Greg S > Recent Status Updates

“In domestic varieties, these aids to survival are lost. A genetic mutation takes place, switching off the mechanism for spontaneous seed dispersal and turning wheat from a hardy survivor into a hopeless dependant.”

“According to Gimbutas, ‘Old Europe’ came to a catastrophic end in the third millennium bc, when the Balkans were overrun by a migration of cattle-keeping peoples – the so-called ‘ kurgan’ folk – originating on the Pontic steppe, north of the Black Sea.”

Totally, decorum is important after 20 years. — “I was on the toilet, passing a motion…”

just look at them? — “I prowled around the equipment in the corridor for ages, picking it up and putting it back, because I knew full well that my determination wouldn’t make up for the information I lacked. I still go and look at it sometimes.”

you’d need two cabins to orient yourself. — “I soon became able, on arriving at a cabin, to work out which way to go to find the next one, and could go to them…”

“I walked back and forth, and had to resign myself to the fact that the road ended there…my anger was the stronger and drove me on. I had to decide on a new direction. At first I’d chosen the east, then the road had made me deviate towards the south-west…”

Using math and the author’s units of steps, this would be between 5,500 to 5,365 hrs to cover the area. — “I decided to cover a vast semicircular area with a radius of five thousand steps. For three days, I walked back and forth…”

Nope. — “My first stop was after five hours. I’d counted thirty-seven thousand, seven hundred and forty-two steps….That came out at seven thousand, one hundred and fifty steps an hour.”

“…on Earth, we’d have noticed the changing of the seasons, but here, over several months, the days had barely become shorter, and the weather was not noticeably cooler…In so far as there were seasons on this planet where things varied so little, winter returned. The temperature was slightly cooler…

uh huh. — “Now that I had a book and could learn to read…”

wild that they never invented music from banging on pots. — “I filled one of the big cooking pots with water and boiled my washing…”

literally all the time in the world. — “…but I was extremely reluctant to retrace my steps when there was so much new ground ahead.”

a reminder to the author that bodies defecate when we die. — “…they had died calmly and would spend eternity in tranquil postures.”

cognitive distortion: overgeneralization, mental filtering.

narrator forgets the dozens of other cages in her musings on symmetry.

remembered from what? from whom? —“I remembered that those things had a safety catch…”

still doesn’t make sense. — “…waking abruptly, to find it was three o’clock in the…”

literally 22 more bags. — “I returned to the bag and was disappointed…”

K. — “…but I shan’t go into the difficulties I had in identifying and naming all these things…”

Odd superstitious thought. — “…the rare bad weather had never made me ill.”

how would she know what east is? — “I walked up the long, gentle slope towards the east, and…”

“It was very difficult, and I suspected that years of a sedentary existence…account the old women, who walked slowly and couldn’t carry much, but I was strong and I decided to take…”

no memories of a hospital from the nurse, I guess. — “…there was an unpleasant smell in our house…”

“They spoke of the facilities in their previous homes, such as running water and baths…the cleverest was a mobile plank system that made it possible to sit on the toilet…we had so few needs that in the end I could think of nothing new.”

author suspiciously does not mention who got to wear the boots while the others went without.

literally the charcoal from your fires. “…we had nothing with which to write…”

wait, so there are bugs after all? — “…infested with maggots that swarmed over…”

she wouldn’t be able to count while sleeping.

literally, all housewives. — “…had lived quietly taking care of their homes, their children, the shopping and housework. I don’t think they had much to forget.”

lol. — “I knew that menstruation occurred every twenty-eight days…”