Err... that should be "ideological". Also, I'd like to mention that I consider the BoingBoing bastards taste-deficient pseudo-hipsters who should be towed out to sea as a habitat for marine life after they are rendered for their economically important fractions.
Agreed. Disney fans are loathsome corporate douchenozzles. Cory Doctorow's hard-on for Disney is one of the reasons I gave up on BoingBoing - that and their censorship, "Antinous'" ideologigal commisariat, Xeni's psycho feminist jihad and Mark Frauenfelder's mercenary exploitation.
School is bullshit anyway. If they don't count setting up your own company as experience, they deserve to be conned. Certainly setting up an effective con should be rated more than equal to doing any silly intern job.
"If you're anything above the awful level it's pretty easy to get a job"
So long as you are willing to lie and say you have 5 years experience with 18 different things, most of them obscure and irrelevant, the rest ghastly and appalling.
"...amongst all the feminist studies of pornography and human sexuality..." Well, there's your problem right there.
How much lesbian porn is actually bought by lesbians as opposed to men? [epsilon. The primary sexual divide is androphile/gynophile, not homo/hetero] While the vast majority of porn is bought by men, they prefer photos, not drawings, while the minority of porn-seeking women prefer less realistic formats such as novels or drawings. It seems quite possible that women are the primary audience for male homosexual comics. This is better judged by asking the vendors rather than writers, feminist or otherwise.
No, yaoi is specifically about the "sexual objectification" (to appropriate a bit of anti-sex feminist cant) of ephebic males, with a homoerotic theme that mostly appeals to late-adolescent females, but also secondarily to ephebophile homosexual males (that is, most homosexual and bisexual males, who are still about 20 times fewer than heterosexual females). The male market for lesbian porn is much larger. Hell, the male market for nearly any kind of porn is larger.
Um... freedom of speech? Censoring is bad, no matter who the "offended" group may be, even if those icky Christians, pedophiles, mens-rights activists, gays, Nazis, [foo]-wingers, or whatever get to put forth their opinions.
I think it's those who buy into the left-right duopoly who are more easily manipulated than the independents, certainly the actual political beliefs of most people today mostly do not fit in the left-right boxes.
The latest Pew poll summary says"The Pew Research Center’s new Political Typology finds that the public is more doctrinaire at each end of the ideological spectrum, yet more diverse in the middle than it has been in the past." (Full report at: http://people-press.org/2011/05/04/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology/ )
Disaffected + Bystanders > Republicans; Libertarian + Social-liberals > Republicans; Democrats > Republicans (37% to 20%); Democrats + " Social-liberals" > Republicans + Libertarians (50% to 29%) Democrats, Republicans, Independents or any coalition of any sub-groups > "Moderates"
About 61% of the public, and about 65% of "main-street Republicans" do NOT agree that: "Most corporations make a fair and reasonable profit"; the same is true of only 24% of "staunch Conservatives" and 17% of Libertarians. On the other hand 53% of New Coalition Democrats say that businesses DO make a fair and reasonable profit.
55% of the public agrees that "government is almost always wasteful and inefficient"; most of these are not Republicans. Only 29% agrees that the Federal government should usually be trusted, but only 14% is angry with the government, while 59% are frustrated. 69% say the government doesn't care what people like them think. (Over 58% in all groups.)
Only 31% of the public agrees "the best way to peace is military strength" (and only 39% of "main-street Republicans").
57% disapprove of Congress, 34% approve. No group gives over a 42% favorable rating. New Coalition Dems. have the least unfavorable rating at 44%, followed by the "Moderates" at 55%.
Only 8% believe that there are countries better than the US, 38% believe the US "stands above all others", 53% say it is one of the greatest.
31% believe peace is best achieved through military strength, vs. 58% through diplomacy. Most groups agree except for Staunch Conservatives (76%/14%), though Main street Republicans and Libertarians are ambivalent (MSR 39%/48%; L 48%/33%)
Only 33% believe the US should be active in world affairs, vs. 58% who say the US should concentrate on problems at home. All groups agree, except the Solid Liberals who are split 47%/47%.
