#not only that… it got published and sold to the general public

[smolthealmighty]

[theteablogger]

I've recently received a few asks about the liquidation sale happening at the costume shop where Andy used to work. Basically, a combination of factors including the pandemic, the strike, debt, and the sudden death of one of the owners made it impossible for the surviving owner to continue running the business. Now the investors want their money and have demanded that he liquidate the shop's inventory and equipment. Before the sale began, the shop had over 400,000 costumes and items of vintage apparel in its inventory; I'm not sure what's left now. The major concern is that whatever doesn't sell is going to be sold by the pound to the rag house and will most likely end up in landfills. Despite no longer being an employee, Andy has volunteered to handle the social media side of things and is tweeting almost non-stop about the sale.

The sale is legit. Yes, Andy has a decades-long history of lying and catastrophizing, but all of the above is true and has been publicized on various media outlets. I cannot vouch for every detail that he shares about people showing up or not, how much money they need by whatever date, etc., but the basic story as I've summarized above is accurate.

I got one ask from a person who's considering being a remote volunteer for the sale--I don't know whether you want me to publish your tumblr name, so I'll answer here. There's no reason to worry that you'll put any shoppers at risk by volunteering to help with the sale. Andy won't be there and he isn't getting any money from it. You would be the only one potentially at risk, as you have to contact Andy via social media in order to volunteer. I generally advise people not to reach out to Andy, but I also understand your reasons for wanting to help with the sale. Ultimately, it's up to you. Whatever you decide, I would not recommend staying in touch with him once the sale is over.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Crunching some numbers for Spare

An article today in the Washington Post included some talk about how publishing contracts, sales, and advances work. Here are some excerpts:

A book can end up on a bestseller list by selling 5,000 or more books in a week.

Under most contracts with major publishing companies, an author earns a royalty of 15 percent of the cover price of a hardcover book. A book priced at $30 would earn the author $4.50 per sale.

Publishers will generally offer an author an advance payment. Once enough books are sold to cover the advance, the author begins to earn additional income. In other words, a person receiving a $1 million advance would need to sell more than 222,000 books at $30 each to earn back the advance.

(source)

What does this mean for Spare? It means...it's bad.

First off, $30 is the average cost for a hardcover book here in the US. However we know Spare isn't actually selling at $30 because it's been heavily discounted since its release. US Amazon is selling it at $19 a copy so let's go with that. At $19 a copy, if Harry's contract has him seeing royalties at 15%, he makes $2.85 a copy.

The publishers are claiming that Harry sold 3.5 million copies of Spare in the first week of publication. That number is definitely inflated; it includes audiobooks (which are free for a lot of people through Audible and other audiobook subscription services) and it probably includes some projected figures. So let's deduct 15% for those ghost copies, which leaves us with 2.9 million and at $2.85 per copy, he made $8.2 million just from royalties.

So per the Washington Post, Harry has to sell enough copies of Spare to cover the advance before he can make money on the memoir. If Harry doesn't cover the advance, he doesn't earn royalties. Which is the juicy bit: the Daily Mail has claimed that Harry received a $20 million advance from Penguin to write Spare. Based on these projections (2.9 million copies sold that first week at $2.85 a copy), Harry hasn't paid off his advance yet. He's still got $12 million to give back.

Now take into consideration that sales for Spare steadily declined since publication. Spare might've sold 3.5 million in the first week, but it's not selling 3.5 million the next week. In fact, Forbes Magazine reported that as of July 1, 2023, Spare sold 1,174,137 copies here in the US. That's 33% of the 3.5 million from the first week of sales - in other words, sales really dropped off. Maybe even flatlined.

So getting very hypothetical here, let's add 33% to 3.5 million, and assume that's how many copies of Spare Harry has sold as of July 1. That's 4.6 million. 4.6 million times $2.85 = $13.3 million. Harry still hasn't paid back his alleged advance. Even if we give him 20% of royalties ($3.80 per copy for a profit of $17.4 million), he still hasn't paid back the alleged advance.

So while all these numbers are most likely made up, what probably isn't made up is that Harry hasn't earned back his advance and isn't making any kind of profit. And we know this because a) real cumulative data on Spare isn't easily available and b) there's been no talk of Harry's next book - either the second memoir alleged to be part of the deal or the book on Invictus Games confirmed to be part of the deal. If Spare performed well, or even beyond expectations, the sales would constantly be in the news as new updates are issues and Harry's second book would have been announced immediately to piggyback on Spare's success. But that hasn't happened. It'll be very interesting to see how it all tallies up at the end of the year.

I don't think we'll see any more books from Harry. Or if we do, they'll be updated/reissued versions of Spare that count towards his 4-book deal so Penguin can move on.

(I'm also side-eyeing the Daily Mail's claim that his advance was $20 million. Bruce Springsteen received a $10 million advance and Keith Richards only $1 million. And these guys have legitimate and proven track records that they can sell content. Harry has no record of even writing his own speeches.)

[justenjoythegossip]

PR ANTICS PART 3: an apparent change in the PR tactics, the deletion of the Vogue pic, where do they go from here

The more organic pic at the afterparty

After the pic of them with Mads Mikkelsen came out, I immediately thought that this was the best and most organic moment they gave us. 

Still, those pics could have been much more organic, had Chris and Abba actually gone to the Golden Globes Ceremony. Why didn’t Chris present an award? Especially since RDJ and so many of his pals like Margot Robbie were there and were expected to bag trophies. Didn’t he want to? Did he just want to do the bare minimum because he is ashamed?  Or was it impossible for him to get an invite to present? 

An apparent change in the PR tactics?

I posted my initial reaction about the pic with Mikkelsen. Here is a link if you want to check it out. 

Chris was smiling, they were more natural touching and there was no clenched fist visible. It was quite the turnaround from their latest disastrous papwalk in NY only a few days earlier. 

First observation, Chris is definitely capable of smiling even when she is close by. Second observation, Chris might have done a very poor job of selling their RS on purpose and it was probably part of the PR strategy from the very beginning.

I am not even talking about the behind the scene video of their first papwalk when Chris dropped Abba’s hand very quickly and her trying to get him to hold her hand again. Here is a link https://www.tumblr.com/rosyrosie-e/704361463430660096?source=share

Was it a random stranger by the way or a plant that posted that video? We don’t know. But what we do know is that main publications fed us those very bad pics of the 2 of them on the stairs. So they definitely wanted us to see that and to draw conclusions from it. 

We know why they have purposefully done a terrible job of manufacturing this RS that they initially sold via likes and emojis on Instagram. We know it enabled them to weaponize Chris’ fandom. They even named those 2 opposing rival clans: Team PR and Team Real. Tumblr (which sponsored his panel at the NY con by the way) was the perfect place to have people fight over who is right. 

