminders of what we should strive towards.

      I’m about as lapsed an Existential Orthodox as I could be, but it still fills me with awe to recall those and other Icons used to teach Church History, and provide focal points for Spiritual Communion with the Ineffable.

      Ecstasy (in three of the four common meanings) and Joy come from many sources.

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  5. Will hold up Middle Fingers in solidarity. The fun suckers are Legion, and deserve all The Middle Fingers creatives can muster. What scares me a little, though, is the thought that they (both L and R) are merely a Mask for The BLOB™ and that the fun-sucking is a symptom of a bigger problem.

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    1. Vaguely related to “holding up Middle Fingers”…

      In the Museo Galileo in Florence, one of the items on exhibit is Galileo’s middle finger from his right hand. Centuries after his death, he’s still flipping the bird to the powers that be. Be like Galileo.

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  6. I think it’s two main groups.

    First, the Conservative Inc folks are the ones who built their industry by being able to profit while losing. Because otherwise they would have been wiped out. So they’re fine losing on fun. They stay afloat when the right is losing.

    The second are the Radical Anti-Leftists. They’re the former leftists that the left ejected from the society for some immutable characteristic or some faux pas they didn’t know enough to avoid. They’re aligned against the left, but are still running on the Leftist source code. Which include Absolute Moral Dogma at All Times.

    I think the radical anti-leftists will mellow out a bit once they discover fun actually is allowed and its really good at spinning up the leftists. And I think Conservative Inc will mostly crawl under a rock and die when they’re no longer useful controlled opposition.

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  7. Sarah, I think that you’re still thinking in terms of Left and Right when you should be thinking in terms of UniParty. These people are happy to provide the illusion of a choice between the them as long as they are in charge.

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    1. It’s no longer Left vs Right, and hasn’t been for a long time.

      Instead it’s Authoritah vs Freedom. “Parties” are irrelevant.

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      1. Folks have been telling me that since at least the mid-90s.

        Usually while identifying as “Freedom,” and then defining it so that I’m a slave to them.

        Tactic goes back at least to WWII, since Blessed Fulton Sheen did an entire episode on it in Life is Worth Living.

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  8. reference:

    “”So, let’s talk about it: When I was tutoring, I got girls in who were failing at everything. Inevitably, I found their parents allowed them to read two things: The lives of saints and the Bible.

    Now, it is possible to write the lives of saints in a riveting manner (Because my brain is broken I’m writing the story of the first Ellyan saint, which is mental as I have…10? books in the world to publish first.) However, most of it isn’t written in a riveting manner, and also, frankly, after a while you kind of know the pattern.

    Do I read lives of saints? Sure, but not as my whole reading diet, because that would be boring.””

    Taylor Caldwell’s novels about Sts Luke and Paul, as well as her work on Cicero, stand out as entertainment and more than a little requirement of thought on the part of the reader.

    I’ll admit that Dear and Glorious Physician, among an eclectic collection of works by other authors, did influence my choice of vocation.

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  9. The “no fun” impulse reminds me of the canard about Puritans worrying that somewhere, someone might be having a good time (and thus they need to put a stop to it.) And the late and unlamented Ayatollah Khomeini declaring that “There is no joy in Islam.” Happiness and fun mean that you are not working hard enough for The Cause. I observed in College 1.0 that when someone took up a Cause, he or she promptly lost any trace of a sense of humor about other things. The Cause devoured and tinted everything in the person’s life.

    The October issue of Texas Highways is about books, bookstores, reading clubs, and authors. All the featured authors write LITERATURE, with angst, social causes, commentary on current social problems, and so on. Several are multiple award winners, and almost all check a minority box of some kind. They write six course gourmet meals that have to be explained by the waiter. I write a Ruben sandwich, or a good cheeseburger. Some people really enjoy fine dining. Other folks want a sandwich or burger. For me? It varies with my mood.

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    1. I like food that is done well. This can apply to the simplest peasant food as well as to those extraordinary chocolate creations that one creator (AG; I don’t want to look up the proper spelling) does.

