I binge read, same as I binge watch.
Last year I read about 300-350 books in mobi format (more like a book with pages than EPUB & its eternal scrolling).
I use Calibre (Freeware) to convert formats on eBooks & set mobireader to display 3 pages horizontally at a time.
I can read roughly 100 pages per hour if nobody is bothering me.
I've read prolly somewhere around 2,500-3,000 SF novels over the past decade.

I do have a dead trees book collection, which I've been adding to since the early '70s, & which stands at 6,534 volumes of SCI-FI paperbacks (about half are 1st printings) dating as far back as the 1950s.
(Know anybody that wants to buy the whole collection? Cover prices add up to ~$30,000 but I'd let it go for $10k.)
I mark 1,863 of the paperbacks as read but many of them are also present in the 156 GB of eBooks on my hard drives (124,753 Files, 21,071 Folders - many of them are in multiple formats (7:1+cover photo), which is why the files count is so much higher than the books/folders count) and have also been read even though they aren't listed as such in my Master SF paperback Excel & Access databases.
I have a sneaking suspicion that although my family is extremely long-lived, I'll never get to read them all but I do try to clear dead authors' entire bibliography before moving on to the next - i.e. I've read everything Isaac Asimov ever wrote, etc.

As for the Nazombie flix I listed, I took into account your non-predilection for both WWII & Horror genres but I believe they are really neither - more along the Bruce Campbell Evil Dead campy trilogy genre, intended to be spoofs on both genres, but funny as hell at the same time.
Stretch yourself SparklingCrystal, give 'em at least a stab at letting yourself enjoy a few good laughs.
You might surprise yourself.
I mean, whooda thunk you could combine SF & Westerns (Cowboys & Aliens)?

2¢ always welcome Zee.

Was folding laundry and a thought hit me.
If some type of disaster hit your area and you had to pack one suitcase, besides socks and underwear, (the most asked for items in homeless shelters), and needed I.D.s passport etc., what would you pack?

Amazing what you have done and how far you've come!
I know the mind is extremely powerful, as is the self-healing ability of the body.
It is actually infinite.
I learnt this from Dr Joe Dispenza. Many who have done his work have healed from stage 4 cancer!?! Also from stroke, being (partly) paralysed, MS and whatnot.
I have started his work a few times, but I always lose motivation/inspiration after some 2-3 months. Like with working a 9-5 job as I told before where I get bored within the same timeframe, I also have this with healing work.
I know from what Joe Dispenza says this is the exact time where you have to follow through. If you do, you're there.
Stupid thing is, I just forget. And then think a week later, "Chit, I haven't done anything anymore?!!"

In spite of my limitations I do a lot myself as well in and around the house. Being single, you have no choice, right?
Sometimes I have to get help in though, volunteers as like you I can't afford to get paid-for help in.
And funny enough much of what I do myself works fine, doesn't bother me much physically?
A few years ago I had to put up a new 7m long gutter on the garage. I'd never done anything like that, normally your man does that, hihi.
But I did it, didn't bother my neck/shoulders at all, which was quite unbelievable! But I was so proud of myself that I got it done and that it worked perfectly as well!
I have yet to finish of the gutter on the other side. Half of it is done.

Roofing I wouldn't do. Too heavy for me. I also have an issue with raising my arms up. Anywhere above shoulder height approx. makes my muscles cramp and triggers my neck.
But I have a council house so that kind of thing I don't have to do myself anyways. I just phone them to tell them XYZ is broken and they sent someone over to fix it.

I hope you manage to get or have it done without too much trouble!!

I could get a parking thing for invalids too a few years ago. But for me there's no real added benefit. Yes, parking in town would be easier I guess, but I hardly ever go into town. I'd get a traffic sign on/near my driveway, which I do not want, hihi.
But I'm on welfare as I wasn't working at the time of my accident, not disability benefit (which is substantially higher than welfare).
Since I'm in the welfare system I cannot get permanent exemption from working/applying for jobs. I can only get 1 or 2yr exemption. Last time I got 2 years, which ends this April, meaning I'll again have to go to my manager and convince him I haven't healed and still cannot work. Sigh...
Always stresses me out as when they decide I can work I'm b*ggered.

I still have my dreams and hopes for the future though! I want to be free of that welfare system, be my own independent self, travel, have a wonderful partner.
Give online courses on the masculine & feminine principles, sell paintings and meditations and so on.

For that I'll have to get myself on track again. Spend about a year on getting balance in hormones after becoming post-menopausal. I started HRT last year (hormone replacement therapy). Takes time to get a balance, not there yet. I do hope it will alleviate my issues. If so, then I can begin to do stuff. Maybe. If I have the guts, hihi.

Lucky you, not having to deal with those animals. Hopefully no human cougars either, haha.