This is good advice, but it breaks down above APS-C size-sensors. Anything bigger really requires being a rich photo pro with a desire to carry heavy things. More generally, "buy the low light performance, not the resolution" (unless you're planning on printing posters)
"Buy the glass, not the shutters" Also good advice, but by getting a camera body with image stabilization built in, one can use less expensive lenses with equally good image quality. Also getting a body that is compatible with older lenses allows using good, cheap used lenses.
By these metrics, the best camera package for the money now is the Pentax K-x with 18-55mm and 55-300mm kit lenses - APS-C, best low light performance in its sensor size, body image stabilization, very good glass covering a wide range, and a total price of as low as $650. (The newer K-r kit gives some refinements for $800).
On the "buy the glass" bit, the best lens to get after the kit lenses is a fast (f 1.2-1.8) 50mm. They're inexpensive and deliver very high image quality. In APS-C it's perfect for low-light, light weight, street photography, and using a cheap macro reversing ring, it allows high quality macro photos. Adding a inexpensive step-up ring and your kit telephoto zoom, one can do ultra-macro (filling a landscape frame with subjects as small as 4mm across).
I agree - the last few percent in processors costs an absurd amount, and it's rare to be waiting for the processor anyway. If the vendor is overcharging for RAM, it's best to buy the RAM elsewhere, but after 3 or 4 gigs there really isn't any benefit for most people and that is less than a $40 upgrade. If you have an extra $300 to spend, the most noticeable performance improvement would probably come from getting a good SSD. A really good monitor would also be a good choice - they can outlast three or four computers, and it's the only part of the system that you can actually see doing anything interesting.
Don't trust TOR too much. Even if all the above were false, it is a very small network with thin traffic running over providers' links that we have known for several years are being monitored by the NSA for traffic analysis.
And major telecom companies, particularly AT&T and the remaining unreassimilated Baby Bells are essentially government agencies anyway. The cable monopolies are even worse - all the power, none of the responsibility. The wires have been paid for by the public several times over, the equipment cost per Mbps has been falling exponentially, yet the monopolies and oligopolies still charge the same exorbitant, abusive rent-seeking weregeld as they did 8 or even 10 years ago. (look at your state tariffs on an OC-3, for example). Meanwhile their service standards have gone to shit, with no one able to actually fix problems - and that is intentional. Having real techs with the power to actually fix stuff costs more than setting up overseas call centers with myrmidons runing half-assed scripts, and as a monopoly on an essential service the telcos know you don't have any real choice anyway. Plus, they feel that providing better service without them getting paid more is just wrong, even if their expenses are falling, and would be falling more if the buyers weren't colluding with the equipment vendors.
I say nationalize the wires, fibers, and spectrum we've already paid for, buy the equipment out at the depreciated rates they've been listing on their taxes, hire away the best techs to run the core, open up the network at nominal prices for small resellers, make the tariffs more transparent than E-bay for pricing and let today's telco executives either start competing at actually providing service or be pureed by the market and fed to their shareholders through straws. The positive externalities of eliminating the robber barons with their tolls for every last mile of data transport will grow the economy by orders of magnitude more than enough to pay the modest setup and subsidies.
Try the "Year's Best" and awards collections to find the good new authors. Anything written by any author who has ever been nominated for a Hugo or a Nebula is at least worth a look.
Tim Pratt, Ted Chiang, Mary Robinette Kowal, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Dominic Green, Eugie Foster, Paul Cornell, Paolo Bacigalupi, Daniel Abraham, Kelly Link, John Scalzi, Charles Coleman Finlay, Catherynne M. Valente, Cherie Priest and Michael A. Burstein are some of the recent youngish Hugo nominees.
Mike Resnick isn't young but isn't mentioned as much as his awards would indicate - he's been nominated for Hugos every year but two since 1989. Charles Stross is worth checking out, particularly Accelerando, Elector, Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. Neal Stephenson has come back to SF with Anathem, and it is genuinely original. China Miéville is perhaps the most original new author to appear in the last 30 years, though many will see his work as being more on the fantasy side of the fence.
