Missive #264

31. THE SUN OR THE MOON?

There was an argument going on at the coffeehouse, as usual. This time, Nasruddin and his friends were arguing about the sun and the moon.

“Which do you think is more valuable,” Nasruddin asked, “the sun, or the moon?”

“What a stupid question, Nasruddin!” they all shouted at him. “The sun is more valuable by far!”

Nasruddin shook his head. “I disagree.”

“Are you saying the moon is more valuable than the sun? How can that be?” they asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Nasruddin replied. “The moon is more valuable because we need the light more at night when it’s dark.”

This Tale is from “Tiny Tales of Nasruddin” by Laura Gibbs. The book is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. © 2019-2022 Laura Gibbs.

“Slot machines, revamped by evermore compelling digital and video technology, have unseated traditional casino games as the gambling industry’s revenue mainstay. Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll explores the dark side of machine gambling—a solitary, rapid,Natasha Dow Schüll is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her work explores the psychic life of technology with a focus on themes of addiction, anxiety, and affect modulation. This book is written very much in the academic style with parts of it coming from her undergraduate and graduate thesis. There are 97 pages of Notes and References and a lot of academic language; other than that the book is interesting. continuous form of play that has less to do with the competitive thrill of winning than with the pull of “the machine zone,” as gamblers call the trancelike state they enter. Addiction by Design takes readers from industry conventions and casino floors into gamblers’ everyday lives, from the strategic planning of game algorithms to Gamblers Anonymous meetings and regulatory debates over whether addiction to slot machines stems from the consumer, the product, or the interplay between the two. At stake in Schüll’s account of the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance is a blurring of the line between design and experience, profit and loss, control and compulsion.” — Book promo @ Authors NYU website

Just In Time For Election Campaign Season – Volume 1

Joe Biden to Release Volume 1 of ‘JRB’- His 5 Volume Monumental Memoir: 

From his picturesque description of travel down the birth canal, to his selfless volunteering as a young boy to act as the canary in the coal mine in his hometown of Scranton PA. during the great canary shortage of ’49,  Volume 1 ‘The Early Years 1942-52’, and the volumes to follow promise never before told tales of adventure and accidental heroism, colorful characters and revealing peeks behind the scenes in the life of America’s Beloved 46th President. – NPR
Available now for preorder at Amazon Books, or for $10 out of the trunk of Hunter Biden’s car. — Just In Time For Election Campaign by Diogenes Sarcastica™