Ed Stackler
1.7K posts
Ed Stackler
@eksiii
I edit thriller and crime fiction. I follow the book business, golf, & Magic: the Gathering. Big fan of best practices, means-testing, and condiments.
Summit, NJ Katılım Şubat 2009
352 Takip Edilen258 Takipçiler
Fellas, what’s stopping you from having your own Wiffleball Fenway Park like this home in Placerville, CA
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@SketchesbyBoze Tom McCormack wrote of this using Macbeth's Witches as an example of an unnecessary story moment that could be edited out...but without which the story would lose much and not be nearly the same.
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Miyazaki has spoken about the concept of “ma,” the silent pauses in stories where characters simply exist. That’s Tom Bombadil. Not every moment in a story needs to advance the narrative. It’s this time spent with the world and its characters that makes the book transcendent.
Sandy Petersen 🪔@SandyofCthulhu
Tom Bombadil stops the story cold. We are in an exciting cross-country trip as the hobbits pick their way through a creepy haunted forest to avoid the sinister Black Riders. A terrifying black huorn ensnares them. Poof! Here comes Tom deus-ex-machina Bombadil to save the hobbits from a threat which Tolkien seems to have created to give him an excuse to insert Bombadil. Then, just as the story starts to move again, Tom shows up a SECOND time as a deus-ex-machina to rescue the hobbits from the barrow wight. Ugh. Again stopping the story cold. What is Bombadil's function? He doesn't represent the Old Good Ways which the fellowship must save. Bombadil isn't threatened - he's a cheesy distraction. I'm not saying it's impossible to convince me that Bombadil is a Good Thing, but such a convincing would be an uphill battle, and I view Tom as one of Tolkien's missteps. I am happy Jackson left him out of the film, because it would have stopped the movie's flow too.
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@TheProjectUnity candle-and-offerings platter with three handholds (you'd want the candle walking into tomb)
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I recorded this video at The Egyptian Museum in Cairo, it is called 'The Disk of Sabu' or 'The Schist Disk'. It was found in Tomb S3111 at Saqqara by Walter Bryan Emery in 1936, it is believed to be from 3000 BCE.
Mainstream answer?
A "Ritual Object"
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What are some concepts of mine you would like to see expanded into an evergreen post I refer back to?
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Ignoring any human suffering, the Iran War hasn't been expensive so far. Oh wait, this data is only for the first 6 days - ouch! The global economy as well as the US economy is going to take a hit for it. All the while Putin gets some breathing room and Xi is probably very confused about what to do. Following geopolitics is very confusing these days.
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@TheZvi The state of our hospital ships is notable too. "As of late February 2026, both U.S. Navy hospital ships USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort are undergoing significant repairs and maintenance, both documented at the Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, Alabama. (gemini)
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@cryptopunk7213 Does it come with one-way mirror for added creepiness?
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this is disappointing.
i was hoping for some sort of device that stayed present on the human like glasses, ear buds, pin… anything
positives:
- i like that it’s ambient (quietly ingests the world around it)
- your chatgpt becomes INSANELY personalized - starts ordering the groceries, giving you advice on the argument you just had, productive work partner you can run ideas by.
The Information@theinformation
Exclusive: OpenAI’s first device is expected to release a smart speaker with a camera, able to take in information about users and its surroundings. Read more from @Steph_Palazzolo and @QianerLiu 👇 thein.fo/4kMndnr
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@TheZvi imo Piranesi was not worth the candle. I need your response after you read it. Or be a rebel and go Hoban (2.3%).
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@SOPHONTSIMP @TheZvi Yeah, probably this if you're up for space opera. It's like that written by LeCarre/Tim O'Brien name your genre master (outside of s.f.). It's that good.
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Pitch me on what I should read next. Fiction only. Not about AI.
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@AndrewJEaddy @TheZvi This and sequels are HARDEST mode. Up there with Burgess and Hoban. Because of complexity, not language. Astounding achievement and Simmons's historicals are epic as well.
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@TheZvi @Invertible_Man I'll bump this. Sequel equally good or better, and Jackson Bennett has two other fun series in the books already. Good ev. ; )
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@C_Angermayer Muraresku, B. The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (St. Martin’s, 2020).
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A rigorous paper published in Nature supports the idea that the Eleusinian Mysteries may have been a psychedelic-based religion.
Plato, Aeschylus, Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, and Plutarch are just a few of the historically significant figures known to have participated in these rites.
Given how profoundly our modern world is shaped by the ideas of these thinkers - from philosophy to governance - one could argue that Western civilization itself has, in part, been influenced by #psychedelic wisdom.
Now, imagine for a moment how much more intellectually vibrant, thoughtful, and humane our world could become (again) if we responsibly reintroduced these medicines into society.
nature.com/articles/s4159…
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Oof. I loved having this on the early internet. And no reason stated why. nytimes.com/2026/02/05/us/…
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@adam_tooze Like with the famous Enron archive...the data might yield some sociological/behavioral insights re: humans generally.
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