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"Shower thoughts" and other things to ponder
Hey all, I have a root canal shortly, and I thought I'd distract myself from that stress with some things to ponder.
What are your best topics that you can regularly discuss or debate but have little real life concerns? Someone whose name I forget shared wondering what sort of food/rations aliens would bring with them.
Help me lower my anxiety and/or distract me from my pain. Or just ponder yourself.
EDIT: root canal successful, but I still would love a lighthearted "what could you discuss at Christmas that isn't politics" thread so thanks y'all
I think that cars should different horn tones, including a cute polite one for when people want to go "oops" or "thanks".
Horn tones are the language we have to communicate with one another when we're driving muted by our tinted-glass-and-metal bubbles. And right that language is only that of loudness, aggressiveness, and harshness. It'd be nice to have a richer language.
Similarly, I would appreciate a straight signal, to accompany the turn signals. Something to remove the ambiguity of a car with no signals and confirm that, yes, I have not merely forgotten to signal an impending turn and intend to proceed ahead.
Maybe a hand gesture? We could model the lanes of the road with the fingers on our hand. Thumb would be left pinky would be right. So then raising the central finger would communicate “I’m going straight through! Thank you neighbor!”
GreatJob!
Hehe, like that. I arrived at this idea through my experience as a bicyclist in Amsterdam. I haven't owned a car in years.
Bike rage is a thing, but it's quite uncommon because it's harder (but not impossible) to be rude to another cyclist when one has to look another in the eyes. When I accidentally made an awkward or clumsy maneuver, I'd just yell, "sorry!"
Sometimes people have their children riding on their bikes too. It's especially hard to get mad at a parent when there are children present.
Cycling in Amsterdam feels very... human. I often bumped into friends and acquaintances on my commute: we'd often wave; sometimes we'd pull aside and have a quick chat, maybe agree to grabbing a drink after work or something.
I creeped on a German subreddit to see that they describe flashing headlights as the “light horn”, which I thought was a funny concept.
This reminded me of a story in Japan of people using their hazards as a way to show thanks/appreciation on the road.
I wonder if there’s an alternative method for communicating on the road that don’t need horns since they can be intrusive in quiet settings. Noise pollution adds stress and decreases life expectancy for the city-folk that live around it.
Pulsing the hazards is definitely a thing in Germany,yeah! Usually as a quick thanks, for example if you slowed down to let someone merge in ahead of you on a busy road
I have seen this in the US as well, but mainly from truckers.
It possibly started from the trucker community, because they will do that - and also signal a truck passing them when they're ahead and can merge back in and stuff. But it's fairly spread across the european countries I've driven through :)
I've seen using the hazards this way in parts of Africa as well. I like the concept a lot and did it a lot while driving around Namibia. It's a nice way to unambiguously thank someone whereas flashing headlights might not be in the right direction or, in some places, might be illegal or meant to signal some concern to other motorists (like police activity ahead). That said, in South Africa people sometimes use it when traveling as an informal convoy of vehicles. That confused me the first time I saw it because they were definitely not a funeral procession or something like that and I couldn't figure out what they were thankful for, haha.
In Namibia there are a lot of nice truckers that are very understanding of passenger vehicles due to long-haul trucks having strict speed limitations. For instance, a highway might be marked 100kph or 120kph for cars, but freight vehicles are limited to 80kph, so passing is essential. Most of the highways are also one lane each direction, so truck drivers would signal the vehicle behind them when it was safe to pass in the oncoming lane.
This is also done in Switzerland (and not only in the German part).
I can’t find the source, but Click and Clack from Car Talk once proposed outfitting cars with tails for this purpose.
I do like the idea of a cute tone, but i also think that a perky little tone would get used in the most sarcastic manner immediately
If I can't have a horn that sounds like a "Fuck you" or "up yours" in tone (I don't want words just like it should sound like those phrases) I don't know if I want a "no worries friend" too
I’ve often thought about these kinds of things during my busy commute. There are two things I often wished existed.