Now that we got those 3 Golden Globes afterparties pics, there seems to be a slight shift in the PR tactics. Of course, it’s still a little early to predict but it’s very possible that we’ll get more natural and organic sightings from now on. We’ll see. 

Why the apparent change…

More and more mods have started to see right through the tactics played by some of the noisiest troll accounts and/or plants and have pointed them out. The manufactured discourse is getting old, repetitive and tedious. 

As for the general public, they just don’t care about Chris and Abba. The comments regarding their latest papwalk were almost overwhelmingly and excruciatingly bad.

Just Jared (which is one of the publication that pushed them the most and also had inadvertently published an article about the valentine’s drop before it even happened) didn’t even use their names for clickbait when they published the article about Scarlett Christmas party, which is quite telling. 

They just don’t register with the general public. So a change seemed quite necessary.

The questions surrounding the deletion of the Vogue pic

The Vogue pic of the 2 of them was deleted by the publication shortly after it was posted. It is still a mystery as to why this happened. Some mods have speculated that the pic was old or fake or unflattering…

What’s interesting is that this is extremely similar to old patterns when we saw influencers posting a pic of Chris before going private. Or when Chris’ friends made their profiles public long enough to leak a picture before going back to private. This is how we got the July 29th pic of Chris playing a golf tournament while Alba was in the Bermuda. 

Those pics just like the Vogue pic were not destined to the General public and they weren’t meant to be posted by official publications. 

The Vogue pic was destined to the fandom that doesn’t buy that Chris and Abba are a real and legitimate couple. It’s not a coincidence that so many blogs were asked the very same question by anons: after this picture do you still believe they are PR? 

And since I don’t think this latest stunt did anything to change anybody’s mind, I guess we can expect more shenanigans with more natural and organic pics of the 2 of them.  

Where do they go from here? 

Now that the writer strike is over, they can hire someone that can come up with some sort of high concept romantic comedy to write what comes next. Something like… 

They had nothing in common. He was Captain America. She was a Nazi sympathizing yacht girl. They even started to resent one another as they had to play one humiliating, ridiculous, cringy scene after the other. His mother thought she was a racist, her best friend and soulmate thought he was a cheap version of Leo but without the talent. But against all odds, they fell in love with one another. They don’t know when it happened. Was it when he drew on her chin and exposed her tonsils? Was it when she posted a shower porn when he started to see underneath her shell?  But it happened nonetheless. Deep down they had so much in common. Weed, booze, their love for yoga pants. Go Portugal! Love conquers all.

Of course that movie looks pretty shitty and also it does bear similarities with the romantic comedy that was just released: Anyone but you.  But who cares? Hollywood is not known for good content or originality anyway.

Or… they could put an end to everybody’s misery and wrap it up. But who knows for how long they are going to keep milking this disaster movie in the making?

[scotianostra]

Up the close and doon the stair,

But and ben' wi' Burke and Hare.

Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,

Knox the boy that buys the beef.

A 19th century Edinburgh rhyme about the serial killers Burke and Hare.

William Burke was executed on 28th January 1829

I'll start this post as I always do for all the newer readers and let you know the main big fat fact about Burke and Hare, as the auld Edinburgh rhyme says, they did NOT rob graves!!! The pair were serial killers, but not in the true sense of the words as they killed their victims for financial gain.

Grave robbing was fashionable at the time many cemeteries even built watchtowers and employed people to guard the last resting places of their loved ones, there was a shortage of bodies for the Universities and Edinburgh was one of the leading cities in the world for teaching medicine, so people sold bodies to the schools, no questions asked.

William Burke and William Hare certainly did this but they were never known to get their hands dirty by digging up a corpse, this was too much like hard work for these two Irish Immigrants so they cut out the labouring part and decided to start their own wee industry, killing people and selling the bodies, the practice became known as Burking.

It all started when a lodger died at Hare's girlfriends house on the West Port not far from the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, he still owed his rent and the enterprising duo decided to fill his coffin with rocks and sell the body to pay this debt, they took the body to a Professor Robert Knox at Surgeon Square and were paid 7 pounds and 10 shillings for it, this is the nearest they got to stealing a body as their "trade" took a more sinister turn.

I wont go through all 16 murders I will just recite to you the one that was their undoing........

Fittingly it was Halloween 1828 and there was a party in Log's Lodgings in Tanner's Close where the duo lived, the following morning guests became suspicious at the disappearance of an old lady who had been very merry the night before. They discovered her corpse — stripped and ready for packing — in Burke's bedstraw. Mary Docherty had come to Edinburgh from Donegal in search of a long-lost son. She had chanced to beg at a gin-shop where Burke had befriended her. Like all the other victims, she was poor, hungry, and alone. Street folk were not missed immediately as more settled people would have been, and dissection ensured disposal of the evidence.

The mode of death was designed to leave no marks. Since only this last body was available to the authorities nothing could have been proven, despite strong suspicion, had not Hare agreed to give evidence for the prosecution in return for legal immunity.

His partner in crime was hanged on January 28th 1829, an event celebrated with carnival by the Edinburgh populace. His corpse, appropriately enough, was delivered up for public dissection at Surgeons' Hall. Hare left the city incognito, and his fate is unknown.

Burke's execution was witnessed by the novelist Sir Walter Scott, who sympathized with the general opinion that both men's wives had served as accomplices, and that the anatomists had been accessories to the murders. Burke's confessions were published after the execution, and they suggest that this view of the anatomists may not have been altogether misplaced. Burke and Hare were commended by Knox himself on the freshness of a corpse; they were never asked any questions about the derivation of the bodies they delivered to the school, were paid immediately, and were always urged to get more.

A pamphlet, later attributed to a doorkeeper at Knox's school, implicated both the anatomist and his staff in the crimes. According to this witness more than one of the bodies had blood at the mouth, nose, or ears. In at least one instance — that of a well-known Edinburgh beggar, Daft Jamie — identifying features were deliberately obliterated in the dissection room: when it became known that he was missing from the streets, his head and distinctive club feet were severed from his body and dissection was hastened.

Dr Knox was never charged with any crime, nor was he called to give evidence at the trial. He remained silent throughout the furore over the murders. He was burnt in effigy in the streets, ostracized by Edinburgh's medical community, and eventually left the city. He seems to have believed that murder could have been uncovered at any anatomy school, and the fact that it had happened to be his school was simply bad luck. Whether this belief had any objective basis will probably never be known.

