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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
Everything is political.
That said, I wish people cared more about the arts and arts funding. Conservatives have been trying to discredit it all as weird and worthless for ages now, and that's unfortunately permeated deep into our culture. Art is literally one of the tools we have against fascism.
Im a sciencey type but throughout my life I have seen the value of the sciences and very glad my major was in the LAS college.
I wish people would stop killing all the insects. We've kicked the bottom out of the food chain, and no one seems to have noticed. I've seen populations tank over the last two decades, even year by year.
Summer before last, when I took the kids to the creek we'd have to start a smoky fire to keep the mosquitoes and flies off. Didn't bother this year, not once. Went hiking yesterday and only had 2 mosquitoes annoy me. Y'all, that creek is surrounded by swamp. Saw a few frogs, zero fish, not even minnows.
September in NW Florida has always meant a lovebug invasion. They were so bad when I moved here that natives advised me to wash my car a couple of times that month because their guts would eat clear coat. Last year I saw a few dozen couples, stuck butt-to-butt (hence the name) in my driveway. The month is all but over and I've not seen a single one. Not fucking one.
Five years ago I'd count the tree frogs and salamanders on my front porch. I leave the porch lights on 24/7, so free food for amphibian friends. Haven't seen either animal in 3 years. Used to have to spray the bug guts off the lights several times in the spring and summer. Just looked, they're fairly clean, haven't sprayed them for over a year.
For context, I'm on the bleeding edge of town. I can walk 10 minutes and be into hundreds of acres of forest and swamp. This ain't the middle of the city from which I'm observing these events.
Nothing else makes me so internally panicked. Rise of fascism? Historical trend, it's here, someday it will be gone. Global warming? Not so immediate, not seeing clear and deniable changes year to year, not so much up in my grill. My planet is dying, I'm scared shitless, and no one even notices.
Also in Florida and yes the insect apocalypse is the most ominous sign of doom. And their life cycles are so short, just lay off for a couple of years, they would probably bounce fast!
Thought I saw a firefly on the trail last week. Probably not. Haven't seen one since I bought this house 8 years ago. Not one. And at that time? Only one.
I've got a pretty wild yard. We've brought frogs back, and next year I hope dragonflies mature and come boiling out my little water features. Pretty sure we're driving the butterfly population, and the hummingbirds are slightly more populous than last year.
But my god man, I'm only one person, with one yard, and I'm nearly broke. I have 40+ guns, but I can't go out and fight fascism by myself. I want to scream and rage, but I do what I can do, defend what I can.
I've never seen a firefly, they don't come this far south. We do have dragonflies, and I still see plenty of lizards, and unfortunately the squash bugs are doing fine, but the city of bees that used to appear when this one random bush bloomed by the garden never comes around anymore, and I can fearlessly turn over bricks piled in the yard, that used to be a nightmare with a palmetto bug under every one!
From what I know, fireflies love dead leaves and laying eggs under those. So don't rake the leaves! Let them be. Or some of them at least. We haven't raked leaves from under our bushes for ages and we always get some fireflies in the summer now!
Spacial awareness in public, especially in grocery stores. People often stop with a cart right in the entrance and seem oblivious they are blocking the way for others while they dig in their bag for the shopping list.
Reading. Too many people say they hate reading because it's boring or there is no point. Most cite the books they went over (probably never read) in school. They think everything is going to be like Romeo and Juliet or something. They don't seem to realize that you study classics in school and that there are troves of modern books that they'd enjoy. I like to find out their favorite movies and get them an audio book in the same genre. It's easier to get them to listen to one than to read one. I now have a handful of people who come to me asking what they should listen to or read next.
You could convince me that the high school curriculum is designed to take any interest in reading out of teenagers. K-8 tends toward stories that are intended for children to enjoy because that's how child psychology works, but from the age of 14 on up it's crusty old shit written in dead languages or in English so old no one remembers what the slang words mean, about shit no one cares about anymore.