This one is not too serious. Some kind of signage to communicate with the driver in front of me to tell them they’re going too slow. I’m on a road with no way to pass the person and they’re doing 40mph on a 50mph road. It’s a common mistake because people don’t know those roads, but it’s still infuriating. Flashing high beams is a dick move to oncoming traffic and the slow driver doesn’t understand it 9/10 times.
Second thing is brake lights that show how hard someone is braking. Like a bar of lights that indicates the rate at which they are slowing down. This would be great when approaching slow traffic or when you’re behind someone that braking often while on a highway.
Kind of similar but I like the use of a left flasher when in the fast lane of the freeway to signify that I want to pass. I've been told it's Autobahn rules but I don't know if that's true or not.
Depending how patient the person behind is... something you'll get high beam flashes :D
I've actually very seldom seen the blinker thing in Germany, where I do most of my driving, but it's accepted practice that if someone fast is coming behind you, you take the next spot in the middle/right lane to let them pass. And it's general practice to just... not be in the left lane unless actively passing. Not everyone does it, but most people do.
Good one. I’ve seen this in France, also.
The "I'm going 190 so I'll leave my blinker on left" is true, but it's not the friendly type that do that.
My dad had a friend who moved from China to LA. The friend would follow the same norms for driving in China in LA and would use the horn as a signaling device to tell people that they were changing lanes, to watch out, that they were passing etc. And he kept getting people giving him the middle finger and couldn't figure out why until a colleague set him straight.
Mark Rober did a video on this seven years ago, but it doesn't feel like it's been that long, jeez.
I keep a list on my phone of funny sounding elf/gnome/creature/character names. When in situations where my brain is idle, or I otherwise want to keep it busy, I will attempt to think of new names for the list.
Context: I used to make up short stories on the spot for my kids when they were really little and needed bedtime stories, and I found the name creation one of the hardest parts to do impromptu. Hence the list was born.
This is only slightly similar,
but I have a hobby of collecting pictures of mobile pet grooming vans. They are almost always a terrible pun related to dogs or pets, and there's usually a cute cartoon dog on them. I don't know how popular these vans are worldwide, but if I'm driving around where I live I usually see a few a week.
Here's a duckduckgo search of some so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.
What a niche hobby....what was your first one and which one is your favorite?
haha, you've unlocked a whole new world for me. Now I'm going to be seeing these everywhere on the highway.
Well...let's get a peek at that list!
OK, here are a few of my personal favorites (in no particular order):
Apologies in advance if any of these accidentally translate to swear words in a different language or are somehow offensive. I mainly come up with them by sounding things out phonetically and picking what sounds good/funny to my ear.
jippity crack-boggler, that's a good list!
What I like best about this list is that a lazy namesmith would just make the two names simple rhymes, but you haven't. "Randall Pando" and "Starbar Jarnifar" and the like are at best near rhymes. It shows attention to your craft.
Definitely using some of these in my D&D games!
Starbar Jarnifar is my favorite. Really good mouth feel. Head canon origin: a corruption of Starboard Jennifer, who always worked the right side of the boat.
A truly silly thought that's entered my head recently: turns out Gotham is in New Jersey. So could Batman potentially have the typical Joisey accent? And that made me think of Jersey Shore, which I don't even know if they speak with that accent because I never watched it, but—
The question to ponder: what would a reality show about superheroes look like?
The Boys but worse
I grew up in Jersey all my life, and I've never actually heard a Joisey accent besides whenever people say it to me when I tell them I'm from Jersey.
Also the Jersey Shore people were from NY, iirc!
Also as a billionaire I feel like Bruce would probably have more of a posh-ish accent or maybe even a bit British cuz he was raised by a British butler?
Oh, he definitely wouldn't have the stereotypical accent given his social circles. From my understanding that's basically unique to the northern area, mainly Newark? And while Gotham does seem like the type of urban area to have it, he'd be from too posh of an area to pick it up. But the point about Alfred's British accent rubbing off on him...
New question: what would an amalgamation of the Joisey accent and British accent sound like??
We could collectively fund a lucky (unlucky) British kid and sponsor him to live in Newark for a couple of years to see!
Bruce definitely wouldn't, but I can see the Joker having a field day with the Joisey accent. No matter where he's from tbh. Harley Quinn already has pretty much that accent (or at least I think she did back when my brother and I watched the animated series)
I think Harley's is a stereotypical Brooklyn accent if I remember correctly right?
