The Sword and Laser discussion

It's a terrific effort if it leads to change - I am just not sure the index really addresses what Vimes was talking about in the boots speech.

Jan wrote: "It's a terrific effort if it leads to change - I am just not sure the index really addresses what Vimes was talking about in the boots speech."

It needs wealthy people willing to take a hit in order to improve the lives of the less well-off, which is not something to bet on. Even if that hit doesn’t actually impact their lives, people rarely do it.

Conversely, it’s hard when the people you’re trying to help don’t understand how things work and make bad choices. To give a simple example from my own experience: I used to volunteer to take people who are homebound to their doctor’s appointments or grocery shopping. One woman I did this for could not understand that she would save money in the long run if she bought the 6-pack of paper towels rather than the single roll each month. This applied to everything she bought. We even did the math for her, showing that if she bought items in bulk, at the end of the year she’d have an extra $200. Her counter-argument was that the bulk items were more expensive. She couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that these things were cheaper when bundled, even though by law the price tag has to disclose the per-item cost. So she’d buy the one roll for 99 cents when the 6-pack was $5, essentially giving her one for free. “But $5 is more than $1!” she’d insist. We had that same conversation every month for 3 years.

Sam Vimes is correct that $50 boots that last 10 years are cheaper in the long run than $10 boots that last one year, but someone who only sees the immediate cost rather than the long term return on investment is impossible to convince.

Trike wrote: "Jan wrote: "It's a terrific effort if it leads to change - I am just not sure the index really addresses what Vimes was talking about in the boots speech."

It needs wealthy people willing to take ..."

Your example of not understanding value is a valid point. It does require planning and budgeting (also having a reserve so you can wait for sales).

An interesting study that relates to this is one that studies cognitive load and your ability to take advantage decisions.

In the experiment you are asked to remember a string of numbers (two or seven numbers) and while they are trying to remember them to repeat in the next room they are asked if they want a healthy fruit salad snack or chocolate cake. The ones with seven numbers pick the unhealthy option more often (OK, I fess up I would always get chocolate cake). I.e., higher cognitive load makes it harder to make "good" long term decisions.

This relates to poverty in the following way. If you are Shortt of cash then every purchase decision carries a higher cognitive load and makes long term planning and decision making harder.

The Vimes boots index has had some effect!
https://twitter.com/bootstrapcook/sta...

(A Twitter thread from Jack Monroe detailing how cheap basic food items have returned to their local supermarket)

^ Oh, excellent! It's been a long time since I had to make that kind of decision, but I recall a tough time in my youth where I didn't eat for a few days because I couldn't afford fifty cents for the cheapest loaf of bread. How horrifying if the price of basic foodstuffs goes up 300% and you just don't have the money.

For this latest go-round I noticed the price of even the cheaper meats went way up. Chicken went up 33% from one month to the next. London Broil, which I use for "quickie beef stew" (cut up chunks, olive oil, beef broth) went up 25%. Price of chicken has stayed up, London Broil went back down. As a T2 diabetic I stick to low carb so for me food is basically medicine. I couldn't live on pasta or rice. Well, I have in the past and paid the metabolic price. Chicken is a base (low cost) food and while I can afford the increase, I wonder about other T2 diabetics who may have to make compromises.

Speaking of bookmobiles, the Bookworm is watching:

@Mark

It's not a bad idea. Like if people want to share stuff that may be interesting to the forums/but not necessarily for consideration on the podcast.

We could call them SlowBurns? I don't know.

Regarding Bloom County coming to Fox: I love that strip! And I'm also a member of the Dandelions FB group. Small world! Well, internet.

It's also hilarious that the show is going to Fox considering Breathed's well-to-the-left political views. Well, Breathed is good at giving it to both sides. Bring on Bill, Opus and the gang! Thhphhhhht!

Fox is owned by Disney now, except for the “news” channel.

Rob wrote: "We could call them SlowBurns?"

LOL Slow Burns is good.

I may have said it before, but I'm a big fan of the original run of Bloom county. I even picked up the multiple volume complete run, that came out a while back. But after that, I don't quite get it as much. It seems like the characters and characterizations I liked least got pushed to the front, and those I liked most got pushed to the back. I really liked Milo, Oliver Wendel Jones, Cutter John, and yes that version of Opus. I never really liked Steve Dallas (I know that was part of the point), Bill, or even what Opus has seemed to devolve into. I enjoyed liking the charcters, instead of rooting against them, or rolling my eyes at them.

