Alas, I promised front page comment notifications so long ago everyone still thought the Yankees and the Mets had a chance this year. Due to various, overlapping, and perplexing issues it’s been delayed. Fear not! It’s here. Also, we have 991 members, which is a fun number. You know what’s a better number? 1,000, which was our campaign goal for our summer membership drive that ends at the end of the month.
I point this out because a few of you, understandably, mentioned that you weren’t going to subscribe until we got reply notifications. We have them. BECOME A MEMBER HERE (please). Check them out:
It’s a little bell at the top of the page and it gives you a notice if people react to anything you do in almost every way. We’re still tweaking it and I’m open to suggestions on how to improve. Right now they show up in the little hamburger bar on mobile which isn’t ideal, but at least it functions.
Also I love this photo. I didn’t take any of the Millionth 911 photos but I did the permitting for that shoot (I think Marc Urbano did all the photos). It was a fun shoot for the release of the Porsche 991. Let’s see if we can get to at least 997 tonight!
Thanks you all so much for your support! Please hit us with any feedback — about notifications or about the site in general — in the comments. We’re always listening.
I have a login issue with becoming a member. Most of my online browsing time is spent on my work computer; when I am logged off I rarely want to get back online on a personal machine. This presents a problem with Autopian membership because my personal email accounts are blocked on my work network. Without access to my personal email I can’t login to this site, and therefore I can’t really participate even if I were a paying member.
Agree. This “wait for a sign in link” is amateurish. Autopian guys, Please just go to a login ID and password sign on like, I don’t know, 99.9% of the known internet.
Two things I’m not a huge fan of:
AUGHH IT STAYS ANIMATED FOR A COUPLE SECONDS AFTER YOU MARK ALL NOTIFICATIONS AS READ MAKE IT STOP
(Suggestion number three: It’d be nice if it auto-marked notifications as read as soon as you click on them, too.)
Oh, and while I’m making suggestions:
It’s still doing it. I can’t delete the notifications, they don’t go away when I’ve read them, and it keeps jiggling its little animation right in my peripheral vision the whole time. If I can ever get this to go away, I may never comment again just to be safe.
Oh no, I’ve commented…
Yeah, could that bell thing just do it’s animation ONE time (per day preferably) ?
That’s a very nice green on that Porsche tooling past the Guggenheim.
This on the same day that back on that other J site, they removed the twitter login so now I’ve lost my screen name AND I’m back in the greys. Not that I visited them more than once a week anyways, but thats the last straw. I’m not mad so much as I am disappointed.
I used to be a starred commenter over there and then after the great rifting and herbing somehow I never got back out of the greys.
I’m not even sure what the idea was with the greys, it just pissed a lot of readers off. They initially said it was to prevent porn from being posted, I guess that used to be a problem? They had no system for vetting, just random approvals. Weirdest system ever.
It was to prevent porn from being posted. Some assholes decides to terrorize Jez with some truly horrifying image posts, and the greys were the workaround to prevent it from automatically showing up.
It fell on the site staff to pop folks out of the greys, and sadly, that was around a lot of other higher-priority duties (writing, editing, making sure there was a site to comment on—the basics!). I wished we had someone whose job was just comment moderation for that reason, but I’d imagine that’s a hard position to justify when budgets keep slimming down due to ever-worsening network/corporate-level management who failed to understand the actual value of anything they purchased.
tl;dr—don’t blame los jalops! Most of us valued the hell out of having an active, engaged comment section and realized it was one of the site’s biggest strengths.
You were the one who freed me from the greys, coincidentally. I remember it well. I asked on a Friday “ask me anything” post what the point was and how you get out of them, and after answering my question you commented something to the effect of “you seem harmless enough”. It was a major milestone in my life 🙂
Hooray for being mostly harmless! Glad I could help.
Mostly, lol 🙂
I apologize if I sounded like I blamed the staff, it sounds like they were bombarded early on with porn-bots, and did what they could to keep everything online whilst operating withing the confines of Kinja. I just wonder how antiquated that threat is, I dont see much of an issue on most other car sites.
