Rottcodd

My namesake - Rottcodd.

Rottcodd is a minor character in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books. He's the caretaker of the Hall of Bright Carvings - a gallery of statues high up in a far distant corner of the castle Gormenghast. He lives there contentedly and peacefully by himself and rarely sees anyone, but through a window at one end of the gallery, he can see the castle spread out below him, and can barely make out tiny-with-distance people scurrying around doing... whatever it is that they're doing.

And yeah - for better or worse, I identify with him so much that I swiped his name.

The only thing I don't like about the fediverse is the constant stream of people blathering on about how "we" supposedly need to centralize and homogenize it and fill it up with botspam, so that easily confused morons with short attention spans will move here.

I loathe it with every fiber of my being.

I detest bot content in general, and bot reposts of Reddit content is the absolute bottom of the barrel. It's not just tedious and unimaginative and unengaging - I honestly find it creepy, like someone stalking an ex-lover.

Huh.

I had no idea Marvel Groot was that old.

That seems to make it more likely that it's not a coincidence though, particularly since while Marvel Groot existed, he was still very obscure. I can see Moorcock slipping the line in, and even giving the character that name so he could slip the line in, just for a bit of amusement.

Broadly, there are two different ways in which a person so inclined can set about projecting the image of an aficionado of great literature.

One is to read, understand and be able to discuss great literary works.

The other is to sneer at supposedly lesser works.

Obviously, the latter is much easier. In fact, it doesn't actually require reading at all.

They could be universally referred to by an entirely different term starting tomorrow, and the only thing that would change would be that that term would also come to be seen as a pejorative.

The simple fact of the matter is that the negative view of them is tied to what they do and who they are - NOT to the term used to label them.

Tricky or not, that's what Lemmy already does, by default.

I'm not sure how it prioritizes it, but what I see, in (mobile) Firefox, is a single version of a thread woth links to the crosspost(s) at the bottom.

So this doesn't appear to be a Lemmy issue, but an issue with whatever app(s) people are using.

Is this an app-specific issue?

I've seen a few references to this in the last couple of days, but I don't see it myself. On Firefox (and presumably on any browser) I just see one version of a crossposted thread, with a note at the bottom that links to the crossposts.

"And by 'we' I of course mean 'you'."

Finished John Dies at the End by David Wong. It was okay all in all - imaginative, but not very well-written.

Started Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I've been working my way through Murakami in publishing order for the last few years, reading one every few months, and it's time for this one. I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far.

The Tell Me Why books by Arkady Leokum - Goodreads link Those probably had more to do with shaping me than anything else I've read.

When I was about eight or nine, I went through a period of reading lots of (juvenile) non-fiction - mostly biographies, history and myths. I don't remember the specific titles, but I particularly remember reading biographies of James Cook and John Paul Jones, histories of ancient Egypt and medieval Europe, the myths of Perseus and Jason, and especially the history/myths surrounding the Trojan War.

And of course I went through a dinosaur phase, but the dinosaur book I remember most clearly was heavy on pictures and light on text.

Then when I was about ten, I switched pretty much entirely to reading fiction.

Yes.

I have a friend who is extremely intelligent, endlessly curious and was raised in a locally well-established and notoriously generous and civic-minded family. So he was raised in that milieu of sincere kindness and generosity, and whenever he's come across anything that interests him (which is seemingly something new every week) he seriously researches it until he understands it.

So it pretty much doesnt matter what the topic is - he knows something about it, but his personality has been shaped so that he's attentive and considerate rather than pedantic and self-absorbed. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen him engage in obviously mutually enjoyable conversations with complete strangers over... pretty much anything.

I vacillate between thinking that it's remarkable that he's the way he is and that it's remarkable, in a different sense, that that's so uncommon.