Ah that may be -- I'm from the Midwest, so the two sound pretty similar to me and it's possible I misidentified it.
It's Brooklyn + some Yiddish
ah yeah I knew there was an occasional smattering of Yiddish! I guess that should've given me a clue.
Oh please be assured, I only know it because I've read about it. Midwesterners being unfamiliar with coastal accents, unite!
So.... Seanan McGuire's Velveteen Vs. series hits on the reality show some. As a kid, Velma among others compete on TV to join the Junior Super Patriots Inc., West Coast Edition, and then much of their lives circle around the decisions from Marketing and they're often on camera for holiday specials and ads and all sorts of regular shows. Velma can bring stuffed animals and other toys to life and doesn't love the leotard/bunny ears and tail costume as she gets older
It's not really about the reality show, it's definitely more about the corporatization of super heros and super powers and the books were written as a string of short stories with flashbacks to her childhood. Velma is just trying to get to Portland.
It hits on child stardom, what makes a villain a villain, capitalism and all of its associated "what sells" considerations and the like. Heroes get powers from basically every possible reason - the belief of children, exposure to chemicals or rays or insect bites, mutations, dimensional hopping, etc.
Anyway.. I do really want to know so I'm going to go looking for another book.. sorry to just gush about a series but it really is good!
I want Batman to sound like he's an Italian American in Jersey now.
Now I want a superhero with a Pittsburgh accent.
...Okay, another new question: which accent and superhero would sound most ridiculous paired together?
I think Wonder Woman with the Minnesota accent .
Particularly, that this is the regional accent of Themyscira, so all the Amazons are going around "yeah, sure, you betcha".
I also thought about a Minnesota accent! I think it's really the best.
I thought Gotham was Chicago and Metropolis was New York.
Gotham was just filmed in Chicago in Batman Begins, it's never been Chicago otherwise. (It's a nickname for New York City and canonically physically in New Jersey in the comics)
Metropolis is the one that should be in Illinois
Honestly same, glad I'm not alone in thinking Gotham was Chicago! I only found out it's in New Jersey last month. Metropolis is in New York for the record, which feels slightly unfair since it already has NYC.
Yeah it's strange to me, because I could have sworn there was at least one storyline in the Bruce Timm animated DC universe that implied there was some distance between Gotham and Metropolis. But it's been years, so it's also possible I'm conflating one of the two with Flash's Central City.
I think you must be thinking of the time the Batman and Superman animated series had a crossover? IIRC, someone took a plane from Metropolis to Gotham.
Yeah, that sounds right. Continuity error I suppose.
At a dinner party recently somebody asked us, if bread and wine are the literally or figuratively transubstantiated representation of Jesus, physically and conceptually, what food and drink would be that for you? Which I thought was fun.
This made me laugh. Initially I wanted to answer "chocolate and coffee" but if I'm being honest it's really "cheezits and sparkling water." What an excellent question.
haha, I had "cheese, and also still wine" pop into my head. But then I thought that people might assume I smell like cheese and decided this little hypothetical was over.
Cheese is a very good correct answer.
I think mine is Cheese and coke zero
But what type of cheese would you go for?
How can one choose, can I be a cheese platter?
Either a cheddar aged to get the salt crystals in it or a blue. I have a strong flavor and most people like me in small doses.
Judging by my past week in Taiwan I think I'd have a good two in one with boba being the food and the milk tea itself being the drink!
I might be 50% milk tea right now.
So jealous :< food pictures?! I need to go to Taiwan one day
I'll probably put together an album when I get back to the states! A bit of it will definitely be my grandma's cooking though! It's been a lot of rainy days in my dad's hometown so I've been way less motivated to leave the house lol
Which 50%? ;)
At this point I have just milk tea coursing through my veins, nothing else. I am 100% milk tea
[Sunday School answer] also Bread and Wine because of my participation of the Body.
[Silly answer] seafood noodles :D the chalice is hotpot of course.
Coffee and pretzels. Because I run on coffee and pretzels are great.