Side note: If I ever run into you at a bar, drinks on me so I can get the good gossip about the inner workings of Jalopnik, then and now. Great site, amazing community, terrible Herbs.
Hehe. All good. I didn’t take it personally—I figure folks want to know what happened! A lot of folks missed why the greys were still around years after the initial roll-out.
Oh no… we were all in Budapest when it happened. Poor Ernie. It was awful.
Oh NO. I didn’t remember that part! Ugh, people are buttholes.
What’s up with our full names suddenly appearing on comments? I don’t have anything to hide, but I do feel slightly doxxed that it happened with no prompt. It feels especially exposing for those of us who have very unique names.
You also lifted me out of the grays when I was a frustrated junior commenter. I think I made you laugh at a Parsh joke.
I always reward GOOD PARSH.
That happened to me, too. A few weeks ago I finally decided to stop even swinging by there any more, and then of course I was suddenly and inexplicably lifted from the sea of grays. Most peculiar.
It was a good ole boys club.
I’m in the black on my phone and gray on my laptop. This is particularly frustrating, because getting the comments to open on the phone is often nigh impossible.
That’s a weird one where I don’t know which herb to blame: Herbfeller for breaking the website, or Astro-Herb for breaking and/or announcing exorbitant fees for Twitter’s API.
I transferred mine to a Facebook login as soon as Twitter (you can’t pay me to call it “X”—*I’m* not the reason that dumpster fire is ex-tremely divorced) started going down the toilet. I hate to see all the Twitter-login accounts get nuked. Is there a new Ernie (Kinja’s former butt-saver) who could help you recover your account? Maybe try the Kinja Helpdesk page if it’s still working? (I think that was help.kinja.com, but it doesn’t seem to exist. Not promising!)
I appreciate the help, I’ll give it a try but I’d rather just focus my energy here.
Yeeeeeah. I get it. 🙁 Jalopnik is littered with “-old” (IIRC) usernames from the ancient, ancient migration over to its current commenting system, too. Sometimes it’s just easier to move on or start over.
Ive_been_looking_forward_to_this.jpg!
Whelp! The notification thing worked for me … Once. Now it shows I have notifications, but when I click on them, the menu just collapses and shows me nothin’ :/
That said, it worked long enough to get my membership money. I am a man of my word!
Now fix it please! 🙂
Promise I’m not stalking you 🙂 but I came back to this article again this morning to see if anyone had responded to my earlier comment to your earlier comment and they had, but I did NOT receive any notifications about that. Then I saw this comment and thought I’d chime in again.
So, like you, the notification worked just once.
Agree this bug needs fixing.
Hmmm… you’re not getting this notification? I have 114 notifications this morning. Clear cache/cookies and try again?
No, I get the notification. But on mobile, when I click on them, it just collapses the burger menu instead of letting me see the actual notifications.
Do you use an ad blocker or pop up blocker? I whitelisted the site on mine and it works. The notification list appears as a small pop up in the screen so that might be affecting things for you.
Nope, no ad or pop up blocker. Just stock chrome on stock Android. I’m a bit of a Luddite.
I cleared cache/cookies and tried again and no additional notifications were received.
I’m on mobile android btw.
Tried that, didn’t help, sorry.
I tried clearing cache and cookies. It makes no difference. I can SEE the notifications on either desktop or mobile, but I can only actually access the notifications on desktop.
I clicked on the first of three notifications, but once it brought me to that reply, the other two notifications were gone. Now the dropdown just says “no new notifications” even though I didn’t click on the other two.
On mobile, put search at the top of the burger menu and replace it with notifications when someone is logged in, otherwise have it appear as it does now. Relatively easy to do with CSS.
991 members, that’s great. And trying to get to 1000… it sounds like David is doing “whatever it takes” to get there but what about the rest of the team?
We’re just sitting around flicking playing cards into a top hat.
I can’t stop laughing, re-reading, laughing again.
Simple, well crafted comedy gold.
The imagery it evokes is hilarious.
