Theophile Escargot @TheoEsc@mastodon.social
- Pronouns
- He, him
TheoEsc on Twitter; TheophileEscargot on Metafilter,HuSi & Flickr. Programmer,reader,Londoner,father,runner. Diary:
http://theophileescargot.hulver.com/scoop/
Joined Oct 2017
archaeology enormous penis
Interesting: the Cerne Abbas giant dates from 700-AD1100, it's neither prehistoric nor early modern as assumed:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/12/cerne-giant-in-dorset-dates-from-anglo-saxon-times-analysis-suggests
Really good run this morning, felt like I was fizzing with energy, significantly faster than the equivalent run for the last few weeks #running
TFW you forget to brink in the dried laundry in the evening, then next morning rain is predicted so you bring it in damp from dew, then it doesn't actually rain so you sit surrounded by damp laundry indoors all day.
TIL the successor generals of Alexander the Great tried to copy not just his appearance but his mannerisms. To the end of their days they would give audience with their hair in his distinctive quiff and their heads tilted to one side.
UK politics
Chris Dillow: "Whilst people will vote for something, even if it’s lousy, they don’t often vote for nothing."
https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2021/05/on-centrist-vacuousness.html
Diet boring
Diet seems back on track after some scale glitches & going to maintenance for the race. Now lost about 17 lbs or 10% of my body weight. Depending which scale I believe I'm either at the top end of my target weight range or just 6lbs above it.
Theophile Escargot
boosted
@TheoEsc
Well.... there's this: https://www.smashwords.com/audiobook/
Granted, not a lot of authors appear to have been taking advantage of this, but what I have always really loved about #Smashwords is that everything (EVERYTHING) is DRM free - a valid reason to respect the products and not engage in piracy.
As opposed to shamazon, which, as I hear, most folks in the know actually strip the #DRM and share the works on private torrent trackers and LibGenesis because DRM is evil, and also to punish authors that allow such encoding of their works. I guess that's a thing.
It is true, by overwhelming statistics, that people purchasing #DRM_free works are much less likely to disrespect the licenses than people who purchase DRM encoded ones. I find that.... interesting.
Anyway, The capability is there for the authors, and there's also these resources, which for the most part aren't strictly for audio books alone, some affording us the opportunity to have fun by giving back to the community too :)
https://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks
https://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video
https://librivox.org/pages/volunteer-for-librivox/ (I know you already use this, but I included this link in case you didn't know you could contribute back)
https://archive.org/details/MindWebs_201410
Another huge resource is #Overdrive, with millions of resources, but sadly, #Libby isn't available at F-Droid, although you may be find it in the #Aurora store (https://auroraoss.com) and regardless, there's a Web UI which allows you access to millions of resources from Libraries for free, as long as you have a single, solitary library card somewhere. I use my UCSD Almuni library privileges and it works fine for me:
https://libbyapp.com/welcome
With value encompassing much more than the #Wayback_Machine, Archive.org offers quite a bit in the way of audio books and poetry as well, with a slick interface that personally, I find to be much more appealing than digital.io (and it's not a shamazon service either that's trying to upsell you at every turn). I already provided one almost forgotten resource preserved in the #Internet_Archive, but here's a compendium of offerings, including those from #Project_Gutenberg, #Librivox, and many others, with the opportunity to give back as well by lending your voice should you choose to:
https://archive.org/details/audio_bookspoetry
Finally, I should probably mention Bibliotheca, but then you're right back in the hot seat with Adobe and the Google PlayStore.
I hope that helps :)
#tallship #Vger
⛵
.
drm-free-small.png
Well.... there's this: https://www.smashwords.com/audiobook/
Granted, not a lot of authors appear to have been taking advantage of this, but what I have always really loved about #Smashwords is that everything (EVERYTHING) is DRM free - a valid reason to respect the products and not engage in piracy.
As opposed to shamazon, which, as I hear, most folks in the know actually strip the #DRM and share the works on private torrent trackers and LibGenesis because DRM is evil, and also to punish authors that allow such encoding of their works. I guess that's a thing.
