So part of the significance of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is how our society has responded to it, and for a truly deep dive (that I’m in the process of going through, myself), check out the Lolita Podcast by Jamie Loftus which begins with the story of how Daniel Handler (that is Lemony Snicket) suggested Lolita to Jamie when she was still a kid looking for book recommendations.

Also as noted by Jamie, both the 1967 Stanley Kubrick film adaptation and the 1997 Adrian Lyne adaptation portray the story with Humbert Humbert as a sympathetic character (with James Mason and Jeremy Irons playing Humbert, respectively.)

So yeah, the story simultaneously invites the reader to walk a razor’s edge between sympathizing with a child predator and watching the story unfold the way one looks at an automotive collision, watching a monster deeply past the moral event horizon justifying his behavior.

Lolita doesn’t play out as a love story. Delores isn’t precocious or mature nor is she mentally equipped for an adult relationship, and yet Humbert insists his pursuit of Delores is proper and justified, despite not only Delores’ age and minor status, but also the power relationship, with Humbert the legal guardian of Delores. The story is psychological horror.

And the story plays out showing in older Delores the psychological consequences of child sexual abuse. This is not a story of a May / December couple in love living happily ever after. Despite Lolita being described as an Erotic Novel by critics and literary indexes.

But then, in the 1980s, one in three American women surveyed were victims of child sexual abuse. Also in 1987 Suzanne Vega put out the song Luka highlighting a long standing culture that whatever happens in your house is none of my business (🐸☕), and before the Satanic Panic and the SRA scares, CSA was not an oft-prosecuted crime (it was assumed incest laws covered them) and the believe was kids who were victimized not by drunken daddy were instead victimized by strangers in white vans offering candy (rather than say, John Wayne Gacy, who held frequent neighborhood barbecues, or the coach of girls’ physical education). Only in the 1990s and the new century have we taken CSA and human trafficking of children seriously, and then, not very, considering how some US states are letting kids work in hazardous conditions and letting children marry. So it doesn’t really surprise me that Lolita is thought of as romantic or erotic even when it is the testimony of an abuser.

Sexy times are not for everyone, I admit.

Queer is forever.

But I do like this:

Based on dress, I’d say:

Alpha: Private Equity Trader, Financier
Beta: Athlete, Footballer
Delta: Mechanic, Plumber
Gamma: Poet, Musician
Omega: Technician, coder
Sigma: Hitman, Organized Crime Goon

Vlad is the one with the beard.

I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn’t accidentally tell you that
I’m only happy when it rains
– Garbage

This to me, feels like a cute proposition for sex (as in getting freaky).

If there are higher dimensions, say the extra seven asserted by String Theory, then we have breadth (thickness?) along each axis that is non zero. The higher-order string theory dimensions (which communicate particle information like gravity) are tightly rolled up.

Brian Greene uses the metaphore of an ant on a wire who can move along the wire freely, but can’t go far laterally. They may be so small that our quantum bits can’t drift anywhere, so our liver doesn’t abandon us drift along a high-level axis.

If there are flat higher level dimensions, then either a force or some kind of membrane would have to exist to keep our blood from leaking.

That said, when we have pure elements, or even pure minerals or chemicals, they retain the same density (mass to volume, sometimes affected by temperature) which suggests nothing is hiding away in other dimensions whenever we take measurements. If there is room along higher axes for unseen activity, it doesnt bug us enough to work out consistent properties.

Ten dimensions plus time in string theory.

I remember uneven wealth distribution was a bad thing even in pro-capitalism Economics 101 (macroeconomics), like this is the thing that will collapse your economy and cause death, disasters without response and eventually popular uprising.

FOX NEWS has, for decades now, been showing us our oligarchs don’t care.

For most of us (like around 88% of the US population) you’re closer to being homeless than you are to ever owning a home even a crappy apartment in the waste shadow of an industrial zone.

None of the girls were willing to be the one that wore green lipstick.

Until we can find a better way to enforce civil liberties, the striking of illegally obtained evidence in the prosecution of terrible criminals is necessary. That they get to walk free is the point first as a penalty to the state (that now a monster remains at large) and second as a penalty to the public for allowing the state to let its agents abuse their power.

If neonazis and terrorists aren’t protected by our Bill of Rights, then you aren’t either. And it informs how the massive extrajudicial surveillance state got formed in the first place, as the US state believes national security (in all its ambiguity) is valued more than American lives.

That’s why cat ears are mandatory when you’re computer hacking.

So far! no-one has ever died from loaded halloween candy. (The few incidents have all been inside jobs, like a parent poisoning their own kid).

The fentanyl candy scare came from brightly colored Oxy tabs that looked like packed-powder candy such as Sweetarts. It was a non-issue, but made for a scare piece to frighten conservative people who believe in teen rainbow parties.

My plug on Satisfactory is you come for playing around with and making sculptures with conveyor belts, and then stay to play with jump-pads, pneumatic hypertubes and later, trains (that actually carry freight and have a purpose). Also the planet is pretty (and you’re going to ruin it all by turning it into factories).

As with other automation games, it’s coding in disguise, and if you get a buzz from configuring logistics to distribute parts and fluids from sources to processing machines, then this game can take over your life. The two principle schools of players are make it efficient and make it pretty. In the end, you have a giant playground to zoom around in and watch all the parts zip this way and that down conveyors, each with actual purpose behind them.

So my take is I should put a Croc on my dog’s head and will be enlightened?

There’s a Pacific Drive + Techtonica bundle I’m looking at and might grab.

Part of the problem is I’m obsessed with Satisfactory which scratches a lot of the itches Terraria did but in 3D.

Is the guy in the second panel Quasimodo?

To be fair, Jesus’ message (some of it, scripture is not univocal) is that divine power is within the grasp of us mere mortals. That everyone who follows him would be able to do miracles like his.

(Apologists suggest he was referring to just the apostles to explain why the rest of us are bound by naturalism, but there are implications that’s not what he meant.)

Note that Gospel Jesus was big on direct evidence.

That said, the cross was made of wood, and Jesus wasn’t the only convict tasked with carrying one. The gravity is in being willing to die for one’s principles which all of these characters would do unflinchingly.