5-14-2026 Daily Thread

RANDOM THOUGHT: I really like the underrated 1999 thriller film The Ninth Gate starring Johnny Depp, which is set in the world of antique book dealers. However, I re-watched it the other day, and I do have one major problem with the movie: Pretty much everyone is always smoking. I know most of the action takes place in Europe, and I know most Europeans tend to smoke more than we do (especially back in the ’90s), but in real life, these guys would never smoke around the books. Hell, when I was in grad school at the University of Glasgow, whenever we went to the “Special Collections” section of the library to look at old books like Shakespeare’s First Folio or a 1611 King James Bible, we had to go into this special room and empty our pockets and wear gloves the whole time. And yet I’m supposed to believe that a bunch of professional antique book dealers are just casually smoking around these centuries-old tomes? I still like the movie, though. That’s all I have to say. Rant over.