696 karma · joined August 19, 2017
As for my copy, I gave it to a friend when they went travelling. They came back, but the book itself has gone on further travels and has yet to return.
The book will probably never become obsolete or go out of style as long as humans exist as we do now. I imagine we'll print and sell fewer of them, but that's not the same as becoming obsolete. The book could only truly be replaced by something absolutely better than it in every way, which an eBook isn't -- it has as many advantages and disadvantages as a paper book.
High-quality ones, used by a couple of artists and a draughtsman my parents knew, were blue: Staedtler Mars Lumographs, again made then in the UK, but now only made in Germany. Still an even better pencil than the Noris.
I remember Berol "Handwriting" pens, red with a white nib that produced blue ink, but never liked them or used them much. Berol had colouring pencils sewn up when I was in school.
It wasn't a success. In all, it looks like they only released a handful in the initial 2011 launch period, then didn't release any more.[1]
I had a copy of Cloud Atlas in flipback format, and it was... okay. I bought it in that format purely for the novelty of it. It felt a bit like reading off a pair of playing cards hinged together, but wasn't entirely unpleasant. Reading a fullsize paperback is nicer if you like the paper reading experience. The paper alone makes a difference; it's very thin and crinkly, like old onion skin paper, or the paper in a Bible, or the paper you buy to roll your own cigarettes.
The main advantage it has over a Kindle or Kobo is that the book itself folds down smaller -- a little bigger than an iPod Classic or a pack of cigarettes -- and it won't run out of battery power. In most other respects, the eReader has the advantage.
I don't know anyone else who's ever read one.
[1]: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=as_li_ss_tl?rh=n:266239,k:fli...
"The means of production" in the gig economy is the marketplaces and apps. They parcel out the work to people to carry out using the tools they have at their disposal -- a car, a bike, a toolkit, whatever. It's established, much like a factory is, to break up the work into discrete steps to be carried out by people who are largely replaceable. In this case the app is just the replacement for the top-hatted capitalist factory owner.
AirBNB hosts are slightly different since they more closely resemble petit bourgeois smallholders and innkeepers rather than members of the proletariat.
I consume content voraciously
The real problem as I see it is there's a large, vocal, vicious echo-chamber effect at play. A lot of its userbase are quite radical and aggressive in their beliefs, and the reblogging system makes it easy to use the platform for bully. It's not entirely optional to interact with radicalised elements on Tumblr. The tagging system lets them find you, and then they can brigade you if you fall foul of whatever pet cause they have.
This happened to me when I'd posted a photo of my dog. She's my pride and joy, and it was a harmless and cute photo of her jumping to catch a ball in the air. My mistake was using the caption "Good girl!" and tag #goodgirl. (I also tagged #dog, #fetch, #springerspaniel, #spaniel.)
I was flooded with follows from people, mostly men but also some young-ish girls, in the "daddy dom" community (their main tag seems to be #ddlg, but #goodgirl was enough for them to find me). That was a pretty disturbing subculture with definitely uncomfortable elements of abuse built right into the foundation of it.
I was also reblogged and targeted by a group of people who had decided that by "gendering" my female dog, I was a bigot. They mercilessly harrassed me. They flooded my inbox with abusive message: "dirty cis scum, kill yourself", things like that. They reblogged my photo saying some pretty vile things about me and my poor dog. In their reblogs they utterly misrepresented what I'd said, reposted it endlessly, called me transphobic, a bigot, threatened to dox me.
In the end I abandoned my entire blog there and deleted it. As far as I know, there's no way to get my dog's photo removed from Tumblr or get the hateful reblogs taken down. I reported them all for abuse and harassment, but Tumblr did nothing. Tumblr's staff don't care. They would never respond on Twitter or by email or to my reports through the form on the site. Just radio silence.
This is purely anecdotal of course. I know someone else who also accidentally drew the ire of Tumblr and ended up having to delete their blog and leave the platform to escape a sustained campaign of harassment and threats from a similar group of people. Again, Tumblr-the-company did nothing to stop it.
