Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Horse of Course

@horsecourser.bsky.social

1K followers 190 following 4.4K posts

Sysadmin, cybersecurity, horses, dogs, books, music, internet. Easily amused and entertained. New Yorker and proud. Veteran fangirl Genderqueer, she/her/they

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · Nov 6

When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world - "No, YOU move."

2 8 26

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 4m

oh yuck

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 13h

Whenever I see someone complaining about a bad review I immediately go "O HO HO! IT COULD BE SO MUCH WORSE!" and then I send them this absolutely scathing masterpiece and it always cheers them up!

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

Some of his writing is superb. Some of it I find incredibly tedious. But I despise the fact that every writer attempting the Great American Novel for the next 75 years flinched from an adjective on their page like it might inject poison into their veins.

1 1 10

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

Sure, but in swinging the pendulum too far the other direction, they abandoned all the music and rhythm and richness of language and took it down to brass tacks. Adjectives are not the enemy.

1 1

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

It's like if literally every poet tried to mimic e e cummings in every single attempt they made in verse for a century, and mostly did it poorly and boringly. One was fine, an entire national literary output based on one dude's verbal minimalism was very much NOT.

1 4

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

Have you ever read "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" by Mark Twain? It is a masterpiece and I think he'd agree with you on Mohicans. But it's more that he changed the direction and evolution of writing in such a violently cramped and proscribed way that it stifled literature for a century.

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

web.archive.org

1 10

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

And yet they are so screamingly funny that a ton of people just straight-up miss the profundity.

2 1 110

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

Dickens is one of those writers where "he was paid by the word and it shows" is actually factually correct.

1 13

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

Just to follow on from this, the ONLY THING that saved us was genre fiction. As everyone else was struggling to be The Next Hemingway (and failing, and writing awful tedious misery in the process), genre fiction was out here being clever and wonderful and descriptive and lovely all along.

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

I dunno about that. He talked about crafting sentences taking days because he wanted to pare them down to the absolute minimum. And honestly, in some cases it really worked for him. I think some of his work is exquisite. It's all the people trying to mimic him that pissed me off.

2 22

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

John Updike should have gone to therapy instead of writing those godawful rabbit books

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

So much boring mediocre man pain

1 2

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

EVERYONE WENT TO FUCKASS MINIMALISM AND HIDEOUSLY BORING TRAGIC NOBODIES AND IT FUCKING SUUUUCKED

1 2

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 1d

Hemingway ruined American literature for a full generation

16 3 140

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

Faine is a pixie theory confirmed?

1 5

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

Seriously, if you're gonna quote post a subject matter expert and be loudly and aggressively Wrong, the very least you should expect is for the original poster to show up and call you a dumbass. That's just internet manners.

1 2

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

It's just little fancy police coats all the way down!

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

This one is so funny. SO funny. They keep saying 'copjacket' and every time I can't help but giggle. Oh my god.

Thank you for bringing this into my life tonight.

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

I don't...think so? They are Very Mad and also extremely dumb, but it feels a little too contained to be Main Character. At least so far.

It's INCREDIBLY funny though.

1 3

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

Also, for 99.9% of computer users, 'entering CLI commands' is an absolute non-starter.

"Now, open the console, now, you have to type sudo to--"

BZZZZZT. Wrong. No. Absolutely not. They cannot and will not do this. Fuck, I sometimes get annoyed by it and I get PAID to do it.

2 11

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

I'm glad this word is getting out, because I fear my guy in your quote may be seriously overestimating the base intelligence/understanding level of the standard person (protestor or not). Just look at how many people shone lasers up during the "UFO" scare. Don't shine lasers at things in the sky!

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

I'm just gonna put the paper bag on my head now

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

Also our kicker just got injured when our own giant O lineman stepped on his foot

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

It's fine as a server OS for plenty of uses, yep. Not great for others. Brutally unfriendly in a lot of ways especially if you're using a lot of enterprise-level software suites or need security implemented in certain ways. And the most user-repellent OS ever.

1 3

Horse of Course @horsecourser.bsky.social · 2d

Never touched it, so I have no opinion.