Shakespeare is the classic example. Shakespeare was kind of the Joss Whedon of his day; he not only wrote in Ye Olde Englishe, but he wrote in slangy quippy word play-ey Ye Olde Englishe. Like, imagine high school students of the 2400s taking turns reading the script of Firefly out of a textbook, the kid who got assigned to read Mal's lines tripping over stuff like "And I think you weren't burdened with an overabundance of schooling." 25th century school kids are going to write papers about 21st century attitudes to homosexuality due to the use of the word "sly" in one throwaway line in the episode set in a whorehouse. I really want to hear a 25th century English teacher tastefully describing who and what Saffron is. Then in their Junior year they're going to do three random episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
That's what studying Shakespeare is like in a modern high school. It would blow William Shakespeare's mind that school children in nations that didn't exist during his lifetime are taught what "Romeo and Rosemary begin with a letter" means.
Why do we do it this way?
Some people are hiding in this category as well. I don't trust people who, when you ask their favorite book, tell you it's hatchet, to kill a mockingbird, Atlas shrugged, etc etc. If it was a school read, chances are it's one of like 5 books they ever actually read.
I still love To Kill a Mockingbird, and I've read thousands of books since high school. I wouldn't say it's my favorite but it's up there.
It's possible to like one from that list or for one to be your favorite. I have a friend who says his favorite is great Gatsby.
It usually means we should ask more questions, because people who read who choose books from school are I think a minority. Most of those books are good for discussion and generally likeable but not "holy shit this it the book for me" kinds of books.
Is Hatchet the one where the kid survives a plane crash or the one where the kid just decides to go live in the woods with a falcon? I read both of those books at about the same time in my life and they kinda blended into one story in my head.
I have to keep reminding myself that there wasn't a book about a kid who survived a plane crash and then learned to survive in a little house he made in a tree with a falcon he tamed. There's the plane crash survival book, and the kid just decided to go live in the woods book, and the former contains a lot more lists of what he ate than you probably remember.
Hatchet is the plane crash. The other is "my side of the mountain".
Lots of gut cherry references in hatchet, and one instance of profanity as I recall.
I was a voracious reader but there are so many time wasters now. Well and my eyes are not as good as they used to be making reading sorta a pain.
Seriously, this. I can't stand to read "the classics" but I love reading things that interest me. Would be nice if schools recognized that and encouraged reading just for the sake of it rather than forcing kids to trudge through endless stanzas of "ye art incorrect and thou must protest this injustice. Oh Horatio! Oh, lamentation this! Lamentation that!" Like, fuck, I lost the plot 3 pages of lamentations ago.
Just let kids do book reports on Harry Potter (or whatever's cool these days). At least they're reading and their brain cells are firing.
Provided it's got a decent narrator, audiobooks are like literal bedtime stories, and a lot of players have "sleep mode" that will either set a timer or stop it after the current chapter. Seems like an easy way to get people into them, IMO.
I have two of Stephen Fry's autobiographies on audiobook and would basically let his smooth voice lull me to sleep. 😆
Provided it’s got a decent narrator, audiobooks are like literal bedtime stories
One of my favourite books I've literally only read on audiobook. I don't love ebooks, and this book is out of print with second-hand copies going for $200+ online, so audiobook is basically the only option. It's not the same experience as reading with your eyes, but it's still a great way to get the story.
Definitely different experiences, but yeah, agree. Generally, I only like to listen to the audiobook after I've read it (unless there's no other option). It's difficult for me to not miss important plot points when I'm listening to it, but that's probably just my ADHD.
Every time. Without fail. When people talk about amazing audiobokks, it always comes back to Stephen Fry. GOD BLESS YOU AND ALL WHO SAIL IN YOU, SIR!
The genre doesn't exist, but it should: "Bedtime Stories: Narrated by Morgan Freeman and Stepehn Fry".
I would pay good money for anything narrated by Babs Olusanmokun. It can be the IRS tax code for all I care. That man’s voice is like auditory melted caramel.
I knew someone who hated reading in highschool but shortly after highschool discovered she liked reading for pleasure. She started with books like Twilight and The Hunger Games. I personally don't recommend Twilight but I do recommend The Hunger Games.