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  10. However, from the inside, each year the print runs are smaller and sell less. You know what’s winning? Indie authors. Okay, most of us ain’t making a ton (most tradpub authors didn’t either) but in aggregate, we’re making a huge dent. And a lot of us are doing pretty well. BECAUSE WE WRITE FUN STUFF. Or at least fun for us, and apparently some people agree.

    The interesting thing is that they’re still doing the “wow, this indy series is successful, let’s sign them” and go three or four books, cranking up the Prog nonsense, then the series doesn’t sell anymore. Sometimes they’ll have someone do a different series, sometimes not.

    There’s also a lot of reprints showing up, at least of authors I can remember being on grocery store shelves when I was a kid.

    So if you go get into the weeds of individual books, instead of broad-brush going off of flags, there’s a lot more readable stuff around.

    ….it’s just a lot more available via Indy, and heaven knows that I’ve been spoiled by having options on if my entertainment will attack me.

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    1. The pie in traditional publishing has been subdivided so many times that many of those indie authors, even with minuscule print runs, are getting far more of an income from that than they would with tradpub.

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        1. My mind just went blank as to who the specific authors were, but back in the 1960s two of them sued their publishers because their sales came up in conversation, and the sales figures were substantially different… for the two sides of the same Ace Double.

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    2. I know an Indy comic author/creator, he’s been doing it for years (since 2016), trying to break into trad-comic-pub, (Drew Spence – his biggest series is the Force Six line.). He does great work, has cool stories, publishes print runs himself to try to get into comic stores. Puts things on Amazon, as well as the online comic “ebook” places, has almost 100 “books”, and still gets very little traction for his works. He’s done merch, newsletters, blogs, social media, serieses, omnibuses, etc, all the things that are supposed to get you noticed.

      I get to hear about how the big guys shut out most of the indie creators and want everyone to stay in their own lane. And how hard it is to market comics even if they are fun, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. I try to help with author marketing information…but it doesn’t seem to be helpful for comics. It all seems to be sewn up by the big publishers still at this point.

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      2. Clearly we need a gofundme for a nerfed rubber desk to be placed next to Sarah when she’s perusing the intertubes, so if she becomes seized with the headdesk urge she can redirect safely there without derailing her next eleven books already plotted in her devious yet attractive mind.

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          1. While redirecting headdesk to headcat could initially hurt less, the resulting claw-based feline corrective action would be more bloody and leave more scars than a simple light concussion. Not recommended.

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      3. I only found out what a partner’s desk is when I saw that photo of Mamdani sitting behind… I think it was George Washington’s desk. People were making fun of two things: the arrogance of it, and the fact that he appeared to be sitting on the wrong side since there were a bunch of drawers on the side opposite to where he was sitting. That’s when I learned that that was a partner’s desk, with drawers on both sides, designed for two people to sit working facing each other. So he wasn’t sitting on the “wrong” side of the desk. (The arrogance criticism still holds, of course).

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  12. You have an antique partner’s desk? Shades of Sleuth!

    If you don’t have to move them often, those are fun.

    Long ago had an old (hardly antique) wooden desk; don’t recall where it came from. Had it dipped and stripped (it was already dead) and used it for our first computers and such. 1983-ish. Quite the geometry problem to get it up the switchback stairs and into the tiny office room.

    ==

    Having just returned from Athens a week or so ago, I’m avidly reading the Valavanis book on the Acropolis through its museum. Our tour went to both the Acropolis and then the museum, and I was wiped out, and didn’t really appreciate the museum. Didn’t help that they don’t allow folks to carry water around with them. (I get that; lots of exhibits out in the open. But that’s tough on me when it’s hot.)

    I literally stopped at about 80 pages the other day – I don’t want it to end! My kind of fun.

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      1. We may be gloating over our less fortunate young friends.

        Nah, not really. Spent significant $$ to fly to Rome, do a 13 night cruise, and end in Athens, because neither my sister in law (77.5, traveling companion) nor I (76.9) had ever been in that part of the world. One of those ‘bucket list, last big trip’ things.