I know I must be in the minority on this, and to be honest the only one who's opinion matters is Breathed, and I'm very glad he is able to make stuff he enjoys.

Rob wrote: "@Mark

It's not a bad idea. Like if people want to share stuff that may be interesting to the forums/but not necessarily for consideration on the podcast.

We could call them SlowBurns? I don't know."

I sometimes post articles here and say "well it's not exactly new news, but" - so having a place to post that stuff would alleviate my guilt when I do that.

Here you go: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Trike wrote: "Fox is owned by Disney now, except for the “news” channel."

That acquisition did not include the Fox TV channels. Fox Television, and as you said, Fox News are still part of the Fox Corporation.

Louie wrote: "Trike wrote: "Fox is owned by Disney now, except for the “news” channel."

That acquisition did not include the Fox TV channels. Fox Television, and as you said, Fox News are still part of the Fox ..."

Oh I see — when John said “Fox” he meant the broadcast channel. I use “Fox” to mean the studio, even though its official name is now something clunky like “20th Century TV”. It’s just easier to say “Fox”.

Also, if one types “Fox” often enough, it starts looking weird.

About Brandon Sanderson's announcement -

That is just SOOOOOOOOOO Sanderson!!!!!! It even escalates!

Serendi wrote: "About Brandon Sanderson's announcement -

That is just SOOOOOOOOOO Sanderson!!!!!! It even escalates!"

That was hilarious.

I showed it to Mrs. Trike and she said, “I expected him to pull a baby out of his drawer.” 😆

Meanwhile, GRRM is just starting work on chapter 7 of the next GoT. :p

His Kickstarter is already the second biggest kickstarter ever. That’s wild. Good to see an author getting a pay day without being beholden to publishers.

He's certainly proven his reliability.

Here's a prescient skit Daniel Greene did almost 2 years ago:

"Brandon has a writing problem..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcZVA...

It will be interesting to see what else happens in the arts due to people having a lot of time on their hands in the pandemic. I can imagine there were quite a few people who gave writing a try during lockdowns.

Also, do any other established authors have something they did with the extra time they had on their hands?

Sanderson's kickstarter is over $15 million as of now, a day after announcement. 29 days to go. This thing is HUGE.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...


EDIT: And over $100K added in the 20 minutes since I first posted this. I considered the Jim Starlin / Dreadstar kickstarter a huge success at $130K. Sanderson is breaking the publishing industry.

FOUR secret novels? Does this man eat or sleep at all??

Scalzi has some interesting thoughts on the whole thing: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2022/03/0...

Dara wrote: "FOUR secret novels? Does this man eat or sleep at all??"

His word output is pretty prodigious. He mentioned at one point that his “cruising speed” is 2500 words per day, and once he hit 19,000. I don’t even know how that’s possible. That’s like 65 pages.


https://ibb.co/LSSthhV

And now it's the most funded Kickstarter ever. Wow!

When it came up in my Kickstarter feed it took me a good 15 seconds staring at it to figure out what it was… the name and the dollar figures just didn’t quite compute for me for a good 20 seconds. I had to google it to make sure it was all legit.

Damn I though Pratchett was prolific (about 50 novels in 35 years)... He also just wrote every day.

^^ I like how the figure in the picture is pointing towards the dollar amount, with a light smirk on his face.

Aaaaand as of now it's almost $21 million. Amazing.

Iain wrote: "Damn I though Pratchett was prolific (about 50 novels in 35 years)... He also just wrote every day."

Not to mention that a typical Sanderson novel is longer than a Pratchett novel.

Brando Sando calls Georgie Martin

https://youtu.be/58SM3QQhAg0

Mark wrote: "Brando Sando calls Georgie Martin

https://youtu.be/58SM3QQhAg0"

😂

Mark wrote: "Brando Sando calls Georgie Martin

https://youtu.be/58SM3QQhAg0"

😂😂

There is an FAQ on Brandon Sanderson's website where he addresses why he did the Kickstarter. I'll post a link, but in short, he is concerned about the dominance of Amazon and did the Kickstarter as a way to give his organization some experience distributing books. That way, if he gets cut off from Amazon for some reason, he has other options.

