FWIW the number of Active Users on Lemmy + KBin has levelled off recently: fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse(i.e. maybe we’ve stopped losing users from the summer influx? Or maybe lurkers are now commenting more?)
Day 68. @empireOfLove still hasn’t replied to the “deez nutz” joke I replied with on c/memes. Morale is low and despair is welling but a tiny sliver of hope remains. Will today be the day that @empireOfLove comes through?
Well, this conversation inspired me to finally read The Colonel, which reminded me of how great some of Watts’ ideas could be. Guess I’ll have to get a copy of Echopaxia next.
Yeah, when I read that book I was like: this reminds me of that time I freaked out in high school!
I admire the fact that the author put it online for free, and it’s a pretty good book, but it could have been better… Watts could have taken all those ideas about consciousness and humanity and produced something like 1984 or Catch-22 that embodies ideas that might otherwise get lost in abstractions. Unfortunately the ideas all get a little muddled.
Yossarian had everything he wanted in the hospital. The food wasn’t too bad, and his meals were brought to him in bed. There were extra rations of fresh meat, and during the hot part of the afternoon he and the others were served chilled fruit juice or chilled chocolate milk. Apart from the doctors and the nurses, no one ever disturbed him. For a little while in the morning he had to censor letters, but he was free after that to spend the rest of each day lying around idly with a clear conscience. He was comfortable in the hospital, and it was easy to stay on because he always ran a temperature of 101. He was even more comfortable than Dunbar, who had to keep falling down on his face in order to get his meals brought to him in bed.
you can only focus on about 10 percent of what you actually see in front of you,
I read about this when I was in high school and it freaked me out because I convinced myself that there were Cthulhu-like eldritch abominations inhabiting the spaces I could not see RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME and I couldn’t concentrate on school for the rest of the day.