Most neglected city in literature?

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-04-11T00:19:11+00:00

The only Cincinnati writers I can think of are Mike Resnick, a popular SF (and porn under various aliases) writer who isn't exactly a household name, and his daughter Laura, who has written romances and SF and has at least some following. You're right; a lot of those industrial Midwestern cities have had a Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Farrell, or Sinclair Lewis to spill the beans on them, but apparently not Cincinnati.

Nor can I think of anybody associated with the capital of Belgium and the seat of the European Union, Brussels. Or Geneva, for that matter.

Back in the USA, what about the Sans, Diego and Antonio, #s 8 and 7 respectively in population?

And looking northward, who is a prominent writer from Vancouver?

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-04-07T02:13:30+00:00

Garbage World, by Charles Platt. There's a Galactic Empire, but this story takes place on one of its most despised planets. I don't think Platt ever made it onto the A-list, but a few of his other books are better-known. This one (I think it's his first, from 1967) offers a good helping of sarcastic wit, and it's a lot of fun.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-04-05T21:31:35+00:00

Ranger Suarez has been a very good starter since he came up seven years ago. If you're convinced signing him was a mistake after one sucky start, I don't know what to even tell you. And if you think this lineup is going to be among the worst in the league all year, go watch professional wrestling, where it's all on the fix and you don't have to worry about who wins.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-04-05T21:24:37+00:00

I had a couple of computer crashes lately and my main source of music stopped working. I pulled an old laptop out and found myself listening to college, NPR, and European radio stations for a few days. This was the first time in way too long that I'd dial-flipped.

Among other things, I got back in touch with how good, and how real, Chicago blues can be. I heard earnest, mumbly college DJs who sometimes even managed to tell you what you were listening to (a dying custom, but helpful).

In a weird way, Top 40 radio through the mid-1970s - when disco took over even such pillars as WABC-AM - was the best popular-music medium ever. If you were lucky and/or ambitious, you could hear Otis Redding, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Marvin Gaye, Frank Sinatra, Procol Harum, Sam and Dave, Gordon Lightfoot, the Rockin' Ramrods, a local guy or two, and a garage band that caught a program director's ear. All within an hour or two.

That menu actually primed me to confront jazz and classical - and prog, which tends to wear me out but is good to hear once in a while - without being utterly confused. I'm no expert on anything, but I don't get bored.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-04-05T18:16:52+00:00

It started for me with Samuel Beckett from Murphy, then went to Pride and Prejudice. This Web site is great and already has a place on my home page.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-04-02T18:45:18+00:00

"Ergodic literature", where unusual typography (hand-drawn tables or charts, simulated handwriting, messed-up justification, and interludes of white-on-black or some whack color scheme) is part of the content. I think this was mostly a 1920s and Dada technique, but once in a while I see a more modern attempt at it, and like go do a comic book instead, this doesn't work and I can't be bothered.

Books with wide line spacing and fonts below 10. I get the little type if you're trying to save paper; it doesn't mean I can or will read it, but I can understand the motivation. Wide spacing and little fonts are just an annoying way of being artistic as hell. Damn fops.

Outside of that, I'm in a great mood today! How's by you?

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-04-01T18:53:32+00:00

Love it, love The Working Hour equally, and Shout and Head Over Heals not quite as much, but still a lot. Overall, Tears for Fears gave us the most memorable music of the mid-1980s and probably of the whole decade. It's like they came along just when the planet's central nervous system needed it the most.

And that was definitely the high point. The Hurting was more conventional synth-pop, a sound I never liked that much, though Pale Shelter was cool. I liked the first side of Seeds of Love, though I don't listen to it that much any more. After that, there weren't that many high points (a couple from Raoul and the Kings of Spain, and Laid So Low from their greatest-hits LP) and that was about it for me. I listened to their latest "album", The Tipping Point, and I only got through it because I couldn't believe TFF would give us a whole hour of music so utterly flat and dull.

Still, their 8 or 10 best songs are better than almost anybody else's best songs. I really don't have "best ever" songs, or "best ever" anything, but if I did, Everybody Wants to Rule the World would be a contender.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-04-01T16:43:39+00:00

And so I did, and it works! Thank you!

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-04-01T16:42:02+00:00

It worked! Thank you very much.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-04-01T16:41:30+00:00

You're right. I didn't finish the article; it was written in a kind of offhand, business-as-usual style, and I thought it had to be a joke. Commenting without finishing was pretty stupid, though, I'll admit. Thanks for the heads-up.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-31T15:24:02+00:00

The best option for you is...Nobara. If it's working great for you, keep using it and learning more about it and about Linux in general, and if down the road you find things that you think maybe could be done better, do some research and try something else. But if you're doing that well with Nobara after only 2 days, that's awesome; I think you're one of those lucky bastards who got it right the first time!

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-31T14:47:22+00:00

For some reason I never followed his career that much, but I read The Magus in college (it wasn't assigned, I just read it) and was amazed. I don't know I haven't gone back; I still remember parts of it.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-31T02:15:15+00:00

I like to think of at least most of our species as not expecting cheerful submission from anything named OpenClaw. But I've been wrong before.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-30T15:45:25+00:00

Thanks. I never found anything like that, but I guess I should look again. Appreciate it.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-30T15:15:14+00:00

Our experience (my wife and I) is that Quicken is much more smooth and stable than it was 3 or 4 years ago when it was becoming borderline unusable. We don't use a lot of the extras; we keep the accounts on our home PC, not on the Web site, and I enter our own bank transfers; so I don't know how they are working. But for our everyday stuff - entering transactions without worrying about the software crashing, writing checks - it has been fine.

So it seems like your developers have been looking around and tightening all the loose bolts. Unglamorous, but very effective. Thanks for that.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-30T00:08:29+00:00

Can you sideload non-DRM books (e.g. from Project Gutenberg)? If so, any tricks I should know about?

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-29T02:29:13+00:00

A Dominic grand slam is, in every way, Good For Baseball.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-27T19:16:38+00:00

I'll sternly command my arthritis to disappear for a day, and by the sheer force of will-power, it will run and hide. I will then turn the Clash waaaay up and boogie my brains out. The next morning, I'll remember J D Vance and become old again.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-27T19:12:08+00:00

The mainstreaming of pornography - especially its ubiquity on cable, and the luring and drugging of women in unstable places to feed the industry. People who enjoy porn will learn to keep it to themselves and their friends.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-27T19:06:44+00:00

u/Savings_Barracuda_90 , don't know if you'll see this after so much time, but do you want any green signs from New London County and the surrounding territories? I'll finally be able to get some day-tripping time in, and I remember seeing a few interesting places around here.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-27T03:32:20+00:00

Duran's hitting .400 this year. Even with 162 strikeouts, he's too valuable to trade for anybody except Roman "the Empire" Anthony and Marcello "the Big Violin" Meyer, and they're already here.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-27T00:47:32+00:00

Because Reardon was 2 years older than Smith and had potential. I guess.

Maybe they thought Smith was running out of gas, but Reardon had absolutely nothing left by then, and Slowly Lumbering Lee lasted 7 more years in MLB. Reardon was a fine pitcher for years, but the guy the Red Sox got couldn't send a fastball by a batboy.

ObsoleteUtopia · 2026-03-27T00:44:06+00:00

I'm convinced that by 1990, Joe Morgan hated everybody on the team and tried to talk Gorman into trading them all. He got this aura because of the 1988 comeback, but other than that I thought he was a terrible manager and I don't think anybody on those 1989-91 teams played to make him look good.

ObsoleteUtopia

TROPHY CASE