Pixel Scroll 6/17/18 Come Away, O Meredithed Book, To The Kindle And The Nook

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(1) ADVICE AND DISSENT. When Elon Musk described himself as “…a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks” on Twitter he got plenty of pushback. Soon Lee and Rob Thornton report that the pushers included Charles Stross, Hal Duncan, Cory Doctorow, and —

https://twitter.com/CherylMorgan/status/1008443039893872640

For those who need an introduction, Edward Champion’s 2013 essay “The Culture Novels of Iain M. Banks” looks promising:

When not committing his considerable energies to such intense Bildungsromans as The Wasp Factory or bleak-humored narratives like The Crow Road, Banks inserts an M into “Iain Banks” and writes science fiction novels. Most of these speculative volumes concern the Culture, a utopian-anarchist society that extends across a sizable cluster of the universe. These Culture vultures gambol across the galaxy in ships with such eccentric names as Don’t Try This at Home and Serious Callers Only. Culture citizens live for centuries, and can even change their appearances if they grow discontent with their corpora. These conditions encourage these civilized sybarites to have more fun than a flighty Dalmatian discovering a chiaroscuro sea of spotty companions. Never mind that there’s always an intergalactic war going on.

(2) DOLLAR BLAST. Just as you’d expect superheroes to do: “‘Incredibles 2’ crushes animation box office record”.

The Disney and Pixar film premiered to an estimated $180 million at the domestic box office this weekend. The sequel to the popular 2004 computer animated film soared past the record for biggest animated film opening in box office history by $45 million.

That record belonged to another Pixar film, “Finding Dory,” which opened to roughly $135 million two summers ago.

So far the film brought in $231.5 million around the world.

(3) BIG CAT. Should an owner discourage the ambitions of an SJW credential?

https://twitter.com/Laelaps/status/1008458533795344384

(4) HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED LEX. Some fantastic beasts who practice law in Hollywood are sowing darkness across the land: “Warner Bros. Crackdown Puts Dark Mark Over Harry Potter Festivals”.

Warner Bros. is cracking down on local Harry Potter fan festivals around the country, saying it’s necessary to halt unauthorized commercial activity. Fans, however, liken the move to Dementors sucking the joy out of homegrown fun, while festival directors say they wll transfigure the events into generic celebrations of magic.

“It’s almost as if Warner Bros. has been taken over by Voldemort, trying to use dark magic to destroy the light of a little town,” said Sarah Jo Tucker, a 21-year-old junior at Chestnut Hill College, which hosts a Quidditch tournament that has coincided with an annual Harry Potter festival in suburban Philadelphia.

Philip Dawson, Chestnut Hill’s business district director, said Warner Bros. reached out to his group in May, letting them know new guidelines prohibit festivals’ use of any names, places or objects from the film series. That ruled out everything from meet-and-greet with Dumbledore and Harry to Defense Against the Dark Arts classes.

(5) WELL ABOVE MINIMUM WAGE. Owen King tells readers of The New Yorker about “Recording Audiobooks For My Dad, Stephen King”.

My father gave me my first job, reading audiobooks on cassette tape. He had caught on to the medium early, but, as he explained later, “There were lots of choices as long as you only wanted to hear ‘The Thorn Birds.’ ” So, one day, in 1987, he presented me with a handheld cassette recorder, a block of blank tapes, and a hardcover copy of “Watchers,” by Dean Koontz, offering nine dollars per finished sixty-minute tape of narration.

This was an optimistic plan on my father’s part. Not only was I just ten years old, but when it came to reading aloud I had an infamous track record. My parents and I still read books together each night, and I had recently begun demanding an equal turn as narrator. Along our tour through Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Kidnapped,” I had tested their love with reckless attempts at a Scottish accent for the revolutionary Alan Breck Stewart, whom the novel’s protagonist, David Balfour, befriends. Even as they pleaded for me to stop, I made knee-deep haggis of passages like the following:

“Do ye see my sword? It has slashed the heads off mair whigamores than you have toes upon your feet. Call up your vermin to your back, sir, and fall on! The sooner the clash begins, the sooner ye’ll taste this steel throughout your vitals.”

Despite this, my father enlisted me to narrate “Watchers.”

