Finished Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Historical novel, very straightforward writing style but fascinating deep dive into aspects of modern Korean and Japanese history and society I'd never been aware of. As always, a handful of favorite bits.

SPOILER: Click to show

Save your family. Feed your belly. Pay attention, and be skeptical of the people in charge. If the Korean nationalists couldn't get their country back, then let your kids learn Japanese and try to get ahead. Adapt. Wasn't it as simple as that? For every patriot fighting for a free Korea, or for any unlucky Korean bastard fighting on behalf of Japan, there were ten thousand compatriots on the ground and elsewhere who were just trying to eat. In the end, your belly was your emperor.

...

The penalties incurred for the mistakes you made had to be paid out in full to the members of your family. But she didn't believe that she could ever discharge these sums.

...

All her life she had heard this sentiment from other women, that they must suffer—suffer as a girl, suffer as a wife, suffer as a mother—die suffering. Go-saeng—the word made her sick. What else was there besides this? She had suffered to create a better life for her son, and yet it was not enough. Should she have taught him to suffer the humiliation that she'd drunk like water? In the end, he had refused to suffer the conditions of his birth. Did mothers fail by not telling their sons that suffering would come?

And from a few books ago, because this passage came for my throat. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

SPOILER: Click to show

"Drudgery accompanied by very occasional moments of happiness, but when I say happiness, I mostly mean distraction... Say you go into the break room, and a couple people you like are there, say someone's telling a funny story, you laugh a little, you feel included, everyone's so funny, you go back to your desk with a sort of...afterglow, but then by four or five o'clock the day's just turned into yet another day, and you go on like that, looking forward to five o'clock and then the weekend and then your two or three annual weeks of paid vacation time, day in day out, and that's what happens to your life... That's what passes for a life. That's what passes for happiness, for most people... They're sleepwalkers, and nothing ever jolts them awake."

What is the point of an ebook if I still have to manually transcribe highlights because copy paste is disabled

so wish I could help optimize this, like...buddy, it doesn't have to be this unwieldy to implement. It can be less painful!

Was trying to figure out why I couldn't add a song, and it turned out I'd already added it 6 years ago. Good (?) to know my music taste hasn't changed at all

did I really spend that long reverse searching a hover without having either the hover, the artist, or the oc, cause it wasn't even an oc, purely by 'More like this'ing progressively similar vibes and art styles?

yes, yes I did. and it worked

People who volunteer to bring playlists for gatherings are

Courageous

AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa

- me about js

Double post: procrastinating by making things I'll never use is my jam. Bonus if they're template types other people don't use either

I have to do mockups in Figma. If you could see all the draft iterations, it would take far too long to code and pivot between every variation. Plus some scrapped designs will often inspire other ones

the glee from getting a care package is real

I don't expect people to skin responsively, but—is it too much to ask that they try for custom bbcodes and inline styling? At least use max-width so posts don't bleed off the page on mobile, which on pb can't even scroll.

You've heard of fan art that looks nothing like the canon, but have you heard of fan art where the canon doesn't even have an appearance

my pyromania playlist continues to grow