Category: idiocy

In which I choose violence

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading2 Comments

Or “no one is paying attention today, I can say anything I want.” Choose your own blog title!

There’s been a debate raging– well, there’s been a lot of people alternately talking past and yelling at one another– on social media in general and TikTok in particular over the last week or so, and while I generally try to avoid this topic as much as I possibly can, it’s Christmas Day and no one is looking at the internet so if I’m ever going to say something controversial this is the best day to say it.

The debate: audiobooks. The problem: everyone is wrong.

The following are all true. You are welcome to disagree with me but you’re wrong:

  • Listening to an audiobook is not the same thing as reading. You cannot read while you’re driving a car. You cannot read while you’re taking a shower. You cannot read if you cannot read— if I’m reading a book to a toddler, that toddler isn’t reading. You cannot read in the dark. You cannot arbitrarily decide to “read” at one and a half or two times your normal speed. You don’t need electronics or speakers or headphones to read. And reading is a relationship between you and an author, with no third intermediary in between to do a really good job or screw things up.
  • This is not the same thing as discussing whether listening to an audiobook “counts” toward some sort of yearly or monthly reading goal. I don’t give one single merry shit what you decide to count toward your reading goal. I’m going to top out around 180-185 books this year. There are a lot of people who might tell me to my face that that’s impossible. Count whatever you want. I do not care.(*) We aren’t getting prizes for this!
  • Use whatever verbs you want to describe your reading; I also don’t care about that. Tell me you “read” an audiobook when we both know you “listened” to it. It’s whatever. I do not have the mental energy necessary to police language choices on this and it gets awkward in practice anyway. (Similarly, one might say “we read The Cat in the Hat” when discussing a book read to a preliterate toddler. It’s the same phenomenon.)
  • I also don’t care about your reasons for preferring audio to text, whether in general or for any given book. Maybe you just prefer it. Maybe you’re dyslexic. Maybe you don’t have any eyes! I’m not going to ask why you prefer audio and I don’t care. You do you.
  • There is also a weird side argument going on about how it’s possible to read over X number of books a year(**) and still remember everything, which seems like a weird criterion that gets applied to readers and no one else. If you pick a random book off of my shelves and ask me about it, there’s a very good chance that I won’t be able to tell you a whole lot, because depending on the book, I might have read that six years and a thousand books ago, and I also feel like my recall in general is not as good as other people I’ve met who like to read. But let’s apply this logic to, say, sports fans. If I pick one random sports ball game from five years ago that I know you watched and ask you to tell me about it, would you be able to even tell me who won? I mean, you might, especially in, say, college football, where there’s a limited number of games per year, but will you remember the score? Individual plays to discuss? And don’t tell me if I ask you about some random game 3 in a baseball series from 2019 that you’re going to remember anything about it. You just won’t.(***)
  • If it makes you angry that I don’t think listening to an audiobook is reading … why? Why the hell do you care what I think? Go do your thing; it’s okay! I’m not trying to turn you away from your audiobooks! I’m not saying you shouldn’t listen to audiobooks! I’m not saying they don’t count, because I don’t care what counts! Audiobooks are lots of things. They just aren’t reading, and if you disagree with me on that, it’s okay. I mean, you’re wrong, but it’s okay! It’s a fine thing to be wrong about. It really seems like, by and large, audiobook people are hugely defensive about their hobby, which has never made any sense to me. You have no reason to care what anyone else thinks about this!

I’ve had a hundred books as my “reading goal” for several years running and I don’t plan on changing that next year. It’s just not that damn important to me, and unless you’re pursuing reading as some sort of self-improvement practice, it probably shouldn’t be all that important to you, either. But if you’re trying to read a dozen books this year because you don’t read much and you want to read more, you’re genuinely doing something different from what I’m doing with a “reading goal,” which is mostly just indulging my mania for categorizing and keeping track of everything. There was no “Yay, I did it!” moment when I hit that 101st book. I shot for 200 one year to see if I could do it and I did, and I think that’s as excited as I ever plan on getting for a “reading goal” and I don’t plan to repeat the experiment.

