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id, aliases, title, tags, dg-publish
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2025-10-26
2025-10-26 18:36 --- Sunday evening
#topic/hobbies/reading
I read Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream this morning. It took me about two hours. What may be curious about that is the story is less than six thousand words. What I did for IHNMAIMS, though---and what I've made a habit of doing with all short-form literature I read recently--- is only half reading. Here's my process:
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Google or DuckDuckGo (Google's cooler but less studious cousin)for "(title).epub", or "(title).pdf" if the first doesn't get any good hits.
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Convert the ripped doc to markdown using one of several tools as most appropriate and no small amount of manual effort.
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Convert the new markdown file to epub and upload it to my calibre library.
It's during step 2 that I read the piece, and I really get in there. Because markdown ignores single line breaks you can put them where ever you want in a paragraph without changing the output. Some standards recommend on sentence per line, but that's often to long to be practical, and, more importantly, misses out on the ability to punctuate another author's writing the way they goddamn well should've in the first place. Again I stress, this doesn't affect the output.
I do this so often that reading any other way--- web articles, where line breaks are meaningless, or worse print, where the the same is true and text is broken up arbitrarily into pages---has become noticeably more straining. Equally straining is writing in this wall-of-text format. I've done it so far simply because I like hearing the margin bell ahhhh We're too advanced as a species to be treating books as anything but an imperfect medium for the pure expression of text.
I have what some might consider a liberal view of artistic ownership. Suppose you were conversing with a coworker and they said something poignant, later you speak with another and share the first's anecdote as your own. Is this theft? No. Immoral? Unethical? Perhaps. Your coworker has not lost anything. Not the idea, and not the certainty that they came up with it. It is possible to believe that something should not be done without believing those who do should be imprisoned. Personally, I cite my sources because I respect information not authors. I would "steal", but I really get a kick out of paying.
To value the profit of one's ideas above their inherent worth is shameful.