CIRCLE WITH A DOT

I never read Nancy Drew books as a child. They come up often when adult readers of mysteries get together though and when I saw the first few from 1930 were out of copyright and available for free on the internet I jumped on a pdf scan of an original copy to read.

I expected to find it outdated and silly, quite possible offensive, but also to find it fun. However it pretty much annoyed me from beginning to end. The story just wasn't very engaging. I have read plenty of children’s books as an adult and have mostly enjoyed them for their easily readable and page turning plots. I won’t be bothering to read any more of these books.

The Secret of the Old Clock

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_A City on Mars_ by Kelly & Zach Weinersmith has the subtitle “Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through?” and - spoilers - the answers seem to be maybe, a smaller maybe, and a big fat nope.

Ultimately I came out of the book with the thought that if we can’t manage to live peacefully on a planet that has enough resources for all of us, then why (on earth) does anyone think that we’ll manage it on one that doesn’t.

Definitely a really interesting and fun read.

A City on Mars

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@miffyhelen Every single fucking month I have to lie to my business bank account because there is no way to say “this is a salary payment, I’ve been paying this person (myself) from this account every month for the last 25 years and if it was a scam I think I’d have worked that out by now”.

I can’t even pay HMRC, who have their own sort codes so I can’t be paying anyone other than the government to accounts under them, without triggering the scam warnings. The system is all scary flashing lights and no actual protection.

@MostlyHarmless isn’t this basically what a tax free personal allowance is for? Though I’m not at all sure that the UK’s £12.5k, which feels like it’s been frozen forever, is enough for each person to pay for housing & utilities, but I feel like that’s the concept behind it.