It is true, by overwhelming statistics, that people purchasing #DRM_free works are much less likely to disrespect the licenses than people who purchase DRM encoded ones. I find that.... interesting.
Anyway, The capability is there for the authors, and there's also these resources, which for the most part aren't strictly for audio books alone, some affording us the opportunity to have fun by giving back to the community too :)
https://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks
https://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video
https://librivox.org/pages/volunteer-for-librivox/ (I know you already use this, but I included this link in case you didn't know you could contribute back)
https://archive.org/details/MindWebs_201410
Another huge resource is #Overdrive, with millions of resources, but sadly, #Libby isn't available at F-Droid, although you may be find it in the #Aurora store (https://auroraoss.com) and regardless, there's a Web UI which allows you access to millions of resources from Libraries for free, as long as you have a single, solitary library card somewhere. I use my UCSD Almuni library privileges and it works fine for me:
https://libbyapp.com/welcome
With value encompassing much more than the #Wayback_Machine, Archive.org offers quite a bit in the way of audio books and poetry as well, with a slick interface that personally, I find to be much more appealing than digital.io (and it's not a shamazon service either that's trying to upsell you at every turn). I already provided one almost forgotten resource preserved in the #Internet_Archive, but here's a compendium of offerings, including those from #Project_Gutenberg, #Librivox, and many others, with the opportunity to give back as well by lending your voice should you choose to:
https://archive.org/details/audio_bookspoetry
Finally, I should probably mention Bibliotheca, but then you're right back in the hot seat with Adobe and the Google PlayStore.
I hope that helps :)
#tallship #Vger
⛵
.
drm-free-small.png
While #running saw a bunch of people starting the Thames Path 100 mile ultra. They seemed very cheerful, lots of Good Mornings. Would love to run that sometime if this body ever recovers.
Ran 16km in the rain, went to supermarket, clumsily dropped & smashed carton of eggs. There are times in my life, such as when dripping wet in a supermarket wearing tights trying to scoop up egg gunk, when I feel a certain want of dignity.
World's oldest surviving diving suite is half-cute, half-terrifying
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2021/05/07/an-old-friend/
Replica gets tried out:
https://youtu.be/uf-_K7BbHww
Theophile Escargot
boosted
UK local election
Voted as planned. Green 1st, Labour 2nd for Mayor, Labour for the constituency member, Green for Londonwide. Do vote if you're eligible! #ukelection
UK politics Labour
Pissed off at how allegedly left media are mindlessly repeating Starmer's "will take time to rebuild" excuse for likely local election failure. Jeremy Corbyn became leader in Sep 2015. All these elections were last held under Corbyn. If Starmer does worse than Corbyn it's not because it's taking him time to recover from Corbyn.
On today's run music player went into Song Repeat mode on the Utah Saints Mortal Kombat theme so I just went with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwWPadFsOA
#running
Good Dogs alert: "Conservation dogs" sniff out invasive or endangered species to protect habitats
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/conservation-dogs-endangered-invasive-species/
Tried the outdoor gym for the first time in a year. Nearly clobbered my head with the pull-down machine: confused it with the pull-up bars and wasn't expecting it to move. #whyYesIAmAGenius
diet
Might have been a mistake to go off the diet for a week and a half around the race. Back on it now and I'm ravenous, Sofa King hungry. Didn't even get me a good race time.
Theophile Escargot
boosted
UK politics / Coronavirus / (a very tiny) call to action
We're not talking about the KFC secret blend of herbs here, these are millions of people's lives, physical and mental health, and livelihoods that are needlessly being put on the line through the most wanky capitalist gatekeeping and nationalism.
Please sign this petition to support the proposal to suspend patents for COVID-19 vaccines:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/564005
- Pronouns
- He, him
TheoEsc on Twitter; TheophileEscargot on Metafilter,HuSi & Flickr. Programmer,reader,Londoner,father,runner. Diary:
http://theophileescargot.hulver.com/scoop/
Joined Oct 2017
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