He also wanted to demonstrate the viability of distributing an ebook with a print book.

His answers are pretty interesting and quite detailed on his thinking.
https://www.brandonsanderson.com/some...

Pandora's Star is clearing missing from Esquire's top 100 sf books.

Shad wrote: "There is an FAQ on Brandon Sanderson's website where he addresses why he did the Kickstarter. I'll post a link, but in short, he is concerned about the dominance of Amazon and did the Kickstarter a...

...
He also wanted to demonstrate the viability of distributing an ebook with a print book."

This ⬆️..

Especially with hardbacks.. Something pretty for the bookshelf and an ebook for travelling around so you can keep your pretty hardback in good condition.

I feel like it's robbery when you have to buy the ebook for a book you own in print. It should be free for purchasers of physical copies.
Marvel comics was doing it for a while.

Ian (RebelGeek) wrote: "I feel like it's robbery when you have to buy the ebook for a book you own in print. It should be free for purchasers of physical copies.
Marvel comics was doing it for a while."

And as an ebook only reader, it would annoy me to have to pay for something that a hardback reader gets for free...

The thing is, if you value having an ebook copy of something, why shouldnt you pay for it? Someone saying "I like the hardback for [reasons] but I also want the ebook" is saying that both have value and in economic terms, things of value usually are paid for. It's easier to give the ebook away, of course, because there's no cost to producing another copy for you whereas giving me the hardcover because I bought the ebook does incur a cost.

it's an interesting conundrum - the value is mostly in the words, of course but we both assign value to the format too. You for wanting the physical artifact for some reason (display, whatever) and me for the immediacy of ebooks and the ability to read on any of my devices. To me, giving someone an ebook that costs me, say, $12.99 just because they bought a hardback feels like I'm getting screwed. To them, having to lay down another $12.99 for an electronic copy of a book probably feels the same.

And then there's accounting for royalties. Does the author get payment for the bundled ebook? If not, doesn't that hurt authors? Oh and... fulfillment. Do hardback purchasers get a coupon? How is that redeemed?

Most of the kickstarters I support offer the ebook or ecomic free with the physical version. The one time it didn't, I shrugged and decided not to pay more as I thought $30 was enough to support the author. I was going to just put on my glasses and read during the day. Anyhoo, they had some delivery kerfluffle and circulated the ebook to supporters.

I'm otherwise overwhelmingly an ebook reader. It doesn't come up. Since I read most tradpub through libraries the authors will get compensated through those deals. For Indie, they can have my money, but up to a limit. Being smart about it means the author can offer ebooks for less than physical for those with limited funds, and include ebook free with physical if you want to/can pay more. Then there's the tchochkes which can add up but can also be a lot of fun.

Pulling the book banning story into a longer discussion....

So every May, I teach a Reading class to college students. Every year Banned Books Day is the favorite, where we talk about the subject, students tend to connect to books they love that have been banned. This year I'm putting more of a focus on it because of where things are these days, and we'll also have a guest speaker from Every Library, the organization that helps public libraries fight when needed.

Since we are all such readers here, I'm curious. Have you ever participated in your public library's governance? Have you served as a board member, or attended a public meeting? Have you ever spoken up for a banned or challenged book? Have you ever written a blog post or letter to the editor?

In my local community, we've had everything from an internationally noted graphic novel banning incident* to a drag show that resulted in death threats and the FBI's involvement**. The library board reports to the county council, which is always super conservative. I've heard of director-encouraged nefarious practices that stop many books from even GETTING to the shelves. My response is not to donate more books to that library (they'll never get to their readers) but to buy them for my academic library in the same town (since 25% of our interlibrary loan is to the public library patrons) and donate them to the queer resource center so the people who go seeking information/books with people like them can get it.

I want to encourage people who care about this sort of thing to do something, even something small, because what happens at the public library often is determined by the loudest voices. I believe public libraries should serve everyone!

*http://cbldf.org/2012/12/neonomicon-b...
**https://www.greenvilleonline.com/stor...

With regards to an Orphan Black series, I'm not super excited. To me the thing that made that show so great was Tatiana Maslany. I'll probably check it out anyways though.