(…just lounging around bored in an under lit basement on awful used furniture together. Tossing cards at a hat on the floor with zero enthusiasm or effort. There may or may not be a haze of smoke in the air. Two shoeless feet, one with a sock, one naked propped up on a snack spattered armrest…)
It’s the curt delivery that really gives it wings.
Specifying that it’s a top hat is the chef’s kiss.
There’s a shortage of perfect jokes in this world. It would be a pity to deconstruct his.
First off: this is the best, most enjoyable car site. Hands down. Wuv you.
But we need to do something about the comments.
“Delete all” notifications doesn’t work unless you manually mark each of them as read. They don’t mark themselves as read when you click on them. If your funny shitpost about DT’s jeeps strikes a chord and gets 30 lols, you have 30 useless notifications to mark as read one at a time.
“So and so upvoted your comment” isn’t useful. At least show the title of the article where your upvoted comment appears. There’s no way to quickly see if you have one comment that’s particularly funny and 50 people are upvoting it (that’s 50 notifications, too), or 50 comments that people found interesting that you may want to go back to and have a conversation with them.
Telling you who upvoted your comment violates the social contract. I am going to stop upvoting because I don’t want some strange admirer to start stalking me or DoSing my notification menu.
Y’all need a better tech team, this comment system has been a sad bag since inception, and it completely lacks basics that would drive engagement through the monroof, like view replies to my comments, ignore some commenters, view the articles I’ve commented on, view reactions I’ve received, etc. Stuff that’s literally been standard in forum software for over 15 years.
Also what’s up with displaying people’s real names instead of screen names?
Shit I’d help you manage the tech stuff for free. Just ask.
I didn’t think about seeing who upvoted your comment violating the social network (is it)? For now I’ve removed that feature.
Also, you can go into Memberful and fix your username. I don’t know why it’s suddenly showing them, but Memberful is looking into it.
Yeah… I had to fix my username too.
I can see how it might creep some folks out. Especially if one weirdo is following you around the forum upvoting every thing you say. Giving off strong stalker energy.
Not that I’d do that.
It could happen though.
Who would do such a thing
I’m on to you.
You’re not kidding
{ Stef upvoted this for the WEIRD }
{ Nic.. I mean Phantom Something Something upvoted this for the recognition of the weird }
And as a me-monster brained one-upper I will now devote the next few days of my existence to scrolling through the archives in search of all your previous comments in order to give them all an upvote. Well.. all but one. You’ll see.
*scrolling and staring scrolling and star-ing, paying no mind to the long ashes growing and falling off my cigarettes*
If I want to get real weird about it I can take it all in and probably figure out one of your biggest fears and use it against you later in an internet argument.
Or maybe I’ve already done all of this, Stef.
*hides a sugar cube somewhere in a Porsche somewhere *
(Oh, thank goodness the upvote notifications are turned off. Nevermind. None of what I just said will be necessary now.)
THAT’S HOW YOU GET ANTS!!!
I feel that the reply notification is spurring a lot of additional activity – not completely unexpected. Too bad most of it is absolute nonsense. 🙂
Absolute nonsense eh?
I’m just playing the long game with a stupid joke here.
The punch line is yet to come.
It’s gonna take days to get there.
Your never gonna get it.
Great, now I am afeared to look at my notifications.
How’s it goin?
upvote for archer ref
<3
Heh, I’m surprised how this weirds some folks out. Defector has it as a drop-down under each comment (visible just to you if you browse your past comments, not public or a notification) and some folks just don’t wanna know. It’s funny.
Facebook shows you of course, and Xenforo I think does (or maybe just some plugins). Same with TheDrive’s system and good old Disqus. Reddit doesn’t, but overall I’d call it more common than not.
Is it possible to make it optional, like the “read notification” check on WhatsApp? That is, if you disable being seen as an upvoter, you also won’t see upvoters? This might solve the issue and still allow someone to se “so and so upvoted you, along with 30 other anonymous upvoters”
Harvey,
Click on ‘Account’ in the upper right(at least, on my tablet-I’m not sure where on a mobile). Top line I see is ‘Name and email’ Edit that name to reflect the screen name you wish to show, and you’re back to anonymity.
