I think I see what you’re trying to say, and I don’t necessarily disagree with everything, but based entirely on this one comment (which may not be indicative of how you generally communicate) I have to wonder if the communication issues you see stem at least partially from your own over-articulation of thoughts and use of “fluffy” language.

I think this bit highlights what I’m trying to say best:

are virtually never taught if not en passant and indirectly This statement feels like it’s saying the same proposition three times, but if I dig into it it is saying three things, but in a confusing manner. I think it would have been better served by replacing “if not” with something simpler like “or taught” to more easily connect the first idea with the other two in the reader’s mind. I probably would have replaced it all with “are taught incidentally at best,” which I think captures the meaning you are trying to convey in terms that are easier for anyone to understand.

I don’t say this to try to bring you down. I just find beauty in seeing a concept existing in one’s mind, unbounded by the world, given a vessel structured by the words of language not to constrain or limit that idea, but to focus it into something that can be shared and understood with others. The vast majority of the time I see that vessel be too loose without giving proper shape to the idea it wants to convey. Yours is one of the very few internet comments I see that does the opposite, where it feels forced into a shape that’s too rigid. That makes me want to say something, because the mind that does that is a mind I think could learn from stepping back a little, rather than being told to force itself forward.

This is as much me challenging myself to understand what bugged me about your comment as it is a comment on your comment, and for talking about giving shape to thoughts I don’t think I did a super job of it.

I do think that humans are one of the only creatures capable of overcoming the difficulty in communication between minds because we are one of the only creatures capable of complex language to do that stuff I said earlier. But it is a skill that is difficult and requires a lot of time and effort to learn or teach. I do think communication is highly valued, or at least a lot of frustration espoused about a lack of communication, but modern society does make it difficult to work up the effort and acquire the resources to develop that skill.

I’m glad that you enjoyed it, but listening to the audiobook was one of the most aggravating reading experiences I’ve had. There were cool bits, but every chapter or two my eyes would glaze over for a minute as Wil Wheaton read off a list of things from the 80’s for a paragraph or two, interrupting whatever flow the book had going on at the time to cram ‘memberberries down my throat. I prefer the movie because I can look at the ‘memberberry references without them interrupting the other cool bits.

I enjoyed it for the most part, but the scene that’s always stuck with me is when Antonio Banderas’s character learns to speak the Viking language. Hearing the way he said “I listened” made me want to listen more to see what I could learn.

I’m a big fan of contronyms, words with two opposite meanings. I first learned looking for a word to describe the change in “literally” from meaning, well, the literal meaning of something to also the figurative meaning.

Another good one is dust. You can dust your house to remove dust, but you can also dust a cake with powdered sugar.

I interpreted “old reddit vibes” to be more about there being an actual discourse on posts more than being about the subject matter of the posts. If you look at the comments on reddit, they all just agree with each other because they’re the most popular opinions so they get the most upvotes. The thing I like about here is that I can still read that popular comment, but there are few enough total comments that scrolling down a bit leads to discussions that would have been buried in downvotes there. But since they didn’t define “old reddit vibes” I could be misinterpreting as easily as you!

If you haven’t read it, this blog post greatly increased my appreciation for mechanical watches: https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

This begs the question “why did enough people start accepting that it was valuable?”

I listened to the soundtrack for about 4 years before getting around to watching the movie. Very fun. For how slow the build-up is, Playtime is Over is one of my favorite workout songs, always gets the endorphins running.

Caffeine has a metabolic half life of 6-12 hours. This means that after a 24 hour period, there could be 1/4 of the original caffeine amount you drank in your system. If you drink the same amount of caffeine again at that point, now after a 24 hour period you ‘ll have up to 1/4 of that 1.25 amount in your system. If you consume caffeine daily, this can lead to an accumulation of caffeine that your body adjusts to always being there, becoming the new baseline normal. This would feel fine until you stop, at which point the caffeine your body expects to be there is gone, and it needs to take time readjusting to that absence. That leads to withdrawal symptoms.

I’d like to point out that you have only talked about hope without personal action to support a statement about hope as a whole. A better term for that would be wishful thinking. While I agree that not acting while hoping for change is foolish, I believe acting on hope can drive a person to perform beyond what would normally be achievable.

If the world is truly hopeless, then why would anybody put any effort into saving it? It seems to me that at least some level of hope for a better world or life would be a prerequisite toward making that world or life a reality.

One of the few series that I love for making me want to be a better person, then hate it because that’s hard, then love it all over again because it’s worth it.

UFO, not that that’s a super relevant question if we’re already admitting that our opinions are “just cause.” I think at that point the better question is “if just cause, why is there such a split in opinions?”

I think the reason GIF is so contentious is that if we can there’s a tendency to make acronyms sound like words if possible. FUBAR and SCUBA are pronounced the way they are because we’re trained from words like tuba to see the UBA and use a long U. Something like “oofo” (or “uh-fo” as you would likely argue) for UFO sounds like half a word, hence pronouncing the letters individually. The thing about GIF is that both pronunciations sound like a word, and so both feel valid enough that there can be a split in opinions. Any arguments one way or the other is just trying to justify a gut feeling about which way is “proper.”

What do you call a pirate’s finger stuck to the bottom of a sailing ship by a metal rod through the joint? A Barrr-knuckle!

My rule is that pets are not allowed to outnumber humans in the household.

Humbling? That’s going on in my head. I’m that complicated! Or at least the “hardware” I run on is. I think having a brain that beautifully complex is more empowering than anything! I wonder what new discoveries will stem from this.

That’s not what they’re suggesting. If it was a tight race and candidate A got 13,000 votes while candidate B got 11,000, both candidates would “win.” Their voting power would just be proportional to their votes. In a way, it would be more representative than what you’re saying, because how it works now is that the 11,000 people voting for candidate B wouldn’t have any representation at all.

If I deciphered their words correctly, I think they said they prefer to write while experiencing brain fog-like effects, so you may not be far off.