The Burke and Hare murders are critically significant to the history of anatomy in Britain. They represent the apotheosis of the market in human flesh. The murders reveal that by the late 1820s, the poor were worth more dead than alive. A further 60 murders by the ‘London Burkers’ Bishop and Williams, in 1831 occurred before the Anatomy Act of 1832 provided the anatomists with a free supply of corpses requisitioned from Poor Law workhouses.

The photos include a contemporary drawing of Burke, a cast of how he might have looked, with a pocket book made from his skin, another card holder also made from his skin and his skeleton, still on display in Surgeons Hall 192 years after he took "The Last Drop"

The transcript of the Broadsheet below can be found here http://digital.nls.uk/.../broadside.../id/15228/transcript/1

[sharpth1ng]

hey again!! thank you for answering my ask, and for the clarification! i figured you probably had it all sorted out because you're a grown adult and seem to know your stuff but i still said something anyways just in case haha

i should have been more clear with my original ask but i myself still find all this stuff quite confusing so thats my bad sorry 😞 basically it has nothing to do with the labour of printing or if the company publishes it or not, it’s because fan fiction is already grey area, it’s ok when no one is making money off it. as soon as at any point someone makes any money off it, like these printing companies, or commissioning someone on etsy, or even just going somewhere local to get the pages printed, it now becomes illegal - fanworks infringe on the creator's intellectual property and you need a licencing agreement if it's not public domain etc blah blah blah you get it lol

as soon as the word "pay" comes in, it's illegal - you can't pay for anything, even if you are the one that wrote the fanfic (which fucking sucks). but your merch and stuff is completely fine because the references are based on your original writing, like theyre not gonna be like "how dare you sell this tshirt with a bloody B on it thats illegal!!" bcs that whole thing is entirely unique to your work and has no ties to the original property 👍

but thats just my understanding of it, and the specifications of it can get really confusing!! same thing happens with fanart too, technically you aren't allowed to sell fanart - that's why people often only sell it irl at cons to avoid copyright strikes. but then again there is people selling fanart on redbubble and in fanzines etc so like, i honestly don't know how that side of it works as well?? i think its under a different law since it’s a transformative work maybe...??

its all very confusing i wish clarification was more clear 😭 but you sound like you've looked into it and know what you're doing so thats fantastic, and i'm glad to hear. thank you again for answering so quickly i dont mean to be a bother. ur a talented writer and i loved debaser, keep it up 😊

Yeah no problem! I do appreciate the effort to give a heads up. And like to be fair I’ve done my research but I’m not a copyright lawyer or a legal scholar and the law on this stuff is very confusing to me.

In terms of the fanart stuff my understanding is that it is illegal to sell but for the most part fan Artist are too small for copyright holders to go after, it’s just not really a thing that’s done for the most part. There’s even a number of situations where selling fanart led to those artists being directly employed by the copyright holders. I think it’s very rare for fan artists to get sued for copy right and the only examples I know of are from Disney.

For the most part fanart sold is illegal, but it’s similar to torrenting content where its not really enforced so people do it anyways, and often at a pretty large scale. The stuff on red bubble and in fanzines is also illegal as far as I know, it doesn’t count as transformative.

Honestly I think it’s very unlikely that anyone printing my work would get targeted like that, mostly because this fandom is small and I’m even smaller. I only have a little over 1000 followers here and while that’s more followers than I’ve ever had before in my life it’s pretty much microscopic on the internet. Beyond that there’s less than a handful of printed copies as far as I’m aware.

Honeslty I have a lot of issues with copyright law- obviously it needs to apply to things like generative AI which is essentially a very environmentally damaging collage machine, but in terms of fanart and fanfiction I really don’t see how it could be construed as taking away profit from copyright holders.

People for the most part only read my work because they were already into scream, and a number of people have even told me my work got them to watch scream so if anything I’ve created profit for them. Fandom is the reason these original works have the legacy they do, and fanworks are a massive part of that because you can only consume the original content so many times before you get bored.

Beyond that we wouldn’t have some of our most highly acclaimed cultural works if copyright law had existed hundreds of years ago. Like, Shakespeare would have been fucked.

Alright lmao rant over. Tl;dr I’m doing my best to do this all in a legal way, but it’s good for folks to be aware that there may be an issue with the legality of printing my work even if they aren’t paying me. I think it’s unlikely any of you will face repercussions because this fandom is miniscule but if you’re worried maybe don’t post on Tumblr- but feel free to dm me or post in my discord 👍

[doshmanziari]

Hey, everyone.

In 2022, I wrote and illustrated a short comic book which I published and sold copies of at that year’s MICE. Entitled Adyton, it was a brief exploration of what I'd very loosely call the close encounter phenomenon, with an emphasis on the abduction aspect. Since then, I’ve wanted to expand on the book; but, as is usual for me, I have to ruminate on something for a long while until embarking on the project feels right. This recently happened, and I’ve decided to entitle what I intend to be my first complete and long-form graphic novel Can You See Behind the Moon? I’m not going to say where the title comes from, and will leave it to those who are more familiar with some of the paranormal literature to recognize its origin.

Over the years, I’ve made sputtering attempts at other graphic novels, but the lack of a clear narrative direction for one doomed it to oblivion (Underbrickers), while the creative momentum of the other seemed bound to a very particular timeframe (Grim Synergy). Differently, I see this project as encompassing ideas which, to varying degrees, are present within my mind every day, or every other day, and I do think it can be sustained by that persistence. If I were forced to speak in very general and perhaps reductive terms about Can You See Behind the Moon?, it is my attempt to explore possibilities implied by close encounters in a way which emphasizes a deep and occulted relationship humanity appears to have with itself, the cosmos, and what one might term the evolutionary impulse.

The first four pages you see here (not counting the cover) are recreations of Adyton’s first six pages. As should be apparent, the narrative is not linear. Like Adyton, the plot sometimes progresses according to visual resonances which can also be interpreted as conceptual resonances. For instance, the as-yet-unnamed young man’s finger-gun gesture becomes the transitional point for a reference to the so-called Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, wherein guns figured prominently, and unusually.

To be clear, this work has been done very quickly, in the interest of submitting it to relevant publishers as proof-of-concept material, and so that I’m able to maintain a pace of a couple of pages every two or three days (while also producing “fine art” for gallery shows, to say nothing of various other side projects). But I also like the roughness of the drawings, and the color of the newsprint paper… so, the making of these has also carried with it pleasure and occasional surprise at the results. Since I’ve decided to work within a limited palette, I’m relying heavily upon the linework.

