Читайте, граждане. Только осторожно.

        A denizen of the 21st century looks back 100 years:

        “… A black and white film with no dialogue, but lots of music!  The story is told through shots and setting of the characters and their actions, and then the important conversation is written on another frame (and so it segues back and forth through the film).”

        Sigh.



*  “They were called ‘pay phones,’ and you put coins in them - pocket change.  No log-in or photo ID needed!”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s $1.85 trillion social spending bill includes a provision that, if it becomes law, would mark the first time the federal government has offered targeted support in response to the decline of local news.

( horrifying wrong )

See, an electric heater works by friction - resistance, impedance, the force of the current turned to heat.  How much current?  Oh, 1300 to 1500 watts - yes, 1.5 kilowatts.  Roughly the same as leaving your microwave oven running on full power…  and on, and on…

You might as well just burn bank notes for warmth - because your electric bill is going to take all of them anyway.

(By way of comparison, the compressor in your refrigerator draws about 400 watts - when it’s running.  Otherwise, well, I think the light inside is 25 watts…)

Whereas, I pay $15 for a tank of propane that lasts for weeks, even in winter, and this Mr Heater® is putting out a cheery orange firelight glow of volcanic heat that an electric resistance heater would need a nuclear power source to match!

“Superior Mirage”

Maelan (Athaia)

Summary:

When Janice Rand returns to the Enterprise to start a second career as the ship’s counselor, she’s convinced that she’s outgrown her crush on Jim Kirk.

( “The ‘Notes’ saved this story” )

or, Cooking The Stats for Dinner

https://minsk007.dreamwidth.org/1436159.html

If my Russian were what it damn well ought to be by now, I’d tell him about the infamous feminist “study” some years back which trumpeted and waved its bloody-shirt findings, that one in four college coeds were raped (!!) - said statistic produced by simply labelling all but the most banal personal interactions with males (boo, hiss!) as “rape,” even when the supposed “victim” denied and disavowed any such interpretation!  What could she know about it, that benighted internally-oppressed prole?  Disagreement merely indicates ignorance of the subject!

It was a thoroughly useful work of propaganda that militant feminist “activists” dined out on for many years, doing as much damage as possible - that being the true and entire purpose of that socially destructive, clinically psychotic hate movement.

[In 1953 a black man in North Carolina was convicted of raping a white woman at a distance of 70 feet, by his “reckless eyeballing” i e  merely looking at her.  This “study” picked up that ball and ran with it, with the same motive:  Implacable, visceral hate.  Indeed, it was itself a premeditated hate crime, tho’ none dared call it out.]

https://www.compuserve.com/news/world/story/0001/20211020/dcbcc6388b24c8b83476ddea14b92e21

The old saying, “The living will envy the dead,” is going to be all too true.  Conversion from one to the other will proceed briskly, by the billions.

No, thank ’ee.  I’m leaving with my world.

I think this was a Phillip K Dick story, one of his earlier ones; it sounds like it.  A veteran of the war against the Blobs goes to his doctor with a sad tale:  He was willing to give his all for his country, and they took him up on it.  He was modified - every two weeks, he dissolves into a Blob, into a shapeless jelly thing.  Thus he could spy on the enemy.  But the war is over - now what?  Two weeks of each month he turns into a thing.  It's not uncomfortable, but what kind of life can he lead - ?

The doctor tells him the process cannot be undone; he's stuck with it.  But he's not the only one!  The doc shows him the waiting room, where a startlingly beautiful girl is sitting, just looking around.  She, too, was in the war, and she has this problem:  Every two weeks of each month she turns into a thing - a rigidly unchangeable thing with hair and these stupid legs sticking out and two endoskeletal arms -

The war’s over, the doctor says.  Why don’t you go and say hello?