Bay 12 Games Forum

You seem to know a lot of specific details about these weird books. Does the library force you to read them before you put them on the shelf?

Read them through, no. Check reviews and sometimes skim over parts (to confirm review contents, among other things like condition or printing error checks), yes. You pick up a decent amount doing that, particularly if you read fast enough and/or are (morbidly) curious enough to take a moment scope out a page or three just make sure you're not hallucinating and, yes, that actually got published.

Yes, it actually got published. Iirc the pyrophilia one sent us multiple copies as a promotion for their book (we yeeted the lot; beyond the magical forest stuff the writing was remarkably shit and the general subject something our patrons don't circulate much).

Why would helicopter blade aerodynamics count as an odd book?

Disk loading, ground effect, wake effects, auto-rotation, all good stuff!

It's a rural public library. There's functionally or literally no one within like an hour or better's drive that would have need or interest in a helicopter blade aerodynamics technical book, and it's wildly at odds with patron interests or the rest of the collection (too specific, not to mention that particular one was a good 15+ years old). It was odd it was still in decent-ish condition, and odd someone thought it was a good idea to donate it to a general use public library at all (though think is a strong word a lot of time, from what I've seen. We appreciate it and try to treat donations better than most things, but I'm pretty sure some folks just dump old book collections on us to clean out space).

Mostly it was just that it was a hyper focused subject matter; most of the time that sort of technical writing doesn't make it into the general population to get donated to us to begin with.

Hey, recreational mathematics is fun! And not that obscure either. Conway's Game of Life first appeared in a recreational mathematics column, I think.

Some degree of it isn't that obscure, but these weren't a column or part of a general book of puzzles or whatever; it's literally a journal series of recreational mathematics. That, specifically, is pretty unusual. Not super unusual, but like I said, probably in the top ten or so most unusual I've seen in the last year or two.

I mean, if you bandin' y'all got to do some benny goodman or somethin' sooner or later. Everybody knows Sing Sing Sing, even when they don't know they know Sing Sing Sing. It's like certain age groups and the Steak, It's What's for Dinner (copland) song or Lone Ranger (rossini).

... incidentally, Rodeo and the William Tell? Both also good ones!

But yeah, if you're looking to dodge copyright strikes, probably aim for stuff that's old enough they've go public domain, or just straight up open use. Huge piles of that stuff around...

e: Though if you want to mess with people, clear out a day and sit your folks down somewhere noticeable, then burn through the entire Ring Cycle in one go. Only 17 hours long! Betcha' cyber gil no one's done that yet :V

I don't think most other meds mess with what caffeine does to you, though they might mess with your reaction. Stuff acts by blocking up the receptors for a certain type of brain thing that lets you know you're tired, iirc, basically forcing your brain to make new ones in order to let you know that, yes, your drugged ass is tired. So far as I'm aware most other stimulants (especially prescription ones) act through other means than the particular venue caffeine attacks -- it's why most drugs don't have much of an interaction with the stuff, outside compounding with the standard effects it has on your body.

... any case, if you haven't built a dependency, it's probably good to make sure you never do. Caffeine's legitimately kinda' bad for you, and you're largely better off just... not.

If there's one thing living in Florida all my life has taught me, it's to treasure every moment of cold tolerable weather we get. I might complain about the effects it has on rain and allergies, but never, never about the cold itself. Every single second of the cool time is precious and fleeting, never an imposition and always welcome.

... why isn't five million output images feasible, again? Those words read to me like saying it's not feasible for several million word works of fiction to exist, tbh. Maybe it isn't, but that doesn't stop people :V

As the person with the most wood, you clearly have the girth of need to axe for priority. Just drop a tree on them and win the contest of axe shafts.

Y'know, I don't know exactly what I was expecting with these vanilla meringue candy things, but them being slightly solid cotton candy wasn't it.

I'm not complaining mind (save the whole holy shit I'm going to eat these and probably shouldn't thing), but it was not at all expected.