For Christmas last year, my partner — somewhat regretfully — got me a comic book about UFOs published the same year by Dark Horse. I write “somewhat regretfully” because she didn’t really like the look of it; and when I received it I had to agree: the art is so simplistic, mundane, and ugly that I don’t think I’ll ever do more than skim some of the pages (the author also seems to have only done the bare minimum of research regarding Betty and Barney Hill’s case). But I’ve used the book as a point of motivation: surely, if something that bland could get green-lit by a fairly well-known comics publisher, then my work stands a chance.

Another one of my particularities is that I tend to get through projects more quickly when I don’t assign their completion an arbitrary date, and also when I don’t make myself beholden to publicizing all of the progress. I don’t intend on making a Kickstarter or anything for this — unless it becomes necessary — so I’m not sure when I’ll be prepared to share more. But, the time will come.

Anyway — even if there’s not much here yet, thanks for looking!

[todays-just-a-daydream]

Saturday, November 16, 1996 Book looks for Oasis from press Invasive tabloid stories prompt third Gallagher brother to tell his own

By JANE STEVENSON Toronto Sun

Don't Look Back In Anger appears to have double meaning for British supergroup Oasis. It's not only the title of the band's current single, but also the mantra of Paul Gallagher, the older brother of notorious band members Noel and Liam. "I mean, if it helps one person, then it's done its job," says Gallagher of his book, Brothers: From Childhood To Oasis, which details the three siblings' violent childhood at the hands of their brutish, mean-spirited father. "There's other people growing up in the same environment -- the only difference is they haven't got two brothers who are the biggest rock and roll stars in the world." Brothers, which was only released in Canada two weeks ago, is already a huge success in England, where it's sold 45,000 copies since mid-September. It helped that the publishers (General Publishing in Canada), who had only expected it to sell about 10,000, moved up the release date to capitalize on the band's headline-making cancellation of the remainder of their U.S. tour. "I expected it to do more but I expect more than anyone else," says Gallagher, sounding a lot like his ambitious brother Noel, who has already layed down four tracks at Abbey Road Studios for the new Oasis album expected next April. Book sales will likely pick up again given the recent Group of the Year honors for Oasis at the MTV Europe music awards, not to mention Liam's arrest on suspicion of possession of cocaine. "It's just mass hysteria over here," Gallagher says. "I mean if Liam walked backwards in the street, they'd say he was retarded and make a story out of it. The press over here is just like scum, basically, and I'm not afraid of saying that. We get doorsteps every day of the week, which means the press just arrive on your door." In fact, Gallagher had just arrived back from London where he was visiting Liam, who has to report back to police on Dec. 30. "I've been doing my Highway To Heaven bit, which means angel of mercy sort of stuff," Gallagher jokes before adding that Liam is holding up well. "He's fine, he just doesn't want permanent press attention 'cause he hasn't really got a private life anymore -- and it's very, very sad that it has to come to this." Understandably, neither Liam nor Noel initially wanted their older brother writing Brothers, but it apparently had less to do with airing their dirty laundry in public than with Paul's choice of collaborator, Manchester-based journalist Terry Christian. "They still don't like him, probably because he's a Man United fan, but there you go." (Liam, Noel and Paul are supporters of Manchester City, the local soccer rivals of Manchester United.) But Gallagher decided to proceed, with the blessing of their mother, Peggy, and says the book has now brought the three siblings closer together. "I think Noel has read it, and he's behind it. Liam probably read the bits about himself 'cause his attention span isn't very large, and he says it's okay. "In the end, I don't really care, okay or not. I mean it was a book that was personal to me and everyone says, `Well, why share it with the world?' And I say, `Well, the world is on my nerves at the moment.' Cause the press was just digging up stories just for the fun of it, trying to disgrace us." There are actually nine books about Oasis currently in Britian, but, as Gallagher points out, "I'm the only one with the divine right to write one. "Brothers are brothers and they'll fight anyway but at the end of the day they still love each other. They've got a stronger bond than anyone on the outside could ever have. You can have lifetime friends until you're ninety-nine but your brothers are forever." As for their estranged father, who still lives in Manchester and has sold his own stories to the tabloids, Gallagher doesn't think he's read the book. Nor does he care. "He just thinks that nothing's happened. He thinks we're his three darling little sons. Well, we're not his sons, we're me mom's sons."

Toronto Sun on Paul Gallagher’s Brothers book release, as copied/transcribed by a fan and posted in the Oasis Usenet (24 November 1996)

[aaronburrdaily]

October 30, 1809

Catteau says that it rains usually every day of October in Zealand. Since I landed in Elsinore, I forgot when, but you may see by looking back, it has been every day fine till Friday last, excepting only the day I came from Elsinore to this place. But since Thursday we have not seen sun or moon. A constant fog, and, generally, mist so heavy as to wet you. Called on d'C.'s; the King and Queen have arrived on the Island of Zealand. Will be this night at Fredericksberg, and to-morrow make their entrè in town. G.H. Olsen called this morning; and at 12 Professor Ramus, by appointment, to visit the collection of coins and medals at Rosenborg. This palace built by Charles IV. or V., I forget which, and is at one end of the gardens, which are open for the public as a promenade. The palace and garden are in the same enclosure. A wood extending the length of the garden, and about one hundred yards wide. The collection is immense. Ramus says forty thousand, being in value and number next to those of Paris and Vienna. The coins of all times and all nations; Europe, Asia, America, and from the early days of Athens. Several of Alexander and Philip. Most of them are described in a work printed at the expense of the government, three immense volumes in folio, and sold for the inconsiderable price of ———. The Flora Danica¹ is published and sold in like manner. Being with the Professor, paid nothing. Hosack and Robinson accompanied me. Din. a table d'hôte.² Evening to Fredericksberg, a very muddy walk of more than two English miles. The park and gardens must be some hundreds of acres. Water, bridges, fountains; the effect (of the illumination) in some places pretty, but nowhere answering my expectations. Almost total want of music. The crowd such that one was in a constant struggle. The sentinels on each side prevented any one from going out of the walks. Got home at 10 and consoled myself with Tem.³

1 The Danish Flora. 2 For diner à [la] table d'hôte. 3 For Tempe, a girl previously referred to.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Shot an arrow, and glanced off the side of the target...

"She [Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors' Guild] said authors want to see AI companies come to the table and discuss a form of collective licensing that would pay creators for the work AI developers have already used to train generative artificial intelligence machines as well as future uses."

Yes, compensation. Fine. You deserve it. Do people who built the internet by putting free content on it also deserve compensation, or just authors under contract to a publisher who might be included in a collective licensing agreement?