(6) WHAT A RUSH. It’s not going to take long for Mark Lawrence’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off 2018 to fill up –

(7) ARCHEOVIDEOLOGY. Echo Ishii returns to the history of TV sff in “SF Obscure: Ace of Wands”.

Ace of Wands is an ITV fantasy show broadcast in 1971 to 1972. It’s technically a children’s/ family show, but it’s fairly sophisticated and one that held my interest. Ace of Wands ran for three series, however, only the third series remains. At the time, ITV wiped old series due to the high cost of production materials and storage.

(8) CATCHY TITLE. Anna-Marie Abell gave her novel an irresistible name — Holy Crap! The World is Ending!: How a Trip to the Bookstore Led to Sex with an Alien and the Destruction of Earth. For the next couple of days it’s a 99-cent special on Amazon. If somebody reads it they can tell the rest of us whether it lives up to the promise of the cover.

Anna-Marie Abell grew up in a trailer park. Well, several actually. Her trailer was on wheels so she got to experience the Pacific Northwest’s vast array of mobile home parks as her parents moved her from one to the other. Somewhere along the way, she got totally into UFOs. Probably because she was hoping extraterrestrials would come and abduct her. But they never did. Luckily for her she was smart, because her only hope of escaping trailer life was college and a full scholarship. Moving to sunny California on her almost full ride to Chapman University, she was well on her way to her new life. Two bachelor degrees later (Film and Television Production and Media Performance), and several honors and awards for her accomplishments, she managed to start working in an almost completely unrelated industry from her majors: infomercials.

It was in college that she got bit by the “ancient alien” bug after listening to Zecharia Sitchin on Coast to Coast AM. In her pursuit to uncover the truth, she has spent the last twenty years researching the ancient Sumerian culture—in particular their “gods” called the Anunnaki—and their connection to the creation of the human race. What she found changed her life, her beliefs, and her understanding of the universe and everything beyond. Her humorous science fiction trilogy, The Anunnaki Chronicles, is a culmination of all her research, her borderline obsession for all things paranormal, and approximately 2,300 bottles of wine.

(9) FRONT, PLEASE. Dorothy Grant’s “Cover caveats” at Mad Genius Club is a great introduction to the process.

So where do you find your cover art and cover designer? Well, you can search the premade options put together by artists and designers, so you know exactly what it’ll look like when you get the “Your Title” swapped out for your actual title, and “Author Name” swapped for your pen name or real name.

Or you can get one designed for you. If you have no idea what you want or need, this can involve writing up a short description of the book or sending the book to the designer. Be aware that a busy professional designer probably will not read your entire book, but is skimming for worldfeel, character descriptions, possibly an iconic scene.

Or, if you’re a little more artistically inclined, you’ll send the designer / artist basically three sets of URLs.

First, links to bestselling books in the same subgenre that have covers similar to what you want. (send 3, so they can get a feel for what’s standard to that subgenre vs. particular to that single cover.)

Second, Send them URLs from stock photo sites that say “models like this”

Third, URLs from stock photo sites saying “backgrounds like this”

Artists think in pictures, not words, so communicate in visuals as much as possible.

(10) IN THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS. I watched the first part of Live Slush Session 2 and was intrigued to hear Baen’s publisher and a contributing editor give candid reactions to authors’ manuscripts.

Baen Books’ Publisher Toni Weisskopf and “Slushmaster General” Gray Rinehart read the openings of volunteer submissions to give writers some insight into the evaluation process.

 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • John King Tarpinian saw how Deadpool celebrates Father’s Day at Brevity.
  • And Ben Solo’s dad featured in yesterday’s Brevity.
  • Mike Kennedy sent along Pearls Before Swine’s suggestion for how to get people to read. (He didn’t say it was a good suggestion….)

(12) ALDEBURGH FESTIVAL. The Stage’s George Hall reviews the opera based on a Silverberg story: “To See the Invisible review at Britten Studio, Snape – ‘a musical patchwork’”.

New at this year’s Aldeburgh Festival, Emily Howard’s chamber opera To See The Invisible has been freely adapted by playwright Selma Dimitrijevic from a taut and distinctly Kafkaesque short story by the American sci-fi writer Robert Silverberg.

