Self posts are not allowed, articles only.
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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 30th, 2023
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14·7 hours agoIf you get a choice to support ranked choice balloting, DO IT!
If you don’t have that choice, fight for it!
The sets aren’t the book I came for. :)
Removed, questionable source.
“Overall, we rate CAIR Right-Center biased based on conservative religious views (pseudoscience) that offset their left-leaning civil rights positions. We also rate them Questionable based on the use of poor or lack of sourcing, questionable funding from governments, and allegations of antisemitism and possible connections to terrorist organizations, though unproven.”
Yeah, I could see that angle as well:
https://www.centredaily.com/news/state/pennsylvania/article283101998.html
“The federal agency estimates nearly 263,000 people residing in Pennsylvania in 2022 lived in a different state one year ago.”
That being said, when I get polled, they only ask if I’m registered in my current state and if I voted in the last election, not if I voted in this state.
“In Pennsylvania, more than 100,000 new voters have already cast their ballots”
That’s huge because new voters aren’t counted by pollsters as “likely voters”. The prime criteria is often “Did you vote in the last election?” or even “Did you vote in the last 2 elections?”
So you look at the left hand column of polling information from PA:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/pennsylvania/
22 polls, only 4 based on registered voters, 18 “LV” or “Likely Voters”.
That’s the key thing to understand when the discussion turns to “why were the polls so wrong??!?!?”
“Wow, that’s terrifying, do you have photos?”
“. . .”
4·13 hours agoDropped a Tom Swifty on my wife… the other day.
“They want me to check in at the hospital…”
“She said admittedly.”
I got “the look”.
We don’t allow self posting.
I think he means in terms of time. In order to make it fully consistent, you’d have to have some kind of index and go through line by line making sure everything is saying the same thing.
Oh, wait…
“These people just want violence! They should be killed!”
ಠ_ಠ
Not exactly random. It’s THE bookstore in Portland.
https://www.powells.com/locations/powells-city-of-books
Also, if you want to avoid giving Amazon money:
Days.
14·20 hours agoGoogle says my house in Portland to Philly is 1 day, 18 hours. But I’m pretty sure that’s not counting rest stops.
Ho boy… how much time do you have? ;)
If you look on the shelf just below Tolkien, you’ll see Folio Society editions of The Princess Bride and American Gods.
Not only are those editions GLORIOUS, it’s really hard to go wrong with ANYTHING by the Folio Society. They’re kind of like to books what the Criterion Editon is to movies.
(I’m still waiting on them to publish the last book in the James Bond run, Octopussy, then I’ll buy that whole set). Apparently hung up by problems with the artist. :( She got caught plagiarising stuff for Wizards of the Coast.
https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/catalogsearch/result/?q=ian+fleming
Their edition of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is out of print, but you can still get it on the secondary market:
https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/chitty-chitty-bang-bang.html
Other than that?
Let’s see…
Science fiction, it’s hard to beat the Fuzzy books by H. Beam Piper:
https://www.goodreads.com/series/49377-fuzzy-sapiens
(stick to the three originals by Piper)
The Matador series by Steve Perry:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/MatadorSeries
Really, read these in publication order, not chronological order.
Fantasy/Horror, the classic of the genre, for me, is the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, 8 books proper, but it branches out and touches so many others of King’s works. Stephen King shared universe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(series)
Rumor has it a new book is coming.
Also Fantasy/Horror, the six book Night Watch books by Sergei Lukyanenko.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_(Lukyanenko_novel)
I hesitate slightly to reccomend these books, because as good as they are, the author has kind of gone off the deep end supporting Russia in the war with Ukraine.
All six books were written before Russia invaded Crimea, so it doesn’t color the text in any way, but Lukyanenko is of Ukrainian heritage and has now fully drunk the Russian kool-aid so if you have a hard time separating the author from the books, this can be a tough read.
As long as I’m talking about books in translation, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series by Carlos Ruiz Zafon are all quite amazing.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/9124283592
See if the synopsis for the first book doesn’t grab the hell out of you:
“At the first light of dawn in postwar Barcelona, a bookseller leads his motherless son to a mysterious crypt called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. This labyrinthine sanctuary houses the books that have lost their owners, books that are no longer remembered by anyone. It is here that ten-year-old Daniel Sempere pulls a single book—The Shadow of the Wind—off of the dusty shelves to adopt as his own. With one fateful turn of a page, he begins an adventure that will unravel another man’s tragedy and solve a mystery that has already taken many lives and will shape his entire future.”
For non-fiction? I dearly love the travel books by Redmond O’Hanlon:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redmond_O'Hanlon
Into the Heart of Borneo (1984)
In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon (1988)
Congo Journey (1996), American edition: No Mercy: A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo (1997)[9]
Trawler (2005)
Neither are the socialists, who aren’t even on the ballot in enough states to win ANYTHING.
Edit Appears to be a 5th and final set, outside “The History of Middle Earth”:
The Children of Húrin
Beren and Lúthien
The Fall of Gondolin
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0358003911Significantly less expensive than the others. Those also appear to be the final three books edited by Christopher Tolkien.
Three more books follow:
The Nature of Middle-earth, edited by Carl F. Hostetter.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Nature_of_Middle-earth
“Its many texts discuss a variety of topics related to Middle-earth, such as its “nature” and landscapes, the characteristics of different races, theology, and many other miscellaneous matters in Tolkien’s legendarium. Most of them were previously unpublished material, but some had been already published in the linguistic journals Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar.”
The Fall of Númenor, edited by Brian Sibley.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Fall_of_Númenor
“The texts were previously published in The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, and The Nature of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien and Carl F. Hostetter. No new material by Tolkien is presented in this book.”
The Battle of Maldon: together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, edited by Peter Grybauskas.
“The book presents for the first time Tolkien’s own prose translation of “The Battle of Maldon”, a 10-century Old English poem about a real world battle, together with the poem The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, an imaginary sequel to the Battle. Also included is a previously unpublished lecture “The Tradition of Versification in Old English”, which deals with the nature of poetic tradition.”
Looks like parts of it are in this set, but this book is it’s own thing.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Children_of_Húrin
"A brief version of the story formed the base of Chapter 21 of The Silmarillion, setting the tale in the context of the wars of Beleriand. Although based on the same texts used to complete the new book, Christopher Tolkien abridged the tale to avoid overcharging his edition.
Other incomplete versions have been published in previous publications:
The “Narn i Hîn Húrin” in Unfinished Tales.
Items in The History of Middle-earth series, including:
“Turambar and the Foalókë”, from The Book of Lost Tales: Part Two
“The Lay of the Children of Húrin” (a narrative poem), from The Lays of Beleriand
None of these writings forms a complete and mature narrative. The published Children of Húrin is essentially a synthesis of the Narn and of the account found in The Silmarillion."
I’m in Portland so we’re getting ready.
If Trump wins, it will be antifa/anarchist rioting.
If Harris wins, it will be free Gaza/anarchist rioting.
Basically, there will be rioting. Fortunately far enough away from where I live…
Born in the UK with dual citizenship, likely not elligible. Do like her though!