AI will produce stories just fine without the sliver of content published and copyrighted by paid authors recently, just give it time. It's already got Shakespeare, Poe, the Bronte sisters, and everyone else in the public domain, plus all us ordinary human beings who are just here to talk about our day. Will it give us good or original stories? No. But stories that can be created to spec, copyrighted and marketed? Sure!

Copyright is the wrong way to go on this - they will pay money to the publishers for the rights, a few authors will get some kind of royalty check, and they'll go right back to trying to replace human-made stories with AI generated ones. How much is "never pay an author for a story again" worth in cash to Random House right now? How much will Margaret Atwood take to back off and let them replace human innovation with endless repetition? Is there a fair price for that?

Ideas are not property, and that means they can't be rounded up and sold at auction like so many head of cattle. Margaret Atwood asking for slightly more money should not be the only thing standing between us and 1984's novel-writing factory. The current way we pay and publish authors does need to die... But we don't have anything to replace it at the moment!

[lucienballard]

RIP Tony Bennett

Tony Bennett, who has died aged 96, made a high art out of being the very best kind of saloon-bar singer – not only in the good-humoured optimism of his big, expansive sound, or his passionate gratitude for life’s lucky breaks and glimpsed beauties, but also in an unquenchable appetite for sharing good songs, whether with 10 people or 10,000.

Frank Sinatra used to call Bennett “the best singer in the business”, an accolade that would frequently turn up in the younger man’s publicity, though a more forthright tribute from the same source (“that kid’s got four sets of balls”) generally did not. Bennett’s artistry and power to stir the heart were qualities a world away from the cliched perception of the Vegas crooner in a tuxedo. During the rock-dominated 1960s and 70s, Bennett was easy to caricature. You only had to pretend to loosen a tie, casually throw an imaginary microphone from hand to hand, and exhale “the loveliness of Paris” in tones somewhere between Sinatra’s and the club style of Vic Reeves.

Closer listening to Bennett’s smoky baritone revealed a different story. His performances often sounded like thanksgivings – for the breaks he’d had, and for his conviction that the good in the world outstripped the bad. This curiously worldly innocence was at the core of his enduring appeal. Bennett’s records (including Because of You and a version of the country singer Hank Williams’s Cold, Cold Heart) topped the charts in 1951 before the arrival of rock’n’roll. His most celebrated later hits included his signature song, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, The Good Life (both 1962) and Who Can I Turn To? (1964). Bennett won 19 Grammy awards and was estimated to have sold more than 50m records worldwide.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/hT5VOnaGRSU?start=2&wmode=opaque&feature=oembed&start=2Tony Bennett performing I Left My Heart in San Francisco on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. YouTube

He was also an accomplished painter and produced a book of his visual art, What My Heart Has Seen (1996). His autobiography, published in 1998, was entitled The Good Life – Bennett knew only too well how ambiguous a notion that could be, having narrowly survived a cocaine overdose and fought off bankruptcy during his troubled middle years. He raised millions of dollars for charities and publicly associated himself with liberal causes. In an interview with the singer in 2002, Simon Hattenstone wrote in the Guardian that Bennett had “done all the classic showbiz stuff, snorted coke with the best of ’em, made out with the younger women, broken bread with the mafia – and somehow come out with his innocence, his idealism, intact”.

Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in the Astoria district of Queens, New York, he was the son of John, a grocer from southern Italy, and Anna (nee Suraci), a seamstress. His father died when Bennett was 10 and Anna worked all hours to support her three children. Watching her struggle, Bennett made up his mind to be successful enough for his mother’s trials to end. His Uncle Dick, a tap dancer, provided an early glimpse of showbusiness, and Bennett was passionate about both singing and painting by the time he attended the School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design) in Manhattan.

After demobilisation, Bennett took vocal classes in the bel canto style at the American Theatre Wing school (a teacher there suggested he try imitating the phrasing of jazz instrumentalists) and he began singing in nightclubs from 1946 under the stage name of Joe Bari. The comedian Bob Hope hired him in 1949, but, disliking the stage name, told him: “We’ll call you Tony Bennett.”

Bennett worked in New York at the Paramount theatre in Hope’s popular show, which soon needed police barricades to hold back the singer’s teenage fans. When he married Patricia Beech in 1952, crowds of young women showed up outside the ceremony, dressed as if in mourning.

Bennett became one of the biggest vocal draws in the US, with three No 1 hits – Because of You, Cold, Cold Heart (both 1951) and Rags to Riches (1953). His single Stranger in Paradise, from the Broadway musical Kismet, brought him a No 1 in the UK in 1955 but the arrival of rock’n’roll made it Bennett’s first and last Top 10 single in the UK, and he had only one more in the US, when In the Middle of an Island reached No 9 in 1957.

Bennett needed to adapt. Unlike Sinatra or Bing Crosby, he had not worked with the swing big-bands, a learning curve alongside expert instrumentalists that could sharpen technique and fill a singer with fresh ideas. But in 1957 he began a long working relationship with the London-born jazz pianist and arranger Ralph Sharon, who edged him toward a jazzier repertoire. Bennett’s 1957 album The Beat of My Heart was made with help from the jazz musicians Herbie Mann, Art Blakey and Jo Jones among others; it was followed by Basie Swings, Bennett Sings (1958) and In Person! (1959) with Count Basie’s big band.

Along with many other singers of his kind, Bennett found that his sales went into steady decline. He tried an unsuccessful detour into acting before, in 1969, the Columbia Records boss Clive Davis persuaded him to make an album of 60s pop hits including the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby. The cover art portrayed him in flares and a psychedelic tie, and Bennett was so intimidated by his unsuitability for material he was not yet ready to appreciate that he threw up during the recordings. He later said it reminded him of his mother being forced to make cheap dresses for money.

Bennett left Columbia and worked for smaller jazz labels during the next decade. He performed with the big bands of Woody Herman, Buddy Rich and Duke Ellington, and in 1975 made a duo album for the Fantasy label with one of modern jazz’s most lyrical pianists, Bill Evans. What might have seemed like an unlikely partnership between the cerebral Evans and the heart-on-sleeve popular performer worked remarkably well, with Bennett’s account of Evans’ famous Waltz for Debby revealing an inspired grasp of the art of jazz-inflected vocal interpretation and interplay. Two years later, the pair reconvened for Together Again on Bennett’s own shortlived Improv label.

In the 90s he paid tributes to Sinatra and Fred Astaire, on the albums Perfectly Frank and Steppin’ Out, respectively, and also recorded homages to Billie Holiday (Tony Bennett on Holiday) and Duke Ellington (Bennett Sings Ellington: Hot and Cool). Through his work with kd lang and Elvis Costello on MTV, he reconnected with a young audience. He even played at Glastonbury in 1998, with the organisers laying out a path of hay bales so he wouldn’t get his silk suit muddy on the way to the stage.

