The Off Topic Topic

[Valmy]

Has there been any cleaned up version of LOTR published yet btw?

I am waiting on the cleaned up version of "Gone With the Wind" myself.

[Barrister]

And I can perfectly undestand changing the ending of The Witches, it is pretty grim if I remember correctly.

That's where the kid is left as a mouse at the end, but he figures is okay since he lives with his grandma and a mouse's three year lifespan is about as long as he figures his grandma will live?

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. I fully get why Hollywood added a good witch to turn him back into a boy.

But I think the original is a little more impactful.

[Josquius]

This random story intruiges me.

https://www.ladbible.com/news/man-made-2000-charging-cold-callers-604003-20230225.amp.html

What if I get one of these numbers, make a fake cv and LinkedIn profile with super in demand skills and encourage lots of recruiters to call....

£££££££

Probably not worth my while but could be a decent earner for those without a job.
Any legal consequences?

[Legbiter]

I am waiting on the cleaned up version of "Gone With the Wind" myself.

Sensitivity reader Quran. 

[celedhring]

Yeah. I fully get why Hollywood added a good witch to turn him back into a boy.

But I think the original is a little more impactful.

Yeah, one of those children books that kinda stayed with me because of how dark the ending was.

Again, though, I don't have as much issue with Hollywood changing stuff - it's an adaptation and understood to be so - as I have with tampering with the original book. You can still have a debate about whether the changes are good or bad, but you're discussing a separate work.

[garbon]

Yeah. I fully get why Hollywood added a good witch to turn him back into a boy.

But I think the original is a little more impactful.

Yeah, one of those children books that kinda stayed with me because of how dark the ending was.

Again, though, I don't have as much issue with Hollywood changing stuff - it's an adaptation and understood to be so - as I have with tampering with the original book. You can still have a debate about whether the changes are good or bad, but you're discussing a separate work.

Why is an adaptation permissible in film but not in text? Is it just a pragmatic one that a film adaptation can never be exactly the same so permitted more leeway?

[celedhring]

Yeah. I fully get why Hollywood added a good witch to turn him back into a boy.

But I think the original is a little more impactful.

Yeah, one of those children books that kinda stayed with me because of how dark the ending was.

Again, though, I don't have as much issue with Hollywood changing stuff - it's an adaptation and understood to be so - as I have with tampering with the original book. You can still have a debate about whether the changes are good or bad, but you're discussing a separate work.

Why is an adaptation permissible in film but not in text? Is it just a pragmatic one that a film adaptation can never be exactly the same so permitted more leeway?

Yes. The idea is that the changes to transfer the medium are so strong, and add so many new artistic dimensions (visual, music, etc...) that they create a new work with new authorship. Legally (in the EU at least), the co-authors of a movie are the director, screenwriter, and soundtrack composer. Dahl remains co-author of the film/TV adaptations of his work because the work of the screenwriters is built upon his books.

My issue with changing the original work without permission of the author, is that you're creating a new version of the work that's not what the author intended, but still presenting it as the original work.

The current solution offered by the publisher of labelling the new editions clearly as such, while making the original still available, is acceptable to me. It's a bit like the abridged versions of classics for language learners.

[Admiral Yi]

Hip new phrase.  "It's been a minute."  Mean long time no see.

[garbon]

Hip new phrase.  "It's been a minute."  Mean long time no see.

Not new.

[Admiral Yi]

New to me. 

[viper37]

Has there been any cleaned up version of LOTR published yet btw?

I am waiting on the cleaned up version of "Gone With the Wind" myself.

That would be a 10 pages book?

[Valmy]

Has there been any cleaned up version of LOTR published yet btw?

I am waiting on the cleaned up version of "Gone With the Wind" myself.

That would be a 10 pages book?

I think it would just say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." And that would be the book.

[Tamas]

I wonder how can I dampen the noise my new espresso maker is making. Not the vibrations on the kitchen surface but the racket it makes inside while making coffee. It's really annoying especially since our kitchen and the neighbour's kitchen share a so-called wall and I remember once hearing them open their microwave door, so I am pretty sure they can hear me make coffee quite possibly from outside their kitchen.

It's a really neat and convenient machine so I don't want to get rid of it, but the noise is bloody awful.

[The Brain]

Interstellar meteor in Finland. No time for caution.

Finland received an unusual visit from outer space

The meteor shower was unusually long and there was something strange about the trajectory of the meteor.

Astronomers have now determined that a space rock seen over Finland last fall came from outside our solar system.


It was on October 23 last year that the night sky over Finland was lit up by a meteor for over five seconds – significantly longer than a normal shooting star.

Jaakko Visuri, analyst at the astronomical association Ursa, is primarily interested in finding meteorites, that is, objects from space that have hit the earth.

But when one of his colleagues started calculating the path of the shooting star, something was not right.

In the end, it turned out to be an object from outside the solar system.

- At that moment, I put the coffee down my throat, says Jaakko Visuri to the association's member magazine Tähdet ja aväjä.

According to Ursa, it is only the third confirmed time that a so-called interstellar object – a celestial body that does not orbit a star – has struck Earth.

During its journey over Finland, the space rock was captured by a series of cameras set up by various enthusiasts within Ursa.

The conclusions, which were confirmed by Spanish astronomers at the University of Barcelona, ��could be drawn thanks to the fact that the meteor was visible in the sky for such a long time.

The object is believed to have weighed approximately one kilogram, had a diameter of less than ten centimeters, and to have been made of stone or some other slightly heavier material.