IntenseDebate - Van Bourbon Bowies

1 day ago @ Crasstalk - Steady As She Goes Ope... · 1 reply · +6 points

Here’s a photo I took in December of the ducks on the grounds of my mom’s condo complex. Ducks in the foreground, ducks in the pond, ducks on the far shore—quite a duck situation. Also an interloping goose.

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1 day ago @ Crasstalk - Steady As She Goes Ope... · 0 replies · +7 points

I’m sorry DQ. You were right where you needed to be, hard as that is. You did so much good for your brother. I hope you can find a way of being at peace with the the pain, grief and confusion of losing him.

And I agree about death being incomprehensible. It’s a terrible old mystery.

2 days ago @ Crasstalk - New Week Open Thread · 0 replies · +5 points

Your mention of film criticism as a career path reminded me of something that Nathan Heller wrote:

“Critics justifying their trade like to say that the judgement aspect of their job—the thumbs-up or thumbs-down—is the least interesting part: really, they just love movies or whatever it is they review. This sounds a little like a butcher claiming to have gone into the meat-slicing business because he likes working with animals.”

2 days ago @ Crasstalk - New Week Open Thread · 1 reply · +5 points

I recommend checking Gibbon out!

I find his prose style sort of breathtaking, in a grandly rhetorical, 18th-century way. Some of his sentences are downright works of art. And he has a droll, supercilious wit that I find really funny at times.

Modern historians of the period disagree with Gibbon’s ideas about why Rome fell, so take some of that stuff with a grain of salt. But I don’t think that matters.

If you do Audible, I recommend Charlton Griffin’s reading of Gibbon. I think Griffin really gets the sweep of Gibbon’s rhetoric, and also his humor.

A sample of Gibbon doing his thing:

“Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterwards of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication. They attempted not, however (as has since been executed with so much success), to naturalize the vine on the banks of the Rhine and Danube; nor did they endeavor to procure by industry the materials of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labour what might be ravished by arms, was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit.”

—Edward Gibbon

2 days ago @ Crasstalk - New Week Open Thread · 3 replies · +5 points

Among my favorite go-to-sleep audiobooks are the complete Sherlock Holmes stories (narrated by Stephen Fry) and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (narrated by Charlton Griffin).

Both narrators are excellent—especially Stephen Fry, who is a life-long Sherlock Holmes fan (which you can really hear in the way he reads).

2 days ago @ Crasstalk - New Week Open Thread · 0 replies · +5 points

Today’s was my first Wordle where my opening word (which is always the same) returned zero hits, which was a surprise. But it turned out to be helpful.

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3 days ago @ Crasstalk - Winter Weekend Open Th... · 0 replies · +2 points

Hi DQ, just dropping in to yesterday’s OT to let you know I’m thinking of you and your brother, and wishing you both ease and peace. I’m thinking of when I was with my dying sister, not long ago—hard as it was, I was right where I needed to be. I couldn’t have been anywhere else. I’m wishing you wellness.

3 days ago @ Crasstalk - New Week Open Thread · 0 replies · +7 points

🎶 🎹

If I could save Tim in a bottle

4 days ago @ Crasstalk - Winter Weekend Open Th... · 7 replies · +13 points

Your being up all night administering meds—that sounds very hard and I’m imagining that your brother’s condition is grave. I wish you and your brother ease of mind, peace, and freedom from pain. I hope you’re able to get some rest and take care of yourself.

Regarding the missing syringe caps: it could be ghosts, it could be cats—it could be ghost cats! That’d be cool.

5 days ago @ Crasstalk - Winter Weekend Open Th... · 2 replies · +10 points

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