Any considerations for a custom CSS? Maybe even just a simple one that uses a tan/brown color scheme to make the board look like binding or leather and the posts a lighter color to look like parchment? It'd give everything a nice library feel.

>>1047 I'd rather see a fixed page width for desktops/laptops, which would actually be useful for longer texts, unlike painting everything brown.

Oops, a factual mistake. Jameson (1891–1945) was dead by the time Whipple published anything about his shield.

Finally got around to reading something relevant to the thread theme. Is Speaker-to-Animals the most iconic space cat in science fiction? Teleportation. Reactionless drives. Anti-gravity. Impenetrable stasis fields. Alien megastructures. Very early on it becomes clear this is not hard science fiction. I should've had a bad time, but thankfully Larry Niven is not a poor writer. He has wit and humor and doesn't take his setting too seriously. His characters constantly bicker and quip like in a Marvel movie, which helps, as I probably couldn't stand them if they were serious all the time. His science isn't all bad, he understands the way spaceships move in space and when he breaks physics he usually does it on purpose, not by mistake. I spotted a few exceptions, such as the good ole just use a mirror to deflect a military grade laser trope, with the added bonus of colored fabrics apparently being good enough to stop lasers of the same color. Bussard ramjets make an appearance, an idea largely discredited now, but in fairness he couldn't have known. The story has an undercurrent of anxiety about overpopulation, which is so 20th century. After meeting exotic aliens like kzin and puppeteers, I found it a bit disappointing that the inhabitants of Ringworld are just humans. I'm not sure if this is meant to be some kind of an inversion of a trope, as the story treats the two alien companions of Louis as allies that can be empathized with, rather than as a strange other. It's not your usual type of first contact story. Oh, do I even need to explain what a Ringworld is? After all, by this point, it's a concept permeating popular culture. This is the book that famously ripped off Halo. Larry's approach to inviting suspension of disbelief reminds me of the old salesman's tactic where you place an expensive piece of merchandise next to something even more ridiculously unaffordably expensive, so that the less expensive product on the shelf appears more reasonably priced in comparison. He has a character explain a Dyson sphere first, before he starts talking about the Ringworld, I guess in the hopes that the reader would now believe the idea of a solid ring made of a nearly indestructible material 2 AU in diameter isn't totally batshit insane. Sorry, it still is. The variable blade is a clear precursor of a light saber. Strangely, after it's introduced it never really becomes a plot point again. No, sorry, I meant to say Larry Niven ripped off Star Wars. Does he have any imagination? I felt the quality of the writing drops a bit toward the end, perhaps due to the author rushing to wrap things up. I especially cringed at the insistence of keeping Louis' big plan a secret, with his companions, including the fierce and proud cat beast and the cowardly puppeteer who usually wants to make sure that everything is perfectly safe before committing to anything, just going along for days with no one questioning why they're pinning everything on a plan this one guy simply refuses to explain. Especially when it clearly has elements that could go catastrophically wrong any time killing everyone and/or destroying their only hope of escape. I get they were not professional explorers but at this point I felt like I was just watching a bunch of bumbling retards, or more accurately, plot automatons slaved to the author's desire to move things forward while maintaining the ending "surprise", which to me wasn't much of a surprise at all as I guessed the nature of the mystery object in question pretty much the moment it was first described early in the book. After all, this non-surprise would have been spoiled if the team sat down like adults and discussed both the strong points and weaknesses of the plan before doing anything. An enjoyable sci-fantasy adventure with a mildly disappointing ending, with elements of mystery that sometimes land and sometimes fall flat. It's not terrible but I'm a bit puzzled by its lofty reputation.