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Have you ever participated in your public library's governance? Have you served as a board member, or attended a public meeting? Have you ever spoken up for a banned or challenged book? Have you ever written a blog post or letter to the editor?"

Good questions, and I'm curious too. I am a public librarian and until the last couple years we've handled cases as they came up, but have recently tried to be a little more proactive. We've got a week of programming coming up partnering with the local university, calling it first amendment days. We're putting it out there on our show on local radio, in the newspaper etc. It's gone from something to watch out for to an issue we feel responsible for starting a public conversation about.

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Have you ever participated in your public library's governance? Have you served as a board member, or attended a public meeting? Have you ever spoken up for a banned or challenged book? Have you ever written a blog post or letter to the editor? "

I’ve never served on a board, but I’ve done all the others.

I’m not opposed to banning some books, because ideas are dangerous, but it’s such a slippery slope that I generally say no to it. That said, I think it’s absolutely fine to restrict some works by age. Children are not ready for certain subjects. That’s why I’ve never been a big opponent of the content warning stickers on things.

I don’t have kids, but even 30-plus years ago my friends were complaining about the sheer volume of stuff that their children were exposed to, and it’s only gotten a million times worse in the internet age. TV ratings and album stickers are a small price to pay to avoid outright censorship.

We recently had a parent want to get a book removed from the school library, effectively “banning a book.” Which a lot of people, including my coworker, absolutely balked at. But the book had graphic descriptions of sex, and it was available to 3rd graders. Kids who are 8 years old aren’t ready developmentally to handle that stuff. Personally, I’d be fine banning that book outright, because it was just gross, but I think any adult should be able to read whatever they want. There aren’t any adults in grade school, though, nor in high school, frankly. They don’t need to see that.

Rob wrote: "With regards to an Orphan Black series, I'm not super excited. To me the thing that made that show so great was Tatiana Maslany. I'll probably check it out anyways though."

Is she not involved?

Trike wrote: "Rob wrote: "With regards to an Orphan Black series, I'm not super excited. To me the thing that made that show so great was Tatiana Maslany. I'll probably check it out anyways though."

Is she not involved?"

The press release that all the news outlets quote doesn't mention Tatiana Maslany appearing in the new show, nor any other actors. So I guess we have to wait and see,

From the Hugo discussion:

Yes, the last Worldcon was delayed to December and this year's will be held in a more normal timeframe. So just a few months after the Hugo announcement we start again.

I just figured Trike was messing with us, tho.

I was not. (This time.) It did feel like they just happened. December 18th, so yeah, recent.

Regarding the announcement that "Send to Kindle will be dropping support for sending books to your Kindle in MOBI and AZW".

Since Amazon is moving to support EPUB which you will be able to send to your Kindle if the EPUB file is DRM-free, this doesn't seem to be a huge deal.

However, it may matter if you are still using an older Kindle and there may be issues with EPUB compatibility. See https://goodereader.com/blog/kindle/e...

Of course everything Amazon does is intended to keep readers on their platform.

Mark wrote: "Regarding the announcement that "Send to Kindle will be dropping support for sending books to your Kindle in MOBI and AZW".

Since Amazon is moving to support EPUB which you will be able to send to..."

annoying

Google's actions are monopolistic and hurt readers. I have no particular love for the corporate behemoth Amazon, but they did pioneer the ebook market and still lead it. Google trying to horn in only makes things worse. It's two Kaiju fighting and the city gets wrecked.

There is a reason that I use Calibre with DRM removal add-ins. This kind of thing drives me nuts. I have the Kindle app on phone, I have a Fire and a Paperwhite, and I don't need telling what I can and cannot do with an item I have purchased.

Clearly it's a different issue with Kindle Unlimited and returning books after reading - that's like paying a rental library fee, and I've no problem with that. But Amazon pulling this sh - er stuff is like GM saying you can't resell your Chevy.

So regarding Jan's recent news item that there is another GOT spinoff happening. Doesn't it seem like all of these are coming too late. I mean it is unfortunate that the pandemic and other issues slowed production down, but I just get the feeling that the forge has cooled down too much on this series. I know HBO made a ton of money off of this originally, but I just don't know if there is any coat tails to ride in on this anymore.

I wish them these series the best of luck, but I'm not going to watch just because they have GOT attached to the name, they are going to have to be good on there own for me to do that.