Disqus - Latest Comments for crystallyn

Re: Do Donkeys Know About Spiders? — Some Thoughts About the Impact of AI on Book Publishing

Crystal King — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 11:54:08 -0000

I regularly ask it for my own bio and it makes something up every time...awards I've not won, universities where I've earned my degree, etc. But today it also gave me some names of publications I've supposedly written for. I asked it for proof and it gave me 5 articles I definitely did not write (nor did anyone else with my name) and all the links were broken. I asked it to give me 5 more but rate how accurate it thinks its knowledge of those articles is. Again, all the links were made up, including one on my own website! But it had estimated 100% accuracy. Turns out that often it's way better at fiction than reality!

Re: Sady Doyle on the Man Who Insisted His Wife Was a Malevolent Fairy

Crystal King — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 10:53:26 -0000

Vampires of New England?? Do you mean witches?

Re: How to Stop People from Stealing Your Packages

Crystal King — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 09:25:19 -0000

So, FedEx, UPS and USPS pretty much all ignore delivery instructions 99% of the time, I've found. All of them have instructions to leave packages on my back porch (which is more easily accessible from the street on that side--I'm on a corner). None of them ever do, instead throwing them onto the front porch. Maddening.

Re: Should you get a social media certification?

Crystal King — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 13:14:29 -0000

Just a note that HubSpot's free social media certification will be launching in early July. :-)

Re: 29 words with unexpected spellings

Crystal King — Wed, 23 May 2018 11:51:44 -0000

Hiccough is a less modern spelling of the word and not used primarily. This article insinuates that hiccup is incorrect, when it dates back to the 1700s and is the more acceptable usage today.

Re: Best Proofreading Software for 2018

Crystal King — Sat, 05 May 2018 08:29:43 -0000

You should check out AutoCrit. While it's not going to be a great grammar editor, it will transform a manuscript with everything else it finds. It's made a huge difference for my novels in finding redundancies (phrases, not just words), cliches, dialogue tags, fixing pacing, etc.

Re: Books to Celebrate Italy

Crystal King — Sun, 04 Jun 2017 11:39:36 -0000

I would also add Melodie Winawer's The Scribe of Siena, Margaret George's The Young Nero, Alyssa Palombo's The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence, and then a bit self-serving, I realize, but all about ancient Rome and food, my novel, Feast of Sorrow.

Re: Italy faces EU fine over smog and waste management ✎

Crystal King — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 11:45:24 -0000

This photo is so misleading. Everyday the Campo tears down the market and for about 20-30 minutes there is this mess, then the garbage trucks swoop in and clean it all up. It's probably one of the cleanest areas in the Centro afterward.

Re: Toshiba CB30-A3120 Chromebook

Crystal King — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 19:07:40 -0000

Just a note that 2GB of RAM make it sloooow. Difficult to manage multiple tabs in particular. :( After a year of owning mine I can't do it anymore.

Re: My Secret Shame: Five Fantastic Books I Just Can’t Finish

Crystal King — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 21:13:37 -0000

I love Calvino. His book Invisible Cities is one of my absolute favorite...so incredibly beautiful. That and his Cosmicomics rank on the top of my fave books of all time. And yet, I too could not get through If On a Winter's Night... I keep thinking I will start it over and maybe I'll get into it again. And Infinite Jest...there is just so many other things that I could be doing with my time than trying to slog through that tome.

Re: Taste-Testing the History of the Hamburger | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian

Crystal King — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 19:31:22 -0000

The Vehling translation of Apicius is 66 years old and flawed. For those readers that might be serious about Roman cooking, pick up the Sally Grainger version. It's not inexpensive, but it's worth it. She also has a small cookbook that is worth picking up. Note that the recipe wouldn't have used pistachios, but pine nuts.

I'm assuming that the recipe referred to in this article is one in Apicius chapter two. The ingredients weren't mentioned here but they should have been:

Chopped meat (likely venison, chicken, pork), with fresh bread crumbs soaked in wine (go with a heavy white version...something from the lava crusted hills near Naples or in Sicily would be a good place to start) pepper and garum (use colatura or thai fish sauce). You can also use crushed myrtle or juniper berries, then you shape the meat with pine nuts and pepper inside. You are supposed to wrap them in caul fat before you cook them. I've made these before and they are fantastic, but I suggest leaving the caul fat off as it is complicated and adds more of a funky flavor to it.. Note that the fish sauce was used in EVERYTHING ancient Roman and you can't leave it out. Use sparingly and think of it as a substitute for salt.

