I’m in my 40s… similar to you, used to eat fast food often, and enjoyed it. I was having a horrible day a couple weeks ago, and thought “fuck it… I’m eating at McDs.” It was disgusting, not like I remembered it all.

Ha, yeah, that’s a good point! It was pretty thiccc/dense.

yeah, np! This is the video I used to make my pick. This guy compares a couple of passages in a bunch of different translations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLn_wmedmT0 good luck!

Ooh, I liked Eyes of the Dragon. Enjoy!

I just finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and just started Fagles’ translation of Homer’s Odyssey. Chapter 1 was surprisingly engaging and follow-able… I was prepared to feel lost, as I haven’t done “classics” like this before. But then, I did do a fair bit of research on which translation to pick, and this one did stand out as readable, so maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised.

:'( I feel ya.

^^_^ thank you

Yes! One easy/good one to use is https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ It lets you pick two colors, and you can even use the eyedropper tool in their Color Picker box to select a color right off your screen. Then it’ll tell you the Contrast Ratio of the two selected colors. Higher is better. It will give you a pass/fail for WCAG AA and AAA (two levels of web accessibility standards). I just now checked the red and green from the linked map and it had a ratio of 1.3:1 which is a fail for both AA and AAA.

Some websites (like Trello) give accessibility options to skip colors altogether, and use patterns (cross-hatch, polka-dot, etc.). But in general, going for a high enough contrast ratio should be good enough. I’m a web dev as well and we just run everything through one of those WCAG tools (I believe we’ve been using the WAVE browser plugin) and fix it until it passes. :) But, being the colorblind one on the team, I can often just be like “uhmm, that one ain’t gonna work.” lol.

btw sorry I got so spicy in my initial comment. I really wanted to see the map. :P

Edit: Another reply to my comment had a link to a more colorblind-friendly version of the map, with red and blue instead of red and green. Much clearer to my eyes. I eyedropped those two colors into that webaim checker, and I was surprised to see it also failed quite badly on the color contrast! For example you wouldn’t want red text on a blue background (unless it was a bright red and dark blue, or vice versa). But for map colors, well… I guess that goes to show that for colorblind checking you have to use a little common sense and know what the most common no-no combos are (red/green seems to be the most common). I checked the accessibility docs at my work just now and we sometimes use this site to check what a site looks like under various types of colorblindness: https://www.toptal.com/designers/colorfilter

oh that’s so much better! thank you!!

Wtf are those colors, jfc… How bout a hand for us colorblinds.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. The prose is beautiful and mesmerizing. It forces me to read it at the speed of speech, to let it flow. I’m a sucker for long and winding sentences (when they’re done well), and this doesn’t disappoint.

It’s also quite disgusting, just as everyone says about it. If you can’t handle brutal senseless violence, don’t pick this up. It’s pretty interesting to see the racism/xenophobia of today reflected in American history (1850-ish). It reminds me of the Dark Forest theory from Three Body Problem: these guys go around killing not just out of a love of violence, but because it’s the only guaranteed way to come out on top. If you aren’t the killer, someone else will be. Capitalism and greed work like this too.

Ah, I set the Witcher books down halfway through but gotta get back to them! Glad to hear you’re enjoying them. At least they’re mostly short-ish.

Yes, exactly. If you live in a solid blue or red state, your vote is a drop in the bucket, so it won’t matter if you vote third party. But in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania… in 2016, the number of votes won by Jill Stein was slightly greater than the difference between Trump/Clinton. Ouch! Was it worth it? Did it move the country left?

I might be in the minority on this, but even though the story arc is VERY unfinished, I still came away with the feeling that I just read some great stories, I know (and like) the main character very well, many of the 2000 pages made me smile broadly and/or well up with tears a few times. No regrets here, even if bk 3 never comes out. But I also do totally hear you. It’ll be worth the wait (and it’s gotta be coming… someday… lol).

Cool about Drizzt! I enjoyed (what I read of) The Dark Elf trilogy… I forget how much I read, but, very cool world-building.

I finally finished books 1 and 2 of The Kingkiller books (Rothfuss) and thoroughly enjoyed them. I’m now onto Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy.

Yep. My parents are in their own echo chamber of Fox news and other 80-year-old racist fucks, and anything you try to say bounces off them with the basic formula you outlined. Actual external logic doesn’t matter. The wild thing is how big that echo chamber has gotten.

alt.binaries…

a good dropperful of liquid vitamin D is good for me once a week. make sure it’s enough – the typical recommended daily values (at least in the US) are pretty low.

Yeahhh… I knew that going in, and I think I’m ok with it. Ask me again when I finish book 2 though :)

yes indoodly!

I’m currently devouring The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, and it’s every bit as good as my friends said it’d be. If you’re into fantasy/Witcher kind of stuff, it’s brilliant. Heck, it’s probably great even if you’re not.

I recently finished the 3rd and 4th books of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, which have been fun. I’m not sure if I’ll continue them anytime soon though. So many other books to read.