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Reading Paper Books


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2021 Jun 27, 8:34pm   30,104 views  240 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (60)   💰tip   ignore  

In my early retirement, I've decided to read at least an hour a night in real paper books. So far, I've read:

- my dad's old college English book (always felt I needed to improve my grammar)
- Candide by Voltaire
- Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche
- The Politics by Aristotle

Now I'm reading The Prince by Machiavelli, and really enjoying it. One tip: before invading, look for minorities who will help you because they resent the traditional rulers in their own country. They may in fact invite you in to help them overthrow their own country. This makes me think that the Chinese have read The Prince and are using BLM, gays, and militant feminism as allies in their fight against America.

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181   Patrick   2023 Mar 19, 11:14pm  

I've started learning a bit of ancient Greek, so I'm going to bookmark this nice presentation of the alphabet here:



I'm going to run through this before getting a paper book to study:

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/getting-started-on-ancient-greek/content-section-overview?active-tab=content-tab
183   richwicks   2023 Apr 5, 10:55am  

HeadSet says

Let me try a crack at the new Mother Goose:

There was and Old Women
Who lived in a shoe
She had so many kids
She did not know what to do
She lived in a Red State
So abortion was moot
She still having kids
So she moved to a Boot

-HeadSet


Sounds like a slut with a lot of baby daddies, and is on welfare, and is using her kids for income.
184   richwicks   2023 Apr 5, 10:58am  

Patrick says






This Tom Wolf?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wolf

I'm always suspicious about rags from riches stories.
185   HeadSet   2023 Apr 5, 12:11pm  

richwicks says

Sounds like a slut with a lot of baby daddies, and is on welfare, and is using her kids for income.

Or by having many baby daddies, get a separate child support from each. Anyway, the joke is the moving to a boot, not any jab at Red states as I agree with outlawing abortion.

Revised:
There was and Old Women
Who lived in a shoe
She had so many kids
She did not know what to do
She's still putting out
To bring in the loot
But with so many kids
She's moved to a Boot
186   richwicks   2023 Apr 5, 4:55pm  

HeadSet says


Or by having many baby daddies, get a separate child support from each. Anyway, the joke is the moving to a boot, not any jab at Red states as I agree with outlawing abortion.


I am anti-abortion and pro-choice. I don't think people should get an abortion, yet, I think they should be allowed to.

Since abortion exists, and it's "a woman's choice", I don't believe in child support either. SHE made the choice to have it, he didn't.

When abortion was legalized, there were very few birth control methods allowed. I know that in the 1940's LYSOL was used to prevent pregnancy as a douche. I have heard women from that time SWEAR by it as well. There was a time where in many states, women could only get birth control if their husband allowed it.

I'm a proponent of RISUG:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345756/

which is now being trialed (forever) as Vasagel

https://www.parsemus.org/2022/07/next-steps-for-vasalgel/

This will NEVER get through FDA approval, I view them as a scam. I've known about them for over 10 years, it would make female contraceptives obsolete. The way it works is a gel is injected into your vas deferens (basically your male fallopian tubes) and this destroys sperm. It might be that it simply blocks sperm flow, it's odd they don't know. Anyhow, it's reversible male sterility, and has been EXTENSIVELY tested in animals, and people - RISUG was used in India, but India also forcibly sterilized males up until like 1970.

As we all know (now) you can't trust the medical establishment as to whether its reversible or not, but it costs like $5 for the injection, it's an outpatient procedure, and it's not available in the United States, because it would make female contraceptives obsolete. Male sterility is permanent until the man decides he wants to have children, and its reversibility isn't well known.

Although it's been extensively tested in animals, animals aren't human beings. RISUG has been used in India since the 1970's, but reversibility wasn't studied. It might be an alternative to castration for animals. When I did dog fostering and rescue, I really didn't enjoy doing castration and spaying. The dogs I had were unwanted and had nobody to care for them, but I still felt like shit taking away their reproductive ability permanently. I had some great dogs, and they should have had children. They were better dogs as dogs than I am a good human being in humanity.
188   mell   2023 May 7, 7:48am  

Savage!
189   HeadSet   2023 May 7, 11:36am  

Elect that kid now. Imagine him in a debate with Kamala.
190   AD   2023 May 7, 11:39am  

Patrick says






Very true Patrick, as read what Robert Downey Jr has said about this.