—I’m hoping you’ll click through the notifications to find this rather than have to scroll feverishly back through the comments, and a) find this, b) be somewhat mollified that they are at least trying to resolve our complaints. Hope this helps
{ignore following as background if you wish as I do go on} I stumbled in here about 2 weeks before it went live: had clicked on Jalopnik for the first time in a year or so (because a) almost unusable with all the popups & autoplays b) the content had degenerated immensely-plus the way they had treated their writers), and read that DT & JT had/were leaving. Searched, and found this site. Bare bones, but promising a format and friendly usability akin to early Gizmodo. Excited, I lurked, then occasionally commented. Lots of glitches, but no one cared: we all really wanted this to work!
There’s some really good posts from those first few months! We got to watch as people came on board and the tone here firmed up, as well as the scope broadened (Hi, Mercedes, Huibert, Bishop, Adrian!). I encourage anyone to go back and read the early stuff as I’ve done while sick one weekend.
Now, with a million or more clicks each month, it’s not as personal & in-the-know feeling, but the quality (to me, at least) hasn’t fallen a bit—actually, with broadening scope, I think we get more. Certainly wider coverage. With that, not everything will appeal to everyone, but I think 80% or more will appeal to most enthusiasts. They have to be broad to have enough readership & membership to become self-supporting.
(deep breath…) The site is unabashedly to the left of center: that should be crystal clear. But, I, personally, don’t feel any articles are pushing any particular political stance here. Inclusion is important. We’re all enthusiasts of one stripe or another. We have commenters who have cars costing many times my annual income-and others who can’t afford $10/month for membership. That’s important! This is about cars-and planes, and trains, and RVs —as well as velocomobiles & microcars occasionally. With such broad coverage comes enthusiasts spanning a broad spectrum of views. I think that’s important, too: echo chambers do no one any good. The thing is, we can express ourselves without dismissing others-or dumping on them. My personal takeaway after going too far in comments on one article is to be kind or stfu.
The above is my personal perspective and I didn’t mean to meander that far away from my point, so I’ll take my own advice and stop. A head full of snot impairs my ability to think & express myself
tl:dr: everything here may not be for everyone, but there’s lots for most enthusiasts. The place is still new—and they’re working on it. Be patient. Be nice, or keep it to yourself, please.
peace
I think of my subscription as similar to subscribing to an oldschool car magazine, except here, it’s in the mailbox every single day, and I get to talk to other readers and even the authors instead of just sitting there thinking “no way…I don’t care what anyone says, cars need MORE tape stripes already!”
That’s a great way to put it!
The engagement is great-like a forum, but the breadth of enthusiasts is way wider: we’re not limited to a single brand or make
You and me both on that. It’s exactly what drew me to the old site, back in the day – the true enthusiasm at its broadest sense. I was sick of fan boy forums, etc.
And then when it went down the tubes (I’d long ago given up commenting), I figured that was it. And then Autopian popped up. Made my year and it’s been wonderful getting everyone’s experience, knowledge, rants, and just community around a shared love of vehicles and what they represent to us.
As you insinuate, it feels a lot, still, like internet 1.0 around here, and I’ve missed that in a big way.
(head nodding)
-I’m actually back reading the 2nd page ever posted here. I’d forgotten many of those articles-like the ‘Face Fell Off’ designer one. Got a head full of snot & cold meds, so stuff I don’t have to pay much attention to is perfect. And you’re right about the net 1.0 feel—almost reminds me of Usenet days.
Times change-many blogs have gone to podcast now, but I still enjoy reading primarily. And you can’t beat the reader engagement.
I have the same experience as you–I was an early reader and love the high quality content. I just want them to succeed, and having done this sort of thing for 20+ years, I’m just flummoxed as to why the comment system is so behind and depriving them of potential repeat visitors and other engagement.
I’m sick-full of snot-and not functioning correctly today.
