(no subject)
May. 27th, 2022 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. The more I hear about what happened in Texas, the angrier I get at well...and not necessarily in this order..
* the NRA
* gun rights supporters
* Boy Scouts of America (they support the NRA, co-lobby with them for funds and have courses taught by the NRA in shooting. Also the only way you can get to a shooting range or teach your kids to shoot in NY is via the Boy Scouts. Evidence of America's Love Affair with Guns.)
* police
* the Supreme Court
* Congress
* Texas
* anyone who owns a gun or supports it
* the Republican Party
The news out of Texas is not good. At all.
2. The Essex Serpent is bringing back what I liked and disliked about the book. The book has a heavy feminist vibe to it, and undercurrent of how men treated women in Victorian Times. Luke - the doctor - is particularly annoying in both - because he has a thing for Cora, and somehow thinks he's entitled to her affections. In his arrogance, he believes the only reason she's not into him is because she's still grieving. (Which is annoying because the reader and viewer both know she was abused horribly by her husband and his death was a relief - so much of one that she refused life-saving measures be performed, and luckily so had he.)
What I liked was the friction between religion and science or superstition and science.
The romance, I found to be somewhat problematic and kind of wished the writer didn't feel the need to go there. But alas. She did.
3. I've been irritable today - so I'm glad I didn't go to work, and had taken the day off. Wales has not responded in regards to plans this weekend and fallen off the map or off text. I'm annoyed. She whines incessantly when I don't follow through and has been bugging me to get together for weeks now - even tried to get together literally the Saturday five days after I was getting over COVID and felt like I'd been hit by a Mac Truck.
But now? Crickets.
4. Mother is making me watch the soap opera. Okay, "making" is a strong word.
Mother (calls at 3PM): Are you going to watch the soap now?
(I'm watching Star Trek Discovery S4 which is slow): Uh..maybe. I don't know.
Mother: You should, it's not bad today - go watch and we'll discuss after.
Me: You realize I'm only watching this thing for you (and well the off chance I'll get to see my favorite couple banter - which is like hoping to see a meteor shower or a blue moon at this point).
Good thing she called, the DVR was screwed up due to all the news preemptions, so it didn't record like it was supposed to. I fixed it.
5. Weighing going into the city on Saturday to partake of the Lower East Side Arts Festival, but I don't know. It's free. Will be crowded. And I'm still wary of COVID. (I just had it and I did not enjoy it and do not want it again. And while the indoor venues are requiring vaccinations, I'm vaccinated and had it. Yes, I know, I'm being a wimp about this. I go to work every day and half of them don't wear masks and not everyone at work is even vaccinated. But they are also not performing and spitting as they do so - I'm sorry, speaking, reading poetry aloud, dancing, and singing - does involve some physical exertion and well spitting.)
Also, it's supposed to rain tomorrow.
We'll see.
6. Where did the internet slang word "Welp" come from? It's been popping up on Twitter and now Dreamwidth, but not quite yet FB or Instagram.
7. New book "Stitch in Time" is apparently a gothic romance, and I can't decide whether the hero is the killer, or his friend or sister are?
Also, while working on revising my own book - Word wanted to be updated. So I did. And now the reviewer has even more buttons and stuff to it. So much, that it took me forever to find "Find and Replace". Also it has this editor button - that appears to tell me how many mistakes I've made, and how concise my writing is, clear, etc. Currently I'm getting 99% accuracy rating. Plus it has a dictate and read aloud function. The read aloud is a computer monotone - which isn't really helpful. They need to work on that.
Software engineers scare me - though - sooner or later they will update this thing to the point in which I can't use it. Stop.
Plus? I don't want to hear any one whine about writing a research paper or thesis ever again. It's easy now. You don't have to worry about grammar, spelling, formatting, footnote placement, endnote placement, structure, insertion of tables, pictures, graphs, style, or any of that. Word does it all for you. Just a click. No html coding required. You don't even have to use a dictionary or a thesaurus. Research? Easy too - it's all online. No card catalogues or worrying if the books are available. Make a mistake? Can delete instantly, no rewriting. Translation? Can look that up too. Check sources? Can do that. Insert a quote? Just cut and past it - no rewriting required.
I can see why they worry about plagiarism - that's easy to do to now.
Honestly, it's easy to write research papers now or non-fiction. What used to take me days in the 1980s through early 00s, now takes someone like my niece twenty minutes to an hour tops.
Academics can't whine about it any longer.
* the NRA
* gun rights supporters
* Boy Scouts of America (they support the NRA, co-lobby with them for funds and have courses taught by the NRA in shooting. Also the only way you can get to a shooting range or teach your kids to shoot in NY is via the Boy Scouts. Evidence of America's Love Affair with Guns.)
* police
* the Supreme Court
* Congress
* Texas
* anyone who owns a gun or supports it
* the Republican Party
The news out of Texas is not good. At all.
2. The Essex Serpent is bringing back what I liked and disliked about the book. The book has a heavy feminist vibe to it, and undercurrent of how men treated women in Victorian Times. Luke - the doctor - is particularly annoying in both - because he has a thing for Cora, and somehow thinks he's entitled to her affections. In his arrogance, he believes the only reason she's not into him is because she's still grieving. (Which is annoying because the reader and viewer both know she was abused horribly by her husband and his death was a relief - so much of one that she refused life-saving measures be performed, and luckily so had he.)
What I liked was the friction between religion and science or superstition and science.
The romance, I found to be somewhat problematic and kind of wished the writer didn't feel the need to go there. But alas. She did.
3. I've been irritable today - so I'm glad I didn't go to work, and had taken the day off. Wales has not responded in regards to plans this weekend and fallen off the map or off text. I'm annoyed. She whines incessantly when I don't follow through and has been bugging me to get together for weeks now - even tried to get together literally the Saturday five days after I was getting over COVID and felt like I'd been hit by a Mac Truck.
