This week's #NewBooks at the library:
- The last of the books from the NHBS January sale: Michael Ruse's The #Philosophy of Human #Evolution, published by Cambridge University Press
- A lovely version of Humphrey Carpenter's highly praised J. R. R. #Tolkien: A Biography, published by HarperCollins
- A second-hand copy of Ant Ecology, published by Oxford University Press

#HumanEvolution #Anthropology #Fantasy #LOTR #LordOfTheRings #Myrmecology #Ecology #Insects #Entomology #Books #Bookstodon #Scicomm @bookstodon

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A photo of three books standing upright on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books. On the left, The Philosophy of Human Evolution, showing a blue hardback with a colour photo of a human diver shot from below encircled by a funnel-shaped school of fish. In the middle, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, showing a white hardback bound quarterbound in brown faux-leather standing on top of a brown slipcase. The book's spine is facing the view and both the front and back covers are visible, showing Tolkien's logo in gilded print. On the right, Ant Ecology, showing a white hardback with a close-up photo of a train of ants passing over each other and feeling each other up with their antennae. This is the army ant, Eciton burchelli.

So, I'm probably kicking a hornet's nest by invoking #Tolkien, and yet, here I go. Stay with me.

in #LOTR, both book and movies, in my head, Sam was always the real hero. He refuses to let light and goodness fail, even if it means dragging the "hero" to his destiny.

"... how could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer." he says. "...there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for."

I tell you that story to remind you that we are all Sam. Be Sam.

The darkness is not forever. The darkness is not insurmountable.

Dawn is coming, I feel it's traces on the horizon. There will be much cleanup, but dawn is coming. Hold tight to thoughts of the light.

I believe in us. I believe in you. I believe in dawn.

#peptalk #optimism #LoveYall #BeSam

There's a feeling which I used to regard in my childhood and adolescence as especially haunting and vaguely important, a feeling that I found myself looking for in the speculative literature and entertainment to which I was drawn: it's the sense of stumbling across a relic of a distant past that is now forgotten except perhaps as a dim legend or tradition. I point out that #Undertale evokes this feeling with its depiction of the Ruins, the first large region of the game which the player (through Frisk) is able to walk around in. Whose Ruins are they? My own impression is that they were already there when the Monsters were exiled, which would make the Ruins a human relic, an ironical first home for the exiled Monsters.

As I said, I used to be quite taken with literature that evoked this feeling. One of the writers who most strongly conveyed such a feeling was J. R. R. #Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings (the real one, not the PJ one) is pervaded with this sense of haunting by a forgotten past. But it comes through even more clearly in Tolkien's apocrypha.

(cont'd)

I am currently addicted to nicotine, have been for 15+ years. I started smoking right out of high school around "the wrong crowd" and I've been vaping ever since and recently transitioned to smokeless tobacco/snus and velo. My habit is currently controlled, isn't as unbearable as it used to be, even if I should quit.

and I should quit... anyone should. No one should "start", which, btw, disclaimer
: If you aren't currently biologically addicted to nicotine, stop right here, take inventory of yourself. This is a small blog, an opinion from one man, one misguided, weak human being. Do not take anything here as a suggestion. Good? Good. Do not consider me influential. I am not. Do not take my words as suggestions. They are not.

Ok, continue with this "examination" into the mismanaged life of a drug-addict, which you (obviously) are not, and will continue to not be by the time this is over.

Won't you?

wipes forehead I'm watching you! Don't you dare open ebay.

Alright...

It's mellow, enjoyable, calming, surprisingly cheap and you'd never want to do it constantly anyway. There's an entire process to it that makes it a full-on, attentive experience and it isn't something you'd want to do whilst preoccupied with other things.

How it differs
If pipe smoking is "smoking", it's about... 70% incense, and 30%... actually "smoking".

I'd say that yes, technically a pipe was "smoked", but only in the sense that a fire was lit and I enjoyed it tangentially, not in the same sense that I lit a joint and attempted to injest every bit of it lest I waste the $120 worth of bud wrapped up into it. Pipe smoking is less interested in the ingestion of (insert drug) and more interested in the...

_...ingestion of_

_V I B E S._ ~ Cello plays ~

Am I advocating that anyone young or old out there goes and buys a tobacco pipe and reads some Lord of the Rings by a tree outside?

Y-yes, actually. That sounds lovely. Can we bring a dog and some picnic supplies? Some watermelon. It is summer, after-all.

-Wait a minute, NO. That's not how this goes! You aren't supposed to want to do this! Stop smiling! Do NOT go and get addicted to nicotine because some lonely millenial is adventuring into fantasy novels and has decided that full-bore immersion would be neat. This is a sad tale of woe!

If you are my age, and you've made your mistakes, and you want to chill, yeah, come with me, fellow graybeard. To the mountain! Grab your churchwarden and staff. We leave at dawn.

Tolkien (2019), starring Nicholas Hoult & Lily Collins (notable supporting cast including Colm Meaney, Derek Jacobi, Anthony Boyle, Genevieve O'Reilly, & Owen Teale), score by Thomas Newman (always a sign of a thoughtful director/producers), is a joy to watch that touches tastefully on the childhood and impact of the Great War on Tolkien's work. Deftly avoids directly connecting too many dots. On Disney+. #tolkien #films

--Del Rayo de toda la vida
--y Bukaneros
--claro
--me voy...
.
#Tolkien
#lodehoy
.
.
libreriapraga.com/lodehoy/
.
#Granada
#librería
#libros
#lodehoy
#segundamano
#bookstagram
#libreríadeviejo
#bibliofilia
#librosdeviejo
#books
#bookshop
#booksofmastodon
#librosdeMastodon
#quéhacerenGranada
#libreriaindependiente
#indibookstore

--Del Rayo de toda la vida --y Bukaneros --claro --me voy... . #Tolkien #lodehoy . . libreriapraga.com/lodehoy/ . #Granada #librería #libros #lodehoy #segundamano #bookstagram #libreríadeviejo #bibliofilia #librosdeviejo #books #bookshop

@MissConstrue

This is from "The Return of the King" (Book 5, Chapter 9, "The Last Debate")

#Tolkien #LotR

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‘Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

Re Tolkien in the encyclical: (Quoting Gandalf)

213. The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”

#encyclical #Pope #Vatican #AI #OpenSource #Tolkien #MagnificaHumanitas

Da Pope has dropped an #encyclical. An encyclical is a pastoral letter issued by the #Pope.

Historically encyclicals serve as a key instrument of the Pope’s ordinary magisterium to guide the faithful on matters of faith, morals, devotion, or social discipline, they are generally not infallible pronouncements ex cathedra.

I’m still reading and digesting, but a quick skim suggests that this is the biggest thing to drop from the #Vatican in my lifetime.

There’s, #AI, there’s transhumanism, there’s social contract, he apologizes for the Church’s blind eye to #slavery, he declared that “just war” is no longer a thing…in a change of policy held since the Crusades. He calls for #OpenSource, he quotes #Tolkien. (I like Da Pope.)

There’s a lot. You can read it here. It’s gonna take me a while to map it all out.

https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html