Or I'll go with gouda cheese because I like that one. Or blue cheese because who doesn't like eating mold.
oh like for your own body/blood?
Yeah! Or I guess getting at a food/drink that captures your ‘essence’
Name a food that doesn't pair well with either chocolate or cheese.
Tofu. :/
Tofu scrambled like eggs goes with cheese plenty well. Or fried tofu with a little dusting of Parm/Romano is great. What makes you think tofu doesn't?
See, in my head vocabulary, tofu is plain white squares. as soon as you do fancy things to it, it's a "soy product" and not tofu. (maybe) the "fu" implies a certain consistency and texture and shape? So yeah, you're right of course, soy products are extremely versatile.
I like to add crispy tofu to a salad and lots of cheeses go well with that.
hey hey hey XD I'm well aware that you can make soy products into every texture but that's straight up cheating.
Fine: soft tofu -- not silken, not doufa/dessert, not firm/medium/old/skin/gluten, and not cooked fancy either. Just soft regular tofu with chocolate or cheese.
incidentally yes slightly crispy tofu has a great texture. I've been experimenting with using marinated + slightly crispen tofu shreds to pad beyond meat, to excellent results.
Haha, I guess I think of that as "raw tofu", which I don't really eat except in miso soup.
I've only had a very small amount of tofu ever... but isn't the basic tofu mostly tasteless? If you were to just make a chocolate syrup and drench the tofu in it, wouldn't it just be a good carrier for the chocolate?
It definitely has a very mild taste that's better suited for savoury flavours.
One could blanch tofu to get rid of the very mild bean taste even more, but it really isn't very ready for sweetness of chocolate. Think of like..... Water and cheese or water and chocolate sans milk + sugar :/
Silken (with egg) or dessert (much more screened for smoothness and with sugar) might be okay with chocolate drizzled or flakes on top.
And as mentioned above, when further processed more, I could very easily imagine a crisp bits version + shaved Romano topping , or a sort of kitsune + cheese even.
I've made vegan chocolate "cheesecake" with tofu and it's delicious.
It's an interesting problem. A very yin/yang one, as I think most would agree cheese and chocolate do not generally pair with each other.
Both of them can be paired with almost any grain.
Cheese goes with most any meat or vegetable, and a huge portion of fruits. I personally feel it does not pair well with citrus fruits like limes and oranges.
However, chocolate does pair well with citrus flavors and most other fruits.
So for unprocessed foods, I think you're probably right.
But for processed foods, I have an easy one: Fish sauce.
There is chocolate cheese that is delicious.
And mascarpone.
And cream cheese goes in cheesecake.
There's so much cheese to work with. It's not the weak link in pairing imo
Oh cheese is the best. Of course, I mostly have cheddar on the brain because I'm eating it right now.
If I could only have chocolate or cheese, I choose cheese every time.
I ate some off the block as part of dinner so yeah I get it.
I just meant cheese and chocolate can pair well!
I'm thinking any sort of Chinese/Thai/Japanese/Korean noodle dish would probably pair poorly with both.
Some curries use very dark chocolate to bring out a very deep flavour. I've made it in the past, and it's tricky to get the proportions right, but it's bloody delicious.
Getting then also the right cheese to have it work with noodles would be difficult though, I wouldn't rule out an obsecure cheese being suitable for it.
Reminds me of mole sauce
I can confirm that taking leftover Chinese food and putting it in Kraft Mac is delicious though.
You'd better not be messing with me, because I'm going to test this assertion. I once made a a grilled andes mint and cheese sandwich just to see how it tasted! (It was terrible)
I'll caveat that this is typically done with General Tsos, Bourbon Chicken, or Boneless spare ribs. Lo mein would probably be OK, but soups probably not. Also that one tripe dish that I had at the buffet would probably be dope.... I'll test that out next time because it didn't occur to me to waste stomach space on the kid's trays.
If you want to try my personal weird love:
Peanut Butter, Cheddar Cheese, Dill Pickle Sandwich. Go light on the PB (single digit millimeters or less), I generally use 2 baby kosher dills sliced vertically.
Have you seen the guy that does "roll for sandwich"? Because it might be up your alley
Is it this guy?