On Playin’ With My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues (2001), he recorded a memorable series of duets with lang, Ray Charles, Sheryl Crow, Billy Joel, Diana Krall, BB King, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Wonder.

For his 80th birthday in 2006, Bennett released Duets: An American Classic, featuring performances with Paul McCartney, Elton John, Barbra Streisand and Bono, and five years later came Duets II, with another glitzy cast including Aretha Franklin, Lady Gaga – and Amy Winehouse, with whom he shared a memorable Body and Soul in March 2011.

In 2012, his book of philosophical musings, Life Is a Gift, was published. The 2014 album Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek was another Billboard chart-topper, and the following year he won a Grammy for a tribute album to Jerome Kern.

The Empire State Building was specially illuminated for Bennett’s 90th birthday in 2016 – and that year Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga and more performed on an NBC primetime special, Tony Bennett Celebrates 90: The Best Is Yet to Come. The Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio (where Bennett’s Homage to Hockney is part of a permanent collection) presented its Two Painters exhibition, showing Bennett’s Tuscan landscapes, still lifes and portraits alongside watercolourist Charles Reid’s work. In November 2017, the Library of Congress made him the first non-composer to win the Gershwin prize.

Bennett worked into his later years – because a new audience was there for him, and because the money funded his charitable work, including the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, which he had founded in 2001. He painted every day for as long as he was able. “You paint with nature out in the field and you realise how magnificent being alive is,” Bennett enthused to Hattenstone in 2002. “Most people just walk past it. I used to walk past it. Each day now, because of my age, I just look at it and cherish it. If people could only grasp how wonderful it is to be part of this.” A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s in 2016 did not dim this view, with Bennett stating on Twitter: “Life is a gift – even with Alzheimer’s.”

His final live performances were with Lady Gaga in 2021, at Radio City Music Hall, New York.

Bennett’s first two marriages ended in divorce. In 2007 he married Susan Crow, who survives him, as do his sons, and two daughters, Joanna and Antonia, from his second marriage.

 Tony Bennett (Anthony Dominick Benedetto), singer, born 3 August 1926; died 21 July 2023

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

How Yates County’s towns got their names

By Jonathan Monfiletto

Maybe I’m just a nerd (OK, I am a nerd and I admit it, but that’s beside the point right now), but I enjoy learning the origins and meanings of various words and phrases in the English language. That is particularly true when it comes to the origins of place names; I love knowing how certain communities around our state and country came to be called the names that they have.

So, especially as Yates County marks 200 years it was formally separated from Ontario County and established as its own county on February 5, 1823, I wanted to investigate the origins of the names of the nine towns in the county. Some of the towns, I already knew where the name came from; others of the towns, I thought I knew how they got their names. In both cases, I wanted to compile the official record of the namings as best as I could.

At first, I consulted former Yates County Historian Frances Dumas’ book “A Good Country, a Pleasant Habitation,” as I thought I had read a certain origin story in that book only to realize later I had seen it somewhere else. Though I did find several records of name origins in that book, when I couldn’t find a precise story, I look through our subject files on the individual towns. I even cracked open Stafford C. Cleveland’s “History and Directory of Yates County” to see what he had to say.

Then, of course, when I was researching a different topic in our collection of digitized newspapers, I came across an article written by Walter Wolcott – a historian of Penn Yan and Yates County – and published in several local newspapers in December 1920. The article is titled “How Names of Towns Originated: Names of the Nine Townships in Yates County Have Interesting History Information.” Voila, eureka, exactly what I was looking for.

With the information from Wolcott’s article and through research of my own in other sources, I now present the origins of the names of the nine towns in Yates County. Akin to what a playbill would do, I present these towns in the order of their incorporation.

Jerusalem, established as a town in what was then Ontario County in 1789, probably has the most well-known, and thus easiest to find out, origin story. As most people know, the Society of Friends, which followed the Public Universal Friend and became the first group to settle what is now Yates County, had a vision to create what they called the New Jerusalem – a place where they could set up their homes, their businesses, and their community. Though the territory of the current town is not where the Friends first settled, it is where the majority of the sect ended up and took its name for the vision they had for their community.

Middlesex was also organized as a town in 1789, shortly after the first permanent non-native, European settlers arrived on the western shore of Seneca Lake. However, at first it was called Augusta, though any source I consult indicates no one knows why that name was given. It seems another town in Oneida County took that name (possibly after this town was formed and possibly after a General Augustus VanHorn), so this town renamed itself Middlesex in 1808. This name apparently came from Middlesex County, Massachusetts where many of its settlers came from.

Benton was formed out of Jerusalem in 1803, though it originally was named Vernon (except a town in Oneida County took that name the year before) and then Snell (after Jacob Snell, a State Senator from Montgomery County who had no apparent connections to this part of Ontario County). It wasn’t until 1810 the town took on its current name; it could have been after Caleb Benton, who bought the title to this township and built a sawmill on Kashong Creek, or it could have been after his cousin Levi, to whom Caleb eventually sold the land. My sources point to Levi as the namesake.

Italy, even at its settlement, was the most remote and least populous part of what is now Yates County, and it remains so today. It was created as part of the town of Naples, which was organized as Middletown in 1789 and renamed in 1808, and Italy was split off from Naples in 1815. It is said Naples received its name from a surveyor who gazed upon the scenery around Canandaigua Lake and felt reminded of the seaside Italian city. When the town was divided, it is said, the decision was made to name the eastern portion after the city’s country.

Milo was formed out of Benton and organized in 1818, though it had been “settled almost as early as the very first pioneers came to City Hill,” according to Dumas. Its original name may have given Yates County another Italian flavor, as it was proposed as Milan after yet another European city. However, at the same time, a bill in the New York State Legislature organized a town of Milan in Dutchess County; thus, Samuel Lawrence, the Assemblyman for this area at the time, changed the name to Milo. According to Cleveland, the name could have come from a Greek athlete, a Roman tribune, or the Greek island of Milos.

We need to pause here for a moment and recognize Yates County, as these five towns alone made up the county as it was originally established 200 years ago. The name of the county is simple yet interesting – Joseph C. Yates was the governor of New York State at the time Yates County was formed. As Wolcott states, the governor reportedly signed his name on the bill creating the county “in a larger hand than usual.” Perhaps it was his exuberance for the legislation that led to the county being named for him or its being named for him that excited him.