It's not entirely optional to interact with radicalised elements on Tumblr. The tagging system lets them find you, and then they can brigade you if you fall foul of whatever pet cause they have.
This happened to me when I'd posted a photo of my dog. She's my pride and joy, and it was a harmless and cute photo of her jumping to catch a ball in the air. My mistake was using the caption "Good girl!" and tag #goodgirl. (I also tagged #dog, #fetch, #springerspaniel, #spaniel.)
I was flooded with follows from people, mostly men but also some young-ish girls, in the "daddy dom" community (their main tag seems to be #ddlg, but #goodgirl was enough for them to find me). That was a pretty disturbing subculture with definitely uncomfortable elements of abuse built right into the foundation of it.
I was also reblogged and targeted by a group of people who had decided that by "gendering" my female dog, I was a bigot. They mercilessly harrassed me. They flooded my inbox with abusive message: "dirty cis scum, kill yourself", things like that. They reblogged my photo saying some pretty vile things about me and my poor dog. In their reblogs they utterly misrepresented what I'd said, reposted it endlessly, called me transphobic, a bigot, threatened to dox me.
In the end I abandoned my entire blog there and deleted it. As far as I know, there's no way to get my dog's photo removed from Tumblr or get the hateful reblogs taken down. I reported them all for abuse and harassment, but Tumblr did nothing. Tumblr's staff don't care. They would never respond on Twitter or by email or to my reports through the form on the site. Just radio silence.
This is purely anecdotal, I know. I know someone else who also accidentally drew the ire of Tumblr and ended up having to delete their blog and leave the platform to escape a sustained campaign of harassment and threats from a similar group of people. Again, Tumblr-the-company did nothing to stop it.
I think this right to fail without a trace is an important one, and one that, intentionally or not, we've taken away from those who came after us.
I use one. Relatively expensive, but brilliant -- very much my favourite ever switch and keyboard.
I store all of my logins in pass[1], and have the store synced in Dropbox. My will has the password for my GPG key and my Dropbox in it. I realise that's a potential security hole, but the copies are sealed and held at home and with a trusted friend, so I consider it relatively minimal.
I also print out all of the important photos I've taken. It's a pretty low-tech solution, but it's a proven one: I have albums and photos from both sets of grandparents and great-grandparents precisely because a hardcopy photo doesn't need software to use.
If I put two scoops into his bowl, and two into the other, he stays with his bowl. He only switches when a third scoop goes into the other bowl. He's been consistent with this since I noticed him doing it, and I'm not sure how long before I noticed he was doing it that he started doing it.
He's a rescue on a special diet for his weight, as we have a small scoop to measure out his portion. Both he and the other cat get two scoops each. I normally put one in his bowl -- which he starts eating immediately -- then two in the other cat's bowl, then his second in his bowl. He stops eating and watches each scoop being poured into the bowl.
He seems to be able to keep track/count of how many scoops each bowl gets, even if I vary the order they're delivered in. He'll switch to the other bowl if it gets an additional scoop, even if it gets one full scoop and two half scoops. He seems good at 'counting' the number of scoops, but poor at judging the quantity of kibble in the bowl -- he'll unfailingly pick the bowl with more scoops even if it has the same or slightly lower quantity of food in it. He only notices a quantity difference if it's reasonably large.
Keep in mind, most of these work anywhere in OS X,
not just in the terminal.
I wonder if it's possible to get Linux to work the way the Mac does in this regard? Allocate a Meta key to do what Ctrl does move of the time, so that these Ctrl commands became available again? I'd really find it easier to use Linux if that was possible.
(Not an attack -- a genuine question because I'm interested in your choice and reasoning.)
Thank you for writing your comment, and for this part in general. I voted 'Remain' but I couldn't agree more with what you wrote -- the backlash against those who voted 'Leave' has been appalling. With just a little bit more compassion, willingness to listen, and understanding, the division between both sides could possibly be healed. We seem further than ever from that, and the likelihood diminishes every day.