I had not heard of it, and it is indeed right up my alley, thanks! :D
Yes, it is! Recently there was a pickle sandwich that you should definitely go back and find. I will not spoil anything else.
cheese ramen are a whole regular thing by now though arent they? there's even a Samyang Buldak Cheese, and many chains offer cheese ramen as well. Vancouver's Kintaro had/has one but I didn't like it: there was way too much cheese added without heating it further so they formed an oily mat on top. When it's done with more restraint it's an excellent ramen topping.
Izakayas regular do all kinds of things with cheese as well - I remember a fried udon one very fondly from 2010's Guu. Korean cheese noodles like this Kimchi Cheese Udon are fairly common in Vancouver as well, and I'd imagine everywhere by now (?)
@Raspcoffee - actually just standard cheddar / mild gouda / jack are best - the dishes seem to be after the stringy quality and creaminess, without any "scent" of cow / mould.
Cheat code - you'll think I'm crazy, but try stirring a chunk of cream cheese into your hot ramen. It doesn't break and cause oiliness like butter, cream or hard cheeses and it just makes the broth deliciously rich.
Nice 👍 I've also cheated with some borsin "cheese" before as well. Instant creaminess!
Yeah, I'm thinking either a very mild cheese that could accompany the rich curry flavour well while not interfering with the combination with noodles too much, or a very unusual kind of aromatic cheese that I would most likely not be familiar with. I haven't made curry with chocolate for quite some time but still, you'd need a very niche kind of cheese to be both aromatic and compliment it while being nice with the structure of noodles.
I had never seen cheese ramen before, and that cheese udon looks delicious. Consider me corrected! :D
although, i wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those fusion things that horrify actually Japanese / Korean chefs lol hopefully someone living in Japan / Korea can weight in :)
Green apple jolly rancher.... What's next 😏
Poached fish. I don’t see that jiving well with either.
Cheese is carrying that question really hard. There are lots of different cheeses.
(ー_ーゞ
Peanut butter - but that's just me hating PB and Chocolate not a universal opinion
??? How come PB and Chocolate dont work for you?
I don't know, I also don't like warm peanut butter. I think it's one of those weird things you fixate on as a kid after a bad experience and then stick with forever.... And by you I mean me and it's probably partially a sensory thing care of my ADHD.
I don't actually like a lot of stuff in my chocolate and for candy bars I prefer American style (like Hershey's) chocolate not quality or European stuff. Unless it's white chocolate and then give me bougie.
I have no idea why for any of it really.
Interesting, yeah it's probably a neurodivergence thing. My version is that I like eating nuts but I can't seem to chew and swallow them without slightly choking, so pureed and screened is how I prefer nuts. (Yes yes peanuts aren't nuts; my body doesn't care)
Just gotta listen to one's body I guess. Maybe it's a safety thing for you as well cuz PB too sticky or something
And yes delicious quality white chocolate high five!
I like PB itself, just not with chocolate. I'm aware this makes me an outlier, but eh, more Reese's for other people
Meatloaf.
I don't know...sounds like a cheeseburger to me!
In my home meatloaf is almost always paired with mac and cheese. It has been this way since childhood and my wife has since adopted this. So I must reject that meatloaf does not pair well with cheese.
Tripe.
I would argue that it's not good without cheese or chocolate either and therefore doesn't count.
I've had tripe in soup before at a pho place and enjoyed it (despite not growing up eating tripe). The tripe wasn't my favorite part but it tasted good among the other pho stuff and was a fun texture.
That said, if you can add cheese to ramen in a tasty way, you can probably do the same for pho, so that might sneak tripe in the cheese category.
To be fair, I've mostly had tripe in menudo, and that is sometimes served with cheese.
fresh pineapple, literally nothing else tastes good after eating fresh pineapple for a solid 10-20 minutes
Isn’t chocolate dipped pineapple slices a normal thing? I’m not really a pineapple person though so maybe I am misremembering.
haha I love pineapple but I'm not really a chocolate person! To me this sounds terrible, the pineapple does its dissolving-your-tongue thing* and then everything else tastes very sour to me afterwards. If I'm hungry and can't eat for another hour or so, the most effective small snack for me is a bit of pineapple because (a) I love pineapple but also (b) I won't want to eat anything else for at least 30 minutes afterwards
* unclear from a cursory search if it's actually dissolving your tongue but it feels like it!
