Starkess

On 1/29/2024 at 5:04 PM, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Oh my sweet summerchild, you don't understand men laundry.

Women laundry simple, two piles: Clean and Dirty.

Men: Clean, Dirty, and dirty but good enough to wear.  (that third pile could be further be divided, but let's keep it simple here).

I think that's just people laundry? Are people really out here washing things after every single individual use? I certainly don't, and most woman I know don't either. Ask them about the chair (do not ask them when they last washed their bra...)

I did indeed have my wallet stolen in Spain! Only time I've ever been pickpocketed. It wasn't in my pocket, though. I was actually in the middle of making a purchase, and got my wallet out of my purse. Sometime between handing the cashier my credit card and ID and going to put them away....poof. I was actually quite impressed! I never even noticed any strangers near me in the shop.

Ended up being a major pain in the ass, though, as it was the start of a month-long trip and I had no way to access cash, and this was in ~2007 so credit cards were definitely not accepted everywhere.

I also liked Barcelona less than most everyone else, but I think possibly because it was our last stop on the trip and I was quite ready to be home by then. I really like Madrid!

I definitely use cover art to help me find books that I think I might like! I've found some random and fun books that way. I do read the back cover blurbs before making a final decision and sometimes checking the rating on GRs (but not reading reviews because I hate hate spoilers--even reading cover blurbs can be too much for me sometimes).

On 1/4/2024 at 4:10 PM, Fragile Bird said:

Oh yes, please, tell me what you didn’t like about it! I mentioned in the last thread that I listened to the first two hours of the audio book and finally gave up. I was so sick and tired of hearing the word fuck I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I was afraid that the sex scenes would be of the “how many fingers he got up me” variety a la The Court of Crown and Thorns et al variety. Yet people are crazy about the book! I can curse with the best of them but the start was so juvenile I couldn’t finish.

Wellllllll....

For one thing I do not think there was a single original idea in the entire book. I know, nothing new under the sun, but everything just felt like a blatant ripoff and copy/paste of other books. Severe case of the main character really being The Main Character. Like of course she not only manages to bond one of the types of dragons that is never supposed to bond with people, she ALSO bonds a SECOND dragon who is ALSO not meant to be bonding with people. She's just THAT super special. She also will not shut up about how tiny and small she is. It got weird. And the MC has a disability, which I gather the author also has so I do think that is a cool bit of representation, except insofar as that is makes NO SENSE. We are constantly told that her joints pop out, her ligaments are weak, etc etc and yet this never actually holds her back even in scenarios where it absolutely should. Including one violent sex scene which breaks all of the furniture in her room but somehow not her incredibly fragile bones?

And the sheer predictability of the ending! I mean, this shouldn't have been a surprise, given the lack of originality elsewhere, but somehow it was surprising in how utterly unsurprising it was.

Anyway, yeah, I kinda hated it. It was shelved with adult fantasy and the cover and blurb were written as if it was a straight fantasy, but I discovered afterwards that it's actually one of the "romantasy" books (yes, like ACOTAR, which I haven't read because I know I don't like that style). It reads like YA except with sex and swearing.

Fun fact, I was reading this book on my honeymoon and I was telling my husband about how terrible it was, making fun of the MC and her two dragons, and a lady at the next cabana was like "oooh, I heard you say two dragons, are you reading Fourth Wing? I LOVE THAT BOOK!" Haha, apparently she did NOT pick up on my tone. But she said she normally doesn't like fantasy but this one was just so good, so yeah, I don't think I was the target audience at all.

Happy New Year! I am really hoping 2024 will be a better reading year for me than 2023. Pretty sure the only really good books I read in 2023 were re-reads, and I had the unfortunate pleasure of reading a book that made me despair about ever reading good fantasy books again (Fourth Wing), but I hope that was just a case of misleading marketing.

Right now, I am re-reading Fool's Fate by Robin Hobb, the last book of the 2nd Farseer trilogy (and 3rd Realm of the Elderlings series). I remember that I enjoyed this trilogy but not as much as the first one, which is one of my favorite series of all time. The second book was definitely pretty slow and, while still good, not anything particularly memorable. So I am hoping the third book will be a bit punchier! I am listening to the audiobook, which is nicely narrated by James Langton.

I am also reading The Fall of Babel by Josiah Bancroft, the final book in his Tower of Babel series. I loved the first one but found the second one not great, so I put off reading the third one for a couple years. Finally read it on vacation in November and it was definitely an improvement, so I was actually willing to move right on the this last one and hope he sticks the landing!

On 11/12/2023 at 2:27 PM, A True Kaniggit said:

Also, today was Veterans Day in America yeah?

Who all we got? @Starkess, ain’t you a Veteran? Or is my brain too scrambled.

Thank you for your service.  

Aw thank you! I spent it trying to cram myself into a basic economy seat on an 11-hour flight

12 hours ago, Madame deVenoge said:

ETA - I am definitely done with SoCal Guy…he mansplained accounting to me, tonight 

 wow, BIG mistake, BIG

On 10/23/2023 at 2:13 PM, Kalbear said:

Belated congrats!

Thank you!! Everything* went really well and I could not be happier!

*almost, I'm a perfectionist but trying not to dwell on the small hiccups...

Lol I just looked up one of those "delusion calculators" and it said there was a 0% chance there was any woman like me in the US 

But sorry boys, I'm getting locked down next weekend!

On 9/28/2023 at 5:00 AM, Tywin et al. said:

It's a sham. This is basically like signing a basketball player to a $2M deal, but if they win MVP, Finals MVP and lead the league in scoring they get $20M. 

The hard truth is the WGA never had a chance for major concessions unless they were willing to strike for years which they simply couldn't do. Big money almost always wins these fights. 

