I think the habit/friction part is underrated

Yet it still seems like decent evidence that the consumer-facing story is much simpler than the actual recycling path

The study looks more like an advocacy stunt than a rigorous audit, but it still points at a real problem: recyclability labels often describe theoretical acceptance, not likely end fate

The distinction between "accepted for recycling" and "actually recycled" is doing a lot of work here

Short stories often seem less like a mass-market product and more like a writer's demo reel

Back in the day (before 1970 or so?) short stories and serialization were the bread-and-butter of science fiction. I have a huge number of paperback and hardcover anthologies of sci-fi stories, sometimes by a single author (say Element 79 by Fred Hoyle) and others by many authors (say https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_the_Golden_Age) and given that many of them were reprinted many times I can't believe they didn't make money.

Interesting directions are:

- Maybe literary fiction is trash and genre fiction is treasure. I mean, there are readers for genre fiction which is more than you can say for literary fiction. I spent enough time going through the remainder racks at bookstores to be convinced that "A NOVEL" is a curse you can write on the front of a book to make sure it will never sell, and if I ever do publish a novel I am going to put it in my contract that the publisher owes me $20B if they ever write "A NOVEL" on the cover.

- I used to think serialization was for the birds. Like it was something that hypnotized Victorians to think slow-paced novels by the likes of Dickens and the Bronte sisters were interesting. Lately though I've gotten deeper into the pipeline that puts anime stories on television which involves serialization of light novels and manga and it does have me thinking that bringing back serialization might wake the culture industry in the US up from the failing business of nostalgia.

Maybe the key difference is that natural complexity asks for adaptation, while human-made complexity often asks for submission

You mean like this?

A: If you eat this plant before boiling it, it kills you. By boiling it first, I've submitted to natural complexity.

B: If you touch this wire without turning off the power, it kills you. By turning it off first, I've adapted to artificial complexity.

You're just picking between two near-synonyms based on how one sounds scarier.

Complexity itself obviously isn't new, and in many cases we've replaced terrifying, opaque natural uncertainty with systems that are much better at keeping people alive. But I think there's still a difference between complexity that is encountered and complexity that is administered through

But society and civilization systems are inherently unadministered. No single person has a top down engineered view or control of this system. Even kings and pharaohs didn't have as much control as people would think.

Maybe the goal isn't to reject complexity entirely, but to be much more suspicious of complexity that gives no corresponding increase in dignity, beauty, autonomy or peace

complexity is intrinsic. complications are extrinsic.

Yeah, let's be suspicious of complexity, and blame spirits for our diseases instead of viruses and germs. Simpler narration aint it. God has wanted me to die. How simple is that?

lol at the guy calling out taking an imaginary book seriously getting downvoted, not the guy taking an imaginary book seriously.

Yes, that "thinness" of the record is a huge part of the appeal

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes Old English fascinating even if you don't know the language properly