Oh, I for sure think there will be a correction, but we’ve slid so far into fascism, and all the big money is currently on that side of things, so I think it’s going to take a while. Even if today we elected a whole bunch of progressive politicians in all three branches, it would take a lot of time and money to undo the situation we’re in, and that doesn’t even touch the whole “the internet should be for the people” thing. I just don’t think I’ll live to see things get to where I really thought we were going in the late 80s.

Pre, or post Apple ][s in þe classroom?

Probably pre, but it might depend on where you were. I graduated high school in 1980.

Maybe our generation is þe most bitter. We saw what could have been, and watched it degrade

I for sure am. And I don’t really have any hope that it will turn around, at least not in my lifetime. The whole country has been enshitified, really. It’s very sad.

I read a giant number of books, and I’m not rich. I use the Libby app with my library card. I usually get the Kindle versions, but they have audiobooks, too. All free.

But if you can, say, call up an intelligent portal virtually anywhere that’s near-omniscient and can transport things anywhere, well, that alone kind of limits the sort of things that you can run into that are real challenges to overcome. And that’s just one of the tools in Merlin’s toolbox.

Yeah, exactly - makes things a bit too easy.

Yeah…though to be fair, if the comparison is Corwin…a lot of the first book is just talking about how able he is to deal with situations and be cunning and see through intrigue even under extreme handicaps, like his damaged memory and with almost no information about what’s going on. That’s a high bar to follow.

Oh, I get it - like I said, I know it was an intentional choice by Zelazny. Merlin is young, where Corwin was hundreds of years old. He’s a different char, and there’s goodness in that. But I also found it annoying in a main character.

I liked the earlier books the most, the ones that focused on Corwin

That’s the first five books, the ones I said I liked better, too. For me, one of the reasons is that magic is mostly constrained to walking through shadows and using trumps. Corwyn mostly deals with his problems by training through solutions and deleting with people. In the second series, there’s a broader type of magic, and Merlin uses it to deal with his problems.

Also, at least for the first half of the second series, Merlin is naive and easily manipulated, which I realize is intentional, but it’s frustrating.

I don’t know, it sounds like your biggest issue is that the books are written to be a series and not self contained. To me, that’s a narrative choice and isn’t always bad. I hate it when the author doesn’t finish and leaves he hanging forever, but I can appreciate a long story that takes multiple books to tell.

I’m currently rereading the Amber Chronicles, by Roger Zelazny, and it’s like that. Arguably, it’s two stories of five books each, although there’s a thread from the first five that continues in the second. It’s a wonderful series, especially the first five.

On the other hand, sometimes it feels like the author of a long series doesn’t know where he’s going, but is just trying to milk the franchise, and that’s more problematic.

Except it doesn’t sound like he was disappointed by anything other than that the books are one long story, not self contained.

Well, as long as he had a reason…

Saving you a click: he said he was possessed by the devil.

Of course, this is the NY Post, so take the whole thing with a grain of salt.

It’s Sylvester’s younger brother, who was a less successful actor. Norm used him as a running joke, blaming him or making him the focus for ridiculous things. One was:

“In Princess Anne, Maryland, state health officials have discovered what caused the mysterious death of 200,000 fish at a Somerset county fish farm. The culprit, you guessed it — Frank Stallone.”

So this is just one of a series.

I hear what you’re saying. Monica wasn’t the sort to do dumb stuff, and the story of one of the guys she was with seemed weird. I actually do suspect hers was foul play, but I don’t think it was part of any conspiracy thing; it’s more likely it was a relationship thing.

I totally agree with your central point, but I have to say that the hiker one is weird. I worked with Monica for decades. She was with other people, for some reason they decided to separate, but still on the same path. They never saw her again. Shortly thereafter, there was a long search and rescue mission and they never found a sign of her. Never a body or signs of a struggle or anything.

Very nice, very smart woman.

I’m more of an SF person, but I really enjoyed the Raksura series, by Martha Wells, about a guy who can shape shift into a sort of dragon. I’m also currently rereading the Amber Chronicles, by Roger Zelazny, and it’s very good.

In case it helps any, I made a post with a giant number of spoiler-free short reviews of SF and fantasy books I’ve read over the last few years, and many of the books mentioned here are in them.

He apparently has a thing for huge boobs, including his own:

Unsatisfied with simply appreciating other people’s breasts, Bryon attempted to create his own. “You turn me into a girl,” he texted one woman. While posing for photos he sent to the women he hired, he seemingly shoved inflated balloons into his tight shirts, with the knots serving as makeshift (and egregiously misaligned) nipples. He also posed in turquoise leggings and pink bike shorts, both of which may well belong to Noem or another woman in his orbit, unless they were purchased for the specific purpose of cross-dressing.

Right - so?

This make me sad, English major or otherwise. I mean, you can look up at the moon and see when the far side is at least partially illuminated.

I’m in my early 60s and went from walking to jogging a couple years ago. I did it differently than you. My usual walk was about two miles, and I just started jogging the portion I could and walking the rest. At first, my jogging was only a couple blocks, but as I kept doing it, I got to be able to go further, a little at a time. My goal was really just to keep my heart rate up for 20 to 30 minutes and get some cardio.

So I’m there now. I jog a couple miles every other day. Takes me about 25 minutes, so I’m not breaking any speed records, but my heart rate is between 150 and 170 for much of it, so I feel like I’m meeting my goal.

Not sure their approach would help.

Which one is bringing the flame thrower?

Nope, that’s a deal breaker

I don’t think I’d even post the comic of someone I knew to be terrible.