So, want to state that only the first 2 paragraphs were actually in reply to you—much of the rest a response to some angry stuff I’d seen over the last few days. A lot of it from commenters I didn’t recognize. Please don’t take the rest as criticism of you in particular.
No problem at all, I didn’t take it that way and agree with it in any case. Feel better soon.
Glad you’re enjoying it!
We’re only going to improve as time goes on.
As for politics, from day one I made it clear that this is a place for everyone of every political affiliation. This was an issue with the old site, and we’re not going down that same road.
It’s important to me to allow writers to display their voice, and to respect science, so it’s never going to seem perfectly apolitical, but we do our best.
Everyone is welcome here, so long as we’re all civil.
I am. I even evangelize about this site-will do so tomorrow at a Cars & Coffee. Sport a hat & shirt at them always.
Definitely appreciate your work here-not just the articles.
Also, the truth is: This site was built on a bit of a shoestring budget using a company that has only ever built car-dealership websites.
Jason literally sketched the site on his iPad and presented it to the web team and said “Please make this.” He provided all the main graphics you see here. It literally was Jason, me, and Beau/Beau’s team at first trying to figure out how to build a media company using car-dealership resources.
It was honestly wild.
(That is to say say: We realize we’ve got a ways to go before the user interface is perfect!).
How can we request collapsible comments? Some chains can be hard to follow as you sort though the comments and it would be easier to follow specific paths if you could collapse ones a user doesn’t care about.
> This site was built on a bit of a shoestring budget using a company that has only ever built car-dealership websites.
Wow, OK, thanks for the context!
“The Autopian exists to serve the car enthusiast community by creating content that informs and entertains, while celebrating the unifying quality of automobiles.”
Still holds up.
You can’t predict or guard against all outside forces and factors.
Human communities will always be chaotic, even at their best.
It must be difficult to maintain the integrity of that mission statement in a venture like this these days. With so many confounding variables .
Yet somehow y’all are pulling it off.
So far.
Hats off to the whole team.
(So long as they don’t just sit around flicking cards into it (hahaha I’m still laughing at that one)).
“If your funny shitpost about DT’s jeeps strikes a chord and gets 30 lols, you have 30 useless notifications to mark as read one at a time.”
Weird humble brag Harvey.
Glad your still here, so I can ask: what breed is the dog pictured there?
I ask because, other than the eye-outline coloration, it looks a lot like my unknown mutt that I’ve never figured out.
Murphy?
She’s a chorkie.
Sweetest dog on the planet.
Thanks!
Percy (Scruffy Boy) was supposedly a long-haired Mexican Blue Chihuahua, but the only pics I can find looking like him were searching ‘Mexican Blue Chihuahua Chinese Crested Mix’
Sadly, as an abused, 3-legged rescue, he’s not sweet—but a Good Dog nonetheless
Murphy (Brillo Bear) was a rescue too. Glad I managed to get her out of that burning building.
She’s a friend to all.
Wait: out of a burning building?
Got a story to share there?
-even if not a dramatic last-second dodging-falling-timbers, tale, still a nice footnote!
Sadly no. It’s just a dumb joke that comes to mind when I refer to her as a rescue.
I had to dive in the ocean and save my other dog from drifting out to sea in a terrible storm though.
Upon further inspection, no thanks. I’m out. I’m way too obsessive to deal with this in my life.
Love y’all. It’s been fun.
Too obsessive?
Like there’s a moderate level of obsession?
Here’s a notification you sexy beast!
Wow?! Right back at ya cowboy.
Are we done here?
Yeah. You wanna get out of here, cruise down the coast in whatever
Sounds nice. Can you put your phone down for two fucking seconds.
Oh baby! I can put it down for days!
Bruh
* whatever?
Wake up!
Wake up
Grab a brush and put a little make-up
Hide the scars to fade away the shake-up (hide the scars to fade away the-)
Note to self: Never visit the internet again.
Why are you aggrandizing this?
“aggrandizing”?
Do you even know what you’re talking about?!