Anyway, Merry Christmas, go yell at me in the comments.

(*) I did encounter one person who claimed she read over fourteen hundred books in 2025, and while my response is unlikely to be “oh, no you didn’t,” I am rather intensely curious about how, precisely, she arrived at that number. Again, I’m fully aware that most people think my 180ish is impossible. I feel like if I adjusted my standards for what “counts” or made a deliberate shift toward shorter books, I could significantly increase that amount. For example, if I counted individual issues of comic books as “books”, which I don’t, that’s probably about another 250-300 books a year without making any changes in my reading. Now, when I do that and it only brings me to a third of this person’s total … again, I’m not gonna argue, because they can say whatever they want, but I’m curious about how they arrived at that number. Maybe they do slush reading for a children’s book company or something. I dunno.

(**) This, I think, is very similar to the dynamics of driving, where anyone driving faster than you are at that particular moment is a maniac. I know I can read X number of books per year, but anyone reading 1.2X has got to be lying!

(***) Maybe you will! I’ll be impressed. Some people are impressive!

Keep on trying me

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I am bored and kvetchy and it’s making my anxiety act up something fierce. I actually got quite a lot done today– no big projects, but a ton of little jobs around the house and I got the oil changed on the car– but since the sun went down I’ve turned into a mess, and I can’t concentrate well enough to read.

That part’s the alarming part, honestly. It’s rare that I can’t focus enough to read. I’m watching someone else play a video game while I’m writing this, and I’m starting to think I need to dive back into Skyrim or something like that; I simultaneously need something new to do and am kind of aching for something familiar and comfortable I can just fall into.

I’m also, for the first time in several years, pretty excited (or at least not actively dreading) Christmas, mostly because I feel like I definitely won Christmas this year. I don’t know if other families do this thing, where they’re competitive about who gets each other the best gifts– hell, I don’t know if my family does this thing or if it’s just me– but one way or another it’s me, hi, I won Christmas, it’s me.

Anyway, I’m going to go take down the wallpaper in the library or something.

In which I have an illness

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy, Reading2 Comments

Careful readers will notice that for some reason there are two copies of Disquiet Gods, Book Six of the Sun Eater series, on that shelf. Exceptionally detail-oriented humans might further notice that they are not exactly the same! The title is a different color, as is the author’s name, the character image is different, and so is the publisher. Further, one title is matte in finish and matches the other books precisely, and the top book appears to be glossy.

You might, just maybe, also notice that the top book is roughly a quarter inch taller than the books below it, but if you don’t, don’t worry; it just means that you’re neurotypical.

Shall I explain? Let me explain. Author and apparent personal nemesis Christopher Ruocchio originally had a five-book contract with DAW for the Sun Eater series. Upon writing five books and not completing the series, he asked for a two-book extension to the contract. DAW offered a single book. And Ruocchio said “bet” and bounced, taking the last two books of the series to Baen, where he used to work as an editor.

Oh, don’t worry, said Baen, we’ll make sure the new books match the old ones! Promise! We’ll use the same artist and everything! And, well, they did use the same artist, but they switched from the matte paper to the glossy paper and made the books ever-so-slightly taller, just different enough that I suspect no one noticed, me included, until the book was on the shelf with its series-mates.

And then a certain subset of humanity of which I am a member lost their minds, because why in the merry hell would you do your best to make sure that the books mostly match, except for those two kind of important details? You get no credit for that at all! None! We hate you!

(By “you,” I mean the publisher, a faceless corporate entity; I’m completely certain Ruocchio had nothing to do with this decision. The man is an author so I suspect he’s One of Us anyway.)

Here’s how they looked originally:

And, again, if that doesn’t bother you, it just means you’re normal. It’s okay to be normal. Also, the book isn’t deeper than the others, just … puffier? I don’t know why it looks so much further forward on the shelf than the books next to it.

