One Honest Indie

The Underreported Report from Congress

08/16/2022 by Debbi Leave a Comment

More food for thought. (Photo by Rebe Pascual on Unsplash)

In retrospect, I should have done more of an introduction, explaining that this is a topic that should be discussed. It should be made, as they say, “part of the narrative.” 🙂

Hi, everyone. I’m gonna talk about something a little bit different today. I don’t know if you remember the hearings before the congressional subcommittee investigating competition and digital markets. They took testimony from the four companies there, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and somebody else. I don’t remember. Was it …Facebook! Facebook, of course. Facebook. So yeah, I always wondered what happened after that. This happened after that, this.

National Book Lover’s Day

08/09/2022 by Debbi Leave a Comment

Today is National Book Lovers Day.

To quote from the article:

Book Lovers Day appreciates the medium that has withstood and preserved its importance in time — literature. Our love for books knows no bounds — someday we’ll write a book on it.

The modern book is made by binding paper, but before the invention of paper, books came in the form of tablets, scrolls, and engravings. Every civilization had its own way to document events. Some time in 3500 B.C., the Mesopotamians would make markings on clay tablets using a pointed device, made from the stem of the reed plant, called the calamus. These writings on the moist clay were called ‘cuneiform.’ Approximately 20,000 of these tablets were discovered in modern-day Iraq.

And here’s how books are made! By the Big Five publishers, that is. 🙂 And other publishers with huge print runs.

Of course, you could always do this. I would, but my office is so crowded, it barely holds my computer, my desk, and the growing stack of books I’ve been reviewing.

And I’m working as hard as I can to achieve this! 🙂

PS: Here’s something you might want to check out.

And don’t miss this! 🙂 Speaking of … 🙂 ~~I wonder how many of those were written in-house.~~

More to come on that.

Finally, in even more interesting news.

Two Book Reviews: ‘Aurora’ and ‘Palaces for the People’

07/26/2022 by Debbi Leave a Comment

Okay. I’m gonna do these at the same time because they have certain similarities. Aurora by David Koepp. I don’t know if I’m saying that right. Koepp. Aurora, I believe this is being made into a miniseries or something or limited series, sorry or something. Maybe I could be wrong about that, but it’s really, really excellent. It should be if it isn’t being. It’s about what happens when all the electricity goes out due to a natural disaster, something that we can’t control and suddenly there’s no electricity, the cell towers are down.

There’s no internet. It’s all back to relying on your community again. That’s what it comes down to, and this gets into those issues in a big way. And you know, how do you, what approach do you take? Do you develop rapport with your neighbors, trust them, work together? Do you go off to a silo in the middle of nowhere and try to establish your own community? Like the brother of the protagonist, Mr. Rich Guy? I won’t say any names.

Speaking of which Palaces for the People. I wanted to mention this one at the same time that I mentioned this one, because this is a book that everybody should read. It’s about the importance of community. And I’m talking about not online community. I’m talking about the community that you live in, in reality. People talk so much about the metaverse, so much about social media.

When are we gonna start talking about where we live and what we need to do to make where we live livable. And when I say where we live, not, I mean, not only our community, but our planet in general. This is part of what will make the planet livable. Paying attention to what’s going on right in your own backyard. And I don’t nearly, I don’t like politics. That’s my problem. So getting politically involved is something that I hesitate to do, but I would recommend that you read this book by Eric Kleinenberg, I believe. “How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.” Civic Life. So, and can probably promote more civil life. Maybe.

Anyway, those are the books that were supposed to be done for May. If I’m lucky, I may get to June’s books by the end of July, <laugh> take care and thanks. Thanks for watching. And that’s all folks for now. Anyway, talk to you later.

Originally published here.

PS: Yeah, right … :-/

Join Team DMV Dystonia!

07/19/2022 by Debbi

Pretend the above image is my team! 🙂 We’re real casual about the whole thing.

Hi everyone. As you probably know, or maybe don’t know. I don’t know. I have dystonia. Dystonia is a rare movement disorder. It interferes with my life in some pretty significant ways, but not ways that are so disabling that I can’t sit here and talk to you. So that’s, that’s a great thing. Yeah.