Whatever man.
You know what would be cool?
Yes… If we left this planet for no raisin.
Hahaha!
I’m fuckin confused here.
How does any of this matter?
Oh?… none of it does. Your comments are but a grain of salt in a can of Nalley Chili.
Wow! How poetic!!
I guess we end on that then?
Unless you have some other smart aleck bullshit to say?
Oh.. I’ve got smart aleck bullshit for days.
Of course you do.
This is getting weird.
We’re done here.
You kind of asked for it.
I didn’t ask for any of this. It just keeps happening. It’s very addictive and time consuming. Like smoking or a morphinan opioid substance.
Did not!
Oh, c’mon, Phantom!
Don’t quit this place: you leave some fantastic comments sometimes. No one has a perfect batting average(looks at own comments).
seriously: your poetry the other day freakin sparkled!
take a break(I did a few weeks back) and come back refreshed
Thanks. That’s kind of you. But..
Dopamine is a cruel mistress to certain personality types.
With you, man
There’s been times I’ve caught myself obsessively scrolling and had to put the device down, pick up an old, paper book and go sit on the porch to read it.
Sometimes it helps me to go do a task I’m competent at: that bring my comfort level back up.
We all imperfect humans here
Book reader huh?
I’m half way through “The Chaos Machine” right now.
Perhaps it’s having an impact on my current mindset.
Obsessive reader here.
Funny you mention impact on mindset: 3’ from me is Ruins of the Reich on the shelf where I put books in Time Out when they get to me. Been there almost 2 years now. It’s about the mess Germany was in post WW2, and reading it got to me so bad I put it down 3/4 through. About time I put it in one of those little free libraries that popped up during Covid: it’s just too damn grim.
Most books I put down I end up finishing, but I’ve found over the decades that not finishing a book is not a personal flaw if I don’t like it. I still struggle with that, but Infinite Jest taught me that life is too short to read crap you don’t enjoy.
Infinite Jest? I learned the same lesson from that book.
Had to set it aside and read all his non fiction instead. Which was great. A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again.
Nice reference to DFW but IJ is a masterpiece and worth a read.
I tried. I really did. With all the respect I could muster. I understand it’s a masterpiece.
I just couldn’t get through it. I found his footnotes to be more interesting than the book itself.
(similar to the comments section here under a boring article)
The notes are epic.
If you liked that you’ll love his essay “Authority and American Usage”.
It’s more footnotes than context.Or.. the footnotes make up the bulk of the context, making the essay itself a footnote of sorts.
A masterpiece?
maybe I should take another look. -My reaction could just be where my head was at at the time, but it felt self-aggrandizing and selfish.
I should note that it was a gift/challenge from my live-in gf back then, so that likely colored my reading. Yeah: the notes were better than the text for sure
Don’t do it. There are a million other books to read. Don’t waste your time on one you know you don’t like.
I only say it because One Hundred Years of Solitude defeated me decades ago when I was pretty young: page-long paragraphs wore me down. Went back to it in my 30s and, while it’s not a favorite, understood why people liked & valued it.
-I won’t go buy it, but if I see it in one of those little free libraries, I’ll borrow & browse
It’s not for everybody, like Conrad or Faulkner or Charlotte Brontë, but if it lines up with your sensibilities, it’s a fkn trip.
Infinite Jest.Started reading it on the vague advice of the group from Fire Joe Morgan. Got halfway through when a basement flood mushed my copy. My wife mistakenly thoght I needed a replacement copy. I finished it it but it was a chore.
I do miss the box the first copy was resting on, it had “Empty Box” printed on it.
It was a chore. That’s why I stopped reading it.
Just googled The Chaos Machine…
What I do when shit gets to me is go reread old favorites: Pratchet, Thurber, Wodehouse. All of Wodehouse is on The Gutenberg Project for free, so instantly available. It’s an easy escape to a simpler world-but somehow still quite engaging.
What’s your favorite book in the fiction genre?
On three.
1..2..3.. Sometimes a Great Notion!
