Outstanding. You had teachers that cared. Out of that list, A Modest Proposal was recommended to me by a history teacher, and Gulliver’s Travels was probably assigned reading at some point. I sought out the others on my own in my late teens.

I got into reviewing a few classics.

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species.
Origin is a fascinating read. People give Galileo and Newton credit for founding true science and its methods, but Darwin earned credit too. He forced us all to understand that we are just animals, despite whatever the holy books say. That was a rough fight, and Darwin won. In so doing, he helped lay down the blueprint for how to do science.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1228

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince.
This is one of the most maligned pieces of literature ever written. It as coldly logical and sensible as could be imagined. Niccolò had some things to say, and whether or not you agree with his conclusions about how we should act, he is demonstrably correct about how we do act. This is a slim volume, written in direct language, doesn’t take too long to absorb.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57037

Johnathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
One of the most famous essays ever written. Savage satire that skewers the causes of the famines in Ireland in the 1700s. This is the same guy that wrote Gulliver’s Travels, which probably also has more teeth than one might expect upon re-reading it as an adult. Only a few pages long, A Modest Proposal is a master class in effective writing.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm

Dante Alighieri, The Inferno
Officially known as The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, this is a trilogy about someone losing his way and going to hell. And back. The Inferno is the first book, and unsurprisingly, the Hell bit is the only part really worth reading. To be honest, even just The Inferno is hard slog. It’s supposed to be a poem, or at least be in verse of some sort. It was published in 1321. That’s a lot of language gap, they simply talked a lot different. Anyway this work is where an awful lot of our conceptions of heaven and hell came from. It’s worth the time, if you can stand the very, very old text.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41537

Look this is funny and all, but the title isn’t quite accurate.
“Canceled After No One Wanted to Pay $1000 to Go” would be accurate.
I think the full truth makes a more interesting headline than this partially true headline.

I’ll accept that. People suck in general, but its the only game in town.
I’m perfectly happy to see the entire dating app thing die under a flood of slop and abuse.

all my furniture except my couches and a few scattered thrift store/alleyway finds came from ikea. this whole idea does not offend me like others have stated.

but fuk creation club.

You’ve missed the big one. Those aren’t people.
They are AI fronts for orgs of various size that will scam you for whatever opportunity they may discover.
You can’t fix that. Try developing something that helps people instead of another platform to use them.
You want to help people meet? Open a bar.

Oh no! Where will I find an AI girlfriend?

Jebus. This sounds like the AI psychosis spiral.
Like, I didn’t think trump was smart enough to use AI. He can’t read.
He must have found one that talks to him. And feeds everything he says to his rusky handlers.

Where’s the beans?

Ketchup sucks. And they spell it funny.

(Image stolen.)

I would be happy to take the stairs, so long as that thing was smashed off the wall.

Ya. I’m cooking some ground pork to throw in the leftover beans from yesterday.
Gonna dump that slop on top of a nuked potato. That will fill the plate.
Tomorrow I’ll do a fresh batch of beans. Or rice. Or both. So much variety!
And fuk, I still eat pretty good. It’s just not very exciting.