I've never used one but it struck me as odd that people would use a seperate device for smth so easily done on your phone.

Is there smth special about the hardware? Is it better somehow?

The whole "bovine" joke was hilarious on one hand and a little horrifying on the other. It got me thinking: how would I feel if an animal I was about to consume came up to me enthusiastically conveying its consent for being eaten? I will be horrified, just like Arthur! But why?

Will it be better to eat against its consent instead? Why?

Then… what about salad's consent?! Interesting thought experiment…

I am presenting the joke in the form of three extracts from the text:

Extract 1:

"A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table, a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips. "Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them. Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox. "Something off the shoulder perhaps?" suggested the animal, "Braised in a white wine sauce?" "Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper. "

Extract 2:

"‘You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?’ whispered Trillian to Ford. ‘Me?’ said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes. ‘I don’t mean anything.’ ‘That’s absolutely horrible,’ exclaimed Arthur, ‘the most revolting thing I’ve ever heard.’ ‘What’s the problem, Earthman?’ said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal’s enormous rump. ‘I just don’t want to eat an animal that’s standing there inviting me to,’ said Arthur, ‘it’s heartless.’ ‘Better than eating an animal that doesn’t want to be eaten,’ said Zaphod. ‘That’s not the point,’ Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘maybe it is the point. I don’t care, I’m not going to think about it now. I’ll just . . . er . . .’"

Extract 3:

"I think I’ll just have a green salad,’ he muttered. ‘May I urge you to consider my liver?’ asked the animal. ‘It must be very rich and tender by now, I’ve been force-feeding myself for months.’ ‘A green salad,’ said Arthur emphatically. ‘A green salad?’ said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur. ‘Are you going to tell me,’ said Arthur, ‘that I shouldn’t have green salad?’ ‘Well,’ said the animal, ‘I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.’ It managed a very slight bow. ‘Glass of water, please,’ said Arthur."

cross-posted from: https://literature.cafe/post/2905115

Hi! Does anybody know of any online book clubs for banned books?

Or does anybody wanna…start one?

I’m looking a comfy group to join that doesn’t cost money or conflict with my busy schedule of being sick all the time.

(if this isn’t the right community to post this is, let me know)

👀

I can do a 13 days of horror books highlighting some horror books in !fiction@literature.cafe if there's any interest in that. It seems that making highlight posts made a lot of people engaged and started a lot of conversations. Thoughts? I'm willing to do like daily to weekly themed book highlights. I can even do nonfiction book highlights as well. I have a shit ton of books I know of.

A few days back, I came across a thread on Mastodon where people were sharing great opening lines of books. I pitched in with the following opening lines from Discworld:

"THE SUN ROSE slowly, as if it wasn’t sure it was worth all the effort." - from The Light Fantastic.

"THIS IS WHERE the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world. And Fate always wins." - from Interesting Times.

So to all Discworld fans out here, pitch in with some Discworld quotes, be it starting lines or anything else. Or even just talk about your favourite books in the series. Let's have some fun!

This is another one:

"I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"...

Death thought about it. "CATS" he said eventually. "CATS ARE NICE."

-Terry Pratchett (Sourcery).

AND….

GNU PTERRY

Help! I'm looking for interesting microbloggers who focus on the literature space (especially speculative fiction) to follow. Preferably on mastodon since I can consume the rss feed of their content.

Nanowrimo is in November so I’ll make the community in prep to rally people on lemmy who might be interested in it

I read a bit more of the Seven Moons of Maali Almeida and it's really good so far.

The CSAM spamming happened again, and unfortunately a local user had to witness it and report it.

I myself did not see it, but from what I gather it was basically an innocent looking tiktok video at first glance that would transition into CSAM. Utterly vile.

The content is being reported and admins across lemmy are handling it. I am hopeful this is an isolated incident but what the fuck man. What do we do from here?

She didn't look forward to going out to meet her friend for lunch. It was two degrees, and wasn't the fire inviting?

She went, though, out of a sense of social duty, out of the knowledge that she should have friends of her own, out of the memory of a day last winter, when she had canceled the lunch, because of the cold, because of the fire. Her friend had not been amused, nor had the friend's co-worker been amused; abused, perhaps, they had felt abused in the lawyer's office, where there was no fire, and no lover reading it.

Over lunch they talked about her friend's project, a one-woman play using only selections of Emily Dickinson's letters. The question of a title came up: Emily Unplugged; A Taste of Emily (they laughed for the connotations of it). Papers. Emily's Papers. The friend said, “Vellum”, and she said, “That's it!” The friend said, “What?” “Vellum, Emily, that's it, Velemily, something. It's the word, it's the right word, better than Emily Verso and Recto — Vellum.”

The table erupted into textures. The napkins, suddenly, were thick and writable. It was a question of the bite of the paper; how lovely it seemed that paper should have teeth, that Vellum may have the strongest teeth to go with the sword of a pen. It was better than tongues of fire.

— From The Prose Poem: An International Journal, vol. 8.

Do you use Goodreads or something similar like Fantastic Fiction?