"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
In order to check your compatibility with Standard Social Media English, you might want to take an English language fluency/literacy quiz. If you score too well, your English will not be down to the “standards” of typical social media drivel. Here’s an easy-peasy MOR quiz, though it does have a couple of BrE (British English) quirks:
Sadly, my English language fluency/literacy disqualifies me from engaging in Standard Social Media English drivel:
Nowadays, any book less than 300pp feels like an essay or a short story to me. Anything over 500pp is almost invariably poorly-edited goat gagger. Exceptions prove the rule. For example, James Burnham’s Suicide of the West is a 400p essay. 😉
“If you like Hitchhikers guide [sic] to the Galaxy and the Starship Troopers movie, you’ll love this book!”
Firstly, the movie adaptation of Starship Troopers sucked swamp gas. Secondly, The two VERY different stories had almost nothing in common whatsoever, apart from the fact that the books they were based on were a couple of the best works of two very different masters of the science fiction field.
If the execrably written and edited excerpt from a book blurb that went downhill from there is at all representative of the book, then the best thing to do is flip on by with a curt, “No.”
Aside–and having nothing to do with the comment above–I dislike “dramatis personae” lists in the front of a book. Sure, I imagine it might help folks keep characters straight, but I think a writer is better served (and better serves his readers) by organically introducing his characters within the narrative, as different characters meet, and, although if a book is in a series and I have read 1,000-1,100 books–not all fiction, of course–in the six months between episodes (and that’s roughly a six month reading list for me), I still prefer to exercise my lil grey cells and recall the characters that were introduced previously w/o reading down a list of ’em.
. . .or not.
For example, as I walk, my left-right strides are about equal, despite the fact that my left leg is longer than my right leg. It kinda works out, cos my left foot is shorter–missing part of the heel, as a result of the same incident that caused my left leg to be a bit longer than my right leg.
It just kinda worked out that way. Cool.
“[he, she, they] turned on [his, her, their] heel[s]” Sometimes “spun” (or even more stupidly, “span“) is subbed in for “turned,” as if that makes the expression any less abysmally stupid.
THIMK!
#gagamaggot NO THEY DID NOT. NONE OF THE CHARACTERS THESE WRITERS HAVE “TURNING” ON THEIR “HEELS” ARE GINGER ROGERS, FRED ASTAIRE, OR GENE KELLY! Heck even searching for those masters of popular terpsichorean displays trying to turn up even ONE instance of any of them doing it was too tedious a task to complete, although there are youboob videos demonstrating in excruciating detail how difficult the maneuver is for even accomplished dancers. For example:
And even then, it’s no singleton action. *smh* I file this with all the other annoyingly stupid laziness writers abuse to break suspension of disbelief. So, wee lil tip to lazy writers: unless your target audience has been playing with autolobotomy kits, don’t have your characters “turn on their heels” unless they are accomplished ballroom dancers, mmmK?
The second, I am quite sure. *smh* Oh, what am I talking about? Old injuries–30, 40, 50, and even 60 years old: long healed. But. Nowadays, the slightest lil thing can seem to evoke reminders of broken bones, interesting wounds, torn ligaments, etc., making minor missteps into weeks long re-recoveries, at times.
*sigh* It’s not a side effect of age but simply my body “remembering” old insults far, far better than I would prefer. *heh* As long as the 59-year-old old skull fracture doesn’t start issuing updates, methinks I can weather the littler things like the lesson on watching my feet around horses. . . ?
The new (to America’s Third World County™) Amazon shipping/delivery service is pretty cool in some ways, but the only person making deliveries that I have met ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. I very much like the tracking map. When I saw I was next up, and that the delivery person’s location was on the street just above us (no houses between us and the street, clear view), I stepped out and saw the driver just sitting there, facing the wrong direction, apparently trying to locate our street, then drive off north, away from our location. Five minutes later, here they came. (Must have been relying on Google Maps, which is remarkably inaccurate around here.) Okay! Finally found us! Then, picked up small package from seat of pickup truck and started hunting around for the second package due in today (which the tracking app said was on the truck). Six minutes this time. Apparently, Amazon offers no training on prganizing a loadout for delivery. *shrugs*
Still, it was a pleasant experience, and the delivery was quicker than Prime deliveries in the past recent months.
Well, firstly, I don’t know how long racoons live. Secondly, I generally keep my “hide” covered with clothing when in public, and as for my hair, well, why do you think I wear a hat?
*smh*
Woke up yesterday (Saturday) with pain on a scale of 1-10 coming in about 9 on my left foot. Ball of foot and great toe could not even take a sock w/o pain lancing up my leg from there. Swollen and red. Close examination revealed a small hair–looked like an eyelash–embedded on the side of the ball of my left foot. Pulled it out w/tweezers. Yep. The epicenter of the pain located right there. How it became embedded in my foot I cannot say.
Lotsa heat therapy and swelling and pain abated enough to sit comfortably (well, moderately, as long as nothing touched my toe/ball of foot). Was able to rest last night and swelling abated along with pain, and toe/ball of coot almost normal size. A little walking around in stocking feet fixed that, though, and although the pain is still less, swelling has rebounded a little.
I’ll just have to see how it goes, I guess.
Just weird.
Yeh, Epoch Times attempts to position itself as a reliable, truthful reporting organ, but when it comes to the Wuhan Flu. it’s as much (or in some cases worse) an example of irresponsible scaremongering as any other Hivemind organ. Sample headline/”report”:
At Least 9,245 Americans Tested Positive for COVID-19 After Vaccination; 132 Dead
First off, since over 202 million doses of the vaccines* have been administered, and at least 100 million folks in the US have been fully vaccinated*, fewer than 10,000 cases among the “vaccinated” is far, far FEWER than the predicted (by experimental data) openly-stated stats for cases among vaccinated* folks. In fact, the best case predicted scenario would see 5% of the vaccinated* contract the disease, and rounding up the 9,245 reported cases to 10,000 would yield a percentage of 0.01%. Scary *yawn* And the number of reported deaths among such cases? 0.000132%. *BIG YAWN* Sure, those are deaths of real human beings, but the numbers are SERIOUSLY UNscary.
And who among those who have not been living under a rock (or have been drinking the Hivemind Koolaid) believes the numbers anyway?
“The numbers are an undercount because the CDC’s surveillance system is passive and relies on voluntary reporting from state health departments.”
*throws the bullshit flag* If the numbers are to be believed, a nation with 4.3% of the world population has suffered more than 20% of the world’s total COvid-19 deaths, and THAT, my friends, makes the numbers–all of them reporting on Covid-19, not merely questionable, but ludicrously so. The odds are very good that the numbers of cases of Covid-19 among those vaccinated* represent as huge an OVERCOUNT as the massively ludicrous overcount of Covid-19 deaths in the US. In fact, the overcount of US Covid-19 deaths approaches the level of monstrous fraud, unless numbers mean absolutely nothing.
*BTW, according to all the various legal and clinical definitions of “vaccine” only the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) offering is an actual vaccine. The other two with EUAs in the US are actually therapies, but since government and Hivemind propagandists rely on citizen illiteracy and stupidity, Merriam Webster has changed its definition of “vaccine” along with all the other words it’s changed meanings on to suit the Hivemind.