Ah, 1970. The world was full of optimism. Nixon was the president, the oil crisis had not yet begun, and all the science fiction authors thought you could fly to another star in a human life span just by scooping the hydrogen existing in abundance in interstellar space, using it for fusion, and generating infinite 1G of acceleration. The idea is that the mass ratio problem of interstellar travel disappears if you don't have to carry your own propellant, thus allowing a ship to accelerate to such a large fraction of light speed that the time dilates to the point where hundreds of light years of travel can be experienced in a mere few years of shipboard time. Thus also making the problem of finite crew life span to go away, and as a triple whammy, the magnetic scooping field also protects the ship from impacts and deadly radiation. On top of all this it's mere icing on the cake that with a constant thrust of 1G, you don't have to worry about the effects of microgravity on organisms. In reality, there are numerous problems with a Bussard ramjet. Bussard himself noted that just building such a thing would be enormously difficult, after all, one of the components is a fusion reactor (using hydrogen as a fuel supposes proton-proton fusion, which is extra difficult, and might not be possible), and that interstellar hydrogen is not evenly distributed. And then the density of the hydrogen in actual space is lower than he assumed. The density in local space near our Sun is particularly low. You would also have to reach a significant fraction of c just to reach a speed where the ramjet can [i]start[/i] operating, meaning you'd need to carry some fairly exotic secondary form of propulsion in addition to the ram scoop. It might not be possible to build a laser that can ionize a large enough volume of hydrogen to make it responsive to the magnetic scoop, while not using more energy than the fusion reactor provides. In 1978, T.A. Heppenheimer wrote that the ramjet would actually experience drag, and it most likely wouldn't be possible to build a scoop that wouldn't fail to stress long before the extreme velocities in this novel could be reached. There is a maximum speed for such a ship which is 12% of c. There are also some cosmological assumptions that might be considered outdated today. But I won't go deeper into those. It's not like we've fully figured out the universe even today. But, I can't help but feel this is all mere pedantic nitpicking. After all, compared to the question of can a future spaceship ever travel faster than light? (Physics gives us a hard "no") An interstellar space drive concept that seems merely extremely improbable, is still vastly more realistic. In the end, these are engineering problems, not the breaking down of a fundamental physics principle. It's conceivable that a sufficiently advanced civilization could solve these problems and... wait. What's this? A world ruled by Sweden? This is not science fiction. This is fantasy. The novel is like those examples in physics textbooks that ask you to imagine a spaceship with a clock inside it moving at near light speed to illustrate the effects of relativity, except instead of being contracted into one paragraph and a diagram, it's stretched out into the length of a full novel. Sound exciting? But fear not, it's at least well written. Poul Anderson is one of the rare breed of science fiction authors who can both write prose and understand physics. I could imagine some of his descriptions of stars and galaxies sounding amazing spoken in Carl Sagan's voice over a backdrop of 1970s synths.

I had an idea for a work very recently: What if a bioterrorist used a progressive retroviral disease, or just a series of retroviral diseases, which would make humanity fit his vision? This could either be a utopian work, where the retrovirus is perfectly made, or a comedic, apocalyptic work, where, for example, the retrovirus is poorly made and accidentally makes any nation where the average IQ is under 80 filled with autistics who collapse their societies because they can no longer deal with them.

My main problem with actually writing a complete novel or even a story is that I despise my would-be readers. Most of them wouldn't get half of the layered meanings that I have fun playing with. Many of them would miss the plot entirely and apply 'critical literacy' to the text instead of actually being literate and reading it. And those few people who might get it, who might relate, who might need it in their moment of desperation — they'll never find out about it, because it will be in the bottom of a book pile, covered by all the hairy posters and gnomes on trains, and those last few readers would stop and compromise, because they lack the determination to dig out that one thing made specifically for them.

>>1053 Illiteracy is a problem, sure. People I've engaged with outside boards: - 50% are illiterate and also don't share my memetic (imageboards/anime/games) background, - 40% are literate but get none of the references or metaphors (don't share my memetic background), - 10% actually comprehend the text I write. Out of those 10%, 2-4% are so insecure they'd rather nitpick than enjoy the story. So I get about 7% of the audience who can actually engage with my writing. As they say in cyrillic, "нахуй так жить, посоны?" That doesn't only affect writing, but role-playing games, too. Playing PbP with people who aren't anons is a chore.

>>1060 That's a good point. Descriptions are a good place to hide subtext, since in terms of plot they're often dead weight but people usually don't find anything amiss even if you have lengthy descriptions, they'll just think it's style or flavor or whatever.

>>1061 And while it's been a long time since I read it, I think Moby-Dick did this a lot. Dialogue could be another place where it doesn't matter if the language doesn't have extreme clarity, some people just speak in riddles you know?

