Well this is interesting

Well, random relative to the set of available books. If only it were random relative to the set of ever-existing books!

“Get the recorder started”

“What?”

“Well, a lot of times it begins a recitation.”

“It… ah, I see.”

“Amazing thing, but you have to be ready. There are people just trying to identify some of the languages of some of these lost poems…”

6 Likes
1 Like

Well, it says right on the machine, “Collect all 112 million titles”. Merely pseudo-random, you may say, but it’s random enough for me.

What is your quotation from?

6 Likes

I was just imagining one conversation if it were random relative to the set of ever-existing books.

You’d probably have various anthropologists and historians camped in front of it year-round, trying to recover as much as possible. You’d need specialists in ancient languages and/or historical linguistics to even identify many languages, and send the books to the appropriate overworked specialists…

5 Likes

If you look closely, many of the ‘transit’ maps are really about major story plots, like Lord of the Rings and Hamilton:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/FiftyThreeStudio

4 Likes

Scholars would be lined up out the door and along Bloor St. for a chance to rebuild the library of Alexandria from random selections, except that at $3.00 a pop, (even $CDN), they’d never get funding.

5 Likes
1 Like

This is interesting in three ways:
1 - An 8K TV channel. That’s a lot of Ks.
2 - Yay, “2001 A Space Odyssey!” :tada:
3 - The still illustrating this article shows a scene that never appeared in the final edit of the movie.

9 Likes

That is a lot of Ks. More than my eyes need.

I have a 4k TV and have watched a few 4k things on it, but since I don’t pay for the extra 4k Netflix as I just don’t get enough ooomph out of it.

At what resolution will there be no point in redigitizing film media as resolution n-1 already captured everything?

9 Likes
6 Likes

I do not really know where this goes, but I HAVE to share.

This weekend I was digging up the furniture dealz for my new digs. I have a place that I’ve found via Craigslist (which fyi turned out to be a real dud of a place) that I am stalking. I have the GPS on but I cannot see it when Siri is saying, “Over there, thataways!” So I go past, then find a place to hang a U-Turn. It just so happens the place I am Uing through has a sign that says it has estate sales. Uh, that’s what I THOUGHT it said. And I can see by the window it’s got vintagey stuff. It doesn’t look like furniture is a big seller there, but it’s right there and why not? I pop in.

Two sweet older ladies greet me in the most pleasant way. They tell me they are twins! And to look around. I ask about furniture and they say they do not have much but point me over to the second room. The place is bigger than it appeared from outside. There’s at least 3 rooms.

And here’s where it goes all Twilight Zone.

“So,” I say as the twins approach, “You get this stuff from estate sales?” It’s all kind of QVC circa 1989 looking stuff - old microwave cookbooks, a LOT of porcelain figures in pastel shades, some hats.

“This is the result of a lifetime of our mother’s compulsive shopping,” the twins tell me, rather proudly. They show me a photo of their mom, young and lovely, in a gorgeous wedding gown. “Dad said that he’d be a millionaire if it weren’t for mom. She grew up in the Great Depression and had nothing. We never saw a garage that you could park a car in. Dad would tear up her credit cards and she’d just open up new accounts.”

It sounded like Dad was a successful business man and that he was able to care for her in old age, so I guess he had some separate accounts he hid from her.

They were super sweet ladies.

I needed to get to the other place before it closed but I told them I’d come back. I’m going to take my daughter. I didn’t even get to see the upholstery fabrics that were in the back room.

Seriously - an ENTIRE STORE that was just their mom’s crap.

19 Likes

sounds like my house

9 Likes

I think you may have spotted well.

I expect 10-20 years from now, compulsive Amazon shopping will fill many pop-up shops.

9 Likes

And I suspect the demand for such stuff will plummet.

7 Likes
9 Likes

Fun fact: Before “Boys Town” (1938) premiered in Canada, children were not allowed in movie theatres! But because of its message, the Canadian government lifted the ban!

11 Likes

This is my favorite, too, lol!!!


And Rooney was actually more Scots than Irish; I dunno 'bout his mom (she was from St. Louis) but his dad was born in Glasgow. The Scotsman had his place in vaudeville for a while, but the Irishman as a character lived on in film long after the Scotsman faded away.

Another fun fact: Father Flanagan was also a whistle-blower on child abuse in Ireland, where he was born!

10 Likes

Awesome story well told. The opposite of the Big Box experience: a place with character and a history.

That’s my parents. Nothing goes out if it has any possible use, and everything is useful.

I think it’s heritable.
11 Likes

I think you are totally right. It’s something I’m struggling with as I clear out my apartment.

I’ve never got to the levels of that lady, and I’ve avoided making shopping a hobby, but I’ve gone through phases/situations where I’ve felt pressure to buy. I don’t go to stitch ‘n’ bitches at yarn shops anymore because of the pressure to buy yarn, every time – at today’s yarn prices, it would be cheaper just to have a nice meal out when I felt like it. Ditto for a lot of book events.

It’s too easy to say yarn and books and all the stuff I mean to mend will keep and not be thrown out, but the larger point is a lot of it shouldn’t have been bought in the first place.

9 Likes

Were they born and/or raised during the Great Depression or by people who were? Because that’s why I have old auto parts, paint, ad nauseum - my parents having been poor, GD or not. “Waste not, want not”.

9 Likes