Doctor Fate (1987) #1

Sep. 19th, 2025 10:29 am
iamrman: (Marin)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writer: J.M. DeMatteis

Pencils: Keith Giffen

Inks: Dave Hunt


The Lords of Order have surrendered to the coming of the Lords of Chaos, but Nabu refuses to give up. He abducts a young boy named Eric Strauss and makes him the new Doctor Fate.


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Follow Friday 9-19-25

Sep. 19th, 2025 01:02 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] followfriday
Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".


yourlibrarian: Butterfly and Alstroemeria by yourlibrarian (NAT-ButterflyAlstroemeria-yourlibrarian)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] common_nature


In our final few days we left Oregon, though stayed the night just outside its border in Mount Shasta. The mountain is clearly seen looming over the city but we could see it for many miles as we headed south and finally passed into California.

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jazzy_dave: (books n tea)
[personal profile] jazzy_dave
Raymond Williams "The Long Revolution"(Pelican)




I've become very interested in critical theory recently, especially in the areas of Marxist Criticism and Cultural Studies. I've been reading some of the primary texts of these movements in an effort to understand where they are coming from and how they can be used in literary criticism and beyond. So far I have finished several short excerpts and essays as well as two books, including The Long Revolution by Raymond Williams. While all of this reading has been truly enlightening, The Long Revolution has stood out to me as one of the most interesting and mindblowing pieces of nonfiction I have ever read.

In this book, Williams sets out to describe the state of literature, democracy, education, and culture in England, how it got there, and where it's going. He does so by tracing the history of various institutions, including public education, the popular press, and standard English, and showing how they have become what they are. Using many (somewhat exhausting) pages of facts and statistics as evidence, Williams comes to stunning and revolutionary conclusions. I was absolutely blown away by his ideas because they seemed so right and felt so honest.

First, Williams sets down definitions for important terms that he will be using for the rest of the books. These terms have so many uses in casual speech that he defines the way he wants the reader to understand them in the context of his book. He defines what it means to be creative, and shows how all people create to some degree in their everyday lives. He also defines culture, not just as art and clothes and the lie, but as structures of feeling, the way people thought and felt about things, the general sense of what it was like to live in a time. Once those definitions are complete, he shows the various ways that an individual can relate to society as a whole, and the different ideas of what it means to be individualistic verses social. His great gift is subtlety, and he can show all the important social reasons why individualism became the dominant idea of how people relate to society while also showing how pure individualism has failed society and is now being reevaluated by a new generation of people. The chapters Individuals and Societies and Images of Society and the end of Part 1 left me literally speechless. It's Williams's balance and fairness, his reliance on research, his refusal to be pedantic or dogmatic, that makes this book so refreshing and so effective.

So often, when we talk about culture we blame low quality arts, be they books, movies, or music, on the masses, as if the working class were inherently less intelligent than the rich or entitled. Williams doesn't just argue against that, he shows with real evidence that much of that classist thinking goes against the actual history of these institutions. He shows, for instance, that the relatively low state of the popular press (magazines and newspapers) today is not, as many people think, the fault of the poor taste of the masses, but instead that the popular press has been affected by changes in printing, distribution, taxation, advertising, and consolidation of ownership more than anything else. The glut of sensational tabloids is sold just as much to the rich as to the poor, and the changes in newspaper styles and distributions are independent of education reforms that taught more of the working class to read. The proliferation of low-quality books, movies, music, and newspapers, he argues, is not the fault of the inherent bad taste of the masses, but a side-effect of the ownership of these cultural institutions by speculators who are only interested in making money. Quality artists, interested in furthering the art form, cannot compete with the scale of distribution that the large companies produce. The problem, it seems, is not that people are inherently stupid or that the lower classes have inherently bad taste, but that our current system of capitalism makes our cultural institutions into a matter of speculation and profit. Anyone who is interested in independent publishing should absolutely read Part 3, Britain in the 1960s, which looks at the publishing industry in a way I've never seen before.

Williams writes in a style that is easy to read and understand. Although there are some slow sections where he is setting down definitions or charting history using facts and figures, his conclusions are always strong and flow naturally from his research. The book is older, published in 1961, so I'm sure it has mistakes and is outdated in some places, but most of it still reads as being contemporary and relevant. His structure is perfect, his writing is incredibly readable, and his ideas are engaging. I don't know that I have ever enjoyed academic writing so much, and I thoroughly intend to read more of his books very soon.