Re: Three tourists take a dip in 17th-century Rome fountain

Crystal King — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 15:49:23 -0000

There is a webcam trained on one of the fountains in Piazza Navona and we watched two women wandering around in the fountain at 4AM Rome time this last Saturday night. My bet is that it happens all the time.

Re: This 3D Map Shows How Much You Must Earn to Buy a Home in 27 Major U.S. Metros

Crystal King — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 08:16:07 -0000

How old is is this data? Median housing prices in Boston are around $490K, while across the river in Cambridge it's over $650K. You have to make over six figures, for the most part, to buy a home in the immediate Boston metro area. Granted, if you go out of the city into the burbs the pricing drops nearly in half, so if you are averaging for MA, I get it, but not within the Boston metro. Also, I'm fairly sure that NYC prices are over $1M -- the Google gives many many many articles supporting that. As someone who has been trying to buy a house in the metro area of Boston, I wish that your prices were true, because it sure bites trying to come up with the cashola required to be in the city.

Re: I Got Your Weird Right Here: 100 Wonderful Strange and Unusual Novels

Crystal King — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 19:55:35 -0000

You are my hero today!

Re: I Got Your Weird Right Here: 100 Wonderful Strange and Unusual Novels

Crystal King — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 19:55:01 -0000

I was just coming back to say House of Leaves!!! What an amazing, insane book.

Re: Join Us on April 23 for the BYOB Book Drive!

Crystal King — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 11:53:12 -0000

I'm surprised that you don't have the very excellent The Oddfits by Tiffany Tsao on here.

Re: The Silmarillion Could Make an Excellent Film

Crystal King — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 08:27:29 -0000

This is also super aggressive...they'd have to be making movies simultaneously. Usually there is 2-3 years between movies. Poor Peter Jackson wouldn't be able to see the movie through.

Re: The Silmarillion Could Make an Excellent Film

Crystal King — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 08:25:47 -0000

For those who have struggled with the Silmarillion, try listening to it as an audio book. It was a completely different experience and infinitely easier to understand when told as a grand story vs. a slog through names on the page. I would love to see multiple movies out of the book...there are so many stories within that it would be impossible to do it justice with a single movie or even a trilogy.

Re: Jean-François Piège’s Childhood Cake Recipe

Crystal King — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 06:58:17 -0000

I'm fairly sure that was one of the draws years ago when I began following your blog!

Re: Jean-François Piège’s Childhood Cake Recipe

Crystal King — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 17:09:43 -0000

Ironically, my childhood cake was a chocolate zucchini cake that my mom used to make. We grew zucchini in our garden and we had a LOT of zucchini every summer. I haven't made it in years but I may have to once there is zucchini!

Re: Here’s a Clip From My New Movie!!! (AND, the Premiere Date!!)

Crystal King — Tue, 19 Jan 2016 17:30:53 -0000

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Re: Why Last Week’s FTC Twitter Violation is a Total #GameChanger

Crystal King — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 14:01:27 -0000

What about identifying specifically in the bio that you work for the company?

Re: Blown Away By Chihuly’s Newest Exhibit

Crystal King — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 18:46:39 -0000

There is a similar yellow sculpture in the MFA in Boston and another like the spiraled blue one at the top at the Mohegan Sun Casino in CT. I lived in Seattle in the early 90s and worked at a place that sold Chihuly the containers he used to mix his paints. He used to send an empty cab to pick them up!

Re: Pontormo in Empoli and why nobody bothers going to this kind of exhibition

Crystal King — Tue, 14 Jan 2014 07:09:04 -0000

It would have been in the late 90s early 200s, so quite awhile ago! It is true in all the exhibits and museums I've seen in Italy. There is often so little information that sometimes I've walked away wondering what/who on earth I've just viewed. It's something I've never quite understood. If you don't latch onto the curiosity of the viewer, it will be hard for them to want to invest in the future of art.

Re: Pontormo in Empoli and why nobody bothers going to this kind of exhibition

Crystal King — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 18:41:46 -0000

The first painting shown here (the one not by Pontormo) was at the MFA in Boston in the big Italian painting gallery for several years in the past, possibly on loan? It is so unusual that it's not one easily forgotten--the painter had a hard time painting the breasts and Jesus is looking a little elongated and creepy. So strange to see it here--it's not been at the MFA for a few years and I wondered where it went. I wish I could see this exhibit. It looks fantastic.