WTF-Beta

@Mary-Anna said:

Re: the album vs. single question, only for reading fiction

I'm not sure there has ever been a hugely popular reading analog to the album. Anthologies of short stories by a number of authors have always been, and they still are, published, but not as a significant portion of the market. Collections by a single author have been, and are still, published, although this generally true only for authors who are very popular in novel form, and their short story collections do not sell anything close to the volume that their novels do.

I think the pulp era may have been the only times that short stories were a significant portion of many authors' incomes. Come to think of it, people like Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, and Poe published frequently in magazines, so that probably extends back to the 1800s and ends around the time of WWII. Even then, I feel sure that it was only due to the popularity of magazines.

Even Agatha Christie, the bestselling novelist of all time, received the bulk of her income in her early years from short stories and serializations of her novels in the pulps. They paid very well. Actually, magazine rates aren't a lot different now than they were then, which means their real value is a small fraction of what it was a century ago.

My husband loves short stories but they’ve never been my favourite. However, some of my most memorable reading experiences have been short stories by Stephen King. In fact, I absolutely loved when he published The Green Mile originally. It was in “chapbook” form, inspired by Charles Dickens. They were released one a month, IIRC, and I looked forward to each one.

As much as I loved that experience and others I have had with short story collections, as MaryAnna said, I generally don’t get short story collections even when written by authors I love. Short stories do seem to fall into two camps (at least from what I’ve noticed). Highly literary authors (Margaret Atwood, for example, has a number of books that are her collected short stories), and genre authors. Sci fi and fantasy collections of short stories are published all the time, and I actually will read the stories by my favourite authors! But I don’t know why I am less inclined to do so with, for example, realistic fiction.

I’ll drift back to wtg’s invitation to weigh in on younger learners. Just for reference, my most recent teaching experience is with grade 1/2 (so 6-7 year olds). Attention spans have definitely been impacted in these young kids. Their brains literally crave fast paced changes. They are fall less able to sustain their attention to a complex task for a period of time. This is something that has been studied in young children over the past few years, so I’m relying on more than anecdotal evidence when I say this. Generally my kiddos do have shorter attention spans and much less tolerance for boredom than children I taught a decade ago. And yes, I blame smartphones/tablets. I think the kiddos sitting in front of me this year are likely the worst I have seen. Remember, they were born in 2018-2019. So many of them were more likely to have screen babysitters as their families juggled working from home while they were still toddlers. This literally “rewires” their brains. Anecdotally, I am able to lengthen their attention span and tolerance for sustained work over the course of the school year - and I believe I’m getting many children to levels similar to those I would have seen a decade ago. However, I have a handful of students who just shut down when given any difficult focused task. And the kids who shut down are also, unsurprisingly, the ones who talk the most about video games. And they are also the most likely to talk about playing wildly inappropriate games like Grand Theft Auto.

I’m not in the “video games are universally awful” camp. I fact, I do believe that they are an incredibly rich art form. I’m also not completely anti-device in the classroom. However, I do think that the current nature of media is changing children’s brains in a way that makes sustained, focused thinking much more difficult. AI certainly isn’t going to help with that trend as they get older.

The radio station of my teen years, 89x, was reformatted as a country station when I lived in Toronto. But last year they reformatted (re-reformatted?) it to be the alternative station of my youth - with an afternoon DJ who is my age. I actually listen to it sometimes when I drive, after not listening to radio for twenty years!

@ShiroKuro said:

@Steve-Miller When I was a kid my Italian grandma has a kitchen in her basement (in addition to the main kitchen). She had these huge tables down there, we used all the surfaces when it was time to make pasta or bread. Whenever I was there, I "helped" but most certainly not in any way that was useful!

Anyway, I always associate a second kitchen with that.

There is a large Portuguese population here and my best friend growing up was a Portuguese immigrant so I spent a lot of time with her and her family. Every Portuguese house had a second kitchen in the basement!

I just saw a relevant clip from Tip Toe, which is airing on Channel 4 in the UK, but isn’t available here. I can’t wait to watch it when it is.

I’m so sorry to hear this.

4/10. AI is terrifying.

This would be so fantastic. An abandoned well is what cause the explosion that destroyed the downtown area of my hometown a few years ago.