Anyway, at some point DAW came to their senses? And apparently bought his contract with Baen out, and now they’re publishing the whole series again, including their version of the book that Baen originally published and the final book. I have to believe this cost them more money than just giving Ruocchio the two books he wanted at the beginning, but I have no idea. So the new DAW version of the book matches the rest precisely, as it should. I’m going to do another book cull over winter break, and the original version of the book will end up in the basement. I can imagine a universe where it’s worth slightly more than cover price in the future, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

(For the record, I bought most of my Christmas presents with my Amazon card, which I get 5% back on. Not that paying for it would have stopped me, but I got the second copy of the book basically for free.)

This is, believe it or not, not the greatest spine-matching sin that has been perpetrated on my bookshelves. I bought an entire special edition of Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series so that I didn’t have to look at this abomination any longer:

Again: why are they just sort of the same? Why change things, guaranteeing you’re going to enrage a certain portion of your readers, but just change them a little? If the shit’s not gonna match, just fuckin’ go nuts and completely redesign everything. This makes no Goddamn sense at all. I was already mad enough when Veiled Throne lost the gold and the embossed title, but I was willing to put up with it. The rest of those changes are just gratuitously evil.

I’m going to go take some sort of pill; I suspect I need one.

Not today, Satan

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Realized last night that I was developing a sore throat. It was worse this morning, and the winter storm meant a two-hour delay for every school district in northern Indiana and southern Michigan, so I decided just to stay home and stay in bed today so that I don’t lose a day that matters later in the week. I did find out today that we don’t have to give a final in 8th grade Math after all, which is awesome, but I’ve already got too much scheduled for the … (checks watch) … two and a half weeks I have left before Winter Break.

Still kinda feel cruddy, but I’m hoping if I go to bed soon and get 8-9 hours of sleep tonight I’ll be able to make it through the rest of the week. We’ll see.

In which I refrain

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocyLeave a comment

I did not buy anything this Black Friday,(*) not because of any particular moral stand or distaste toward capitalism, but mostly because nothing really crossed my radar that I wanted to buy. I did check lego.com this morning to see if there were any deals I was interested in; there were not.

I did manage to talk myself out of buying something; my wife and I have been talking about how we don’t want to get each other any Useless Crap this Christmas, and we mostly want to avoid getting the boy any Useless Crap as well. I have had my eyes on the odachi in the image above for a couple of weeks now, and I believe that I’ve successfully convinced myself not to buy it, and for the most ridiculous reason imaginable: an odachi is the kind of sword you use if you need to cut a horse in half. They are so big that there is apparently a school of Japanese historians that believe the swords were never actually used in combat at all. This particular one is 78″ long– six and a half feet.

My house has eight foot ceilings. My wingspan, fingertip to fingertip, and yes, I just went and measured, is right about 70″. There is, in other words, virtually nowhere in my house where I could unsheathe this giant bastard without worrying abut breaking things, and resheathing it afterward under any circumstances would be a challenge. Now, none of my little goofy-ass pile of weapons is ever going to see combat, fake or otherwise, so it’s not like I’m going to be doing sword practice in my living room or something like that, but if I’m gonna buy a sword that’s eight inches longer than my actual height, I’d like to be able to take it out of its sheath and swing the fucker around once in a while, and that would be absolutely impossible to do inside my house.

Which would require me to go outside carrying a six and a half foot long sword, and swing it around like a dork in my back yard, and while my lawn is fairly private, that’s not something I’m going to allow even a chance of someone else seeing. So, as sad as it makes me, no odachi for me.

(Given the price point, the sword in question is likely junk anyway, but again: I’m not buying these things for combat.)

Fun fact: the largest odachi ever forged is the fifteen foot long, 165-pound Great Evil-Crushing Blade, probably forged in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century.

I suspect I can’t afford that one.

(*) Upon reflection, not quite true– I impulse-bought my son an inexpensive Christmas present from what I believe is a small business. So I guess I spent, like, $15 on Black Friday, without leaving the house. Or did I do that yesterday? Hell, I don’t remember.

Burn the whole technology to the ground

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching2 Comments

It’s been a few days since I’ve given you any kind of proper post, so let’s see what I can scrape out of my brain tonight.

