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Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" is a ridiculously fun book. Very short, and stuffed with melodrama. My copy has an excellent introduction to Gothic architecture, literature, and politics by Nick Groom, which goes much deeper than this article.

Affinity is amazing. It's like the old Photoshop you remember, before it became totally over-bloated.


"Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" is an amazing book. I taught my daughter to read before kindergarten. It works.


What does "before kindergarten" mean? In the mornings? Or before she was old enough to go there? I started kindergarten at age 2 (like described in Wikipedia) and I suspect that is not what you mean.


She was 5. Most kids in the US start first grade about 6.


The book itself recommends that most children start the program in the book at age 4, also noting that some advanced students may be ready at age 3.5.


A note on this: We used this book to teach our two oldest kids to read before they entered kindergarten. Kid #1 was asking to learn to read at age 3.5, and that's when we got the book. She could really read before her 4th birthday. It was indeed amazing. We then started trying to push it on kid #2 at age 4.5, since our expectations were set by kid #1, and we now regard this as a mistake. Nobody was having fun, so we ended up setting it aside for half a year. We picked it up again in the summer before kid #2 started kindergarten, and she finished learning to read with ease at that time. I think we're lucky that the initial attempt didn't ruin reading for her. We're being much more gentle about introducing it to kid #3.

Kid #1 was and still is an oddball in a number of ways. Learning to read so early seems to have given her some advantages, like being able to consume volumes of information at a young age, but she'll have a harder time in other ways.


At least here in the USA, age 2 is generally when you start pre-school. Kindergarten starts at age 4 and lasts for 2 years, K4 and K5. Then 1st grade at age 6.


For what it’s worth, that doesn’t sound typical to me. I’d say pre-school, it’s it’s done at all, is done at the age of 4 - maybe 3 if you’re doing it super early. I’ve never heard of “K4” and “K5,” and most kids start kindergarten at age 5 and only do one year of it.

Where do you live?


I did a lookup and a lot of places refer to what called “K4” as “Pre-k”. Where I grew up I had preschool and then K4 and then K5.

My son started preschool at 2.5. I guess anywhere between 2.5 and 3 is typical here. Then pre-k at 4.


Where is "here"? In the upper midwest, "Pre-K"/"4K" is age four. Kindergarten is age 5. There is not typically anything earlier than that, and parents are on the hook to find their own daycare if not home with the child.


NYC has “3K for all”. All kids get free 3K now. Many surrounding areas (like in NJ) have new programs for this with coverage expanding.

Where I live it’s private. So parents send their kids to pre-school at 2.5-3. But by 4 the public schools will take them in.


That’s interesting. Thanks.


Same here, I did one year of each immediately before first grade. Never heard of two years of kindergarten before.


In the US, kindergarten starts at 5/6.


I write F# on Linux with both Emacs and VS Code. Works really well. LSP, Iodine, Fantomas greatly improve the IDE experience.


My experience playing around with F# on linux was about the same but I used the snap version of dotnet core which when I using LSP/iodine ended up spawning infinite processes. Eventually, after a lot of trouble with that I thought of using C# and it was then that dotnet told me that because I was using a snap install (which the docs at the time recommended) that things wouldn't work. Some time later I switched distros and reinstalled dotnet from a package instead of a snap which had the effect of actually working as stated. TLDR; be weary of using the snap install (maybe it was user error on my part or maybe they've worked out the kinks) and be prepared to install via a package/source.


I have Thucydides and Herodotus, both are amazing. I don't know how I would read Thucydides any other way. There are so many place names and directions, you really need the maps these editions provide.


For someone who spends a lot of time on r/AskHistorians, these are a must-have.


Learn Elisp the Easy Way: M-x info "Emacs Lisp Intro"


This is the way.

Sadly this documentation isn't distributed with the Ubuntu version of Emacs, and a newcomer has to jump through some hoops to get it installed. Which is probably an appropriate learning experience.


I agree with an appropriate learning experience, but the docs are the stuff supposed to get one started:

sudo apt install emacs-common-non-dfsg


The Emacs Lisp Intro manual is also available online here: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/eintr/in...


With the rise of online streaming and satellite radio, plus the demise of physical record shops, magazines, MTV, and local radio, everything is way more fragmented. The 80s & 90s were probably the last decades of 'common' songs based on shared media.


J. R. "Bob" Dobbs taught us the importance of Slack years ago.


When I was a teenager, my music teacher always had a copy of the Real Book around. I went to a local music store and was looking through their music books when one of the employees asked, 'is there something I can help you find?' When I said the Real Book, he said, 'oh, we don't keep that out here'... he disappeared for a minute and came back with a copy from the back room. At the time, I felt like I had been admitted into a secret club.


I have a very clear memory of taking the subway to a random music shop in Boston near Berklee as a teenager that an older musician friend had told me about that had Real Books in the back. Went up to the counter and when I asked for it the person working there got real quiet, asking me what key I needed it in, and then ducked into the back to grab it. I think it was something like $45, which was a lot for 15 year old me in the 90s at the time. It definitely felt like a secret club! I loaned it out to a drummer friend in college and never got it back, I should ask him if he still has it.


I thought they were all in the same key! I got mine because someone gave it to me. Then later I gave it to someone.


they come in the different transposed keys for instruments that read in different keys, but technically. the actual key, is all the same.


And the good jazz musicians can play their instrument from the C version. Over time you learn to transpose on the fly. It's just 12 keys after all, and the melodies tend to be not that complicated anyway.


I'm not sure the circus ring finale works on its own. It's the denouement of the whole film that has been building to this point. Mastroianni is struggling with all his relationships: his work, his wife, girlfriend, producer, then he finally turns a corner and is able to celebrate his life for what it is. What I love about 8 1/2 is how the camera is always moving and spinning, taking on Mastroianni's point of view. Characters keep popping up in your face and you feel swept along with the movement. Now that I'm older, I enjoy it more than when I first saw it: it's a film about life, not just Mastroianni/Guido's problems and relationships, all the other characters have their own issues as well. But the surrealism and humor keep it from becoming a downer: when Guido's girlfriend shows up at the same cafe with his wife, Guido has to pretend he doesn't see her, but of course his wife does...awkward ! When Guido quits the film, his critic tell him he made the right decision, never mind the money, it's part of a producer's job to lose money! And when it all becomes suffocating, he climbs out of his car window and flies away.


Hey, thanks a ton for the context! I really appreciate it.


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