@daniel So I have an Instagram account dedicated to board games. Occasionally small board game companies send me games to play with the understanding that I’ll play the games and post about them. Because modern board games are a fairly niche hobby, it only takes a few thousand followers to become enough of an “influencer” for companies to partner with you. Larger accounts (many still under 10k followers but some of the super popular board gamers influencers that I follow have over 100k followers on instagram ) will be paid to make content about games, sometimes for social media or for Kickstarter campaigns. They get invited to try games before they are released and get lots of free product. And these folks definitely influence purchasing decisions amongst fellow board gamers so they are a huge part of a game company’s marketing budget. Every hobby has their own group of influencers. In niche hobbies they may only have a few thousand followers. But in areas like makeup and fashion they may have millions of views on TikTok. It’s a really bizarre landscape. There is a woman, I believe in China, who shows each product for 1-3 seconds before moving on to the next one. She’s a big deal - though I don’t really get why. But companies pay her to show their product, just for a moment.

I know someone who has become an influencer in the financial sector. Neither he nor his partner have zero credentials. The recommendations they make are legal, but very risky. I don’t really understand all the ins and outs but it amounts to leveraging everything you have to take loans and then investing that money. There is a name for it that I have forgotten. Again all legal. But their audience is folks like me - teachers and other middle class professionals who are doing fine but definitely are not wealthy. They charge people for their “course” and consultation fees. They are in the camp of “don’t let those financial advisors take your hard earned money - we can teach you how to do it yourselves”. I don’t know what that looks like if people start defaulting on those loans.

Ugh. Alberta. To be honest most of us are fine if they want to go - the problem is it cuts off BC. The separatists of Alberta are the same ilk as the carrot dictator’s base so…

I use AnyList for recipe management. I have been on the lookout for a good recipe app for literally decades and this ticks all the boxes for me. If you copy and paste ingredients as a block of text it separates them into individual things. There is a share function from blogs and recipe sites where it formats the recipe by just sending it to the app. (NYT Cooking plays SO well with it!). It allows you to sort and categorize and the search function is great. We use it to meal plan (and it tells us when we last cooked something - you can even have it suggest ideas based on how long it’s been). Once it’s in our meal plan I just click add to shopping list and it brings up all the ingredients for the week. I tick off the ones I need. If there are duplicates (one lemon in this recipe and two in that one) it will consolidate them to one list item. We have been using it for several years and they continue to add new features. There is a slimmed down free version but we pay the $15 (CAD) subscription to have all the features. Highly recommend!

Deep in the green, here. However, now I say grilling unless I mean BBQ (smoking). Maybe because Rob got really into BBQ for a bit so we changed our terminology to match? But chili has beans.

I do get Tangle but haven’t been reading it recently. I did read this - thanks for posting it.

@wtg said:

@Mik said:

Yeah, that sugar as the main ingredient throws me off.

Yea, the original Nutella also has sugar as #1. I love hazelnuts, and I know people love Nutella, but I've always found it to be way too sweet.

I made homemade Nutella when the kid was little. It was SO DELICIOUS. And of course I could lower the sugar content. Highly recommend.

I’m with Jon and Adagio. I much prefer reading on my Kobo (similar to Kindle, but not Amazon tied) to paper these days largely due to my eyesight. I tried reading on my iPad for years and my reading dropped significantly. Eventually realized that even though I turned off all notifications while reading just having the iPad in my hand messed with my focus. With my kobo I have the exact same focus as I do with physical books but I can actually see the print without eye strain. Also, I suffered from tendinitis for years (clarinetist hazard) and for a time holding a book open was painful. While that’s no longer the case it is nice to have that lighter Kobo rather than a heavy book.

All that said I love the idea of beautifully bound books in a physical library. But in practise I am down to a small barristers bookcase of books I keep for nostalgia.

I’m rereading Project Hail Mary. I’m enjoying it more the second time. It’s still not as good as The Martian, but pretty great! I’ll see the movie when it comes to streaming.

The photos the came back after the flyby yesterday are amazing. For what it’s worth, I’m ignoring every photo on social media and only trusting those directly from NASA. But they are pretty spectacular.

My favourite:
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/art002e009288/

I turned on the livestream at about 11 this morning and have had it on all day. The fly by was fascinating! Can’t wait for the photos from Artemis.

I do check the comments before hand and sometimes I use the suggestions! I don’t use them all, based on what I know about our tastes, but I definitely check!