I always felt Australians were quite a lot like us western Europeans, not like Americans, which is why it felt so good to be there.
I get the same vibe from Canadians.
I know many Dutch went to Canada. You often can tell by the surnames. Lot of Dutch ancestry there.
Also German and Belgian I think. Which makes you wonder how many have British roots over there.

Maybe time to dig into Canadian history, hihi. But for now have to chase after a cat who's trying to eat food she's not allowed to eat due to allergy, grrr...

AI Overview
China's extensive AI-enabled surveillance network is officially known as "Skynet" (天网, Tiānwǎng), which uses facial recognition and connects surveillance cameras across provinces to monitor public spaces
. Launched around 2015, this system is primarily used by public security organs to identify individuals, crack down on crime, and assist in Operation Sky Net, which apprehends suspected economic fugitives.

Google it.
www.google.com/search?q=china+names+defense+AI+"skynet"

AOL had some of the best chat rooms...lol Get that 30 day free trial disk so each month you had a new screen name...lol

(Gives Zee the "side-eye" & asks if the daily fix was as good for her as it was for me? )

Whew!
In order to avoid another negligent 2¢ worth comment I actually speed-read all 45 pages here.

Kreist, ye ken ye watch too much TV & movies when you can honestly say you've seen almost every series and movie put forth so far & this thread only goes back to 2018.

At 70+ I have the opposite kind of memory problem most older folks suffer from - I can't forget.
I still remember YUGE swaths of the 1st SCI-Fi book I ever read, in the 6th grade (Starman's Son: 2250 AD by Andre Norton).
Forget trying to get me to watch a movie or TV show less than 20-30 years old, I can practically lip-sync the dialogue from end-to-end.
(A wee bit of exaggeration, but not much of one.)

SparklingCrystal, I think I've sussed out what grabs you favorably, so what I'm going to do is toss some stuff at you that might pry you loose a bit more from your "preferred" consumption.
I agree with plenty you do like, though having seen practically anything worth watching produced on 3 continents and some from S.America & Asia too, I find almost all of it tiresome recycling of shows that have already been done (something Hollyweird seems especially hooked on, re-booting movies for the 3rd, 4th, or even 5th time - like Dracula, A Star is Born, etc.)
I ABSOLUTELY agree, "Dracula Untold" was the best version of Bram Stoker's tragedy ever made.

I also agree in general that BBC/UK police procedural shows are far superior to American-made crap.
(Line of Duty, Luther with Idris Elba, DCI Banks, Ripper Street, Unforgotten-has Nikola Walker EVER done less than stellar in ANY role she's inhabited?, Tom Burke's "C.B. Strike", & looking forward to more of D.I. Ray.)
If it's a UK procedural, it's somewhere on my 24TBs of hard-drive storage (7x4TB in a PC tower).

I believe the reason is not better scripts, it's the fact that English/UK/Irish actors tend to walk the boards long before they ever do a TV series & have earned/learned to project "Presence" in their roles - and in general shorter "series" runs of 4-6 episodes per issue, which allows tighter focus on the case at hand & avoids 16 episodes of drift from "fillers" until they get the baddies.

igotthegirth was also correct (5 times) about "Hell on Wheels" being A-1+ fare, particularly in the Westerns/Civil War era genre.
SF doesn't get any better than the "Battlestar Galactica" reboot with Eddy Olmos.
Throw in "Babylon 5" & "Crusade" for good measure.
Straczynski has crafted a 123 eps.+6 movies feast running over 5-years in 2 separate but intertwined series.
A galaxy-&-time-spanning political extravaganza covering millennia of wars & a veritable UN of Aliens.

Horror is something I gather really isn't your cuppa but I believe I can actually change your opinion in a limited fashion.
Eldest & I have taken to watching a number of "Nazombie" flicks (WWII movies with zombi-fied Nazis).
Start with the 3-part series of "Outpost" movies;
•Outpost (2008)
•Outpost: Black Sun (2012)
•Outpost: Rise Of The Spetnaz (2013)
Then move on to the Dead Snow series;
•Dead Snow (2009)
•Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead (2014)
If those five movies don't have you howling with laughter while also actually tense with a bit of dread, you are a lost cause.

Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Iain Glen, James Purefoy, & a host of A-List appearances across the franchise keep it fresh & spice up what would normally be just zombie comic book fare in the "Resident Evil" movie series.

For good measure throw in a small Michael Mann film HE would rather forget but I found to be one of my favorite movies of all time, in ANY genre.
•The Keep (1983)
The Keep is very hard to find but www2.putlocker.digital does have it in 360 & 480p (check the gear wheel for settings).

I also did not "See" (see wot I dun dere?) anyone mention "Black Sails" (8+3x10 eps.)
John Malkovich's 1-off 9 ep. season, "Crossbones", is a nice companion piece to "Black Sails".
Zack McGowan does for 18th century piracy what Anson Mount does for the 19th century transcontinental railroad era ("Hell on Wheels").