        I mean, what would my children do with an inheritance, anyway? Fritter it away on things like house payments and education for my grandchildren, I suspect.

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        2. My parents actually just left today to do a similar cruise, although I believe that they’re starting in Athens. Maybe they’re getting on the ship you just got off of!

          Like you, this is a bucket list thing for them. My mom has always wanted to go on a cruise, and for both of them, their health has been going downhill, so I’m really hoping this is everything they’ve dreamed of.

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            1. Well, the superficial description of Rome and Athens both is ‘lots of graffiti, traffic, and amazingly bold motorcycle/motorbike riders’. I found it odd that in both cities, those riders uniformly (in my observation) wore helmets. The rest of their behaviors did not suggest any great concern for their safety.

              OTOH, the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel are definitely all you may have heard, and more.

              —

              The cruise thing … I like unpacking just once, and have the hotel travel to the destination. We visited Naples/Pompeii, Tunis/Carthage (Roman, re-built Carthage), Malta, Dubrovnik Croatia, Bari IT, Kotor Montenegro, Korfu, Katakolo and Santorini Greece.

              —

              Visited Runnymede a few years ago, as the last stop on our Plantagenet tour. That’s where the Barons pretty much compelled John to sign the Great Charter in 1215. (I’ll ignore that John found ways around those promises and it took a couple more tries to get kings to honor most of them.) 1215 Runnymede was kind of a swamp – gave both sides good views of anyone approaching. 2022 Runnymede is about the least prepossessing monument to a Significant Event you might imagine.

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              1. JohnS said

                Runnymede is about the least prepossessing monument to a Significant Event you might imagine.

                Does it Rival (supposed) Plymouth Rock for the feeling of “thats it? Its just a small rock that someone carved 1620 into. And they moved it…”

                which were my feelings on seeing it at about 11 years old.

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          2. Maybe they’re getting on the ship you just got off of!

            No, Mariner left for Barcelona and eventually Miami on Oct 12. But if they had caught that ship, I think they would have liked it a lot.

            Have a neighbor who is doing a Norwegian CL trip next summer, to about the same area. It seems to be one of those 3,000 passenger, 20-deck behemoths. Ours was about 750 passengers, and the top deck 12 was mostly the walking track plus a nice piano bar all the way forward.

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  13. This topic has Ambassador Londo Molari’s voice in my head saying “Moon faced assassin of joy!”

    “It’s not art unless it’s from the Art region of France…”

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  14. “… the only propaganda that stands any chance of influencing people is packaged so attractively that editors will buy it in the belief that the cash customers will be entertained by it.” — Robert A. Heinlein _Expanded Universe_

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  15. Quibble: The Elgin Marbles weren’t being used as lime wash for people’s houses. People were indeed using marble and limestone from the Acropolis for whitewash and as raw material for various ad hoc building projects, but the sculptures that became the Elgin Marbles weren’t in any real danger from that — if only because they were way up in the architrave, and people mostly couldn’t reach them. And it’s not like there was a shortage of marble and limestone lying on the ground out there.

    It is true that the inhabitants of Athens at the time (subjects of the Ottoman Empire) actually were routinely destroying bits and pieces of irreplaceable masterpieces of art and architecture out there…just not those particular ones.

    The damage Lord Elgin did in removing them is actually quite tragic, and removal was not actually necessary to protect them. Far more tragic is the fact that the entire building remained intact until 1687, when 1/3 of it was obliterated by an explosion as a Venetian army fought against the never-sufficiently-to-be-damned Muslims who had used it as a gunpowder magazine. If not for that, the Parthenon could’ve made it to the modern day pretty much intact — that’s how well it was built.

    In related news, I am very happy to announce that, for the first time in…23 years?…some small part of my thesis research has at last proven useful…ish. (If pulling a “well, ackshually…” on Sarah Hoyt’s blog isn’t simply a health & ego hazard, that is. You do that here, you damn well better be right.) :D

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    1. The Greeks are still miffed about Elgin and his collector crew, to the point that our guide accused them of using dynamite to free the sculpture. Seemed odd, so I asked Grok – 1) Dynamite wasn’t invented until a couple decades later (I suspect nitroglycerin without the Kieselguhr may have been available) and (2) not even the 19th century robbers/vandals/preservers were generally that stupid.

