sarahcanary

That's pretty fancy! How long does it keep in the fridge?

I loved this book! Such a fun read. Plus living in the South with kudzu EVERYWHERE, I was delighted it finally found a purpose besides choking all other plant life to death.

Yes! This experience has made me question a lot about what I think I 'know' and to really have an open mind towards new (to me) information.

All context, or lack of it, aside, the writing in Heart of Darkness is phenomenal. It's prose poetically dense and I find myself lingering on each sentence to experience it fully.

I need to give Finnegan's Wake a try! Years ago one of my friends composed a 'sonic micro opera' of Finnegan's Wake. It was experimental theater in the extreme and made me curious to give it a read. Thanks for reminding me of this novel.

Yeah I had to look it up and now recall learning about the theory! Funny what a brain forgets. My brain at least.

Well wow, your book experience here is incredibly profound! Mine doesn't quite compare in intensity, but did rewire my brain a bit.

I am doing a re-read of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for a book club. I read this book years ago in college in a Gothic Lit class, reading it in the context of gothic genre traits: self vs other, familiar vs strange, civilization vs savage- and the inevitable dread accompanying the dissolution of the 'vs' and realization that civiliity is mere patina on monstrosity etc.

I still had my old college copy, but sadly it was filled with underlines and highlights (I can't believe I was so terrible!) so I got a clean copy, a Norton Critical edition. Omg. The amount of extra material included was vast. Essays on the history of the Congo, on Imperialism, letters to Belgium's King Leopold, notes from Conrad's own journey as a Congo steamboat captain, critical essays on the book itself.

As ridiculous as it sounds, I had NO IDEA this book was a critique of Imperialism. None. Zero. Reading this in college I thought it was purely a fictional dark gothic fantasy. I didn't know about the actual atrocities in the Congo and that Conrad had witnessed them first hand. I didn't know public sentiment turned against King Leopold after this was published, because they too didn't really understand what was happening there. I even read in one of the essays that American kids were being taught this book as a 'journey to the center of self' and devoid of any mention of imperialism. Yes, yes we were! That spoke directly to my experience.

All of this suddenly coming into focus felt both enlightening and awful. How was this taught without context?? And how am I only realizing this now? I'm still reading through the essays, grateful I found them before reading the novella again.

The guy lived on the moon for a bit so... bound to be a little off. The whole show is a little helter skelter but I think that's what makes it so great. Creative and unexpected with pinch of time travel, yum.

Great show.

Right, so... Do gravitational waves theoretically travel at the speed of light? I studied physics way back in the 90s, I recall the universal gravitational constant, I don't think gravity waves were a thing yet. I'm just trying to get an idea of the wavelength.

Edit: Yes, they are theorized to be light speed waves with a potential wavelength spanning the entire universe.

Shit like this makes me regret changing majors. I miss thinking about the fundamental nature of reality in mathematical terms.

This article says these particular gravitational waves have a frequency of perhaps a decade? Am I reading this right?

Well, I get your general point though tipping at a restaurant doesn't quite work like that. You don't get crappy service as a result of not tipping; you tip at the end of the service.

I tip 20% no matter how dismal the service, which is not the norm here. People have bad days and I don't want to financially penalize them on top of it. It just feels shitty.

Me neither! What a creature, positively prehistoric.

Yes, it does make you the asshole, especially because you know that's what we do here and why we do it. Until living wage laws are passed, it's not going to change.