Though they were not added to Yates County until 1826, Barrington was incorporated in 1822 and Starkey in 1824, albeit both were part of Steuben County at the time. Steuben County had been formed from Ontario in 1796, with Frederickstown – named after German immigrant Frederick Bartles – as its northernmost town. The town was enlarged in 1804, had Reading split off from it in 1806, and was renamed Wayne in 1808. Barrington was formed from Wayne in 1822, and Starkey was formed from Reading in 1824 when the latter became part of Schuyler County.

Like Middlesex, Barrington took its name from an area of Massachusetts – the town of Great Barrington – where its early settlers had come from. Starkey, meanwhile, was named for John Starkey, who had opened a store in 1816 and a post office in 1820.

Potter, which was “almost universally known as Potterstown,” even when its larger town was called Augusta, was officially established as its own town in 1832 and formed out of Middlesex. Finding the name origin of this town is almost as easy as finding the name origin of Jerusalem, and it is closely connected to that town. The Potter family, led by Judge Arnold Potter, were prominent followers of the Public Universal Friend and had purchased a tract of land comprising nearly the whole extent of the town. Judge Potter and his family also established the Potter Mansion, where they lived and which still stands in the town today.

Last but not least, Torrey has the dubious yet interesting distinction of being the site of the first permanent settlement of non-native, white Europeans while being the last town in Yates County to be officially incorporated. Its territory was taken from the southern portion of Benton and the northern portion of Milo, and it was named after Henry Torrey, the Potter town supervisor who was chairman of the county Board of Supervisors when the town was incorporated in 1851. Reportedly, the initial plan before the board to create a new town was voted down, but the board was persuaded to reconsider when the chairman got this honor.

Previous articles have covered the settlement and development – including name origins – of Yates County’s four villages, Penn Yan, Rushville, Dundee, and Dresden. And now you know the rest of the story on the origins of the towns’ names.

[chaoskirin]

HI EVERYONE!

I got ten new followers overnight.

For anyone coming to check out my blog, welcome! As I’ve been accused of just being mad that I got blocked by Christopher Paolini, here’s some stuff you should know about me.

I’ve been drawing since I can remember, and I wrote my first short story in 1994. I finished my first novel-length work of fiction when I was 17. I have sold art both through commissions and in a professional/contracted setting. I have published one book.

I DO understand the relationship between an author and a publishing company, and know that an author surrenders a good amount of creative control when they sell their book. However, authors do maintain SOME creative control, even as a new author. And those who are worth millions of dollars tend to have a LOT more pull than average.

Because of my experience, it is my opinion that Tor and Paolini are either severely stretching the truth or outright lying to save face. I do believe Paolini had more of a say than he’s letting on. He’s handling this situation by RTing people who are defending him rather than stepping up to the plate and accepting responsibility for what might set a horrible precedent in publishing.

Lastly, because people have tried to make this personal... No, I don’t like Paolini. I tried to read Eragon when it was published and... I know a lot of people like it, but it is an objectively badly-written book. It’s wonderful for him that his connections led to him being published, but I don’t like his writing, and I don’t like that he gets away with plagiarizing.

However, up until now, he was staying in his lane. Now he’s complicit in the publication of a book with an AI-generated cover. I wanted him to do the right thing, so I called him out on it, repeatedly and loudly. I was not alone.

I have respected the block. Even though I have an account I use for my books that I could have continued posting under, he made his wishes and intentions clear. He does not want to do the right thing, and he doesn’t want to hear people who encourage him to do so.

Therefore, it is also my opinion that the only way to drive the point home that this is not okay is to get as many people as possible to boycott the book. If even one person who reads my posts decides not to buy Fractal Noise because of what I wrote, then it was a successful post.

Even though I don’t like him, I wish his writing all the best. However, I cannot sit back and allow one AI cover to make it through into the mass market without trying to stop it from happening. People are watching. And if Tor gets this through, you can bet you’ll be seeing an absolute deluge of AI-generated covers within the next year.

Why does anyone want that?

[runic-kitchen]

Hard agree, and I propose that early AI was a glimpse into the vision of a population versus the commercialized and sanitized stock images we get to see today. The things regular people made were amazing; it's reminiscent of when the general population got ahold of cameras and a proliferation of photos washed over us like tidal waves. It reminds me of when social media was first invented, when you had to get an invite to Yahoo forums to post hot takes. Or when only a few people had Gmail and you had to have an invite to get in.

It smells like MyFace when you could finally upload pictures to your private feed and all your friends got to see, let alone the cinematography of socials now - with filters and effects that would have previously taken months or YEARS of classes and costly software.

For one blessed moment, we as a species got to experiment with a new tool that allowed anyone to create into images what was only possible with words or lots of artistic skill, time and money beforehand. And oh the things people made, what a vision people crafted. That was truly art.

Now in the haste to pull the open source generators for more ethical models and public discourse, companies are making their own AI with all the data that was sold to them these last few decades and pouring millions into it. It's this ultra-clean corporate culture horror that really scares me.

Ps. Did you see that some guys from MIT published a pro-worker AI paper? It's incredible.

I will say that the better AI gets at accurately creating photographs or art, the less interested I am. Where's that quote about how the imperfections of the medium will be the thing that defines it? My fascination with AI from an artistic standpoint is mostly centered around the <2021 days when everything it generated kinda looked like confused, swirly nonsense. Before its cateracts were lasered off by evil mathematicians and rooms sweltering from the hot breath of a thousand GPUs.. an AI was a humble, ugly program that could evoke concepts like "night time", or "a castle", or "food", without any literal representation on screen. THAT is compelling, artistically, imo. It's like dream inspiration on demand. But yeah the puffer jacket pope era sucks and bores me, and the uncanny reality of contemporary AI-generated imagery is frightening in a much less tantilizing way than it used to be

[billconrad]

Are Today’s Writers Spoiled?

    My father was a hard-core author who published from the mid-70s through the 2000s. He began with an IBM Selectric II typewriter and sought out the only publisher, McMillan, willing to take on a ceramic textbook. Later, he used this same typewriter to typeset and self-publish his books, which were sold mail order from our garage.

    Today, publishing is quite different. A person can use a free online word processor like Google Docs to write a book, convert it to an eBook, or print on-demand book and publish it online where millions of people can download it.

    And the tools we have? Word, Front Page, Excel, Visio, Grammarly, Photoshop, ProWritingAid and Hemmingway. There are even AI-powered resources like ChatGPT. Plus, the internet is a research powerhouse that can fact-check, locate information, find existing works, locate publishing resources, correct flaws, and inspire ideas. Well, I guess that is it. Anybody can publish a book without any effort and make millions of dollars. Umm, no.