      Bunches of fragments in the Acropolis Museum have been assembled into ‘whole’ artifacts; seems that British Museum or Berlin have some of the other parts, and casts of those were made for Athens. Weird when all one sees of the original is a foot.

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  16. The good thing is if the usual country club killjoys on the right are joining with the you-are-not-allowed-any-unapproved-fun left, you know we’re winning.

    Those dufuses from the reach-across-the-aisle clique never complain when we’re losing.

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  18. Today I got a Thing from the State, complaining that my fraud-by-mail ballot is DUE NOW and they’re all upset that they don’t have it.

    Election day is NEXT F-ING WEEK! That is when we’re supposed to vote!

    I get it, they won’t know how many ballots they’ll need to ‘find’ until they get the real ones. That’s not my problem. 😡

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      3. Or Oregon/Washington.

        Oregon at least will not count ballots deposited after 8 PM, Tuesday Nov. 3rd. Or so they say. They even have people out collecting them at the drop boxes. If in line at 8 PM and not at the drop box (seriously, park and run it there by 8 PM) too bad, so sad. (Again, or so they say.)

        Another thing happening is a new drop box type, that scan and take pictures of the envelope. Something that gets done before it is opened at county count location. Only one location, Lane County. A reaction to the drop boxes that were arson last election in conservative Portland (WA had a location hit too). At least they know whose ballots were lost (although if the drop box is damaged, data gets lost too; how does that help?) We will not use it. If for no other reason, the location. I am not going downtown.

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          1. I do not think Oregon has that option, anymore. Can get a replacement fraud-by-mail at county offices, if you can prove yours was destroyed. But still have to put it in one of the drop boxes.

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  19. I only disagree on one point. Art is not solely, “that which has survived the test of time.” Sometimes even that which withstands the test of time, does that only because its corpse is propped up like the dead boss in Weekend at Bernies. Despite its occasionally brilliant prose, I would never read Moby Dick again. Also not an F. Scott Fitzgerald or John Steinbeck fan. I predict R. E. Howard will outlast both of them.

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  21. I’m having fun writing this stuff, and I hope my fans are having fun reading it.

    In the end, that’s all that matters.

    Write stuff you want to read, I’ve heard. That’s what I’m doing, because it’s not likely anyone else will read it.

    Fun is what you think is fun. Not what anyone else thinks is fun. It’s fun to read. It’s fun to write. It’s fun to watch old tv and movies. It’s fun to wander in the desert, shore, or mountains. I don’t ask permission to do these things. Of course, the wife has to agree to it.

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  22. This portrait of the Virgin Mary is exquisite!

    It’s $#!+.

    How can you say that? It’s extraordinary art!

    It’s literally made with elephant dung.

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    2. Hooleeee……..

      That’s my childhood, right there. Just add The Real Ghostbusters (ordinary guys being heroes because nobody else could).

      I now need to introduce my 7-year old to Transformers: G1. And Ghostbusters, and He-Man…

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      3. Oh, on Transformers!

        Roku has them streaming. It’s basically all of the Transformers, and it’s kind of in random order, but they’re very good background sound and it made my middlest child get down right salty about paying attention to when writers pull stupid tricks with characters.

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        1. my middlest child get down right salty about paying attention to when writers pull stupid tricks with characters.

          Can’t even imagine where that would come from….. 😇

          Inconceivable!

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  24. 64 comments (as of when I started writing my own comment) and nobody has made the obvious pun yet?

    Sex is better with bridals. As in, weddings. As in, sex is better when it’s with the person you’re married to.

    When my wife and I go into the bedroom and close the door, it’s not always earth-shaking. I saw someone compare marital relations to eating meals: sometimes you have a four-course banquet, and it’s the best thing you’ve had in months. Other times you have fast food: nothing to write home about, but still nice, and a whole lot better than nothing. Sometimes we just have “fast food” in the evenings. Other times, a four-course banquet. (We’ve had both in the course of the past 7 days, in fact).