Yeah, school does a decent job at putting you off whole genres of things but there's still many things I'll happily read. Classic literature is so dull.
Tbh I hate reading because of school but it's not because we had to read classics, it's because in my school we weren't allowed to read anything out of an arbitrary reading bracket.
Even if you wanted to take home an interesting book from the library you weren't allowed to unless you read all the books between your current level and the level they put the book on. We had to pass comprehension tests to see if we understood the book we just read but we could only do it once a week so going up a single level could take most of the school year.
I think some people are bad at reading through no real fault of their own. Then they feel, consciously or subconsciously, embarrassed and angry when they try.
I also think a lot about a woman I knew that was like "analysis is stupid. Sometimes a story is just a story!", and that was very strange to me. I asked some more questions, and she said she hated how in school they were always reading and being told to find the secret meaning. I was like, your education failed you. The game isn't find the meaning. The game is finding a meaning you can support in the text.
Like, Dracula can just be a book about a dude that bites people. But you can also look at it and be like "hmm so these women abandon their 'motherly' duties of raising children and staying in the home, and the only way to 'fix' them is for some men to hold her down and penetrate her with a big piece of wood? Hmmm"
But, also, you don't have to think hard about everything you read. You don't analyze every TV show, even though you could.
“hmm so these women abandon their ‘motherly’ duties of raising children and staying in the home
More than that! When Lucy is turned into a vampire, she feeds on children. She turns into the very opposite of the motherly feminine ideal. The same is true of Dracula's brides, who feed on a baby in one of the early chapters. Dracula, by contrast, feeds on adults. He shows an interest in Jonathan (bisexual? Eww, that's not natural!—side note, Stoker himself was likely bi) but most of his attention is focused on women like Lucy and Mina. The expectation of a gentleman being a chivalrous protector of ladies is inverted.
There's also the fact that Lucy, who early in the book expresses her wish to marry all three of the men who proposed to her:
Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?
It's the very sexually-forward woman who ends up succumbing to vampirism and being killed for it. But not before receiving the bodily fluids from all three of those propositioners—plus van Helsing. The sexual undertones of the blood transfusions are hardly subtle, but this also ties into another major theme of the book, which is how powerful modern science and technology can be as a tool to defeat strange unnatural superstition.
We've recently been doing a Dracula bookclub over at !vampires@lemmy.zip, reading through each diary entry/letter/newspaper clipping on the day it is set. We are, as we speak, amid the section between when Lucy has died and arisen as a vampire, but before she has her final death at the hands of the crew of light. In fact, as soon as I'm done with this thread I'm gonna go and do today's reading, and I think that might be Lucy's last. edit: I was wrong. Lucy unlives for another night...or two...
I can understand their attitude, I don't share it but I can understand it.
It is quite hard to try new books when you're not sure what you might like, it is trial and error with each trial requiring a commitment of a few hours.
I agree with audiobooks, they are a easier to get into just because they don't require to stop everything and allow to do other stuff at the same time.
That's amazing!
Politeness. It changes the atmosphere of a conversation/community/country when people are polite.
Self cooking with more vegies and only meat once a week or so. And so sugar in diet
Obligatory answer on behalf of rest of Lemmy: Linux
Other than that, going for a walk without listening to anything. An idle and undistracted mind is great for mental health.
Obligatory answer on behalf of rest of Lemmy: Linux
Just because I'm on Lemmy does not mean I run Linux.
I mean...
I do run Linux.
But it's not because I'm on Lemmy.
(I tried to put this on the Will Smith meme, but my meme creation skills failed me.)
(I tried to put this on the Will Smith meme, but my meme creation skills failed me.)
That's fine. I'd love to get back to the days words being funny on the internet without needing it to be on an image
understanding technology
Otherwise-smart people who just throw their hands up and say, “I just can’t do this high tech stuff!”
Motherfucker it’s easier to operate than your car, how do you even live
looking at their car, beat to hell and currently on fire, sideways, in a handicapped spot
"...never mind"
Accelerating when merging onto the highway, rather than slowing down.