There's also lots of older stuff that you likely haven't read - Vance, V.Vinge, Wolfe, Sturgeon, Piper, Bester, Delany, LeGuin, Zelazny, Brunner, and not old, but not new things from Rucker, Sterling, Brust, Prachett, Egan, Asaro, Brin...
It's not Heinlein's best work, perhaps, but it's certainly a better read with more interesting ideas than National Book Award winners such as the mawkish, PC "The Color Purple", and Sontag's unreadable "In America: A Novel".
All but a couple of dozen of Asimov's books (not counting the many editions of others' work that he edited) were non-fiction / opinion, and these were generally mere collections of facts with some opinion filler. He could write them in his sleep, and judging by the uneven quality, he sometimes might have.
Big, boring "classic" doorstop-size novels are not the sort of thing that will foster a love of reading at that age. Short stories are a better way to go, and shorter novels written for children, for instance those by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Frank L. Baum, Andrew Lang's collections of old fairy tales, The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, the Earthsea trilogy, the Narnia books, Discworld books, Roald Dahl and Heinlein's juveniles. Some Vernor Vinge would be appropriate, such as the early "Bookworm, Run!", "The Peace War" and "Tatja Grimm's World" and the late "Fast Times at Fairmont High" and "Rainbow's End". If he actually likes longer works, of course he'll read the Harry Potter books. You might try out some Jack Vance (e.g. the Lyonesse books) or Gene Wolfe (e.g. The Knight), but they may not be suitable.
Folktales and myths are a favorite around that age. Horror and ghost stories are well-loved at that age, too. (My favorite at age 8 was Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily".)
There are earlier (and better) examples of SF than Frankenstein, e.g. Gulliver's Travels and the Tempest. There were ancient Greek works about voyages to the moon ("True History" by Lucian, "Of the Wonderful Things Beyond Thule" by Antonius Diogenes [lost]). The Odyssey falls squarely into the genre, at least by modern standards. What about the ancient tale of the giant robot, Talos?
Ada Lovelace likely never wrote a computer program, rather she debugged an algorithm by Babbage (for a machine which was never built, which makes the claim a little doubtful from the beginning).
Babbage wrote the following on the subject, in his Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864).[Babbage, Charles (1864). Passages from the life of a philosopher. p. 136. ISBN 0-8135-2066-5, via Wikipedia article Ada Lovelace]
I then suggested that she add some notes to Menabrea's memoir, an idea which was immediately adopted. We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.
The Bernoulli number algorithm is precisely what has been put forth as her work and her claim to be the first computer programmer.
So it is unlikely that a woman was the first SF writer or computer programmer.
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction -- some say twenty-two..... 1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere..... 3.They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others..... 5. The require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say..... 10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the "Deerslayer" tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.
These few rules at least seem to be more commonly violated in well-reviewed mainstream fiction than in well-reviewed SF, particularly #10. While the diction of dialogue has become more believable since the early 1800s, the failure to write dialogue and plots meeting the requirements of meaning, relevancy, and interest is so usual over the past few decades that a story or a conversation with a point seems to be considered a reactionary affectation by the mainstream lit-crit twits. The lack of any interest in the characters or any real point is what makes mainstream literature so dull and pointless.
Well, yes, good SF is superior to the mainstream literature praised by academics. SF is literature with ideas, mainstream literature lacks ideas. People who prefer not to have to read about ideas are inferior in intellect and imagination to those who seek out ideas, thus SF readers are superior to mainstream readers.
Slashdot Mirror
Err... that should be "ideological". Also, I'd like to mention that I consider the BoingBoing bastards taste-deficient pseudo-hipsters who should be towed out to sea as a habitat for marine life after they are rendered for their economically important fractions.
Agreed. Disney fans are loathsome corporate douchenozzles. Cory Doctorow's hard-on for Disney is one of the reasons I gave up on BoingBoing - that and their censorship, "Antinous'" ideologigal commisariat, Xeni's psycho feminist jihad and Mark Frauenfelder's mercenary exploitation.