    But here’s the thing. Even if it was disappointing, if we were both wanting a four-course banquet but found ourselves having nothing but a fast-food experience… that’s not a problem. Because both of us know that the other one is committed to this relationship, for life. We know the four-course banquets will come around again, and our commitment is unconditional, anyway. Even if one of us became paralyzed or otherwise unable to function, our vows were “for better and for worse … in sickness and in health”, so one evening of disappointing relations? NOT a threat to the relationship in any way, shape, or form.

    But sleeping with a boyfriend or girlfriend when the relationship is still new, and you don’t have that commitment to each other yet? Big mistake, which so many people make. Because then there’s a subtle, unstated (it better be unstated otherwise the relationship is toxic and you should run away fast) pressure: the experience had better be good, otherwise the relationship is in trouble. So many people have read so many romance novels where it’s magical between the couple because they are in love, and they think that’s reality. So even a single disappointing experience can make them think “I must not really be in love with him/her” and break off a relationship that really didn’t need to be broken off. Or they might not think that, but they will be wondering if the other person is thinking that. It creates pressure. And as anyone with experience should be able to tell you, pressure is harmful to your ability to perform.

    Besides, it gets better in the long run. The first few months of our marriage, we were not very good at sex, and about all we had were those fast-food experiences. (And yet, it was infinitely better than anything either of us had had before, so neither of us was disappointed. There are immense advantages to two virgins marrying each other.) These days, with over a decade of marriage behind us (and looking ahead to many more decades), I know what she likes, and she knows what I like, and four-course banquet experiences are far, far easier.

    So yes, sex is better with bridals. 😄️

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    1. Henceforth, I shall consider the term, ” unbridaled sex”.

      Married 47 years and agree wholeheartedly with everything you said.

      As Robert Redford once said, ” Why would I go out for a burger when I have steak at home?” upon being asked if he’d strayed from his wife.

      Only works when a wedded wife is involved.

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    2. Agreed with all, but there’s biochemistry in there too – when hom.sap. Had to bond with a mate, pair bond both ways to keep everyone from wandering off, and successfully yield more than 2.3 babies within a 20-30 year lifespan, things had to go fast. As a result there’s a trigger in both sexes, somewhat stronger in females, which hardstarts the pair bond based on brain chemistry produced by sexual activity.

      Back when the issues were sabretooths and dire wolves and cave bears (oh my), that meant there was a chance of the band not dying out waiting for those darn kids to hurry up and make some grandkids. But nowadays jumping in the sack prematurely may fire off that pair bonding before the rest of the pieces are in place, and repeatedly firing off that pair bonding can degrade the ability to do so properly when it’s finally the right pair.

      Short answer – just slow down a bit.

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      1. Agreed with all, but there’s biochemistry in there too – when hom.sap. Had to bond with a mate, pair bond both ways to keep everyone from wandering off, and successfully yield more than 2.3 babies within a 20-30 year lifespan, things had to go fast. As a result there’s a trigger in both sexes, somewhat stronger in females, which hardstarts the pair bond based on brain chemistry produced by sexual activity.

        :pushes glasses up nose:

        There’s a really interesting complication in the question of bonding via sexual activity.

        We know that it can be damaged in both men and via repeated initiation and breaking cycles.

        We also know that pr0n mimics that bond-then-break-connection cycle, especially when combined with, er, mechanical solo options. And it correlates with how much was used, in those few studies that looked into it. (News usually reports on it as alienation inside of existing marriages and scoffs because that’s unpossible.)

        It is entirely plausible that the hypertextualization of teen boys (something testosterone makes you very vulnerable to) on up has damaged their bonding ability to such an extent that it’s almost impossible to find a man who hasn’t had the bonding destruction experience of a hook up party girl.

        This could both explain why observant Christians of groups which emphasize restraint even in solo experiences report a much higher rate of satisfaction inside of marriage.