Pineapple eats you!
https://medium.com/food-101/pineapple-the-food-that-eats-you-back-f38102462f63
You can be sent in a time machine to any historical time and place, no objects can come with you. Where/when could you pick so that your knowledge would make you the most famous and influential, and how would you do it?
It's a good one for discussion because you can pick apart each others' ideas, and it tends to draw in people's niche hobbies and interests.
Interesting, I tend to avoid "going into the past" questions because especially for queer people or POC there's often not a great time to go back to. Even if I was a straight white woman there's only so far back I'd want to go.
Idk if I have an answer. I could pull off investing in Apple or something but not sure about influential.
How about go back in time 2 years from now, win every single lottery jackpot, and use the money to out-lobby hate groups to influence real change from the political side, while also establishing new ways to support people of all identities?
(This definitely side steps the "who would you want to meet" part of the question, though.)
Meeting a world where people got arrested for January 6th might count
Maybe I could do something about the pandemic in 2020 and Jan 6th and become famous enough to do something about the insanity.
Probably not though, and definitely not without doing some research in advance
That's a point I should keep in mind more often. Here's a reformulation: in what year in the past would your knowledge/skills be considered revolutionary?
My favorite tidbit is knitting, though I don't know anything about knitting myself. But it was surprisingly only invented around 1000AD in Europe. Before then they didn't have stretchy fabrics. A single person who knows how to knit could revolutionise textiles and cause fashion styles that never existed in our actual history.
Well if I was super unethical I would go back to the early 1980's and create the game Tetris on an 8-bit computer and make sure I had the perpetual rights to it. Sorry Alexey Pajitnov, your game is a brilliant design but very easy to program.
I'd be afraid of going back in time and trying to affect political events because I assume there would be some unintended side effects. Except maybe the rise of Trump, that isn't working out positively for anyone (whether they know it yet or not) and I'm sure I could like undermine The Apprentice or find a way to make sure that New York holds him accountable for some early crimes.
Travel to probably the industrial revolution (the first one, with textiles/water mills), introduce electricity and you can potentially undermine the benefit of the first steam engine. And given how absolutely filthy the first steam engines were (and the cleanness and efficiency of electric motors), you could potentially prevent fossil fuels from taking off in the first place. Both because electricity is cheaper, and because people wouldn't want the stink when there's a better option.
It would depend a bit on your knowledge (if there's one item I would take with me, it would be a solar-powered Wikipedia reader, because memorising stuff is hard), but as long as you have the basics of electricity, how to make a scalable battery, electrolysis (including electrolyzing iron) and the optimal shape for a wind turbine (if you compare 1980s wind turbines to 2020s wind turbines, the latter are something like 10% of the material simply due to aerodynamics improvements) you can basically jump the entire industry forward 200 years (so 1700 to 1900ish, don't ask about rubber etc plz). Electric trains/rail would be vital too.
Modern renewables have a hard time competing because modern fossil fuel engines have something like 300 years of development and network effects, so the further back you go the more competitive you are, but I wouldn't want to go back before the industrial revolution because the industrial revolution might not have been possible before then - modern banking/trade, developments in shipping and the sort of infrastructure that made the mass importation of cotton from Indian slave plantations, all clearly contributed to the economy of scale that made textile mills profitable. Also, Britain wasn't liable to just be conquered if it gained a sizeable economy in 1700, whereas in e.g. 1200 it probably was.
Although arguably, if you could go back to e.g. the 1450s and 1) produce iron without charcoal (up until coke coal was invented (first used for smelting iron in 1709), producing 1KG of iron required burning ~10KG of wood, which made iron hella expensive), you could set up iron electrolysis and mass-produce iron blanks (bars that blacksmiths bought as raw material), and 2) produce cast steel (not to be confused with cast iron, which is a confusingly-named ultra-brittle steel that's basically useless except for pots/pans), you could produce insanely cheap (for the time) cannons of superior quality to any of the hoop-cannons they had (where the gun barrels were built like a beer-barrel (several planks of
woodiron, with a hoop around them to hold them together) instead of a single cylinder with a hole bored through the middle), and if you could make one then any king would give you basically unlimited money to make more.Selling cannons has two benefits: 1) you're the key to a king's conquering all of Europe making him (and thus you) richer than god, and 2) if the king conquers all of Europe then Europe isn't going to invade and conquer you.
