Through a weekend with another major browser crash, oh how I hate Microsoft...Theoretically it's still possible for me to read all the physical books and e-books I have accumulate. Not, however, in one year. Theoretically we have to figure that, allowing for eyeglasses at some point, I'll be reading for at least two more decades. So it's still possible for me to buy a book without thinking "Which book that I already have will I never be able to read?"...but not every day or anything.
Glyphosate Awareness
Y'know, all those previous studies looked at mouse survival rates, not mouse brains...There are some potential flaws in this study. It might need replication. Or then again we might just look at the overall survival rates and admit that, although glyphosate harms each individual differently, it's done enough harm to helpless dumb animals. Including two-legged ones.
Housekeeping
I'm with Tom Cox. It's far better to be a hoarder than a tosser. (Which is why "tosser" is an Almost Unprintable Word in some countries, but this is the US so this web site doesn't give a toss.)
"Tossing" has some other slang meanings, but at this web site it describes the irrational, bizarre, and dysfunctional behavior of discarding useful things in the belief, fostered by merchants and thieves, that a house should look like a hotel, with lots of bare floor, probably covered in nasty carpet, and the things our modern society requires people to keep, such as keys and legal documents, easy for anyone to find.
Should the old gentleman Cox called "The Collector" have moved his collections out of the way, or let someone more able-boded move them, enough to allow the house to be repaired? In an ideal world, I'd say he should. We do not live in an ideal world and he was probably deterred from maintaining the actual house, if not by lack of money, then probably by some idiot babbling about "clutter" and "decluttering."
In your house, the things you find useful and/or beautiful are not "clutter." They have value for you and for anyone who deserves to be in your house. People who show confusion about this are a particularly nasty form of "clutter" and should be thrown out. You have a right to choose whether to display some of your belongings in the room where you receive visitors, in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement where they can be admired, or to stack them up warehouse-fashion, in a jumble that makes it impossible for people who shouldn't know where to find the valuables to guess where the valuables might be.
"But what if a stack falls on top of somebody?" You didn't invite this "somebody" to be pawing through that stack, did you? If a stack falls on a burglar and breaks his ribs, maybe that will give him some better ideas about things to do for quick cash. If busybodies can't see everything in your collection, that may be even better.
Some people have a morbid fear of depth. When surfaces aren't flat and bare, like bare walls or flat Astroturf "lawns," they imagine things they are afraid of lurking behind every plant and in every cabinet. This is a treatable mental illness for which these people need encouragement to seek help. They should not be allowed to let their phobia lower the quality of other people's lives. One reason why rooms that are not actually being rented out should not look like hotel rooms is that we don't want to be responsible for mental patients, so we don't want to encourage them to hang around our homes.
I, personally, like depth. I like living in a place with hills and valleys and trees and cliffs and caves. I like houses that have closets and cabinets and niches and shelves and basements and maybe even a secret passage somewhere. I like books with layers of subplots and meanings, too. I like clothing with deep pockets.. I recognize that bare grassland, and bare hotel rooms with empty space for people to bring in their own baggage, and short simple stories, and postcards as distinct from proper letters in envelopes, appeal to some people and have their reasons for existing, but I like things that will continue to reward my attention in a variety of ways for a good long time. To me "flat and bare" equals "boring."
Does this preference for shallowness over depth tie into people's whole worldview?
Shopping
Scalzi's list grows:
...and I ought to add the Friday post about charities Scalzi's readers endorse, but MICROSOFT FOULED UP AND LOST MY TABS, BOOHOOHOO! and that makes me feel less charitable.
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