XiaCobolt

Finished or just reading?

I’m almost finished Ex Libris by Simon Groth. It’s like a YA update of Fahrenheit 451. It has this gimmick that 12 chapters are randomly shuffled, like background vignettes on the 4 main characters so every copy is unique. Neat in concept but overall the book is okay, fun at times but not great.

Before that I finished Everything for Everyone : an Oral History of the New York Commune. It’s a speculative fiction post a successful 21st century communist revolution. It’s nice to read an upbeat sci fi setting, and I think it’s good to show societies absent of capitalism like The Dispossessed does. I found it a bit slow though, like it’s anthology interviews, not a lot of drama or tension.

Before that I raced through Welcome to Dorley Hall and really liked it. I’m trying to wait for the next paperback as I’m trying to get back into physical book reading but it’s so good I might read it online via the patreon.

Not Babs, but I think there's some decent speculation that the "weight loss" associated diabetic medications like glitazones, SGLT-2 inhibitors and GLP1 agonists (of ozempic fame) might have a very useful role in gender affirming medical care, in particularly in trans femmes, because of speeding up fat redistribution, basically giving faster and more dramatic results for HRT.

It one of those complicated things where yeah the science lags behind, because medicine and endocrinologists mostly don't care about trans people, and trans people have to take it into their own hands, but also avoiding fueling disordered eating and anti-fatness.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang as everyone mentioned.

I remember watching the very forgettable movie Felon some 15 years on DVD and thinking the only good part was Val Kilmer.

Some of us have special interests

I think it varied quite a lot depending on the location and the time. We're talking really hard to comprehend lengths of pre-historic time. Like 300,000 years of what we consider a modern human.

And the differences between hunting and gathering, and agriculture as @xj9@hexbear.net says are not as clear cut. Many "Hunter-Gatherer" societies might be moving between semi-permanent seasonal camps (sometimes leaving behind structures and dwellings) where they had planted different crops along the routes and at the places, so they could change with the climate and animal migration

Other permanent "agricultural" settlements, might have been permanent communities with crops growing, livestock etc, but also significant portions of their population going on hunting trips that might take weeks or pasturing livestock in different regions. And almost certainly some amount of foraging local areas. We know even medieval peasants still did that.

At any rates both might have had periods of peace and abundance, versus scarcity and extreme violence. There's probably some hunter-gatherers whose lives were like the garden of Eden, others who it was like The Road. Likewise there's probably farming communites who were like "we've cracked the code free food forever" and others a constant life of paranoia peering over your hill fort's walls incase a neighboring tribes is going to attack, loot your granary and kill you.

Yeah it's crazy, I would have thought a good 60-70?

Edit: I googled him and he does look older in some photos, but whenever he is showing emotion (excited, happy etc) he knocks decades off his appearance

Stealth Galli of Cybele visiting Ancient Persia "yo do you think that guy Astrolabe'd me?"

I think Luna Ooi has done some videos. Vietnam has a lot of garment factories including shoes. They are often conflated with so called “sweat shops”, but the pay, hours, safety condition, age requirements etc are better. Sometimes not to western standards but improving. Frequently unionised in large ones.

There’s still some shops with shitty conditions this is often smaller scale petit bourgeois family operations.

Stealth Gala of Ishtar visiting Ancient Egypt “yo do you think that guy sundial-ed me?”

Stealth Enaree from Scythia visiting Ancient Rome “yo do you think that guy water-clocked me?”

They were an occasional jump scare when I was on twitter and I think they left Bluesky in a huff.