I think they did get major concessions in all the other areas though. Definitely a success IMO.

I think to say no streaming residuals is a simplification. There are plenty of improvements and gains regarding streaming residuals, at least my understanding from reading the WGA agreement summary. I think the new viewership-based residual is the one that didn't get accepted, but there is a "bonus" established based off the residual amounts so kind of a semantics game?

The accepted new viewership-based streaming bonus:

"HBSVOD series and movies that are viewed by 20% or more of the service’s domestic subscribers in the first 90 days of release, or the first 90 days of any subsequent exhibition year, get a bonus equal to 50% of the fixed domestic and foreign residual. For example, for a project written under the 2023 MBA, the bonus would be equal to: • $9,031 for a half-hour episode • $16,415 for a one-hour episode • $40,500 for a streaming feature over $30 million in budget"

(Though personally I think that the "viewed by 20% or more of the service’s domestic subscribers in the first 90 days of release" threshold is way too high, there can't be very many shows that would ever reach that, though I guess we don't know for sure since that data isn't public.)

Tiger Woods.

Finished listening to Mad Ship, the 2nd book in Hobb's Liveship trilogy (the 2nd trilogy set in the Fitzworld). This is my second time reading this trilogy, and I always ranked it below the Fitz books, but upon re-read I'm liking it even less. All the characters are terrible, the situations feel contrived at times, and the books are glacially paced and overly long (especially noticeable as the hours of the audiobook drag on). I mean, it's still Hobb, so it's good, but definitely don't think I'll feel the need to re-read this trilogy again. Starting Ship of Destiny and then looking forward to a change of pace.

Decided to run a race for the first time since my marathon! Just a little local 10k in October, but it feels good to be training again. Though also crazy, definitely running into the barrier of simply not having enough hours in the day. But I already run longer than 10k (very slowly) for my weekend runs, so even if I can't totally stick to the plan, I should be able to finish and have a fun time at the race. Speaking of which, better go get these miles in before bed...

On 7/25/2023 at 11:32 AM, Raja said:

Also, is the Hartnett-aissance afoot?

OMG THAT'S WHO THAT WAS! I spent the whole movie thinking he looked so familiar, but I had no idea!

I checked this out over the weekend. First time in the theater in probably at least a year? I'm not a big movie person. I enjoyed it, though I was pretty unfamiliar with any of the historical context outside of the Manhattan Project and I felt that made it a bit hard to follow. Felt like Nolan was making a film for people who already knew the story, in a way. My fiance and are both physicists (of the astro variety) and I was a nuclear engineer, but neither of knew the history (doubly so for him since he's not American) and felt that took away from the experience a bit.

I actually didn't have any issues with the sound mixing or the volume, something which I do regularly get annoyed with in other films.

On 7/23/2023 at 10:26 AM, IheartIheartTesla said:

Just got off the phone with the parents, and they were telling me about some protests (well, everything in India can either be celebrated or protested....not too different from here) because of Oppenheimer quoting some Gita verses during a sex scene. I dont know if that has any basis in reality or not, since my parents didnt watch either. 

Yeah this absolutely happened, it was one of the weirdest and cringiest scenes in the whole thing IMO. Threw me right out of the movie and fiance and I both exchanged eye rolling glances.

Okay everyone talking about the music made me check it out, and y'all are killing me. Yes maybe it's arranged weirdly for the trailer, but the song is Control by Halsey, a certified platinum song from her double-platinum certified debut album, Badlands. It's an excellent song from an excellent album!

I felt similarly about Tchaikovsky. I read the first couple books in his insectoids series and they were fine, solid books but they just didn't have a spark for me, and I didn't really care much about the characters. I keep meaning to check out his Children of Time stuff since I've heard it's better...one of these days, maybe!

I listened to Children of Eden, a dystopian YA novel. It was...pretty meh, tbh. But it didn't actively offend me so I will probably pick up the sequel at some point when I need more running entertainment. When I went to add it on Goodreads, I saw apparently the author is some YouTube personality?? I mean good for him for turning that into a novel (and I think he had an uncredited co-writer), but maybe could have used some more work first.

On 7/5/2023 at 9:02 PM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Tomorrow threads comes online, I’m betting it’s a spectacular failure the first day, whose up for it? Winner gets bragging rights.

You lost that bet, sir.

10 hours ago, ljkeane said:

I've been struggling with plantar fasciitis since lockdown. I've tried various things to fix it but basically it seems what you need to do is just rest it and I don't really want to. I gave in though and I've not been running on the road since Christmas and I haven't really done anything since the end of the rugby season. It feels a bit better now in general so I'm going to give preseason for rugby a go and see what it's like/try and get fit.

 

When I hurt my feet (not plantar fasciitis but achilles enthesitis) I had to stop running for 2 years before it got better. Unfortunately rest really does help more than anything else! I hope yours clears up soon!

Done!

I do have some Bluesky invites if anyone wants one...

Ended up being so unenthused about picking up The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill again that I just decided to return in. Started on Children of Eden, a post-climate-disaster dystopia from the sound of it? We'll see.

I listened to Mister Monday by Garth Nix, the first in the Keys of the Kingdom series. I picked it up because his Abhorsen trilogy is wonderful. This one is not quite as good, but I still enjoyed it. Very quick read (it's YA or maybe even MG) and the MC Arthur is a great blend of clueless and plucky.

I am now listening to The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill, which I am not enjoying very much. The MCs are a pair of sisters and one of them, Elaine, is driving me bonkers. I'm trying to tell myself it's possible that she's going to get a comeuppance and grow and learn, but I'm a quarter into the book and no sign of it. Also the entire book is dripping in "good salt of the earth farmers vs big bad evil business people" condescension.