School is bullshit anyway. If they don't count setting up your own company as experience, they deserve to be conned. Certainly setting up an effective con should be rated more than equal to doing any silly intern job.
Exactly! Now if we could find a way to get this through the pointy little heads of the HR and mgt. parasites...
"If you're anything above the awful level it's pretty easy to get a job"
So long as you are willing to lie and say you have 5 years experience with 18 different things, most of them obscure and irrelevant, the rest ghastly and appalling.
That may be the biggest load of bullshit I have read in over a decade on Slashdot.
"...amongst all the feminist studies of pornography and human sexuality..."
Well, there's your problem right there.
How much lesbian porn is actually bought by lesbians as opposed to men? [epsilon. The primary sexual divide is androphile/gynophile, not homo/hetero] While the vast majority of porn is bought by men, they prefer photos, not drawings, while the minority of porn-seeking women prefer less realistic formats such as novels or drawings. It seems quite possible that women are the primary audience for male homosexual comics. This is better judged by asking the vendors rather than writers, feminist or otherwise.
No, yaoi is specifically about the "sexual objectification" (to appropriate a bit of anti-sex feminist cant) of ephebic males, with a homoerotic theme that mostly appeals to late-adolescent females, but also secondarily to ephebophile homosexual males (that is, most homosexual and bisexual males, who are still about 20 times fewer than heterosexual females). The male market for lesbian porn is much larger. Hell, the male market for nearly any kind of porn is larger.
So everyone is free to disseminate -whatever- so long as it doesn't offend the politically organized aficionados of your favorite kink?
Um... freedom of speech? Censoring is bad, no matter who the "offended" group may be, even if those icky Christians, pedophiles, mens-rights activists, gays, Nazis, [foo]-wingers, or whatever get to put forth their opinions.
If by "interesting" you mean "predictable", "shrill" and "doctrinaire".
I think it's those who buy into the left-right duopoly who are more easily manipulated than the independents, certainly the actual political beliefs of most people today mostly do not fit in the left-right boxes.
The latest Pew poll summary says"The Pew Research Center’s new Political Typology finds that the public is more doctrinaire at each end of the ideological spectrum, yet more diverse in the middle than it has been in the past."
(Full report at: http://people-press.org/2011/05/04/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology/ )
Republicans: 20% (Staunch (reactionaries) 9%, "Main street" ("moderate") 11%),
Independents 33% (Libertarian 9%, Disaffected 11%, Social-liberal "moderates" (anti-safety net, anti-affirmative action, pro homosexual: 13%),
Democrats 37%, ("New Coalition"(mostly non-white) 10%, "Hard-pressed" (financially/ ideologically) 13%, "Solid Liberals" (D.party partisans)
Bystanders 10%.
Disaffected + Bystanders > Republicans;
Libertarian + Social-liberals > Republicans;
Democrats > Republicans (37% to 20%);
Democrats + " Social-liberals" > Republicans + Libertarians (50% to 29%)
Democrats, Republicans, Independents or any coalition of any sub-groups > "Moderates"
About 61% of the public, and about 65% of "main-street Republicans" do NOT agree that: "Most corporations make a fair and reasonable profit"; the same is true of only 24% of "staunch Conservatives" and 17% of Libertarians. On the other hand 53% of New Coalition Democrats say that businesses DO make a fair and reasonable profit.
55% of the public agrees that "government is almost always wasteful and inefficient"; most of these are not Republicans.
Only 29% agrees that the Federal government should usually be trusted, but only 14% is angry with the government, while 59% are frustrated. 69% say the government doesn't care what people like them think. (Over 58% in all groups.)
Only 31% of the public agrees "the best way to peace is military strength" (and only 39% of "main-street Republicans").
57% disapprove of Congress, 34% approve. No group gives over a 42% favorable rating. New Coalition Dems. have the least unfavorable rating at 44%, followed by the "Moderates" at 55%.
Only 8% believe that there are countries better than the US, 38% believe the US "stands above all others", 53% say it is one of the greatest.