The central character has been found guilty of the crime of coldness and is sentenced to a year’s invisibility, during which he is completely ignored by (almost) everyone he meets.

In Dimitrijevic’s libretto the character’s isolation remains severe, though he now has a family consisting of a mother, father and sister. His encounters with them and other individuals – in court, in a public gardens and a brothel – ameliorate his plight while also allowing some of Silverberg’s focused purity to dissipate.

In the opera he also has a kind of shadow in the shape of what the libretto describes as The Other Invisible – Anna Dennis’ female soprano regularly in synch with Nicholas Morris’ baritonal male. The character’s dual vocality is undoubtedly one of the more successful features of Howard’s score….

(13) IT’S NOT EASY BEING MEAN. Olga Polomoshnova analyzes the villain who gave evil a bad name — “On Sauron’s motives” at Middle-Earth Reflections.

Being the chief villain of the Second and Third Ages, Sauron sparks numerous questions concerning his motives. How did he become the evil figure we know him to be? Why did he run the risk of transferring a great amount of his inherent power into the One Ring knowing that it could lead to his destruction? Let us look at his downfall and motives through Tolkien’s own stories and letters.

Having risen like the shadow of Morgoth, Sauron was nevertheless different from his former lord. His downfall arose out of good motives, nor was he the beginner of discord. Sauron belonged to the Maiar — spirits created from Ilúvatar’s thought. He came into existence before the physical world took shape. Originally Sauron, who was known as Mairon (the Admirable) at that time, was associated with the people of Aulë, so he was a very skillful smith….

(14) EATON PHOTOS ONLINE. Andrew Porter labors on, identifying people in Jay Kay Klein’s photos. At the 1967 Worldcon, NYCon 3, this shot of a panel audience showed Walt Liebscher, Ray Fisher, Arnie Katz, Lee Hoffman, and Bob Tucker:

(15) A PENNYFARTHING FOR YOUR THOUGHTS. Ninety years ago, when Frank R. Paul painted his cities of the future, he didn’t include any bicycles at all. Now the BBC is asking — “Tomorrow’s Cities: Will the bike become an urban must-have?”

Fifteen years ago there were just four bike-sharing schemes in cities around the world, but now there are close to 1,000.

Most require you to pick up and leave a bike at a designated area, but new “dockless” schemes from China are coming to cities around the world – and proving controversial.

(16) THE MUMMY DIET. There’s a blog devoted to mummies, and Michele Brittany’s Musing on Mummies is up to “Episode 11: Sokushinbutsu and the Mummification Method Not Often Discussed”.

Ii-wey! Natural or intentional is usually what comes to mind when discussing the process of mummification. Certain environments, deserts, high altitudes or arid cold for example, will naturally dry the deceased, arresting the process of decay as a result. Intentional mummification requires human intervention after a person has died and most often, the Egyptian mummies come to mind. However, there is a third process that is not as well known.

Sokushinbutsu is a Japanese term that refers to a Buddhist mummy that remained incorrupt, or without decay after death….

(17) RADIO FREE BRADBURY. Listen to Ray Bradbury’s Tales of the Bizarre on BBC Radio 4. Four episodes are available online, with three more to come.

(18) NOT THIS WAY. “Astronaut Chris Hadfield says the rockets from NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin won’t take people to Mars” — Hadfield told Business Insider why he’s skeptical.

…NASA’s Space Launch System, which is slated to debut in the 2020s, will power its engines with a combination of liquid hydrogen and solid chemical fuels. Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, is also looking to use liquid hydrogen. SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, is staking its future on burning liquid methane, which the company believes it can generate on the Martian surface.

Like other experts, Hadfield doesn’t doubt that any of the vehicles could actually get to Mars; his issue is about the safety of any humans on board. Explosions, radiation, starvation, and other problems would constantly threaten a mission.

“We could send people to Mars, and decades ago. I mean, the technology that took us to the moon back when I was just a kid, that technology can take us to Mars — but it would be at significant risk,” he said. “The majority of the astronauts that we send on those missions wouldn’t make it. They’d die. Because the technology is still quite primitive.”

(19) EMMY TREK. Star Trek: Discovery submitted a long list of material to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in over 20 categories. The full list is available at the linked GoldDerby story: ”’Star Trek: Discovery’ Emmy Submissions: How Many Will it Win?”.