.
191   AD   2023 May 7, 11:41am  

There are some easy read books that are very helpful such as 7 Habits of Effective People, and How to Make Money in Stocks (written by the founder of Investors Business Daily).

If I am going to reach fiction, I like James A. Michener. I read his Caribbean book when I was stationed in the early 90's at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico.

It gave an appreciation as far as the cultures around me especially when I traveled to different islands.

.
192   Patrick   2023 Aug 16, 10:52am  

I just finished vol 9 of "The Life and Works of Thomas Paine". I haven't read the previous volumes. I just happened to find this book on a book-exchange shelf near me run by the owner of this local used bookstore:

https://www.abebooks.com/feldmans-books-menlo-park-ca-u.s.a/69651/sf

I like old books, so this one caught my eye.





It was printed in 1925 and apparently never read through, since some of the pages needed to be sliced apart to open them.

I flipped through it and could feel the fire! Hoo boy, is Paine an unorthodox guy. He was a Deist, saying that the universe itself is proof of God, but denying all "revealed" religion and their books.

He was the OG memer, writing little tracts and distributing them. Some of the stuff is hilarious, as in speculating that angels must shit, since the bible says they eat, and comparing that to the way birds shit in flight.

I must read "Common Sense" now if I can find a copy. Our local library does not have it, amazingly. They do have a ton of books on how to be gay and why white people are bad though, all prominently displayed.
193   fdhfoiehfeoi   2023 Aug 16, 10:06pm  

Still struggling through Ulysses, but the more I read it, the more I like Joyce and his unique style. Although I must say I am stumped after listening to The Dubliners sing about fighting against England, and comparing that to the stories I hear about Ireland today. What the fuck happened..?
194   Patrick   2023 Aug 16, 10:09pm  

Ireland got rich. Well, the Republic did anyway. That took the fight out of them. They became wussified.
196   stereotomy   2023 Oct 1, 6:23am  

NuttBoxer says


Still struggling through Ulysses, but the more I read it, the more I like Joyce and his unique style. Although I must say I am stumped after listening to The Dubliners sing about fighting against England, and comparing that to the stories I hear about Ireland today. What the fuck happened..?

The Soviet Union fell, drying up the majority of funding for the IRA. That prompted them to come to the bargaining table with the Unionists and largely end the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland.

Then Ireland was swept up in the whole EU thing, after that whole hiccup with the European ERM collapse caused by Soros in 1992. Later, EU money gushed into Ireland, and bought up everything, causing a real estate boom like Spain and the rest of the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain).

When the housing meltdown occurred, the Irish assumed about 50 billion pounds of the bad loans lent by the international banks under pressure from the EU. Unlike the Icelanders, who said "Fuck you!" to that bullshit, the Irish, to my and their shame, acted like the whipped cur that they are and knuckled under, nearly bankrupting their economy.
197   Patrick   2023 Nov 18, 7:44pm  

rocketjoe79 says

Highly recommend the Aubreyaid (Master and Commander Series) by Patrick O'Brian. Excellent on every front.


Finally saw the 2003 movie Master and Commander and it was really excellent. I recommend it.
198   gabbar   2023 Nov 20, 2:01am  

https://archive.org/details/fasting-the-ultimate-diet-with-bonus-book-fasting-as-a-way-of-life

Fasting The Ultimate Diet by Alan Cott. Also available as paperbook on Amazon. Everyone should consider reading this one, imho
199   RWSGFY   2023 Nov 20, 7:51am  

NuttBoxer says

Still struggling through Ulysses, but the more I read it, the more I like Joyce and his unique style. Although I must say I am stumped after listening to The Dubliners sing about fighting against England, and comparing that to the stories I hear about Ireland today. What the fuck happened..?


They cucked out. Don't even speak their native language anymore.
200   Patrick   2023 Nov 20, 8:47pm  

I agree.

The Irish should speak only in Irish to each other.

Iceland retains its own language even though everyone there knows English. So it can be done.
201   gabbar   2023 Nov 20, 11:34pm  

Patrick says

The Irish should speak only in Irish to each other.

This will serve as an anti-dote to wokeism
202   HeadSet   2023 Nov 21, 7:31am  

Patrick says

The Irish should speak only in Irish to each other.

Which "Irish" is that? In the old days, an "Irish" from County Cork spoke a language different enough from an "Irish" from County Kerry as to be mutually unintelligible.
203   RWSGFY   2023 Nov 21, 8:42am  

HeadSet says

Patrick says


The Irish should speak only in Irish to each other.