        (Also, please note that damaged bonding means it’s slower, not that it’s impossible.)

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  25. OT…Twitter is saying a number of European countries plus Japan have all told their citizens to stock up on several days worth of food and water (ranges from 3 days to a week or longer) just in case “something happens,” over the next few days.

    I do not like this, Sam I am.

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        1. ‘Course not.

          You can have all the bags you like.

          ==

          Used to think licensed drivers should be issued a 1911 at first licensing, 7 rounds as a starter, and 7 tags then and at each renewal. See also Ellison’s Along the Scenic Route.

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    2. Jeb wasn’t registered in Israel, but somehow his list is picking up 6.9 seats in the Knesset.

      (I’m joking, but he is gonna nuke Turkey.)

      There’s only so many political elections impacting such widespread geopolitical stuff, but probably just climate change.

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  26. Gee whiz, they aren’t even telling people to prepare for 2 weeks to flatten the curve. And we all know how long 2 weeks stretched into.

    If they think you need to prepare for something, and they’re coming right out and saying…I’d go 6 months minimum.

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  27. I like Takaichi so far, but otherwise I would suppose that Europe is scared of nothing.

    OTOH, CCP may be ready to roll out infrastructure attacks or something.

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  28. I need to finish the article, which is awesome and SAH is nailing it. But I got stuck on bridles and now I’m picturing a bridle shower. Bad pun! Bad!

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  29. You can type, hunt and peck style, with your index fingers while keeping your middle fingers extended, but that just makes it a double V for victory and dilutes the message. Oh well!

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  30. “..all of fiction, including people like Larry Correia and John Ringo are a sign that everything is corrupted, and evil, and we’re putting bad things in children’s heads and the left is winning.”

    The Left/Right dynamic is a farce. If you follow around to the Far Left Left, you take one more step and SHAZAM! you’re on the Far Right Right.

    The true Dynamic is Karen, and “F- off, Karen.”

    I have no more respect for the Righties out there telling me I’m having fun wrong than I do for the Lefties. Yeah, I’m doing it wrong. Deliberately. I’ve been doing it wrong for a long time, and I’ll KEEP DOING IT WRONG just to p1ss you off.

    Make me stop, Karen. And get off my lawn.

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  31. (WHY are you buying books in the grocery store?) or even at most bookstores,

    Because the last bookstore in town closed seven years ago. And half of the grocery stores have gotten rid of both their book and magazine racks.

    There’s still a half-empty spinner rack at Dollar General, though.

    There’s some kind of chain bookstore in a strip mall in the next town. The one time I went in, it was “best sellers” and remainder tables, and looked like an upscale flear market.

    If your business plan depends on “bookstores”, your business plan is sinking along with them.

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    1. Honestly I don’t frequent Bookstores much. I’ve been a Kindle guy since 2011 (yes I know that has its own issues especially when Amazon occasionally gets spicy and starts limiting access to things that its employees don’t like). But the 8 pt type in my paperbacks is hard to read and my hands and wrists don’t like holding large hardbacks ( Wind and Truth anyone?). My kindle is perhaps 6oz and I run it at about 10pt, its backlit and so far easier on my hands. And I carry around 300+ books for no additional mass. Somehow I now want to take a bunch of things OFF the Kindle, use one of my wife’s 4-place analytical balances and then put things back on to see if the changed state affects the mass. My brain says it SHOULDN’T but sometimes these things make no sense.

      A while back I had to spend an hour or so before an appointment and there was a Barnes & Noble nearby. My how the mighty have fallen. Rumors are that their new CEO is actually loosening control from HQ and letting locals select content (like Borders of Old). Why would I go to B&N? The Scifi section was 8′ of 4′ high shelves. Almost all “literary” Authors I didn’t recognize. Back catalog consisted of Dune, Original Foundation Trilogy, Fahrenheit 451 and Rendevous with Rama. Oh and Starship Troopers and The Moon is A Harsh Mistress. Not one publication from Baen (yes they’re not perfect but they still publish interesting stuff). Fantasy was larger (12′ of similar shelves). I recognized Sanderson, Tolkein, Brooks, a little Pratchett and Jordan, The rest was unfamiliar. Dungeon Crawler Carl was on a table. Juveniles had 20′ of 8′ shelves mostly of fantasy/scifi like titles (my goodness, Mr. Sanderson is prolific). There was more shelf space allotted to Feminist titles (about 10′) than to SciFi. There really aren’t any other large Bookstores, the collapse of Borders mid 2000’s was the last hurrah of opposition to B&N

