Favorite Book Round Up

Based on context clues I've put a green dot where I kinda think Tom's house might be. They come out of the forest, which can be seen from Tom's west window, and they saw the downs to the east of his house. And then there's this bit:

By his advice they decided to make nearly due North from his house, over the western and lower slopes of the Downs: they might hope in that way to strike the East Road in a day's journey, and avoid the Barrows.

The yellow arrow is the journey they're hoping to make today :]

What would Michelle look like if she was an opinicus instead of a Grecian sphinx?

I normally only take reader questions from patreon or the comments of the website because it's easier for me to keep track of them there, but this one was cute and I wanted to answer it! So it's today's reader question!

In 2011 a woman named Maureen Seaburg wrote a book about synesthesia called Tasting the Universe and there's a whole chapter about Billy Joel that he did a fairly extensive interview for and I have literally found no other evidence of him discussing synesthesia before or since.

Full chapter under the cut:

It’s impossible to give directions in Boston. Nothing makes sense. There are inexplicable one way streets, there are streets that change their names as you move from one area to another. There’s a road in my area where the gps literally tells you to take TWO full right turns to “stay on” the same road which is at a right angle to the original. There’s like four different Massachusetts Avenues. Sometimes you have to be in the left lane to turn right. The gps can’t even get directions to my workplace correct; it tells me to take a left on a road where lefts are not allowed, and the only way to not have to go across the river and take 15 minutes to turn around is to remember this shit one block early and make the left THERE. Recently, they’ve restricted 1 of 2 lanes on each side of major thoroughfares to only allow bikes and buses, and the government officials seemed to genuinely believe that would somehow EASE traffic. Oh and don't try to drive on Memorial Drive on Sundays; they close it for pedestrians. Just because. And when you DO drive on Memorial, there's one exit that will make your gps lose its mind and start chanting random sequences of numbers for four minutes straight. You can't take a Uhaul on Storrow Drive because the bridges that go over it are too short, and every year some doofus college student ignores this rule and proceeds to "get Storrowed" when they shave off the top of the truck on the overpass and get stuck. I-93 turns into I-95 and makes a big circle around the city, so a lot of the time you'll be on I-95 north but driving east or west.

It’s not limited to driving either. The Arlington train station is not in Arlington, it’s in the middle of downtown. Harvard Square is not a square, it’s more like a pentagon. There are four different green line train routes, and they’re labeled B for Boston College, C for Cleveland Circle, D for… Riverside, and E for… Heath Street. The Silver line is listed on the train map but is entirely run on buses which have to be connected and disconnected from power lines every time you go through the route. The Blue line goes to (and I’m not joking) Wonderland. The two red lines are labeled for their southern points: Braintree line goes to Braintree, and the Ashmont line goes to… Mattapan. To be fair, the train itself stops in Ashmont and you continue to Mattapan on a trolley, but that doesn't make it better. South Station and North Station are 1 mile apart and the easiest way to get from one to the other is just to walk it because otherwise you have to travel through 4 or 5 train stops on two different lines. But make sure you memorize the route because there's a good chance your gps will lose signal in the Financial district because it can't get through the buildings. In Boston Commons there are two train stops within line of sight of each other, on the same street, and one of them screams. To get to the trains at Porter Square, you have to ride down escalators 105 feet below street level, or you could just take the 3 flights of stairs totaling 199 steps (presumably because the engineers had something against nice even numbers). The North End is south of East Boston. Castle Island is part of the mainland.

No matter where you're going or how you're getting there, it takes 45 minutes (no wrong turns) or an hour and a half (one wrong turn). It doesn't matter if you're going one stop on a train; it will take 45 minutes. If it's summer, there's a better than 50% chance you'll be in the train car that lost it's AC; if it's winter, you're guaranteed to be in the car where the heat has it up to 80 degrees and the inside of your winter coat will be a sauna. Check the Red Sox schedule before you go south of the river, or you'll be trapped in the waves of baseball fans flooding the streets and days will go by before you're found again. And just... don't go outside on September 1.

