I imagine if you took two seconds to contemplate how too many small businesses are run, you could figure out it’s shit management from your local companies and not this particular kiln operator.
I bet Covid got you a lot of fun data to play with re: “supply line collapse”.
I’ve always been interested in work like this–I took a class that covered lean manufacturing and kept thinking about how “just in time” inventory seemed like it’d be awful for a hospital, as the hospital would be MOST needed if supply lines collapsed, and JIT stuff seemed a dumb move. But I was only spitballing on the surface as an outsider.
Thanks that was a great analysis. Once you started in I did recall about half those details, but mostly I guess it needs to go on my reread pile since I’ve forgotten so much.
I find, when I re-read, one thing that stays with me is how vibrant and beautiful her narration is. I think the books are still worth reading, but that modern audiences who’ve been participating in more modern discussions around storytelling would recoil at some of the bits we sort of just accepted as being “normal”, as standards for what is “normal” have shifted. The spirit of the books always was forward-thinking, even if she got some stuff wrong.
When Anne McCaffrey did a signing in Chicago when she won her Grand Master award, I had a battered copy of Damia (from her Talents series), and she told me Afra Lyon was her own 2nd favorite character, behind Robinton.
I was on “The New Kitchen Table”, which is where her online fandom ended up in the late 90s for a while, but her fandom was HUGE and had already been around for nigh 20 years with Weyrfest and all at Dragon*Con so aside from the one in-person comment (after I waited hours in a line that twined around the bookstore–the only time since that I’ve seen a bookstore event line that long was for a Harry Potter release), I was very much on the periphery of the fandom vs. those who’d been in it for 20 years already.
Honestly, it’d be easier to say which books have GOOD adaptations, since the norm is poor adaptations and it’s hard to choose which one is the worst since so many suck in different ways.
I think part of the reason I use Zenni Optical online is because Warby Parker sounds like a place that’ll offer grandma glasses for stupid-expensive prices.
If someone will legit get hurt or killed by incompetence, you speak up. That’s time-sensitive, and you can’t afford to twiddle your thumbs just because you’re anxious or whatever. Immediacy of physical harm is the one situation where action is most important above all and even if you’re shy and withdrawn and generally don’t get along socially with people, you can’t cater to that in certain situations and you have to do something yourself to fix the situation if incompetence is going to cause physical harm.
In situations where an entire company is being incompetent as a whole or is doing something terrible, you leave/quit. Yes, it’s sometimes a choice between removing yourself from an immoral situation or starving–and I have, absolutely, chosen to be poorer and starving rather than be a part of certain things. But other people make that choice on their own knowing their own internal situation and context.
If someone’s just being dumb and the consequences of their dumbness are my own irritation or frustration but nothing that actually matters but my poor feelings, I often ignore it. There is no way as a human to fix everything that is wrong with everyone everywhere, so it becomes important to learn how to internally deal with your disappointment when you discover that the world is imperfect.
Online, I don’t believe really in “debate” (I don’t learn from active, aggressive live-action debate–it’s more likely to trigger me to shut down and STOP learning, which is bad), I learn more from reading other people’s convos. So I will sometimes respond to someone who is being dumb, not as a way to get into a debate with them, but to get my perspective out there so lurkers who learn as I do by reading more than interacting have something to chew over that’s better than the bullshit I saw. I don’t expect anyone to take my words uncritically–that’s not how people learn–I’m just massively disinterested in debate since it fucks up my own ability to keep pressing forward with learning. (Trauma in my past means my responses to stress are all fucky, so I jury-rig things to work around it.)
I’m glad you’re healing well. I broke my foot earlier in the year in July…lis franc injury, but mild enough that they decided not to do surgery for fear of fucking up with the tiny foot bones (I got a lot of little breaks at the end of the bones which are nigh-impossible to put screws through without making it worse), which seems to have been the right call as I’m walking on it 4 months later.
I absolutely loved the doctors that got all excited and doctory talking about stuff! With me, I ended up with some of the history of lis franc injuries, which used to be common for soldiers on horseback, as they’d fall from their horse and get the midfoot stuck in the stirrup, breaking it.
I also had an unrelated small skin biopsy, and my surgeon was happily chattering away about doing it by hand so I don’t get weird skin flaps by the punch, and how the little cauterization tool worked. You know, as I lay there with bits of my flesh burning, lol.
In my experience, this usually fills in for something that people need to be true.
I’m not religious, but I’ve noticed religion can (successfully) act as a mental buffer to help people through hard times. To keep them from simply clocking themselves out during the lowest of lows.
Whether someone else likes that idea or not because it’s “lies” doesn’t really matter if it’s a technique for pure animal survival that works for some members of a species.
Personally, I’ve seen a lot of damage done to perfectly good people done via religious institutions, so I’d prefer if a formalized network of mental health services that was affordable and accessible existed. But, again, my preferences for the type of system that performs a function aren’t going to erase what happens in real life with real people faced with survival problems on the ground.
My entry into Discworld was Guards! Guards! and I’d love to see a really good rendition of that. I know a lot of people loves Vimes, and I do too, but I also love Carrot and his werewolf girlfriend and I’d like to see Carrot being Carrot.
I think Susan’s story as the grand-daughter of Death could be great, too.
I know Neil Gaiman has a great deal on his plate shepherding his own works onto the screen, but I wish he magically had a bit of extra time and energy to do something (besides Good Omens) of Pratchett’s.
They’re only trivial to separate if you think the only “real” sci-fi is hard sci-fi. Star Wars, Star Trek, and plenty of other beloved sci-fi series that blur the lines would get lost in the infighting.
I mean, the “war” between sci-fi and fantasy has been going on for decades, and it’s always been ridiculous.
It’s unlikely Hollywood will ever touch Piers Anthony with a ten foot pole after some of the stuff he’s self-published in his later years. Like Marion Zimmer Bradley, the SFF world has decided it’s wisest to quietly forget him.