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Cake day: October 9th, 2025

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  • Is The Count of Monte Cristo really that much better than Robin Hood? I don’t think it should be, but its adaptations hit harder and I think there are more of them.

    Speculating here, but maybe the rich people that pay for these adaptations to be produced find it easier to relate to Dantès, who starts poor and ends rich than Loxley (or however they want to spell it this time), who starts as an aristocrat and becomes an outlaw.

    Dantès does most of the “work” of the story himself; sometimes he gets a plucky sidekick, depending on the adaptation of the book. Loxley, in almost all of the adaptations I’ve seen, bands together with the common folk and leads them to rise up against oppression inflicted on them by the greed of one or two men.

    I’m probably stretching it a bit, but if I was a billionaire deciding what people get to watch, I assume the Count would scare me less than a band of commoners overthrowing their rich oppressors.

    Then again, even though I’m common as they come, I’ll admit that I like Dumas’s coherence and Dantès’s complexity more than the looser jumble that comes with the Robin Hood myth. Monte Cristo will probably always be at the top of my list of books to read and reread every couple of years until I’m dead, simply because it has everything for a fun adventure story — a simple guy, the woman he loves, the enemies (and one drunk sot) who betray him, a wise mentor, growth through adversity, revenge, saving your friends from bankruptcy and suicide, helping nice people marry each other, realizing that revenge tends to not limit its damage to the targets you choose, more growth, and…weirdly marrying that nice lady you bought.

    Okay, the last thing is a bit odd and Haydée gets left out of some adaptations, which is a bit of a shame, since the scene with Dantès and Mercédès where they realize they’ve become different people than they were when they were in love 800 pages ago, and they’ll never be together and that’s okay, is probably my favorite part in the whole thing. Someday, someone will do that scene well.










  • aGlassDarkly@piefed.ziptoAutism@lemmy.worldHelpful fact
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    8 days ago

    I like the amber light some of those give off (LED Edison-style bulbs with a dimmer). My trick is to hide them behind objects (like a row of books) and put them on a smart switch so I don’t have to get near them — they light up the wall/ceiling behind the object with a nice warm glow and I don’t have to look at them directly.








  • Great summary work — this part makes me a little crazy:

    The Agriculture Department could also turn to a specific interpretation of existing law to justify continuing to fund food stamps, said David A. Super, a law professor at Georgetown University. Under that theory, food stamps are an entitlement program, like Medicare, that is not subject to the annual appropriations process.

    “The simplest approach for the U.S.D.A. would be to recognize that language in the Food and Nutrition Act makes SNAP an entitlement independent of appropriations, and continue paying benefits on the strength of that language,” Mr. Super said.

    Because of course food isn’t already an entitlement program. Always money for weapons, never for starving people.