ASlave2Gravity

Hey just want to say a massive thank you for everything you've done with this project. I've shot so much (short films, music videos, even a TV pilot!) on my pair of 600Ds and ML has given these cams such an extended life.

It’s been a huge blessing!

I couldn't put that book down!

It was suggested that I could take them to small claims, but I've never done anything like that before, and looking into it seems that Amazon makes it rather hard and admin heavy to do.

I've basically written off KDP for all future publications, and most of my current stuff is for sale through all the other book retailers.

It's a real shame as Amazon is the heart of a lot of indie publishing and provides a good service but ultimately they don’t care about the individual.

I have seen stories of slightly bigger indie authors also raising hell on Twitter and getting various other people involved (BSFA in this case) to speak to Amazon. In that case I believe they got paid.

I’m still shocked that Amazon let me pay for ads for a novel that I would never get the sales money for. That hurt more than just being delisted.

Just wanted to chime in here and say that I, too, got banned from KDP, but in a rather sinister way. They initially locked me out of my account totally, only for access to be reinstated after an email to them. I thought, phew, that was lucky! Little did I know I was still banned…

What I hadn’t realised until releasing my next novel was that whilst I was free to publish work to the platform—and free to run and pay for ads—I wasn’t actually able to collect my royalties! It took me a while to realise this as there’s quite a lag between sales and payout. I was livid. After many emails I’m still not able to collect unpaid royalties on the new novel.

Congrats! I find I'm using Marginalia more and more, it's especially great for researching for novel writing, and can’t wait to see what the future holds! Good luck!

Mirrors my experience completely.

The great thing for me at university was that no one forced me to go to the lectures. I was on a computer science course, but was more happy making games in my bedroom or writing fiction, and just skipping everthing course related.

For me, life's best served when there's no one badgering you for your attention or your time. If a friend randomly walks up to my flat and rings the buzzer, there's a good chance I'll use it as an excuse to stop work and go hang.

Even if it takes us like 5 extra years to get that deep knowledge of physics, who really cares? You get there in the end if you have the time and space to actually learn it. The modern world is so focused on optimising for time, it can really hinder some people.

Beautiful! :D Thank you for sharing!

The 'does it not?' breaks the flow of the quote perfectly. It was intentional, I like to believe; it's as if your peace of a flowing sentence is suddenly interupted by the life of a fantastic writer! :D

Elegiac is the perfect word for it!

It's a lovely quote too. I remember reading the novel and thinking, 'Holy shit, he's hit the nail on the head!'

I'd happily run a class on it. Whenever anyone asks for a reading list, it's often on there.

I take the novel as a mystic work, much like Meister Eckhart's works. It's a pendulum swing between the secular and the sacred.

Easily one of my favourite novels. It's riddled with beauty; there is a lens held up to the shepherding of knowledge that made me really appreciate what it means to be a scholar.

It's a wild ride and I think a book people should read.

My fav quote,

"When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary.”

I think it boils down to public adoption, right? Like, everyone, even the bell-hop, was telling me to buy. It was beyound insane. But they said that because they all saw the graphs. It made the news, etc. But I rarely meet people who will happily take BTC or what have you. Now, is this because it's still in geeksville, or because it's harder to pay taxes, or because its slow? Where do you draw the line on usability? We know why it was made.

Would you mind sharing more of your thoughts on what might play out if the SEC loses? And then also, if you don't mind, what would happen if the SEC wins?

A good techno-thriller might be some group of hackers nab the Chinese bathymetry database, which then finds its hands in some war hungry US general

I'd agree here for sure. I'm not sure how we even go about dealing with it as every converstation seems to spiral into madness

Nope - good point!

I suppouse I want to see more UN involvement with the Organ Harvesting. It's insanely barbaric and shouldn't be happerning. But I think people like Alex Jones have given it more credit. I don't have enough data to make valid conclusion about it. But the Falun Gong practitioners I have met scared the crap out of me. It felt a lot like Scientology vibes. Does that mean we should harvest their organs? No, clearly. That's insane to like the nth-degree.

e: also, as the wiki states, Ethan Gutmann's investigations are pretty striking. Same as the China Tribunal in London. This has moved on a lot since I last read up on it. Christ.