The house of Random Penguins

[nana77]

Originally Posted by Quoth

EDIT:
I'm not that keen on anthropomorphic animals. Read the Redwall series if you want to annoy yourself with that. Redwall would work fine with people. Not sure Wind In the Willows would. Maybe all of the Narnia books except the first (TLTW&TW) could have worked without anthropomorphic animals. Was it purely because of childhood "Boxen" or was it just a case of the kitchen sink in the 1st book?
Watership Down maybe works better than Redwall. I tried the Duncton Wood series (moles) and don't know why I bought more than one. OTOH I have all of Wheel of Time, but lost interest somewhat during the 5th book and never finished the 1st one Sanderson wrote.

Disney annoys me (not the only reason) by sticking in anthropomorphic animals (and even objects) in the animation that are not even in the original work. I liked Disney till I was about 11, though aspects always annoyed. They annoyed me even more when I read the original works. They are a blot.

The book I''m currently reading, which is "This Is How You Lose the Time War"", by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone mentions in the novel Travel Light, by Naomi Mitchison (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Mitchison)

Literary critic Geoffrey Sadler stated of Mitchison's historical fiction: "On the basis of her early writings, she is unquestionably one of the great historical novelists."

https://www.npr.org/2014/01/01/25838...s-travel-light

Mitchison and Tolkien were good friends, and Mitchison was among the first readers of The Lord of the Rings before it was published (Travel Light was published in 1952, Lord of the Rings in 1954).

That Mitchison's life and works should have been so unfairly relegated to secret history drove home my feeling of books as points of divergence to alternate timelines; that having read The Hobbit rather than Travel Light at that fragile, formative moment of being a child in Lebanon standing at a crossroads of languages, religions and literary traditions nudged me into a different life. Who might I have been if I had met Halla Bearsbairn before Bilbo Baggins? How different might my attitude toward dragons have been if I'd met Uggi before Smaug?

There is a thing great in early Disney works imho: the rotoscope animations; the anti-Disney to me is Ralph Bakshi, hope you watched some of his animated (rotoscope there, also) movies; IMHO again the anti-anti-Disney would greatly be Hayao Miyazaki .

*an errata corrige: Jovanotti's travel was started from Patagonia, not Brazil, the year's book is 1998, not 1993.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by issybird

I like old travel guides, the rule of thumb that they have to be really old and not just dated. And yes, they're an inadvertent snapshot of their times, in addition to being guidebooks to places.

I have a guidebook to London from 1931. Among other things, it tells you whether a gentleman should take his hat off when he meets a lady in an elevator. I don't remember if the answer is yes or no, but the etiquette for this in England was different from that on the Continent.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by hildea

I have a guidebook to London from 1931. Among other things, it tells you whether a gentleman should take his hat off when he meets a lady in an elevator. I don't remember if the answer is yes or no, but the etiquette for this in England was different from that on the Continent.

In fact, a Gentleman should not wear a hat inside a building at all

[Quoth]

Update and summary.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...on-raynor-winn

Of course the author claims the report isn't true,

[issybird]

.
<<=

Originally Posted by rantanplan

In fact, a Gentleman should not wear a hat inside a building at all

I see men in baseball caps eating in restaurants and I still think, “Were you brought up in a barn?”

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

I see men in baseball caps eating in restaurants and I still think, “Were you brought up in a barn?”

But those aren't hats and are pretty weird caps. Also what is it with wearing the brim at the back?

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by Quoth

But those aren't hats and are pretty weird caps. Also what is it with wearing the brim at the back?

Hat is a blanket term for headwear, so a cap is a type of head.

[Quoth]

Update:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...e-was-invented

As someone mentioned that aspect.

EDIT

Aside from rare exceptions – such as when a group of readers successfully sued Frey’s publisher, claiming they were defrauded as they bought his book under the impression that it was true, and were refunded the cover price – publishers do not face serious material repercussions for lies told in memoirs. Reputational damage, meanwhile, is usually put on the author.