>>1060 Hi OP here again, this is a hand full so i hope you can understand what i mean since i'm not the best at explaining in clear ways what mean sometimes if by "easy-to-read text" you mean just with or without my style of writing yet in a more ordinary way of writing but still hiding secrets in the text, yes, but i didn't enjoy it but i feel like sometimes when it comes to the way i describe a character's thoughts/emotions and settings (sometimes), i feel like the reader can understand what i mean despite me using my style of writing, it's just when it comes to important things like certain story knowledge (i.e. foreshadowing, plot points, a character's reaction/true feelings to something important to the story, philosophy/allegories and things that can reward the reader of analysing my text) i'll usually try to hide it with my style, yet i feel like it still can be found somewhat easy by just looking up what certain words mean, how what i describe mirrors a certain scenario/tone or how i use certain words* i feel like the way i write is similar to the idea of pathetic fallacy or the way certain artists convey emotion/response in what they draw with colours/art styles and whatnot but i use a lot of symbolism and "fancy" poetic ways of writing (at least i try to) if that makes sense answering your final question >writer's sanity self-check when needed. kek i feel more so that people also enjoying my work is like a cherry on top, while it would be great if they did enjoy it, i'm okay if they don't, so i just wanted to get a small peak with this to find out what one of you guys would think as a small idea of that since i feel like my book's biggest negative of people enjoying it is possibly the way i write, as i had this idea of someone enjoying something else about my story (such as the characters and or plot) and them getting invested in it, but there being a barrier between the story and the way i write since it could be hard to follow, since even if i do get like a reader base of 7 people that actually enjoy my book, that could possibly motivate me to change my writing style since it is always nice to have people appreciate your work and i do like being a people pleaser, but my book is basically the next Empress Theresa in the public eye and it's completely barren of people's enjoy, then set that aside and sleep well knowing that at least i enjoyed making it and love it as a story, since it's everything in a story i could want if that makes sense

>>812 It's a good book.

Also very short, I read it in one sitting at a Starbucks with a friend. Still very memorable.

>>327 How's your read going so far?

>>772 Seen it on my wishlist but never picked it up

>>785 its freeeee

Hey that's nice, took a copy to make notes on some definitions about the subject

>>1041 Mine is hunger games. I have just uploaded my first fanfiction. I have to say that uploading text is easy, but images are problematic, the only way is to reference them in html type of code.

>>1041 If you are searching for a guide. Here is the one which helped me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fjjppq8sJQ

>>1042 I'm writing my stuff in Notepad++ using html formatting and tags, so i just copy and paste with everything ready to go. >Images I was thinking about uploading necessary images to Catbox to use them. >>1043 Looks good. Thanks anon.

>>1024 The subject matter sounds miserable, but at the same familiar. I feel like a fish being told he swims in water, and what kind-of water it is that he swims in. I'll make an attempt at reading it Anon, I can't promise I'll finish it. From what you've written it sounds like an enlightening read on the separation, and gross individualism in contemporary western society; but also a very sad one, Houellebecq explains why it is, but I don't see any way out — on a social or individual level — other than to grit one's teeth and keep going. I do apologize if I sound too sullen, you've written a short, perfectly understandable summary of the book — an interesting one at that. Thank you.

>>1022 I finished Harassment Architecture. Mike Ma is prone to magical thinking, hypocrisy, and fatalism, but some points he makes are interesting. For example, Hurricane Katrina being what ended the 90s, and the decay of aesthetics and sincerity in society causing psychological decline. However, I wouldn't hold him as a great, or even good, writer from this work. Not only is it barely a work, it slowly dissolves any narrative form until the very end as he expresses fantasy after fantasy beginning with an overly long manic episode by his self-insert protagonist. Many of his points are trite, and quite a few come off as wignat-ish. For someone who had all of the Unabomber's works on his website, he doesn't understand the points conveyed in those works, and what he does understand isn't expounded upon further than pseudo-religious babble and repetitive critiques made by others in better form for over a century. The violent scenes and descriptions of people were entertaining. I don't think I could recommend this book to anyone. How he opens the book, with disclaimers that someone smarter than him should and could make a better narrative out of his work, is masturbatory on his part but necessary for anyone who wishes to read it.

If you guys ever come across a book entitled Ecotopia, save yourself the time and don't bother reading it. It's Communist trash written by a college professor who knows absolutely nothing about the real world and the people who live in it. Only got a quarter of the way into the book before I decided to toss it and read the rest of the plots summary off Kikepedia.

>>997 If you use markdown/pandoc you can still have formatting, just not directly. I just use the text editor that comes with Mint, and convert it to HTML/DOCX or whatever with pandoc. Text is good because it'll always work.

>>620 >>867 Emacs for me, especially org-mode. I can't live without the ability to collapse/expand entire categories and easily navigate my documents with evil-mode keybinds, also using internal links to reference characters, places, events...

