I'm now reading Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It's the novel that inspired both the Tarkovsky movie Stalker and the video game series S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
It's really well written. I was having a little trouble getting into it at first because it's different from what I usually read. The story is told from the perspective of a character whom you follow going about their often shady business. It reminded me of the style of film noir detectives. It's not really my thing, but the book is good enough to keep me reading.
When finished I'm gonna watch the movie with my boyfriend, who has it on DVD. We did this with 1984 as well, which was a good experience.
What's also frustrating is "al" is a word in Dutch, meaning although or everything. It's often used at the start of a sentence, thus capitalised and indistinguishable from AI. After reading too much about A.I., which is unavoidable nowadays, it messes with reading everything, because every now and then a sentence starts with "al" and your brain messes up and you have to go back.
Oh, is this why even opening folders in windows is so slow? Explorer at my work computer shows a message like "still working" for multiple seconds before showing something like 12 files. It's really shitty.
It seems like they'll do the exact opposite. The EU is preparing a change to the GDPR to exclude A.I. purposes and the commission has agreed to adopt American car safety standards (which are way lower) during the tariff negotiations.
I always thought it was a made up name too, but apparently it's an archaic Dutch name. German version is Jost, which I imagine sounds like the Dutch version Joost, which is fairly common (I now one).
The English version is Joyce, which became a female name, which could explain why they didn't want to use that and chose Jonathan instead. Maybe other languages just followed that choice? I don't know. I much prefer Jodocus though.
Growing up I really loved the animated series Alfred Jonathan Quack or Alfred Kvakk in Norwegian. It's about a duck, his farther (I think) is a mole and the antagonist is a nazi-styled crow called Dolf. My favourite episode was about this island they visited which turned out to be the shell of this gigantic turtle.
Another favourite was The World of David the Gnome. It's about a gnome who lives in or under a tree and has all sorts of adventures with animals. The books it's based on are also great, I still have them.
I don't know if you can still find these series since they're pretty old.
Oh definitely, the tobacco industry is way worse. Tattoo artists (at least in my county) have to follow hygiene regulations and aren't allowed to tattoo minors, and there don't seem to be any issues with this. There isn't any incentive for them to cause harm to their customers, on the contrary, so I don't blame them for this. If tattooing poses serious health risks like this study suggests, it would suck for everyone involved.
I suppose I would be in that crowd. I'm an atheist, but I think the whole tattooing thing is kinda stupid. To each their own of course, I don't care if anyone gets a tattoo, but the culture around it annoys me and I think it's a waste of one's body. I do like some of the art styles, but why not just print it on a shirt and wear it?
That being said, I think it's petty bad if it turns out the ink causes a higher risk of disease. Like with cigarettes in the past people weren't informed about the consequences before making their choices. That sucks and I don't wish it on anyone.
Thanks! I keep hearing good things about the movie, definitely looking forward to watching it.