But now? Crickets.
4. Mother is making me watch the soap opera. Okay, "making" is a strong word.
Mother (calls at 3PM): Are you going to watch the soap now?
(I'm watching Star Trek Discovery S4 which is slow): Uh..maybe. I don't know.
Mother: You should, it's not bad today - go watch and we'll discuss after.
Me: You realize I'm only watching this thing for you (and well the off chance I'll get to see my favorite couple banter - which is like hoping to see a meteor shower or a blue moon at this point).
Good thing she called, the DVR was screwed up due to all the news preemptions, so it didn't record like it was supposed to. I fixed it.
5. Weighing going into the city on Saturday to partake of the Lower East Side Arts Festival, but I don't know. It's free. Will be crowded. And I'm still wary of COVID. (I just had it and I did not enjoy it and do not want it again. And while the indoor venues are requiring vaccinations, I'm vaccinated and had it. Yes, I know, I'm being a wimp about this. I go to work every day and half of them don't wear masks and not everyone at work is even vaccinated. But they are also not performing and spitting as they do so - I'm sorry, speaking, reading poetry aloud, dancing, and singing - does involve some physical exertion and well spitting.)
Also, it's supposed to rain tomorrow.
We'll see.
6. Where did the internet slang word "Welp" come from? It's been popping up on Twitter and now Dreamwidth, but not quite yet FB or Instagram.
7. New book "Stitch in Time" is apparently a gothic romance, and I can't decide whether the hero is the killer, or his friend or sister are?
Also, while working on revising my own book - Word wanted to be updated. So I did. And now the reviewer has even more buttons and stuff to it. So much, that it took me forever to find "Find and Replace". Also it has this editor button - that appears to tell me how many mistakes I've made, and how concise my writing is, clear, etc. Currently I'm getting 99% accuracy rating. Plus it has a dictate and read aloud function. The read aloud is a computer monotone - which isn't really helpful. They need to work on that.
Software engineers scare me - though - sooner or later they will update this thing to the point in which I can't use it. Stop.
Plus? I don't want to hear any one whine about writing a research paper or thesis ever again. It's easy now. You don't have to worry about grammar, spelling, formatting, footnote placement, endnote placement, structure, insertion of tables, pictures, graphs, style, or any of that. Word does it all for you. Just a click. No html coding required. You don't even have to use a dictionary or a thesaurus. Research? Easy too - it's all online. No card catalogues or worrying if the books are available. Make a mistake? Can delete instantly, no rewriting. Translation? Can look that up too. Check sources? Can do that. Insert a quote? Just cut and past it - no rewriting required.
I can see why they worry about plagiarism - that's easy to do to now.
Honestly, it's easy to write research papers now or non-fiction. What used to take me days in the 1980s through early 00s, now takes someone like my niece twenty minutes to an hour tops.
Academics can't whine about it any longer.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-28 02:02 pm (UTC)I don't tend to mind sex or romance in books - I read a lot of romance novels. But it does have to be somewhat organic, and not off-putting. The Essex Serpent? I liked the central romance for the most part, but at the same time - I kind of felt it wasn't really organic to the novel or the novel would have been better without it. Sex and romance should further characters and plot. And it does in this novel - but, I don't know, it didn't work for me as well as other aspects - also I despise love triangles, and the love triangle or quadrangle in the novel irritated. It may work better here in the television form, not certain.
Regarding Amazon? Eh, I don't think they are evil. But I also have "extended" family members who have worked for them and benefited. And at least three of us got books published and sold because Amazon existed. Plus all the stuff folks are accusing them of? Are also true of many many other organizations notably: Apple, Microsoft, Dell, WeWorks, Google, Wellchoice (ie. Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield), US Sprint, HW Wilson (now defunct), Many Universities (Columbia is not a happy place to work), Barnes & Noble, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Persesus Books,
Elsevier, EBSCO, Wallmart, Loews, Home Depot, The Boy Scouts of America, GE, NBC, Disney...
I know too much about various industries and companies via my own experiences, my extended family, co-workers, etc. The most toxic to work in? Entertainment, Fashion, Publishing, and Library Reference. (I still can't get myself to use libraries.) Also Academia.
That said? I think Amazon has over-expanded. It's gone into everything, and I greatly preferred it when it stuck to books, movies and music. Clothing - it kind of sucks at, and it's probably better to get appliances from Best Buy - which I keep learning the hard way. Furniture - from anyone else (learned that the hardway as well). Food - also from anyone else.
Agree on software - it just keeps adding do-dads that I don't need. Someone clearly does, but it can't be that many someones - can it?
no subject
Date: 2022-05-28 04:12 pm (UTC)Yeah, lots of awful corporations. Partly I have more irritation at Amazon because they're more in-my-face too, e.g., making it increasingly hard to tell them things they might want to know, showing me things that are available only to Prime members, making me have to hunt for whatever links allow me to order without joining Prime, etc. Twenty years ago their site was a lot less annoying. For books, in the UK I try to use places like Hive instead where I can.
No idea library reference is so bad though, that's a shame.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-28 06:34 pm (UTC)The difficulty with a lot of books - is the writer often doesn't know how to write a romance or sex scene - both are hard to build well. And in some books - they aren't necessary. With sex scenes - it helps if you know anatomy. (-: (It's amazing how many folks don't. For example, cis-gendered women do not have prostrates.)
Never heard of HIVE.
I like Amazon for e-books, they cost between $0-$2.00. Also free shipping. But I also am just doing it in NYC, not in the UK or rural America. In NYC - Amazon is really easy to use. We have several warehouses, etc.