You know, there’s a flip side to this: Hardigree *was* excited that there were 100 comments to this article… then he saw your post and now he’s just sad.
Absolutely no way I could single out a favorite!
Books I have reread to pieces (literally) include,
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me-Fariña
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress-Heinlein*
Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas-Thompson*
Ringworld-Niven*
The Hobbit& the trilogy *
The Years With Ross-Thurber
Thank You Jeeves-Wodehouse*
The Color Of Magic-Pratchet*
The Once and Future King-White*
Tramps Abroad-Twain**
*denotes authors whose books I’ve devoured multiple times
-this doesn’t include juvenile books: we didn’t have a tv (by choice) when I was a kid, so reading was my pastime. Meaning the Dragonriders series as well as House on the Prairie not to mention Hardy Boys et all also were early favorites
Niven changed my life introducing hard science fiction. Heinlein was humanistic. Twain brought me humour. HST helped me learn to live in a F’-up world along with Fariña
Sorry: way more than you asked for. I’m zigzagging between ‘enough’ decongestant which tweaks me out & less which means I feel almost human, but dizzy from sinus pressure
I’ve read two of the eleven on your list and I loved them.
Never heard of Niven before but I’m excited to look into it based on your statement.
“ changed my life introducing hard science fiction”
That’s how I feel about “The Expanse”.
“HST helped me learn to live in a F’-up world”
Now you’re tugging at my heartstrings.
My copy of “Fear and Loathing in America” is falling apart, full of stains, sand and dog eared pages.
Note that I read adult books way too early, so that affects my outlook. Read Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 at the age of 9 or 10 and loved it because it sounded like the grad students that used to gather at our place: real talk about the shit that was going down
Re: Niven, start with Neutron Star as I did. Short stories and a small commitment if it’s not for you. My 3rd? copy is barely held together with aged rubber bands.
The worlds he creates fit -with some caveats necessary to SciFi- our physics, but the extrapolation is, imo, masterful
Every book is a kids book, if the kid can read.
I’m the youngest of seven smarter siblings that lived off hand me downs so… yeah.
HST, Derrick Jensen, E.O. Wilson, Nabokov. This is what I stayed inside to read as a kid, when the weather was perfectly terrible.
I like to think it effected my outlook in a positive way.
*”Kingdom of Fear”
Tramps Abroad should be A Tramp Abroad
-someone said something about obsessive??
Maybe it’s a verb? Tramps. Slang for tramples? An action done abroad…
No: it’s A Tramp Abroad
one of his first after the Jumping Frog story made him famous. Thoroughly enjoyable read if the stilted 19th century language doesn’t put you off—I know some people find that doesn’t flow for them
-just checked, and it’s on The Gutenberg Project for free if you want to check it out.
About his travels & travails as a young man. I last read it maybe 10 years ago, and loved having Google available to understand references more than 100 years old that I didn’t get in earlier readings.
Just scrolling and figured I’d chime in, Moby Dick. The only book I have read multiple times at different stages of life and have found new lessons and interpretations each time.
Moby Dick?
Welcome to the underground Autopian book club my friend.
The first time I read it was so I could put one more egotistical notch on my I’ve read that belt.
I just cruised through it. Never stopping to think.
Now I read it slowly, as I believe it was intended to be read.
It’s a crazy adventure written in cipher.
So many lessons learned.
And it helps to know that these 19th century authors were paid by the word.
That explains a lot of Dickens
It’s not going well.
Would it help to remove some of the notifications?
Hey!
the notifications zero when you mark them as read. Thanks!
It’s not you, it’s me.
Removing upvote notifications did the trick.
That was too much. I panicked.
Have any of you read “Solutions and Other Problems“ by Allie Brosh?
Fantastic memoir of sorts.
One of my favorite books of all time.
Alright Matt, I said to your face I’d join when you made notifications work. If one of y’all can reply to this comment and prove that they work, then I will be a man of my word and pony up my money.
Well, if it helps, I just followed Matt’s guidance to activate comment notifications and was promptly alerted to someone having liked a comment I made 3 days ago. Thanks Torque!
