everybody on ilx complains about reddit

i like "user-hostile metafilter"

― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Wednesday, October 11, 2017 4:42 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

new board description obv

it's probably absurd to try and understand and relate to "incels", but at the same time it's good to see ilx's comments on those darn kids occasionally go beyond "we used to kick a ball in the street".

if these kids ever kicked a ball in the street they wouldn't be in this predicament

Some truth to that. Exercise can ameliorate solipsism.

Does Rocket League count?

I know this is just "we used to kick a ball" but I do think about how at one point the weirdo outcasts (or at least some of them) were more likely to start terrible bands and go to shows in bowling alleys and VFWs and basements.

I was captivated by online communities even when I was doing that, but I think there's a lot to be said for interacting irl with other awkward weirdos vs online during teenage years.

Definitely

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/7669xp/i_feel_like_an_idiot_i_vastly_misunderstood_how_a/

It's s whole new world for PM_ME_GLUTE_SPREAD

what's sad is, i think that guy's idea of a library (basically a movie rental store, for books) is pretty close to how you'd expect it to be in our shitty society! libraries with free books are an amazing thing that we all take for granted.

if the concept of the library suddenly vanished, and we were all walking around the same 2017 except that libraries didn't exist, and then someone had the brilliant idea to create a physical space with tons of books that could be borrowed, the natural inclination would be to charge money for each book to offset all the other costs of running the library. the idea of making it basically free for the library patrons and instead paying for the operation through local funding, government subsidies, grants, etc would seem naively progressive and unlikely to work in places other than small towns in Vermont. instead, someone would be like "why don't we just all purchase books separately, and then we can lend them to each other using an app that lists the books we own and the books we want to borrow, and then it'll cost $6.99 a month to use the app, and then we'll offer free basic shipping but offer a 1-day shipping option that's more expensive and we take a modest cut of it. yes, that sounds much easier and financially lucrative than going to the trouble of putting all the books in a physical space and trying to pay for it through local taxes."

in my neighborhood these littlefreelibraries have started going up. if you haven't seen them before they're these structures - a clear cabinet on a post - where people leave and take books. it's a huge crapshoot (mostly mysteries/other pop lit and other mass market lit) esp if you like more exotic fare but it can be fun to release a book into the wild if you're otherwise done with it (surely someone else will appreciate this collection of essays on benjamin???) and we've found some great kid's lit including like every single Rey curious george.

speaking of children's lit i know i'm now getting way off field but i have to tell ppl about this and i haven't had the chance to figure out what thread it goes into.

so we have this collection of beatrix potter stories that i've been reading the girls for years - mostly the peter rabbit story and the benjamin bunny one and like the one about tom thumb hunka munka and the dolls. but the other night they asked me to read Jemima Puddle-duck which i had never read bc it's one of the longer ones in the collection. but we had some time so i read them the whole thing. it's really grimm level horrific. i really recommend everyone to read it themselves but basically it's about a duck who really wants to hatch her ducklings but mrs farmer keeps taking her eggs them from her so she goes to the forest to find a place to lay + incubate the eggs herself. while searching she finds this charming gentleman with "black prick ears and sandy-coloured whiskers" (the fox, Mr Tod) who invites her to lay her eggs in his home. he shows her a nice room to use and she's very confused to find that it's filled w/ duck feathers. anyway, she comes every day to incubate the eggs and eventually they're ready to hatch and the fox asks jemima to go to the market to get various spices (that are useful for cooking duck) for a celebratory dinner. she goes shopping and while she's at the market she proudly brags about everything to this local sheep-dog. he solemnly thanks her for the intelligence, gathers up a posse and they beat up the fox. unfortunately in the commotion jemima freaks out and breaks all of her eggs :( but the happy ending is that the next season mrs farmer lets her incubate her eggs and of her 9 eggs 3 ducklings are born because it turns out after all that jemima is not a very good egg hatcher.

besides being a casual children's story about a predator tricking his prey into letting him eat her and all her offspring in his murder den, it lets pass without any judgement that mrs farmer was doing the same thing - using jemima to create a never ending supply of eggs to eat herself and her supposed mercy at the end of the story is just her creating more egg hatching machines. it's v bleak for a children's story told in a very bright, upbeat fashion.

what's sad is, i think that guy's idea of a library (basically a movie rental store, for books) is pretty close to how you'd expect it to be in our shitty society! libraries with free books are an amazing thing that we all take for granted.

