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PaperclipPerfector  9hr ago (text post)   293 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 3, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I’m finally on ‘The Far Side of the World’ – perhaps the most famous novel in the Aubrey/Maturin series.

Captain Jack Aubrey, expert sloth debaucher, knowingly recruits enough lunatics and mutineers to fill out the complement of the ‘Joyful’ Surprise, before pursuing an American cough ‘French’ Man of War around Cape Horn and into the Pacific.

And after spending nine novels vociferously proselytizing his hatred of alcohol abuse to anyone who will listen, Dr Stephen Maturin has now chewed, injected, snorted, smoked, enema’d, or otherwise ingested most drugs found anywhere in, on, or adjacent to, the entire Seven Seas.

Aware of his addiction to the laudanum from his own medicine chest (that somehow didn’t make it into the screenplay), junkie Maturin decides that the only sane course of action is to wean himself off with the aid of a new wonder drug; Cocaine.

And that’s before he tries to cover up a fellow officer’s cuckoldry.

Unhappily, Peter Weir somehow felt the need to rewrite the film version to appeal to a broader audience.

For shame.

Black Magic Sanction (The Hollows Book 8) by Kim Harrison.

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