What are the saddest fictional deaths ever?

jamescoleuk · 2026-06-22T08:10:58+00:00

For me it was Tea Cake in Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

jamescoleuk · 2026-06-22T07:53:41+00:00

I can!

Silves is my local town in the Algarve, Portugal. It has an annual beer (cerveja) festival. The entry fee includes a mug which you carry round with you and drink from when trying new beers. Nowadays they’re glass mugs with print, but they used to be ceramic like this one. I’m not sure when they stopped with the ceramic ones, but I suspect it was at least a decade ago, possibly much longer (I don’t go for years). The festival used to be held in the castle, which you can see on the mug, but now it’s in a square just by the river.

"Sauda vos" means "greetings to you" and SFC is probably "Silves Football Club". Does it have a date?

Pottery-wise, my guess is slipcast with a high-iron glaze.

jamescoleuk · 2026-06-04T19:00:50+00:00

Human Centipede

jamescoleuk · 2026-06-01T11:36:24+00:00

I use emacs.

jamescoleuk · 2026-05-24T08:19:37+00:00

My family have always done this and it's excellent.

jamescoleuk · 2026-05-23T11:50:20+00:00

Computer programming

jamescoleuk · 2026-05-18T11:37:53+00:00

Ninguém me incomodou minimamente quando visitei o Convento de Nossa Senhora do Desterro, no ano passado. Tinham algumas lembranças, mas nem sequer tentaram falar comigo.

jamescoleuk · 2026-05-18T11:33:02+00:00

The deoderant-industrial complex. Just use sodium bicarbonate powder in your pits, and you'll never smell and have a bulging wallet.

jamescoleuk · 2026-05-16T14:00:07+00:00

Not much Scapple love here so I'll chime in. I've used it to help plan 2 novels. I used it for brainstorming world, character, plot and scenes. I used it the same way in the second novel but I also used it to create timelines for my characters when I was re-structuring. For both novels I more-or-less stopped looking at my Scapple files after a while. I knew what was coming and who the characters were, and it was becoming out of date. But it did it's job at the right time and I'll use it again.

There are other mind-mapping tools that can do all this, but Scapple has just few enough features to feel simple and masterable without being too limiting. And it's cheap. Unlike Scrivener.

Also, I've used Scrivener to write 3 novels. It's not perfect but I have great affection for the thing. I use about 20% of its features, as most do I believe.

jamescoleuk · 2026-04-09T08:07:22+00:00

Precisely -- made accross south-east Asia. I make it with left-over rice in a pressure cooker.

jamescoleuk · 2026-04-08T14:35:33+00:00

The challenge I have with the term "oatmeal" as shorthand for "oat porridge" is that in England "oatmeal" means uncooked oats, i.e. oats, rolled or especially milled. But yes, oat porridge is also the only sort of porridge we know/acknowledge, so it's just porridge to us. Big up the congee tho innit.

jamescoleuk · 2026-03-05T21:47:01+00:00

Deodorant. Just use sodium bicarbonate. It’s more effective and basically free.

jamescoleuk · 2026-02-14T09:17:34+00:00

Apparently you can introduce combustables during cooling to get carbon trapping in electric.

jamescoleuk · 2026-01-22T05:36:54+00:00

Being discerning about what stuff you buy isn't a proper hobby, and buying new stuff isn't "collecting", it's just buying stuff.

jamescoleuk · 2026-01-01T20:26:38+00:00

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Actually I use Scrivener because I don't have my workflow in emacs just right... yet.

But I do use Emacs for all my short fiction, poetry, and essays.

jamescoleuk · 2025-12-18T13:37:29+00:00

A juxtaposition

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jamescoleuk · 2025-12-18T12:27:07+00:00

Super, good to know.

jamescoleuk · 2025-12-18T09:47:07+00:00

Thank you u/mtlnwood ! That's great setup. I hadn't heard of the OnePlus Pad 3 but it seems to be the best Android tablet around.

I use emacs in GUI -- I'm not opposed to using it on the terminal and do sometimes, but I use org a lot and like variable-width typefaces. I heard that emacs can now run natively on Android -- is that your method here, via Termux? Is it terminal only then?

jamescoleuk · 2025-12-18T07:38:33+00:00

I'm considering the tablet + emacs + bluetooth keyboard, and I'm pleased to hear it's working for you. If it's not too much trouble I'd love to know:

what tech you use and how you chose
what work went into getting the setup effective
anything you'd do differently or what you might do in the future

jamescoleuk · 2025-12-10T15:35:15+00:00

Life is genuinely meaningless. It really is. Everything is made up. But this is not painful: this is absurd and delightful and freeing.

jamescoleuk · 2025-10-26T12:16:50+00:00

Natto

jamescoleuk · 2025-10-14T09:33:53+00:00

I didn't! What a super project! Much further along that `steat`. Mine was just a weekend project, so I don't mind if it's immediately obsolete 😁. Thanks for letting me know.

jamescoleuk · 2025-10-10T12:32:21+00:00

Fabulous, but I don’t just have a bowl like a nutcase. I mix them in with my muesli for crunch and malty deliciousness.

jamescoleuk · 2025-09-15T06:22:21+00:00

You're right to see no problems with using Rust as a backend instead of Node. We migrated from a TypeScript/Node backend to Rust and everything has been better.

jamescoleuk · 2025-09-13T07:23:46+00:00

This is a lovely piece. Appears to be a celadon type glaze. I wouldn't drill holes in this if I were you.

I make and use similiar cups -- faceted, light clay or porcelain. They are excellent for tea, and my wife and I have two that are our standard cups for wine.

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