31% believe peace is best achieved through military strength, vs. 58% through diplomacy. Most groups agree except for Staunch Conservatives (76%/14%), though Main street Republicans and Libertarians are ambivalent (MSR 39%/48%; L 48%/33%)
Only 33% believe the US should be active in world affairs, vs. 58% who say the US should concentrate on problems at home. All groups agree, except the Solid Liberals who are split 47%/47%.
"'Pay for the sensor size, not the megapixels"...
This is good advice, but it breaks down above APS-C size-sensors. Anything bigger really requires being a rich photo pro with a desire to carry heavy things. More generally, "buy the low light performance, not the resolution" (unless you're planning on printing posters)
"Buy the glass, not the shutters"
Also good advice, but by getting a camera body with image stabilization built in, one can use less expensive lenses with equally good image quality. Also getting a body that is compatible with older lenses allows using good, cheap used lenses.
By these metrics, the best camera package for the money now is the Pentax K-x with 18-55mm and 55-300mm kit lenses - APS-C, best low light performance in its sensor size, body image stabilization, very good glass covering a wide range, and a total price of as low as $650. (The newer K-r kit gives some refinements for $800).
On the "buy the glass" bit, the best lens to get after the kit lenses is a fast (f 1.2-1.8) 50mm. They're inexpensive and deliver very high image quality. In APS-C it's perfect for low-light, light weight, street photography, and using a cheap macro reversing ring, it allows high quality macro photos. Adding a inexpensive step-up ring and your kit telephoto zoom, one can do ultra-macro (filling a landscape frame with subjects as small as 4mm across).
You can find out by how much magnetic field it's producing.
I agree - the last few percent in processors costs an absurd amount, and it's rare to be waiting for the processor anyway. If the vendor is overcharging for RAM, it's best to buy the RAM elsewhere, but after 3 or 4 gigs there really isn't any benefit for most people and that is less than a $40 upgrade. If you have an extra $300 to spend, the most noticeable performance improvement would probably come from getting a good SSD. A really good monitor would also be a good choice - they can outlast three or four computers, and it's the only part of the system that you can actually see doing anything interesting.
TOR is 86% US government financed according to PGPBOARD Administrator Alan Taylor. ( http://www.pgpboard.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=435 ).
Why? (Aside from SIGINT made possible by their covert control over the software and many of the routers, of course.) http://cryptome.org/0003/tor-spy.htm .
Don't trust TOR too much. Even if all the above were false, it is a very small network with thin traffic running over providers' links that we have known for several years are being monitored by the NSA for traffic analysis.
And major telecom companies, particularly AT&T and the remaining unreassimilated Baby Bells are essentially government agencies anyway. The cable monopolies are even worse - all the power, none of the responsibility. The wires have been paid for by the public several times over, the equipment cost per Mbps has been falling exponentially, yet the monopolies and oligopolies still charge the same exorbitant, abusive rent-seeking weregeld as they did 8 or even 10 years ago. (look at your state tariffs on an OC-3, for example). Meanwhile their service standards have gone to shit, with no one able to actually fix problems - and that is intentional. Having real techs with the power to actually fix stuff costs more than setting up overseas call centers with myrmidons runing half-assed scripts, and as a monopoly on an essential service the telcos know you don't have any real choice anyway. Plus, they feel that providing better service without them getting paid more is just wrong, even if their expenses are falling, and would be falling more if the buyers weren't colluding with the equipment vendors.
I say nationalize the wires, fibers, and spectrum we've already paid for, buy the equipment out at the depreciated rates they've been listing on their taxes, hire away the best techs to run the core, open up the network at nominal prices for small resellers, make the tariffs more transparent than E-bay for pricing and let today's telco executives either start competing at actually providing service or be pureed by the market and fed to their shareholders through straws. The positive externalities of eliminating the robber barons with their tolls for every last mile of data transport will grow the economy by orders of magnitude more than enough to pay the modest setup and subsidies.
I'll admit that a guy who names himself after a cartoon BM has me beat in the humility department, but certainly not in taste or intellect.