So Publishers don't care about facts, only getting sued, and this publisher, one of the largest, has no fact checking department, team or person.

So when you are buying non-fiction (text books may be more reliable if maths or science, remember that Sociology, Psychology and Economics are not science based. History is written mostly by the winners). from ANY publisher, remember they only care about not getting sued and making sales. Don't base life decisions on it. Test recipes before the important event. Regard it as entertainment unless you MUST read it as part of earning/studying for a qualification.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Update:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...e-was-invented

As someone mentioned that aspect.

EDIT


So Publishers don't care about facts, only getting sued, and this publisher, one of the largest, has no fact checking department, team or person.

So when you are buying non-fiction (text books may be more reliable if maths or science, remember that Sociology, Psychology and Economics are not science based. History is written mostly by the winners). from ANY publisher, remember they only care about not getting sued and making sales. Don't base life decisions on it. Test recipes before the important event. Regard it as entertainment unless you MUST read it as part of earning/studying for a qualification.

Recent events show not so much anymore:

https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06/...-up-citations/

This to me is a lot more concerning than a memoir being "loosely" based on the truth. I never expected those or other mass appeal non-fiction titles to be held to a very high bar.

And it's such an insanely simple sanity check to see if the citations are real. Like an intern could do it.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Recent events show not so much anymore:

https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06/...-up-citations/

This to me is a lot more concerning than a memoir being "loosely" based on the truth. I never expected those or other mass appeal non-fiction titles to be held to a very high bar.

And it's such an insanely simple sanity check to see if the citations are real. Like an intern could do it.

I'm guessing they were AI generated and that the hypothetical intern would use AI to check them.

If you think the publisher list price is high check out the paper and ebook prices on amazon.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

But those aren't hats and are pretty weird caps. Also what is it with wearing the brim at the back?

You wear the brim at the back when the sun is beating down on the back of your neck.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You wear the brim at the back when the sun is beating down on the back of your neck.

That's what collars, and/or hair can do. Or you can wear a real hat that has a wide brim all the way around, because why would only the back of your neck face the sun? A proper hat with complete brim is what you need in the sun. Some work for rain too.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Recent events show not so much anymore:

https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06/...-up-citations/

This to me is a lot more concerning than a memoir being "loosely" based on the truth. I never expected those or other mass appeal non-fiction titles to be held to a very high bar.

And it's such an insanely simple sanity check to see if the citations are real. Like an intern could do it.

Yes, the use of so-called AI to produce and check stuff is garbage. It is concerning.

LLM produces plausible garbage unless tricked to divulge what has been copied (so-called "Training" is simply copying, mostly without curation).

Almost everything to do with "Machine Learning" / LLM etc end of so called "AI" is made up marketing hype.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Yes, the use of so-called AI to produce and check stuff is garbage. It is concerning.

LLM produces plausible garbage unless tricked to divulge what has been copied (so-called "Training" is simply copying, mostly without curation).

Almost everything to do with "Machine Learning" / LLM etc end of so called "AI" is made up marketing hype.

Sigh. No, training is not just copying. I'm not sure AI was used to check stuff here. I'm questioning if they even checked at all.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Sigh. No, training is not just copying. I'm not sure AI was used to check stuff here. I'm questioning if they even checked at all.

Probably wasn't checked at all.


It's not "just copying". But calling it "training" (or machine learning) is a lie, Marketing-Speak, and the content for LLMs is copied, but just not in a normal easily accessible replay with sane source identification (which would be more useful as then you'd have a decent interactively driven search engine)*. The entire LLM part of AI is dishonest and misleading. No computer system learns or is trained in the sense the words are traditionally used. The entire industry segment is like Humpty Dumpty in Alice through the Looking Glass. They are using anthropomorphic phrasing and descriptions that are dishonest or at best misleading.


[* Something I proposed about 25 years ago. I was a professional, qualified programmer and had studied AI for over a decade by then.]