      Indy bookstores in Massachusetts aren’t any better. The owners tend to be slightly to the left of Che Guevara AND deeply rooted in the “This is Art, who shall NOT enjoy it, it is WORK” pseudo puritanism of the left. There were SCIFi/Fantasy and comic stores in Worcester and Lexington (and likely ones in Cambridge, I only knew of the Million Year Picnic Comic Store in Cambridge), but those seem to have slowly faded away, likely brought low by Amazon.

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      1. You can do a much simpler experiment. Take a big USB FLASH drive (say, 256 GB), weigh it new, fill it with data and weigh it again. There will be no difference.

        Loading a digital device with data doesn’t add anything to it, just changes the states of electronic circuits that are already built into the device. Would you expect changing the magnetic states of tiny spots on the plate of a hard drive to affect its weight?

        Didn’t that bookstore have any Larry Correia, John Ringo, Wen Spencer, David Weber, Travis Taylor or Lois Bujold? They’re all officially Best-Seller Authors.

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        1. Very, very little of any,and none of some at the B&N I visited in New Jersey. The local one did carry Baen, but don’t know if they still do.

          The NJ store gave Howard Zinn pride of place on their history display table, which says a lot about their general taste.

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        2. The result (no change) is also what I expect. The USB is a nice thought, but I have a chip (small form) that I use for my camera of 128GB. That has the advantage that it is less than 20g and might be able to go on the high precision (5 or 6 place) analytical balance which has like a 25g max load. I would not want to break the high precision balance it is $5-10K :-) . You also have to be extraordinarily careful as things like fingerprints have mass once you’re in 4-6 places of precision with grams …

          I did not see Correia in fantasy (which MHI and Son of the Black Sword clearly are and Black Sword is at least as good as the Stormlight stuff) OR SciFi, No Weber (Even if Honor is a serious female heroine), Bujold I don’t think I saw, Mr Taylor I am not familiar with, sounds like I might want to be. Ringworld for Niven, No Pournelle or Pohl. Although No Ellison. Three Octavia Butler (meh), Dahlgren by Delaney which I cionsider slightly less readable than Finnegan’s Wake. Wandered over to the Thrillers section and only Mr. Schlichter’s latest hardback (his stuff also is best seller). There is an obvious bias almost if Randy Penguin and the other lamestream publishers were providing kickbacks :-) .

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      2. I’ve been ebook, specifically pre-epup, since late ’90s for same reason. Eventually added a Nook, then Samsung device. All the pre-epub sources were bought out by B&N, eventually converted into current B&N library. Does not mean I do not have two copies (er three if one counts online locked version). Did not add Kindle to the list for a couple of decades.

        Right now I use the laptop, and my phone. Both Kindle and B&N make this difficult, as neither have current apps that work on Windows. B&N I can at least use an old installer to put on new laptops. May have to breakdown and get a Samsung portable Android, again. But then I’ll have to figure out a way to get copies to save in Calibre. (“No, they are not ‘borrowed’! I bought them!!!!” Do not have the money to waste to make that point to either Amazon and B&N. Not the authors, they are not the ones pulling this c**p.)

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          1. Dead-tree is for special stuff.

            I think I have 3 different LOTR/Hobbit, plus kindle for LOTR

            I have SEVEN different translations of Homer Iliad/Odyssey – yes, that’s odd; I’ve actually read the Lattimore but barely dipped into the others. Once thought to learn Greek, but no. (Someone might ask – Lattimore, Wilson, Fagles, Fitzgerald, Mendelsohn, Butler (2 versions), Chapman, all hard copy) Also Quintus of Smyrna The Fall of Troy. And a couple books on Schliemann and his excavations. (Notes on the various levels at Troy often include something like “also this city phase ended in a raging fire”. Rough neighborhood.)