Rob Roy is a better Scottish movie than Braveheart, even though the latter stole all the awards.

A particular favorite of mine was the 5-year run of "Person of Interest" starring Jim Caviezel ("Outlander" [2008]) & Michael Emerson ("Lost").
Something about it reminded me a bit of "The Pretender" series which ran 4 seasons in the late '90s - stoic ledes by Weiss & Caviezel I suppose.

"The Man in the High Castle" (4x10 eps.) is a brain stretcher alt-history/multiverse series based on a P.K. Dick novelette that might not really fit you, but it's worth a look-see (see wot I dun dere -AGAIN?)

There's been a ga-jillion Star Wars TV spinoffs but "The Mandalorian" (4x8 eps.) is by far the best of them.
The Book of Boba Fett (7 eps.) is a companion piece prelude but not strictly necessary.

As for a few movies I specialize in uncovering but which few people ever "see" (did it again LOL) - I guarantee they are worth the watch;
•"Quigley Down Under" (Tom Selleck)
•"The Grey Zone" (concentration camp)
•"Rabbit-Proof Fence" (trackers chase abo escapees from a Native resettlement camp across OZ for 1,600 km - true story)

Two unusual detective flicks with Jean Reno ("The Professional" aka: "Léon:The Professional") in the lede.
•"The Crimson Rivers" (FR-2000)
•"Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse" (FR-2004)
There is a 4x8=32 eps. spinoff TV series, "The Crimson Rivers" (2018-2022), but Reno plays no part in it.

My wife had a few favorites as well, though she was inclined to romantic movies & B&W films AND had what we laughingly referred to as "Video Voodoo", whereby every unknown VHS movie she picked out at the rental store was HORRIBLE! (mostly).
She did know good acting, good scripts, & good directors, better than anyone else I've ever met though.

She watched good movies over & over, which for me would be cruel & unusual punishment.
•"The Good Earth" (1937-Paul Muni)
•"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946-returning WWII vets)
•"The Helen Morgan Story" (1957-Paul Newman)
•"Spender in the Grass" (1961-though she detested Warren Batty, she loved this movie & "Bonnie and Clyde" [1967])

She was a bootlegging gangsters aficionado & also cultivated more mental ephemera about that era than anyone else I ever met and which helped me immensely in my research into Organized Crime's reach into the NFL (fully half the Owners are mafia/criminal underworld-adjacent if not outright involved, like the SF DeBartelo family, the NYG Maras & PIT Rooneys) - but I digress.


Finally, I remember you saying something about not reading books.
Is there anyone who doesn't like "The Age of Sail" genre?
For those who do AND hold Sci-Fi to no longer be "low-brow" entertainment, I present to you a pair of authors who combine the both of them with great storytelling;
•David Drake: the Republic of Cinnabar Navy (RCN) series which is currently 13 volumes and won't be more as Drake passed in 2023.
•David Weber: the Honor Harrington universe with 16 main-line books & 28 (& counting) splinter volumes about service in the Royal Manticoran Navy or being allies/enemies with Manticore.

I swear to you, both series will have you itching for more once you let yourself immerse in those worlds & start running a sync-ed movie of the adventures in your mind.
I have already seen the movies, at least how I would direct, cut, & edit them, were I to be tasked with turning them into films.
Oddly enough, I really admired what I thought I knew about Weber from his prodigious 100+ books output, but after watching the horseshight he spouts on his FaceBook account these past couple of years, I find myself in the awkward position of still loving the crimes while simultaneously very much not-loving the criminal.

Sorry if that was a long read but I tried to edit in sufficient breaks to get you through it without ending up with "Lazy Eye" & "Cross-Eyed" afflictions.

You are describing the old Yahoo Chat rooms to a "T".
Instead of scammers they had "booters" - immature little shights who got off on causing others misery.
The saving grace of Yahoo Chat was that room creators had admin/mod powers and could kick out undesirables & keep them banned (thus leading to the common practice of creating dozens of user names).

That sort of thing would go a long way toward cleaning out the hustlers, escorts, & scammers (most of them are obvious, blatant, easily detected, & terrible at the whole go on WazzzApp/Telegrift/Googlyeye Chat/Seignail & "send me money" grift - like this is the grift factory on-line training center or something.)

Admins here lose nothing and have a shight-ton to gain by allowing volunteer moderators to detect, process, & decide the fates of all the unfilled profiles that keep turning up in so-called "matches".

Private chat forums for moderators, where they compare notes over repeat turn-ups in matches, when the "match" part is an obvious crock when they haven't filled out ANY of the de-minimus bio categories even, have no photo or one that is obviously not in accord with what their given age/ethnicity is, or if their profile fill-in looks like it was a copy&paste job from a script so many of them use without even attempting to modify/personalize it.
So says Bob

Scammers? Here? Ooooh Nooooo!!!!!