This’ll do: I wanted something a little different from usual for today’s lesson, as we’ve been working on solving equations for weeks and I’m tired of Google forms and worksheets and their textbook is still pitching too high for them to hit. I found an assignment I liked in my partner teacher’s class and imported it over to mine; basically a Who Wants to be a Millionaire? type game centered around the right kind of math. I played through about half of it to make sure it fit what I needed it to do and called it good.

I tell my first hour they’re my guinea pigs a lot of the time; they’re my brightest of my non-Algebra groups and they’ll both notice and let me know (neither of these things are guaranteed) if something is wrong with an assignment. And kids quickly start coming to me with bewildered looks on their faces. “Isn’t the answer to this a decimal?” and other similar questions.

Shit. Naturally none of the mistakes in the assignment were in the part I looked at. They’re all in the back half. And it turns out that three of the questions out of, like, fifteen have wrong answers. And this game is multiple choice and it makes you start over if you’re wrong. I find myself writing things like THE ANSWER TO THE $32,000 QUESTION IS D, JUST TRUST ME on the board.

Give yourself a pat on the back if you have already figured out that I eventually determined that all of the questions on the assignment were created by AI, which apparently can’t even do eighth grade math right. It took a few minutes but I was able to figure out how the assignment was created and pulled together a new one, and four of the questions on that were initially wrong, but this time I knew to look for it and could edit them. I managed to get everything fixed before my next class started, but I won’t be using this service again.

There was a disclaimer that “questions should be reviewed for accuracy” at the bottom of the screen, of course.

Absolutely Goddamned ridiculous that these people would rather rely on AI that they know is fucking up than create a bloody question bank. Idiots.

It was this or a bigger house

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading6 Comments

I have all the books.

Wait.

I worry that what you heard was “I have a lot of books.”

I have all the books. Do you understand?

And, as you no doubt can tell, I have lots of other shit as well. And three other people live in this house! They have stuff too, even though nearly every single object you can see in these pictures is mine. Except the Pokéballs. Those are the boy’s.

This is the second house in a row where we have eventually decided to convert what was supposed to be the dining room into a library. I am absolutely out of places to put shit and I have been reading at a 175-books-a-year clip for the last couple of years. I still have some space on top of bookshelves, especially if I get rid of some of the statues and Legos (and the statues, honestly, may be on their way out soon) but one way or another I’m no more than two years away from needing to pile shit on the floors if something doesn’t change.

So yesterday, fearing an actual intervention, I ordered this:

along with a $12-a-month subscription to Kindle Unlimited. I’m thinking about instituting a rule that any book by a new author gets bought on digital first. Does that mean I won’t get those books in physical form? Not necessarily; as you can tell, I’m not just a reading enthusiast, I’m a book collector, and those two hobbies feed into each other in obvious and terrible ways. There will be books by new authors that I feel the need to own physically. But in most years at least 30% of my books are by authors new to me– this year, right now, it’s actually just over half. Surely this will end up saving me money as well as essential shelf space, right? That Dinniman book on the cover of the Kindle there is in one of those pictures in hardcover– on the white bookshelves, a couple shelves below the Wheel of Time books– but it was free on KU so I downloaded it anyway, to see if I lose my mind trying to read a thousand-page book on an e-reader. We’ll see.

We can’t move. We got our mortgage rate on this house before the economy exploded. We’ll never see this rate again. I’ve got to do something.

I remain

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Defiantly unraptured, as of yet; we shall see if TikTok Jesus takes me tomorrow, as my understanding is that the end of the world has been rescheduled. Again.

I had one girl show up to school today in what I very well might have called a wedding dress on an older human; I decided not to ask any questions, and by afternoon she was in a cheerleading T-shirt and shorts, so … I still didn’t ask any questions. I don’t know if Jesus having child brides is a thing, or if he’s okay with his child brides going to school on the day he marries them? I have degrees in religion but I’m not as up to date on the fever swamps of evangelical Christianity at the moment, and unless someone starts paying me for it I have no intention of venturing any further than I already have. They are wrong, again; it is the only thing that they have ever been. What an immense surprise.