― Karl Malone

free public libraries are cool and all but my understanding is that they're basically the work of a ludicrously rich corrupt monopolist who wanted to be remembered as something other than a ludicrously rich corrupt monopolist - like, not really all that different from google today?

i hate to see the bing version of a 'littlefreelibrary'

https://i.imgur.com/QkxshDE.png

in my neighborhood these littlefreelibraries have started going up. if you haven't seen them before they're these structures - a clear cabinet on a post - where people leave and take books. it's a huge crapshoot (mostly mysteries/other pop lit and other mass market lit) esp if you like more exotic fare but it can be fun to release a book into the wild if you're otherwise done with it (surely someone else will appreciate this collection of essays on benjamin???) and we've found some great kid's lit including like every single Rey curious george.

we inherited an unofficial one of these outside our new house. i just have to tidy it up once a week or so, otherwise it takes care of itself. it's great! a lot of spanish stuff, a lot of kids books, an anomalously large amount of franzen.

Speaking of libraries, "Ex Libris" is really really great. Reddit users wondering "what does the public library mean in 2017?" will have all their questions answered.

i thought it was pretty weak by wiseman standards tbh; the beef that he's allowing his agenda to be warped by the institution he covers with lots of board meeting coverage rang uncomfortable in libris to me

god bless the NYPL of course
and wiseman too incidentally

Mordy otm re beatrix potter. The Tale of Mr Tod, with two brawling psychopaths competing to eat children, isvalso horrifying. graham greene wrote a great essay about it which i cannot find online.

thx for the tip - looks like it's in his collected essays. $1.99 mass market paperback. ships from uk tho - hopefully in a month i'll remember why i ordered it.

Support your local independent bookstores. Not Amazon or libraries.

free public libraries are cool and all but my understanding is that they're basically the work of a ludicrously rich corrupt monopolist who wanted to be remembered as something other than a ludicrously rich corrupt monopolist - like, not really all that different from google today?

― bob lefse (rushomancy), Saturday, October 14, 2017 12:42 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

1) no, 2) even in cases where yes, who gives a fuck? libraries are one of the few decent things we have.

Support your local independent bookstores. Not Amazon or libraries.

― Treeship, Monday, October 16, 2017 9:48 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like wtf are you even saying?

The library thing was kind of a joke tying into the discussion I support libraries. But I think bookstores are cool too and Mordy just mentioned buying something from Amazon.

ok, not a joke i really got but it wouldn't be the first time.

independent bookstores are fine! they're also by and large not serving esl readers, or like poor people in general (he says, for the record, not countering any particular post)

Yeah they're different kinds of institutions.

neither bookstores nor libraries generally have the book i'm looking for

i love them both but they can only stock so much

you can have local bookstores and record stores order stuff! and not pay shipping because they’re getting it from the distributor in a weekly shipment. local record store knocks a dollar or two off retail price if I special order.

It's true.

I order everything thru my local bookstore now except academic presses because they end up having to charge over the cover price for those. It's fun!

I'm had at libraries because I haven't got the focus to finish anything before it's due back, or even start reading things right away

I buy pulpy science fiction straight to kindle and occasionally borrow books from the library via overdrive

free public libraries are cool and all but my understanding is that they're basically the work of a ludicrously rich corrupt monopolist who wanted to be remembered as something other than a ludicrously rich corrupt monopolist - like, not really all that different from google today?

This is why Trump won? ^^^ because no one can delineate the line between public and private anymore? I certainly don't walk into libraries and gesticulate in front of the ghost of Andrew Carnegie.