So this random internet commenter (and member!) can independently confirm that they work!
Time to bust open the wallet!
Turns out just once though 🙁
Works on a desktop, but only worked the once on mobile 🙁
Slightly less random internet stranger here…does this work
Testing, testing…
Yes…now what were we talking about? Oh yes…https://opposite-lock.com/post/1152226
Hmm…can we get image comments next? I GOTTA POST ‘LUMP.
It does work!
First hand, this makes Wrenching Wednesday articles so much better!
It’s now easier to turn what was a few comments into a conversation over time.
“What was BlankName working on a few months ago? How’s that coming along? I just thought of something that might be helpful.”
Which in turn makes a new Autopian membership more valuable because you can now join in on a conversation from the archives and get somewhat real time responses.
On the other hand, I suddenly feel obligated to scroll through hours of comments past to apologize for each time I let my fragile, defensive ego get the best of me and acted like an ass.
(There goes my weekend.)
On the third hand this helps keep the comments more cordial due to enhanced culpability while still retaining precious internet anonymity.
On the fourth hand… nobody has four hands.
Wait, are you implying that people have three hands though?
No! That would be really weird.
Stop looking at me!
Everybody knows hands come in even numbers.
Yes: the 3rd is the Gripping hand
(Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven reference-a fantastic book I’d recommend to almost anyone who enjoys fiction)
If you like that you’d love “ The Expanse” fiction series by James S. A. Corey.
Sweet. Noted for future shopping
Danke!
Kein Problem.
Comment notifications. Finally!
Now we can start our odd, underground, Autopian book club.
Oh, oh!
That just prompted memories of old-like ‘60s-juvenile books about cars I would find in various libraries during the 70s & 80s. Sadly, don’t remember titles or authors, just snippets of car descriptions & scenes
Other websites at which I comment have a clickable link on each post on the main page that takes me directly to the comment stack for a given post, but not The Autopian. Is there a reason?
Cool, I like notifications, too bad it will have a lonely existence under me. And more than likely have an existential crisis.
I know, 32 on the lead image? I hope not. I’ve got stuff to do. Here’s an easily deleted one for ya.
Thanks!
And another.
(I couldn’t help myself)
Hahaha! Now I can see who the maniacs are that give my inane, ridiculous comments stars (smileys).
But oh no… now I can be reminded about the stupid crap I said a few days, weeks, months ago.
I guess I’d better be on my best behavior from here on out.
Now, off to the archives to test this out.
Thanks Jack. I am sorry. I get unreasonably defensive sometimes. It’s not an excuse but I’m the youngest of seven siblings.
Sometimes that loud, whining, attention seeking child still rears it’s ugly head.
That pic is not what my screen looks like.
Hit refresh?
Back in my day when we wanted to see if our comments got any likes we navigated back to them by hand. In a blizzard. Uphill both ways.
You mean we shifted through them manually?
Yeah. On the tree…
The notifications is a handy feature, because now it is no longer futile to reply to old threads. It gives someone reason to check a reply.
Totally. I can’t wait to see someone challenge my foolishness/enlighten my mind like 3 days later. I mean, RootWyrm or V10omous can’t reply to everything immediately, right?
Not everything
Heck, commenting a week late is my usual reply schedule.
So excited to see the notifications!
Bring On The Distraction!
Thank you for partially obscuring my name with a superimposed arrow in that screenshot so that I may continue to zealously guard my online privacy.
That name could be anybody! (we’re happy to obscure names if you wish; just say the word!).
Thanks for the offer but I realized a long time ago that if I’m going to babble constantly about my own highly identifiable automotive undertakings then there’s really not much point in pretending nobody can figure out who I am.
I am the same. Used to be really worried, then I realized who cares. If someone wants to dox anyone here, it’s easy for tech people. I am not a tech people so I leave bread crumbs all over. I just try not to say anything TOO outrageous, which in reality is probably better for everyone involved.
Nice Friday afternoon mic drop. Take the rest of the day off. Good work!