That post also links to a separate story showing Trek Emmy winners from the past series.

The original “Star Trek” series ran from 1966-1969 and didn’t win any Emmys, but it was nominated 13 times, including twice for Best Drama Series (1967-1968). “Star Trek: The Next Generation” followed two decades later and aired for seven seasons from 1987 to 1994, during which time it won a whopping 19 Emmys, all in Creative Arts categories. “TNG” struggled in top races, however, and wasn’t nominated for Best Drama Series until 1994 for its final season.

(20) DON’T QUIXOTE. Terry Gilliam’s tragedy-plagued project is still plagued but it may not be his anymore. Io9 reports: “Terry Gilliam Has Lost the Rights to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote”.

Well, this is a strange new chapter in one of the strangest stories in modern film. For decades, famed genre director (and former Monty Python, uh, snake) Terry Gilliam struggled to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, his own surreal take on the classic Spanish novel. He succeeded, finally, with a rendition starring Adam Driver, and the film premiered this year at Cannes Film Festival.

Except, uh, apparently Terry Gilliam just lost the rights to it. Yes, that’s correct: as reported by Screen Rant, the Paris Court of Appeal just ruled in favor of the film’s former producer, Paulo Brancho, who sued for rights to the project on the grounds that Gilliam made the film illegally.

(21) OH NOOO…. When will they make an end? Comicbook.com is spreading the alarm, er, the — “Rumor: ‘Star Wars’ Actor Claims 9 Movies in Development, Including More ‘Story’ Stand-Alones”. Voice actor Tom Kane is said to have claimed there are nine Star Wars movies in some stage of development. Kane has provided voices for Star Wars video games (starting with Shadows of the Empire in 1996), TV shows (Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels), and several of the more recent movies (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi).

Only six of the projects are known:

Disney-owned Lucasfilm also has plans for fan-favorite Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi and famed bounty hunter Boba Fett, who will reportedly receive his own stand-alone from 3:10 to Yuma and Logan director James Mangold.

Lucasfilm is also said to be developing an all-new trilogy under The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson, which will be unconnected to the Skywalker saga depicted in the episodic installments and set in an unexplored corner of the galaxy.
Johnson’s producer, Ram Bergman, recently gave an update on the “completely new trilogy,” saying, “It’s all new characters. Everything is new.” The project, he added, is “just in the early stages.”

Abrams’ Episode IX, Johnson’s planned three-movie series, and two new anthologies in Obi-Wan and Boba Fett make six, leaving three supposed projects on the docket.

[Thanks to Dann, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Rob Thornton, Soon Lee, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ky.]

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102 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/17/18 Come Away, O Meredithed Book, To The Kindle And The Nook”

  3. Meredith Moment:

    Boxed set Three Tiptree Award-Winning Novels is selling at Amazon US for $1.99. Three novels by Eleanor Arnason, Nancy Springer and Elizabeth Hand. I don’t know how long it will be at that price or if the other sites have it, but a Meredith Moment is appropriate.

  4. (20) Well. Next time I re-read Genius by Patrick Dennis, I’ll have to see if I can imagine Leander Starr as Terry Gilliam, instead of Orson Welles. I think he’s earned it.

  5. I am an excellent multi-purpose meme slash in-joke slash stack of dragons in a trenchcoat.

  6. (4) HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED LEX

    Not new behavior by them at all. When (I think) the second novel came out a local fan of the series decided to do a for profit (her pocket to be precise) festival complete with a train ride to the Market provided by a local narrow gauge train group. Even the Boston Globe covered it and that’s most likely why she got a letter from the lawyers at Warner who held all rights in the States at that time save printing the actual novels.

    They had a conversation and she donated one hundred percent of the profits to a arowling approved charity. She did it again next year but the restrictions imposed by Warner but it not profitable and that ended that venture.

    Warner will license the rights to doing a festival but failure by them to not control their rights to the content including look and feel could very well result in them losing say a court case against a company releasing Harry Potter one sixth scale action figures.

  7. @20: I wonder who sits above the Paris Court of Appeals, and how they’ll rule? The BBC story from a few weeks ago didn’t think much of Brancho, but was more concerned with the triumph of getting the film made rather than the exact legalities.