    Take the topic of Nelson Mandela. With a few minutes of internet research, ALL the essential facts about this amazing man are available. Are they accurate? Multiple sources can easily confirm the vital facts. What can be done with this verified information? Write a book, report, article, educational pamphlet, children’s book, or fantasy story with Nelson as a character or a parody based on researched facts.

    For example, an author could use Google Docs to write a time travel story where the main character meets Nelson Mandela. Then, check it with Grammarly, import a table from Excel, and use free online tools to place their book on Amazon. Heck, the cover design could be done by the AI image generator SDXL. The resulting book would be wholly fact-checked, grammar-checked, and properly formatted with excellent cover art. The apex of the spoiled author is to use an AI program like ChatGPT to write the entire book. Truly remarkable.

    All true, but there is a problem my father never faced. Readers have a thousand time travel books to choose from or can download a free time travel story from many sites. Do you like horses? “Hey, ChatGPT. Write a time travel story with Nelson Mandela riding horses.” Done!

    This wide variety makes it nearly impossible for an author to get a potential reader’s attention. I did an Amazon search for “Nelson Mandela books,” and 409 results appeared. Poetry book? 80,000 results. Religion book? 100,000 results. Harry Potter book? 4,000 results. Side note: When I did this search, I found “Welcome to Hogwarts (LEGO Harry Potter).” Lego publishes books? I do not even know what to say…

    It gets worse. A nobody reader can leave a scathing review that stays public until the last hard drive in the universe stops spinning. And oops. The server crashed, and your Google Docs book got deleted. Plagiarism? It is now easier than copying files off a floppy disk.

    Alright, I’m getting lazy. “Hey ChatGPT. List the problems facing modern authors.”

1. Oversaturation of the Market: With the rise of self-publishing and digital platforms, more books are being published than ever, making it harder for authors to stand out.

    Discoverability: Competing for attention in a crowded marketplace requires significant effort in marketing and branding.

2. Financial Instability

    Low Royalties: Traditional publishing contracts often offer modest royalties, and self-published authors may struggle to make consistent sales.

    Pressure to Write Quickly: Authors may feel pushed to produce content rapidly to keep up with market demand, which can lead to burnout.

3. Marketing and Promotion

    Lack of Support: Many authors, especially in the self-publishing world, must handle their marketing and promotion, which requires time, money, and expertise.

    Social Media Pressure: Authors are often expected to maintain a solid social media presence to engage readers, which can be overwhelming and detract from writing time.

4. Changing Reader Habits

    Shorter Attention Spans: With the dominance of digital content and streaming services, some readers may have shorter attention spans, impacting interest in lengthy works.

    EBook vs. Print: The shift to eBooks and audiobooks changes how books are consumed, and some authors struggle to adapt.

5. Technological Disruption

    AI and Automation: Tools that generate content, like AI-written texts, are emerging, potentially altering how stories are created and valued.

    Piracy: Digital piracy remains a significant concern, with unauthorized copies of books cutting into authors’ earnings.

6. Diversity and Representation

    Gatekeeping: Some authors face barriers related to race, gender, or identity when trying to break into traditional publishing.

    Pressure to Represent: Authors from marginalized backgrounds may feel obligated to focus on specific narratives, limiting creative freedom.

7. Creative Challenges

    Writer’s Block: Pressure to produce can exacerbate creative blocks.

    Balancing Art and Commerce: Authors may struggle to balance writing what they are passionate about with what sells.

8. Mental Health Concerns

    Isolation: Writing can be a solitary profession, leading to feelings of loneliness or disconnection.

    Public Criticism: Negative reviews, online trolls, and cancel culture can affect an author’s mental health.

9. Industry Gatekeeping

Traditional Publishing Barriers: Many authors face rejections or long waits for decisions from conventional publishers.

Focus on Trends: Publishers may prioritize trendy genres or themes, making it harder for unique or unconventional stories to find a home.

10. Sustainability

Environmental Impact: Authors may grapple with the ethics of traditional publishing’s reliance on paper and physical distribution.

Cultural Shifts: Trends and norms evolve quickly, requiring authors to adapt their writing styles and themes to remain relevant.

    Today, authors face many challenges my father could not have imagined in the seventies. When he started, there were only TWO ceramics textbooks. I searched Amazon for “ceramics textbook,” and 242 books appeared. This number is incorrect because my father amassed over 500 hardcover ceramics textbooks during his writing effort.

    And the quality of the modern ceramic textbook? Nearly every new ceramic textbook, potter’s manual, glaze recipe cookbook, reference book, or guide has my father’s books in the appendix or bibliography. So, I know they must be good.

    My father faced many technical and economic challenges that today’s authors can only read about in history books. Instead, our challenges are the extreme competition, cut-throat marketing, developing new ideas, and utilizing new technology. So, today’s authors have many tools at their fingertips that my father could only dream about, but we face sophisticated modern readers and mountains of existing work. We certainly are not spoiled, but neither was my father.

    You’re the best -Bill

    November 27, 2024

    Hey, book lovers, I published four. Please check them out:

   Interviewing Immortality. A dramatic first-person psychological thriller that weaves a tale of intrigue, suspense, and self-confrontation.

    Pushed to the Edge of Survival. A drama, romance, and science fiction story about two unlikely people surviving a shipwreck and living with the consequences.

    Cable Ties. A slow-burn political thriller that reflects the realities of modern intelligence, law enforcement, department cooperation, and international politics.

    Saving Immortality. Continuing in the first-person psychological thriller genre, James Kimble searches for his former captor to answer his life’s questions.

    These books are available in softcover on Amazon and in eBook format everywhere.

[zaydatft]

The comments on the Shonen Jump vs Capcom video are fascinating mostly because i could identify when it breached containment and went into the arena of the general public.

Comments made day 1 by my fanbase of mostly queer women: omg yay akane made it!

Comments I got after the breach: dude who the fuck are all these nobodies? Where’s Goku?

The thing I find fascinating here is a lot of people are saying most of my shonen jump pics where “obscure” which I find funny because I intentionally picked manga that had over 100 chapters published and had sold over a million copies (Ruri being the only exception due to only being on chapter 25ish but still having insane sails numbers). LIKE THEY ARENT OBSCURE DUDE YOUR JUST A FAKE FAN???

I kinda knew I was being a contrarian but only because I fucking hate safe lame ass rosters. I wanna live in a world where a shonen jump fighting game has room for romance, sports and gag manga characters.

So at the very least I hope this encourages people to look beyond their own bubble and try something new stuff they hadn’t seen before.

Also I stand by what I said of if you disagree with the roster your not as big of a fan as me lmao