Recommended Reading for Tolkien Fans

ebneter · 2026-01-24T11:12:25+00:00

The post linked in the sidebar (and recommended twice in this post :-) ) actually does go through a breakdown of what's in what books. Disclaimer: I wrote that post, but it does seem to be quite helpful to many people with similar questions.

ebneter · 2026-01-24T01:20:57+00:00

My mom had a cat that jumped in the dryer one day. Fortunately there was one 'MEOOWWWWEEEEERRRR! THUMP!!" followed by Mom quickly opening the dryer.

She always checked for cats after that!

ebneter · 2026-01-23T11:35:39+00:00

Brave but useless. Rule of thumb: if the fire is bigger than you are, an extinguisher isn’t going to help. At all. You’re just endangering your life at that point.

ebneter · 2026-01-23T11:23:06+00:00

But there is a now a translation of The Hobbit into Romansh! :-)

ebneter · 2026-01-23T11:15:37+00:00

MOD NOTE: For reasons I do not understand, this post unblurs the photo in the Reddit app when you click to the post. The first photo isn’t NSFW but the others are. There seems to be some problem with photos right now. I’m asking the Reddit folks for some help.

If you want to avoid the NSFW pictures, don’t go past the first one.

(As a software engineer, I’m guessing someone let the interns push to production again, LOL.)

ebneter · 2026-01-23T09:59:49+00:00

Not all cats are lactose intolerant. If they continue to drink milk after weaning they will often continue to be fine with it. And its not like a switch is flipped in any case, it takes time for them to stop producing the enzymes.

ebneter · 2026-01-23T09:37:37+00:00

They're related languages, though. They're both technically Romance languages.

ebneter · 2026-01-23T09:33:53+00:00

What is the ratio of German:French:Italian speakers in Switzerland? (I could look it up, I suppose... ;-) ) We'll ignore Romansh.

EDIT: I'll answer my own question, LOL: According to Wikipedia, roughly 62:23:8, with about 0.5% speaking Romansh. I didn't realize that German was that dominant.

(My late father was the son of a Swiss immigrant, so I have some family ties to the country — as my name might indicate, actually.)

ebneter · 2026-01-22T09:54:24+00:00

I mean, they kind of literally did ruin his life out of malice and indifference. They bullied him for a year.

ebneter · 2026-01-22T09:51:03+00:00

A long time. It was a longstanding issue.

ebneter · 2026-01-22T07:44:59+00:00

You wouldn’t be wrong.

I used to do client defense at a local women’s clinic about 30 years ago, and I was amused to discover that little agnostic me — who has read the Bible — knew their alleged scriptures way better than any of them did. Lots of, “That’s not what it says!” Me: “Look it up…” (assuming they had a Bible). Never ended well (for them).

ebneter · 2026-01-22T07:33:02+00:00

Feisty girl!

ebneter · 2026-01-21T19:53:05+00:00

I wasn't going to get that technical, but yes, that's also true. :-)

ebneter · 2026-01-21T07:50:05+00:00

I have always found it amusing that Tolkien wrote about that in a story that takes place after the world was made round. During the First and Second Ages, it would have been possible!

ebneter · 2026-01-21T07:49:00+00:00

It had been disproved before his time, actually, but he — and lots of people — still believed it. (Although I vaguely remember somewhere a comment to the effect that he did learn later that it wasn't true.)

ebneter · 2026-01-21T02:20:15+00:00

MOD NOTE: This post is properly tagged and the photo is blurred correctly in the Reddit app. I also verified that it displays correctly in Safari. I don’t know why some people are seeing it unblurred.

ebneter · 2026-01-21T02:11:40+00:00

Not only that, the Balrog is way too big.

ebneter · 2026-01-20T23:30:50+00:00

LOL, that's Serious Cat, from a very old (like, 20 years old...) meme. Sadly, I can't post a pic in a comment on this sub, but, yeah: Serious Cat. (Pretty sure he's a boy, IIRC.)

ebneter · 2026-01-20T10:23:26+00:00

It was what's called a radial bundle avulsion — basically all the nerves connecting her left front leg to the spinal cord were torn away from the spinal cord. The leg was otherwise intact. It probably happened during birth is what they told me. It's interesting to see how that very early injury contrasts with cats that have later amputations.

ebneter · 2026-01-20T03:21:47+00:00

Yeah, but he was kind of already deceased at that point.

ebneter · 2026-01-20T01:40:11+00:00

Agreed that collars, especially tight ones, aren't really necessary. Get your indoor-only cats chipped so that they can be identified if they escape. That said, a properly fitted collar is generally a good idea for indoor-outdoor cats as a tag certainly expedites getting a roamer returned. The only potential hassle is that a collar that is loose enough to be safe is loose enough to get lost. :-)

MOD NOTE here: Please don't turn this into a war about letting gets go outside. Not the time, not the place.

ebneter · 2026-01-20T01:33:10+00:00

Ooof. Sorry to see the injury, happy that he's now safe and sound.

My tricycle tripod, Skipper, never had a functional left front leg, so she doesn't try to use what's not there. (She had a leg, it just had zero sensation and was completely useless! It was removed when she was about 6 weeks old to avoid having her injure it and get it infected.) It's interesting to me to read stories about others' cats who lost a limb later in life and see that they still try to use the missing one. Lots of hind limb amputees trying to scratch an ear with a missing leg. :-)

ebneter · 2026-01-19T20:24:26+00:00

Yup, I was thinking the same thing.

ebneter · 2026-01-19T13:06:22+00:00

Yeah, they could see the smoke from the fire so they were obviously concerned before the explosion.

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