The Defenders #13

Sep. 18th, 2025 05:26 pm
iamrman: (Bon Clay)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writer: Len Wein

Pencils: Sal Buscema

Inks: Klaus Janson


The Squadron Supreme are an unfunny in-joke that have long since outstayed their welcome. Alas, Nighthawk is here to stay.


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Thursday

Sep. 18th, 2025 08:41 am
susandennis: (Default)
[personal profile] susandennis
I set an alarm for volleyball days but usually I'm awake well ahead of the alarm. Not this morning. I was in a deep coma when that thing went off. I did not stay up late. I just musta been in the middle of some deep cycle.

Today is early ballgame. The Mariners game starts at 11. The Phillies don't play. Everybody lost yesterday so I'm hoping for a better today.

I need to go through my closet and move winter stuff and delete stuff I will never wear again. I'm pretty sure that's not happening today but it is on my list. It is actually the only thing on my list.

Oh and I think I have a bulb out on the top of my kitchen cabinets but I can't quite be sure. I have a camera on a wire - endoscope with a long, stiffish wire - that I'm going to send up there to let me know for sure. If out, then work order, if not out, then quit worrying about it.

I have a giant Chewy's order coming in today. Food, treats, litter.

But, first, I think I'll get dressed and make up the bed.

20250917_194113-COLLAGE

Yes, Virginia, There IS a "They"

Sep. 18th, 2025 10:14 am
mallorys_camera: (Default)
[personal profile] mallorys_camera
Not that I'm a Jimmy Kimmel fan, you understand. I don't own a television. I've never watched late night talk shows. My only association with late night talk shows comes from an ancient Harold Robbins novel in which an aging movie star, propped up on vodka & dolls, masturbates to a late night show applause track.

But firing Jimmy Kimmel over saying this? The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.

That's BAD.

The FCC chair threatening ABC with nonsense investigations for Kimmel's opinions on Charlie Kirk's murderer is even worst.

###

My immediate conclusion was that they—and yes, Virginia, there is a they—wouldn't be acting this way if they weren't absolutely certain they were gonna keep their hold on power (which they're not going to be able to do with votes.)

Thank Gawd that turns out to be wrong.

No, it turns out just to be about money: The dying television industry is trying to consolidate. In Olden Times, this would trigger monopoly fears. But nobody cares about monopolies anymore, & anyway, if they did, in 10 years, television will be deader than rotary phones.

###

I keep thinking that I've been here before, and that there's something I didn't do then that I can do now. It's the same feeling you get when you're working your way through a particularly absorbing video game scenario.

The one universe-changing act is there.

But where?

Is there some gold ring I'm supposed to toss in a volcano cauldron?

Really, I'm not much good at anything except bearing witness.

I'm superb at bearing witness.

But what good does that do?

###

Meanwhile, a very low-key yesterday in which I did no work of my own but labored for filthy lucre.

The sky was overcast. When the sky is overcast, I get despondent. It's some brain chemistry quirk, & I know it's just errant brain chemicals, but knowing doesn't stop the feelings, it just makes it so I have to ignore the feelings.

filicology

Sep. 18th, 2025 07:26 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
filicology (fil-uh-KOL-oh-jee) - n., the botanical study of ferns.


a fern available for study
Thanks, WikiMedia!

Better known as pteridology, the difference being this is from Latin filix, fern, instead of Ancient Greek ptéris, fern. Since -ology is from Ancient Greek too, I suppose pteridology is the more well-formed word, but I still like this one better.

---L.

Captain America #390

Sep. 18th, 2025 02:29 pm
iamrman: (Default)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writer: Mark Gruenwald

Pencils: Rik Levins

Inks: Danny Bulanadi


This gathering of female super-villains really are an eclectic bunch. Titania and Screaming Mimi are probably the biggest names there now that Moonstone has been caught.


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Batgirl (2000) #4

Sep. 18th, 2025 10:32 am
iamrman: (Buggy)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writers: Scott Peterson and Kelley Puckett

Pencils: Damion Scott

Inks: Robert Campanella


Batgirl's attempt to save a man from assassins leads to her gaining invasive voices.


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Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

Sep. 17th, 2025 10:49 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] book_love
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse

Another Jeeves novel. Spoilers ahead for the earlier ones.

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