“Fetch”... Presumably a reduction from “fetching” because the young whipper-snappers these days have no gosh-danged time to fully pronounce more than the first two syllables of a ‘proper’ word (e.g.: “vaycay” as opposed to the exhausting “vacation”)... But boy-howdy will they let out as many as three syllables for…

Robert Heinlein once made the best back-handed compliment about teenage slang ever, in “Revolt in 2100": the Resistance to the theocratic regime running the U.S. used it as an utterly unbreakable radio-code.

Point granted, panthercougar-efendi.

Maybe. I mean, I at least recognized the name, and because the show permeated pop-culture unough to keep showing up in articles here in the Kinja ‘family’ of sites. But if you were quoting one of his routines I still suggest giving credit where it’s due. Even if I'm the only one following this particular discusdion…

Pretty much, yeah.

You have my sympathies for being stuck in a family of mostly non-readers.

True. But then again, television isn’t quite the same universal cultural link that it used to be. We have more than three channels, now, and the “broadcast day” no longer concludes at 10 pm, not to resume until about 6 am.

I might recomnend a read of Erik Flint’s “1632" for a sonewhat exaggerated but still-reasonable explanation for why having a ‘robust and extensive’ personal library of physical books might be a good idea. (It’s much easier and safer to loan out easily-copied books than irreplaceable electronics, among other things.) Tr…

The “PITA” (fascinating acronym) of moving a physical library is a price I’m willing to pay. Ebooks may be wonderful for a lot of reasons but “physical durability”, “access outside of Internet-covered areas” and “no batteries required” are not among them.

I’ll asmit to feeling considerable jealousy for people who can not only read a book once and recall its contents in perfect detail years later, but do the same thing with every book they read AND sort through their mental library to find the relevant information quickly enough to pass a test or generally ‘do work’.

A fellow named Alistair Cooke had a collection of books about the U.S. and had trouble organizing it. Eventually he hit on the system of positioning the books in a pattern corresponding to the general geographic locations of the states they discussed: Texas in the bottom-middle, New York in the upper-right, Hawaii way…

Ben Bova published a fascinating story back in 1989 that, quite frankly, deserves to get more attention. Turning “Cyberbooks” into a movie might miss the point, though...

Note to self: when writing stories set in this era of U.S. history, "sophisticated" means "superficial" when it comes to "artifacts" of "the Before Times" like books.

Depends on your relationship with the contents of the books. As a writer, I frequently return to reference books to remind myself of details, or to seek inspiration for writing. As a reader, I read some books more than once, the same way a restaurateur goes back to the same place and orders a favorite comfort meal.

Exactly. I live in a home, not some kind of stage set. Admittedly, my home is too small to have a dedicated “home office”, I don’t have a job that requires Zoom meetings and my family cares more about what my wife and I have to say than the décor.

How about an article or even a column on people who can’t or won’t cook tjeor own food? Some folks live under circumstances where cooking their own food is altogether more trouble than it’s worth; e.g.: no kitchen in their living-space or just not enough Gods-damned _time_ between juggling jobs, kids and a blessed…

Do tell? I can imagine the eggs helping to absorb a lot of the tannins from wine, but how would they help in brewing beer?

So I would need to stand over the pot and stir, constantly, while the eggs work their magic on the coffee? Interesting. That aspect of it might also explain why coffee shops didn’t adopt the technique, back in the day. At the same time, however, I think there might be a lot of very simple, even affordable,…

— This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother’s side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply.
— Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’s…

“The ‘waste processing industry’ across America varies quite widely from one place to another,” says the expat former Californian now living in the wilds of rural Texas, where ‘recycling’ and ‘green waste’ are all tossed into the same ‘garbage’ bin. Apparently, some company tried to get the locals to separate their…