Which "Irish" is that? In the old days, an "Irish" from County Cork spoke a language different enough from an "Irish" from County Kerry as to be mutually unintelligible.


There must be a standard Irish, methinks. Germans have many dialects but standard German is a thing.
204   Patrick   2023 Nov 22, 3:01pm  

There is a standard Irish which is taught in schools and used in official documents.

I threw a good five years into learning Irish, even studying a bit on Inisheer (Irish: Inis Oírr). The three main dialects are mutually intelligible and people converse across them all the time. The fourth dialect is Scottish Gaelic, which is not really a separate language from Irish, though the Scots would like to think so. It's further removed, but I've read that any Irish speaker needs only about a week to get a pretty good understanding of Scottish. I can get parts of it myself.

The Irish colonized Scotland about the same time that the Angles and Saxons were moving into England, like 700 AD. This is why Scottish Gaelic exists. The Irish brought it there.
205   Patrick   2023 Nov 25, 5:38pm  

Someone left this book out on the street nearby for free with other household items for anyone to pick up, so I've been reading it at night before going to sleep. I've been interested in Locke since learning that he was one of the inspirations for the American founding fathers. He even repeatedly refers to "Life, liberty, and estate", which is not exactly the same as the Constitution, but close.

His English is pretty long, twisty, and verbose, but then he was writing in about 1690. I have to read some things several times, but I can mostly get it.

This edition copyright 1937, printed in 1952.


207   HeadSet   2023 Dec 17, 2:59pm  

Patrick says





And this cartoon came out decades ago.
208   Patrick   2023 Dec 20, 3:18pm  

Sort of finished the Locke, Berkeley, and Hume book above. Their English is so verbose and twisty that it was too painful to really read it all. Glad I tried though, because I got an impression of all three of them into my head. Locke was totally one of the founders of the US whether he knew it or not. The Constitution is clearly quoting him at times.

Found another interesting book at a free bookshelf around here, so I've started that now:



Heard about Plutarch many times, so it will be interesting to read his little biographies of many people of ancient history. He's said to be very entertaining.
210   AmericanKulak   2023 Dec 31, 11:12pm  

Patrick says


Found another interesting book at a free bookshelf around here, so I've started that now:

Wait until you get into the Livia conspiracy or is that in Cassius Dio?

You'll LOVE The History of Rome podcast


211   Patrick   2024 Jan 1, 8:16pm  

AmericanKulak says

You'll LOVE The History of Rome podcast


@AmericanKulak

Do you mean this one? https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/
212   AmericanKulak   2024 Jan 1, 8:19pm  

Patrick says


AmericanKulak says


You'll LOVE The History of Rome podcast


AmericanKulak

Do you mean this one? https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/


That's the one. Then you can start the History of Byzantium podcast after that, which should cover you for QUITE a while.
213   Patrick   2024 Jan 22, 3:51pm  

Thanks @AmericanKulak

I finally started listening to them and they are very good.

It's nice that they are just mp3 files, so I can download them and listen to them later without a connection.
216   Patrick   2024 Feb 15, 2:29pm  

Patrick says

Heard about Plutarch many times, so it will be interesting to read his little biographies of many people of ancient history. He's said to be very entertaining.


https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/cost-of-glory-podcast-alex-petkas-interview


“Fill your souls with Plutarch, and dare to believe in yourselves when you have faith in his heroes. With a hundred people raised in such an unmodern way, that is, people who have become mature and familiar with the heroic, one could permanently silence the entire noisy pseudo-education of this age.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
217   fdhfoiehfeoi   2024 Feb 15, 3:40pm  

Started reading the Arabian Nights tales. The whole book centers around a king who kills the girl he sleeps with every morning so she won't have a chance to cheat on him. Seems like patnetters have more in common with Arabs than many of you might think.
218   Ceffer   2024 Feb 15, 4:31pm  

NuttBoxer says

Started reading the Arabian Nights tales. The whole book centers around a king who kills the girl he sleeps with every morning so she won't have a chance to cheat on him. Seems like patnetters have more in common with Arabs than many of you might think.

Shhhh!
219   Patrick   2024 Feb 15, 4:59pm  

Well, when he comes across Scheherazade, she keeps him entertained and he keeps letting her live.
220   fdhfoiehfeoi   2024 Feb 16, 6:42am  

Yes, but the opinion of women as whoring sluts who can't keep their legs closed, especially around black slaves is not subtle..

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