  9. (3) Dare to dream, kitteh!

    (4) I RTFA. Shutting down festivals of 45,000, sure — but cease and desisting a birthday party for 30? I understand defending the trademark and shutting down bootleg merchandise, but a birthday party?

    TBH, I’m surprised it took them this long to crack down.

    May these groups license the intellectual property? They might not have enough money, but it could be doable.

    I kinda don’t see the problem in festivals of magic; expand your horizons, folks! It’s not like Potter was so super-original and non-generic. Rename the Potter stuff, and add in other things. Like the IMNSHO Diane Duane “Young Wizards” novels, which I’d rather my imaginary children read. And Earthsea, though with all the racefail around it, I’m a little hesitant to suggest it to white folk.

    (5) Awww. For people who write stuff that scares the bejeebers outta you, the Kings seem such a lovely family.

    (8) That link says “No longer published at Smashwords”. Amazon reviews are… mixed, and point out that there’s a cliffhanger and the next book isn’t out yet, much less the third.

    (21) Whyyyyy….

  10. WRT the Harry Potter festivals: it is stipulated that Warner has rights to the intellectual property known as “Harry Potter”. History has shown us, however, that enthusiastic fandoms RAISE profits. There are no new books coming out, no new movies. Okay, “Cursed Child”, but as much interest as that has on Broadway, I don’t think any tweens are going to be running to the books and movies because of it.

    But, there has got to be some way to square the circle of acknowledging and respecting Warners’ rights while allowing fans to do fannish stuff. Even if they make a few coins off of it. There has to be a way to keep unauthorized action figures being sold, and allowing people to give Sorting Hat demonstrations and selling faux butterbeer. (the stuff they call butterbeer at Universal sux, btw.)

    The urge to monetize every last jot and tittle of a fandom is going to kill the fandoms involved.

  12. @Lurkertype
    Another self-published author has disappeared from the various outlets where his stuff was published (I was looking forward to the next book in the series he was writing). Even the existing books disappeared. Way to sell lots, there.

  13. How can someone have the ‘rights’ to a story written in the early 1600s?

  14. @Lurkertype, @P J Evans
    I suspect the author decided to go exclusive at Amazon in order to get into Kindle Unlimited. Not that I don’t respect an author’s choice to go exclusive with Amazon, but yanking books from other platforms doesn’t make the author look good. Not to mention that some vendors are slow to take down books, which can get the author in trouble with Amazon. If you must be exclusive, start out in KU and go wide later, not the other way around.

  16. 21) Might the additional three Star Wars features be the ones rumored to be commissioned from the Game of Thrones producers a while back?

  18. @Techgrrl1972, I saw a trailer for a new Harry Potter (universe, not character) movie when I went to see Solo last week; a sequel to “Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them”. I don’t recall the title of the upcoming film, but since it’s an ongoing franchise that’s probably why Warner is being a stickler.

    That said, I agree that stifling the fandom is a stupid and counterproductive action on their part.

  19. How can someone have the ‘rights’ to a story written in the early 1600s?

    They can’t. But they can have the rights to Gilliam’s screenplay.

  21. Oh, Doctor Science, I’m so sorry. But I’m glad that you got so many wonderful years with him. <3

  23. Doctor Science That’s so sad and so close to how things went with my own cat Willow. I-I’m not good at. Um. *opens arms*

    Hug?

  25. 1) Anarcho-capitalism is just another name for capitalism with no checks and limits. Musks fight against unions marks him as one of the ordinary capitalists who tramples on other peoples lives for his own winnings.

  28. Oh, Doctor Science, I has a sad along with you. Glad you got a few more weeks with him, and that he got to appear here.

  29. Doctor Science, sad to hear that. I’m down to 3 cats tonight/this morning. Pepper, my oldest, died about 2 hours ago. I found her unconscious and unresponsive earlier in the evening. I opted not to make an emergency visit to the vet since she didn’t seem to be suffering but seemed too far gone to revive. It took her a few hours to stop breathing.

    She was a tiny dark tabby, 15 years and about 7 1/2 months old. She’d been diagnosed with diabetes just over a year ago, and been to the vet for a checkup just this past week. I wasn’t expecting her to live a whole lot longer, but her death tonight was unexpected. I’ve had her since she was about 5 months old, and loved her very much.