            Art books get hard copy.

            Survival/First Aid/Field Manuals are generally hard copy.

            Amazon tells me I have 5693 Kindle titles. I think my wife was picking up on the free ‘cozy’ mysteries and witch books. I’m pretty sure I don’t have $18K in Kindle books …

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            1. That is impressive :-) I have slightly under 800 kindle titles including a large selection of Audible (although that gets listened to on the phone and in the car via bluetooth, I haven’t got anything paired with the Kindle, and the audio jack went away two generations ago). A lot of those are either 0 cost Kindle titles or .99 cent early versions of things before it was easy to get stuff from Gutenberg. Indeed I have many Hardbacks (Sci-Fi Book Club, and a few special editions like Slipcased Redbook LOTR and slipcased Hobbit, though they are well pre Kindle). I also have my Paperbacks. At some point the paperbacks will get thinned as someday we’ll go somewhere where 2-3 walls of bookcases is not appropriate. It is hard to give them away its like selling your favorite child… And Yes Graphic Novels and compilations of favorite comics ( Dark Knight, Watchmen, X-Men from Byrne/ Claremont) so my originals can stay tucked away in their mylar sheaths I also have some Photo books (Ansel Adams and one of Civil War photos, that latter is hidden away as my girls loved coffee table books, and that one though amazing for its photography will quickly give you nightmares) and scifi/fantasy art (Frazetta, Hildebrandt and some others). So far there isn’t a kindle that has really good color reproduction at a price that I’m willing to spring for.

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              1. Can’t use audio books.

                At home, I read much faster than I can listen.

                In the car – well, I tried that, two days in a row, maybe 40 years ago (cassette tape player). I found that I listened and did not pay attention to driving. Kinda dangerous.

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            2. I have …. 5 copies of all of Heinlein. they have an habit of walking. Most of pratchett in HC but yeah, I’ve weeded the stuff I’m not likely to read again and don’t desperately want around for potential grandkids.

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          2. I went initially for the cost. In 2013 I started riding mass transport daily and having the Kindle meant I could hop between books (and or Bibles) without carrying extra weight (even a 2011 gen 3 kindle was less than a pound even in its case). The Paperwhites have only made that better although the Mass transit went away 2020 when our company realized paying for real estate (no matter how nice) in the North End of Boston was a massive cost sink.

            One thing that has always baffled me is the mainline publishers view of their back catalogs with respect to Epub. ANYTHING published since the late 80’s (and almost all of their back catalog falls into this category) has been electronically typeset, likely with some markup language (Tex, Runoff, several other more proprietary systems). Run through converter and a week in the hands of a (very) junior editor and voila you have something you can throw on Amazon/Nook for chicken feed. Say the editor gets compensation tops out a little above 150K inclusive that week is ~3k, 6k if you have to use 2 weeks. Compare that to the half million dollar to the advances they give to folks like Clinton/Obama/Biden, This gets you 80+ titles generating cash flow instead of 1 title that will likely never make back its advance. Set the books at $4.99 to $6.99 and you’ll make back the investment in 3-4 months, and then its just gravy. It’s not a lot, but there is no warehousing or printing like a paperback back catalogue would require. And it’s not like you’re going to cannibalize your paperback sales, as many of the back titles no longer have in-print paperbacks. And it is not just SciFi/fantasy titles , Westerns, Mystery, romance (gotta be money there for folks that don’t want the leads jumping into bed on page 6 of a 300 page novel) are waiting. Maybe there are licensing issues, but I can’t imagine the authors/estates don’t think an additional royalty would be a bad thing.

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      3. I still think one could make a physical business out of Print-on-demand books.

        Either customers bring in a file to get it printed and bound, or the shop prints books and the author gets paid for every book printed.

        But that’s probably because I don’t know anything about any of those businesses.

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