You want a new future? Break my glasses, Khmer Rouge.

also this is only sort-of-true in the US of A, very different stories for y'know the whole of the rest of the world

Also, as an example of non-misogynistic ways in which reddit communities demand toeing a (usually harmful) line, while also providing needed hope to the hopeless, i direct you to: http://www.reddit.com/r/cripplingalcoholism/

It's a community that doesn't judge gutter drunks, but also maybe gives them a home that's too warm. They're not receptive to college students worrying about the occasional bender.

They really love each other. It's just a shame that the members die off like rain-forests. r/opiates is also interesting, if you're looking for membership outside of social norms.

r/ambien gave me some chuckles the other day

i love free libraries. they have them all over town here, either in custom wooden cases or re-purposed newsstands. once i found a really cool art book on the Symbolists. usually its pop crap/Da Vinci Code/Dean Koontz/etc. but sometimes you see literary classics and texts bought for school.

unless i am looking for anything specific i do most of my book shopping at thrift stores. 50 cents paperback $1.50 for hardcover, you can't beat those prices. if you luck out and someone w your interests donated recently you may come upon a treasure trove of a bunch of cool stuff you never know you needed.

the library system is one of the great achievements of civilization, don't play yourself

I understand why people find those 'little free libraries' cute and nice, they seem pretty innocuous and well-meaning. But they're exemplars of the issue of moving social good into the private/charitable/voluntary sphere. Patchy, minimal, constantly in danger of being abandoned due to lack of free time or interest, untrained or no staff, not actually providing the service that they've named themselves after, not really accessible to the people who need the service most... and many other issues.

And probably I will get people going "oh, but they're not really supposed to replace public libraries" - look at the mass redundancies of librarians and their replacement by untrained, unskilled volunteers. If you think they couldn't possibly replace libraries, stop erroneously calling them libraries, for a start.

neither bookstores nor libraries generally have the book i'm looking for

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 17, 2017 3:10 AM (thirteen hours ago)

Okay, how did someone respond to this by saying that indie bookshops will order stuff for you and completely neglect the concept of the INTERLIBRARY LOAN, never mind the fact that librarians are trained professionals in information access? You can get almost literally any knowledge that has ever been recorded from any library.

sadly not true. i use interlibrary loans as much as possible but v often the book i want is not available anywhere in the network.

I've said the exact same thing about the little free libraries, emil.y, but was rebuked by actual librarians and book enthusiasts! The people most enthusiastic about them tend to be big readers and more likely to use actual libraries, but having a neighborhood book share is more of a local community thing and drums up interest in reading, which is lacking.

and yeah, I've bought books because interlibrary loan system doesn't account for the fact a small press book from another country hasn't made it into the local library system's radar

the library system is one of the great achievements of civilization, don't play yourself

― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Tuesday, October 17, 2017 11:14 AM (fifty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

also "little free libraries" are cute and all and good kind of fun way to share and discover books, they also add a little aesthetic charm to a neighborhood but that's about all

independent bookstores are fine! they're also by and large not serving esl readers, or like poor people in general (he says, for the record, not countering any particular post)

― call all destroyer, Monday, October 16, 2017 10:05 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

I've said the exact same thing about the little free libraries, emil.y, but was rebuked by actual librarians

You obv don't hang out with the same librarians as me, lol.

i like little free libraries but they're not really libraries, they're neighborhood book share systems. which is fine! but they're obviously not a replacement for the many offerings of public libraries. and i don't think most people see them as a replacement. more just a fun easy cute community thing to do. (i am technically a librarian but am not a public librarian, i run a small niche library and do a lot of other non-library-related knowledge work for a nonprofit association).

i can imagine real deal librarians would have an issue w the misuse/general expanding of the term. i have friends that went to school for archiving and library work, so i definitely respect that profession. we will always need librarians and imo the traditional library. technology will not replace books (on the contrary it has made it possible for more people than ever to print and distribute their own).

the problem may be the term "library" itself is too useful, what else are you supposed to call a freestanding book depository? its a book place or something. book recycling? but that makes it seem like the books themselves are destroyed and re-purposed. i dunno. its easy to say free library.