If you're thinking that this sounds eldritch as shit, you're right. The entire city is an arcane lock keeping the ghoulies and ghosties from haunting the rest of the nation. We charge it with every "fuck" we utter while we travel our labyrinthine paths and drink our Dunks. You're welcome.

My favorite genre of self-portrait is cartoonists being bothered by their characters while trying to draw

Bill Watterson – Calvin and Hobbes (1986)

Hergé – Tintin (1947, Tintin Magazine)

Albert Uderzo – Asterix (the cover of Uderzo l'Irreductible (2018), but originally much older)

Jeff Smith – Bone (1993, Bone Holiday Special)

Walt Kelly – Pogo (1950, Maclean's Magazine)

And a bonus:

Berkeley Breathed – Bloom County

This idea for an SCP article came to me in a dream, so it’s not necessarily good, but I have to get it out there. My subconscious was clearly influenced by memories of mathematical SCPs (like SCP-033 and SCP-1313) and semiotic SCPs (like SCP-4703, though I hadn’t actually read that one before, and another one I can’t for the life of me find right now but I’ll add it if I do).

Keep reading

Thoughts on the phrase ‘Knowledge is power’, and on learning ‘enough’ about a skill/topic before doing a project about it

I’ve thought for a long time about the phrase ‘Knowledge is power’, and have lived most of my life aware of the negative impact of ignorance and lack of knowledge on our lives. But the more I think about it, I feel like a better phrase would be ‘It is the application of knowledge that brings true wisdom and power’. Knowledge can only help us to a certain extent - what is the point of knowledge, if we’re unable to utilise it well, and if we’re not strong or able to apply knowledge into our lives? It requires both strength and wisdom to be able to apply what we’ve learnt into real life.

This is kind of linked to a conversation I had with someone recently.

During that conversation, they told me that they prefer learning everything - or learning enough - before starting a project, because they were afraid of failure or messing things up along the way. I feel like that’s something many people do, but by doing that, they’re overlooking the importance of learning from experience and failure. Learning the theoretical knowledge, and trying to retain all the knowledge you gain, is helpful - but what is not helpful is NOT doing the project, NOT learning to apply your knowledge into life or into ongoing problems because you believe you aren’t ‘ready’ or that you don’t know ‘enough’ to do the project.

It is important to enhance your ability to apply your knowledge in creative ways in real life to deal with complex situations - and that means being able to put aside some time to apply your limited skills - be it your art skills, music skills, math skills, critical thinking skills, reflection skills, socialising skills etc. To use and learn more about your flaws and areas of improvement. Knowing is helpful, knowing theories and a methodical step by step way of solving things is useful - but being able to do things as you learn, being able to spot your mistakes and learn from them WHILE doing the project you’re doing, is so, so important.

It’s important to allow yourself the grace to make mistakes, to learn from failure, to pick yourself up, to cope with pain, guilt, anger, sadness, and grief - even if you think you aren’t ‘fully’ ready or prepared for certain things sometimes. DO that project, TRY that new activity, APPLY whatever limited knowledge you have into your life or personal goals after you’ve learnt enough to do some basic things. Of course, keep learning, do spend more time learning, but as you slowly become advanced and no longer a ‘newbie’, I hope you don’t restrict yourself in the ‘newbie’ section just because you aren’t a master, and create that new song, create that new artwork, try writing a critical review on a historical source or critical response to a philosophical argument. You might make mistakes, you might mess up a bit, but you will also learn along the way!

There are some things you can only learn through experience.

Ok, I think I yapped enough ahaha.

TLDR; While knowledge may bring power, it is the application of knowledge that brings true wisdom and strength.

the craziest part is how it ends with the prototype local hero theme

he's like a stress ball to me.

The Billy Joel GIF set on Instagram is funny because you've got all your Uptown Girls, your We Didn't Start the Fires, your Allentowns, and your The Longest Times and a couple of the old man's live performances and then for some reason there's a GIF of "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" Live at Sparks 1981. I have no idea who is responsible but they have criminally good music taste and I hope their soup is always warm and their milk always fresh.