  30. They can’t. But they can have the rights to Gilliam’s screenplay.

    And it’s a metafictional spin on Don Quixote rather than a close adaptation, too.

  33. 1) Just goes to show, a billion dollars won’t buy you self-awareness.

    7) Ace of Wands is obscure, is it? Pfft. I’ll see your Ace of Wands and raise you The Strange World of Gurney Slade and Undermind.

    (Personally, I’m still on the lookout for any trace of Mandog, a 1972 show that enlivened my childhood for six weeks, involving freedom fighters and secret police from the 26th century psychically time-travelling to the present day. One of the rebels ended up with his mind stuck inside a Border collie, hence the title. Woefully overdue for a release, if it hasn’t been wiped. [Don’t blame the BBC, this was an ITV show, the commercial stations were just as ruthless with archive material. As those of us who’ve watched the surviving episodes of Ace of Wands know.])

  35. (13) On Sauron – I think the author misses a few points. Sauron does not ignore the possibility that his enemies might destroy the Ring because it is difficult to do. It does not occur to him that they might try because his own lust for power makes him think no-one could resist taking the power of the Ring for themselves. Gandalf, Aragorn, Elrond and Galadriel all do resist the temptation to use the Ring to destroy Sauron, despite having the opportunity and (probably) the ability.

    Secondly, the author supposes that Sauron does not think the Ring might be destroyed by chance – citing Gollum accidentally destroying the Ring when Frodo is unable. In fact, this is not simple chance, it is Providence – the nearest thing in the book to Tolkien explicitly showing God acting in the world. Frodo and Gandalf (and even Bilbo, once upon a time) spare Gollum, and that act of mercy and pity brings about the “accident” which saves the world.

    Why I Left Glyer's All-Night Tickboxers

  41. Steve Wright — the entire episode of the first Mandog Is up now on the YouTube. No sign of the other five anywhere. I discovered to my delight that all six episodes of Nightmare Cafe with Robert Englund are up on the net with the original commercials as well!

  42. 1) I’ve never much cared for Musk, but his reputation has been collapsing for a while now, regardless of his relentlessly stupid behaviour on Twitter–my own dislike of him stems from his union busting and unsafe labour practices. Manufacturing cars safely at speed has been a solved problem for basically Musk’s entire life; that he can’t even manage that aspect of his business is extremely telling. As I said on Twitter, though, his misreading of Banks isn’t surprising. He’s a rich dude in tech: grossly misunderstanding something painfully obvious is basically in the job description. Using that misunderstanding to justify hurting people more vulnerable than he is in the name of “innovation” is also basically in the job description.

    (Also, Ed Champion is toxic af, for those who might not be familiar with his reputation in mainstream lit circles. A notorious troll “famous” for a puppies-style misogynistic rant many thousands of words long about how much young female novelists are inherently terrible, both as artists and as people. He’d honestly be on my list of dudes to link to via archive.org, if ya know what I mean.)

  44. It rules that Elon Musk has twenty-one billion dollars, a pop star girlfriend, a factory that makes seven electric cars a year for rich people, and a campus full of brilliant engineers focused on achieving the stars, but he chooses to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon acting like a dipshit online and getting dragged across the internet like Hector’s corpse by his favorite author’s friends.

    What a boring, solipsistic, genuinely stupid person.

  46. My sympathies to both Doctor Science & Anne Sheller both.

    A dark day when animal friends and companions leave us for the far shores.

  47. Sympathies on the deaths (expected or not) of SJW credentials. (It always hurts. I expect to be greeted by at least two when I go. (“At least two” because I wasn’t Sammy’s person; that was my father’s role.))

  48. @Anne Sheller:

    I’m so sorry to hear that! It hurts even when they’re old and ill.

    I find that I’m feeling a lot better having gone through my picture collection and written up the memorial. I have many more pictures of the cat than of the humans in the family, it turns out.

  50. (1) Musk also twittered something among the lines of „Im thinking myself as a socialist, just not the type who distributes wealth to the poor“ and that tells you all you need to know. He likes cool labels, he just dont understand you can not just stick them on to yourself.

    The man who killed this scroll title

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