Well anyway. How is your book going, lads? Surely you'll get published this year, right?

>>688 Obligatory Faggot classic.

The Great Mirror of Male Love is good. More anti-woman than pro-gay though honestly.

>>883 I'm not that anon, but Bret Easton Ellis is a gay man who wrote the novel as a means to express his rage for living a lifestyle similar to the one described in the book. In doing so, it is a projection of homosexual promiscuity and superficial aesthetics onto straight men as well as a means of expressing Ellis's struggles with the influence of his father, who introduced him to the Bateman-esque lifestyle and left a suffocating legacy on him. From a lens removed from homosexuality, it's about the struggle of someone successful who was corrupted by New York but still yearns for liberation through violence against others and pursues this liberation or suffers a breakdown as he's unable to cope with how he can't free himself, depending on your interpretation. The movie refines the work's points on this fairly well. Consider the card scene and how Paul Allen is treated later. Patrick is capable of killing many, many people. He's capable of killing scores of people brutally and joyfully. In nature, Patrick could leap across the table when Paul Allen shows his card and kill him there, establishing the authority he desperately wants. Instead, he has to play stupid games about cards and music and restaurants and girlfriends. All of the effort he puts into his appearance isn't for some self-satisfying aesthetic desire or to be able to express primal supremacy better. It's so he can continue playing these games in order to accrue material wealth and social status unnaturally. From a homosexual lens, Patrick wants to sleep with Paul and his coworkers and expresses this desire that's incompatible with his lifestyle by sleeping with and killing women. Removed from homosexuality, this misogynist behavior is something else entirely. >TL;DR American Psycho is a book by a then closeted gay man to express his frustrations with the paradoxically feminine behaviors required of the generally seen as masculine New York lifestyle idealized in the 1980s, having been written throughout the latter half of the 80s and been released in 1991. The author of Fight Club, also a gay man, did something similar for the decaying white collar atmosphere of the 90s.

>>898 Searles idea of language dependent reality is somewhat convincing but doesn't count for the nonhuman natural world as much

opinion on the modern Diogenes?

>>1020 >one guy two sausages

From what I remember, and this way years back. The second arc is about curing Mary Jane, and using her telepathic powers or something, this ties in to the smaller third arc where the MC and his friends kill Dracula when he arrives on England. Even then the third-arc is so-so, I don't think they even confront him in person. I get the feeling the first arc in Transylvania is what most people remembered, and with good reason. The two later arcs are just passable imo, in comparison to the first. Frankly, gothic / 19th century horror in general seems pretty overrated from what I read.

>>993 The middle act, about everyone trying to cure Lucy, definitely drags. The final act, where the protagonists actually start taking action, picks up more.

Chan is back people. See you over there

I'm here.

>>996 Nah, fuck em

>>959 The other two books I'm reading are more philosophy than history though

was thinking of doing a "meta-reading" of this as someone who leans right and is in the middle of the populist-elitist axis to understand what the left thinks of us in terms of political knowledge acquisition.

>>856 If you're interested in primary sources, check out Claudius of Turin's work in translation.

>>1002 If you're looking for something like the Iliad, check out the Aeneid. Poetry collections tend to be hit-or-miss unless they really resonate with you. Try picking one of the poems you did like in that collection and then asking copilot/chatgpt/deepseek for poets/poems with similar themes or style. I found some interesting stuff that way.

>>1004 Not a big fan of using AI - aside from one particular use. But I figure asking for poem recommendations won't do too much harm. Where do people on the internet even talk about poetry anyways? With attention-spans being shot to shit as they are nowadays you'd think there would be that much more interest in poetry. Thanks for recommending me the Aeneid. From what I recall it's essential a Roman sequel to the Iliad, written centuries later, and featuring one of the Trojan allies as main character and ancestor of Rome (don't want to spoiler a millennia year old work :^) ). So I expect a plot-structure and style not too different from the Iliad. Speaking of structure, one of the scenes that stuck with me in it was two heroes on each side bantering with one another for several stanzas, until Agamemnon - I think - told the Greek hero to cease the banter and get to fighting. This in a work where the dialogue pre-battle can take up three times the verses the actual fighting does.

>>1005 X has a lot of people talking about poems/poetry. Unfortunately it's also a cesspool of pontification and preening. If you look past that, you'll find plenty of people posting pictures of poems they like, giving recs, etc. Just beware of pseuds as usual.