Try the "Year's Best" and awards collections to find the good new authors. Anything written by any author who has ever been nominated for a Hugo or a Nebula is at least worth a look.
Tim Pratt, Ted Chiang, Mary Robinette Kowal, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Dominic Green, Eugie Foster, Paul Cornell, Paolo Bacigalupi, Daniel Abraham, Kelly Link, John Scalzi, Charles Coleman Finlay, Catherynne M. Valente, Cherie Priest and Michael A. Burstein are some of the recent youngish Hugo nominees.
Mike Resnick isn't young but isn't mentioned as much as his awards would indicate - he's been nominated for Hugos every year but two since 1989. Charles Stross is worth checking out, particularly Accelerando, Elector, Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. Neal Stephenson has come back to SF with Anathem, and it is genuinely original. China Miéville is perhaps the most original new author to appear in the last 30 years, though many will see his work as being more on the fantasy side of the fence.
There's also lots of older stuff that you likely haven't read - Vance, V.Vinge, Wolfe, Sturgeon, Piper, Bester, Delany, LeGuin, Zelazny, Brunner, and not old, but not new things from Rucker, Sterling, Brust, Prachett, Egan, Asaro, Brin...
It's not Heinlein's best work, perhaps, but it's certainly a better read with more interesting ideas than National Book Award winners such as the mawkish, PC "The Color Purple", and Sontag's unreadable "In America: A Novel".
All but a couple of dozen of Asimov's books (not counting the many editions of others' work that he edited) were non-fiction / opinion, and these were generally mere collections of facts with some opinion filler. He could write them in his sleep, and judging by the uneven quality, he sometimes might have.
Big, boring "classic" doorstop-size novels are not the sort of thing that will foster a love of reading at that age. Short stories are a better way to go, and shorter novels written for children, for instance those by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Frank L. Baum, Andrew Lang's collections of old fairy tales, The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, the Earthsea trilogy, the Narnia books, Discworld books, Roald Dahl and Heinlein's juveniles. Some Vernor Vinge would be appropriate, such as the early "Bookworm, Run!", "The Peace War" and "Tatja Grimm's World" and the late "Fast Times at Fairmont High" and "Rainbow's End". If he actually likes longer works, of course he'll read the Harry Potter books. You might try out some Jack Vance (e.g. the Lyonesse books) or Gene Wolfe (e.g. The Knight), but they may not be suitable.
Folktales and myths are a favorite around that age. Horror and ghost stories are well-loved at that age, too. (My favorite at age 8 was Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily".)
There are earlier (and better) examples of SF than Frankenstein, e.g. Gulliver's Travels and the Tempest. There were ancient Greek works about voyages to the moon ("True History" by Lucian, "Of the Wonderful Things Beyond Thule" by Antonius Diogenes [lost]). The Odyssey falls squarely into the genre, at least by modern standards. What about the ancient tale of the giant robot, Talos?
Ada Lovelace likely never wrote a computer program, rather she debugged an algorithm by Babbage (for a machine which was never built, which makes the claim a little doubtful from the beginning).
The Bernoulli number algorithm is precisely what has been put forth as her work and her claim to be the first computer programmer.
So it is unlikely that a woman was the first SF writer or computer programmer.
Including some of the revered names of the literary canon, such as James Fenimore Cooper - see Mark Twain's "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses":
These few rules at least seem to be more commonly violated in well-reviewed mainstream fiction than in well-reviewed SF, particularly #10. While the diction of dialogue has become more believable since the early 1800s, the failure to write dialogue and plots meeting the requirements of meaning, relevancy, and interest is so usual over the past few decades that a story or a conversation with a point seems to be considered a reactionary affectation by the mainstream lit-crit twits. The lack of any interest in the characters or any real point is what makes mainstream literature so dull and pointless.
Well, yes, good SF is superior to the mainstream literature praised by academics. SF is literature with ideas, mainstream literature lacks ideas. People who prefer not to have to read about ideas are inferior in intellect and imagination to those who seek out ideas, thus SF readers are superior to mainstream readers.