Of course, that's a great theory but how do you get the seed capital with which to build anything? Well, here's my idea: as the location, choose the middle of the king's court so the nobles clearly know you're not just some muggle. This might require some fast talking and historical research prepared.
By the way, forget about making copper - if you really need to, you can mostly just use steel wire initially (because you're trying to make steel anyway) and copper is hard to find geographically and plain not worth it when you can just buy copper. Aluminium wire is a better option, but aluminium is a pain in the ass to produce AFAICT and by the time you're doing that you'd have unlimited hoe heads to sell for copper coin (or maybe axes).
Well, having studied physics if I could be prepared for it there are a few avenues. Inventing the blue LED a bit earlier alone could be very useful for society. Having some programming background too, could be very useful for developing some technical products a few years earlier.
That said, you could argue that humanity is already struggling to cope with too much change. It's also questionable whether I could get my ADHD medication if I go back a few decades in the past. :/
Just gotta go back to the 1800s when everyone was self medicating with cocaine extracts and other stimulants. I've seen arguments that science at that time benefitted greatly from neurodivergent people having access to things like that.
Funny you've said that, I've joked before that you can tell general relativity was developed in a time where people used lots of drugs. Because I can't imagine developing mathematics like that without smoking some serious shit.
They had the real shit back then. Laudanum was a Victorian medicine that was just opium dissolved in grain alcohol.
This is closer to shower/stoner thought than anything to ponder too hard.
But in D&D/Fantasy/Sci-Fi there are a lot of stories about an individual ascending to godhood. Usually through some ritual. But how does that reify in real life?
What I’ve settled on is that the modern ritual of ascension is blood magic. The individuals who have performed it are our billionaire class. So yes in my head canon Musk/Bezos are Vecna.
Well I hate that, but to paraphrase, D&D didn't teach us that monsters were real, we knew they were, they taught us they can be slain. (If only everyone was free on the same night and doesn't cancel last minute)
And the DM is willing to roll over a particularly nasty string of 1's to avoid ruining a whole thing months in the making.
Hey, that's why the villain throws you in jail, or you get a round two in Hell. Dealers choice
Yeah me too. But I'm not sure that there is a better allegory for ascension to godhood in our society other than the decisions made by those who have accumulated the most wealth.
A literal shower thought from this morning:
What if water actually came in the colors that it looks like it has in nature? Like, the colors that lakes and oceans reflect from the sky, or the sedimented browns and reds of rushing streams after rain, or algae-filled pond water, etc. Which colors would be appetizing to drink, or extra relaxing to bathe in?
Blue would be "freshest". Kind of like glacier turquoise would be amazing.
milky the tastiest and also best for onsen soak
green very unappetizing and unappealing for baths because I'd be thinking about algae inside the whole time
Anything Orange Red Yellow Pink Red Black Purple are right out. :/
Oh! What if sparkling water is actually sparkling?
I want to agree, but I've seen Disneyland's water... and NOPE! I've even seen similar (and gorgeous) waters in the Gulf of Mexico (nowhere near Texas/Louisiana though) and along Mexico's western coastline. And all I can think of is a multitude of children's voices singing "it's a small world after all" and wondering why the hell the water looks like that.
Like a deep purple bath would be awesome (bath bombs sort of achieve this)
Arguably water does have a colour that we can't see, in microwave wavelength! So, mmm... What if we could somehow see those colours as well? On one hand, sounds awesome, but perhaps it could also be too much at some point?
The mantis shrimp would have some words with you about this.
A common party discussion in my friend group is playing the “kill, fuck, marry” game with bread, pasta, and rice.
It’s a deceptively simple choice but leads to many passionate disagreements. Maybe better in a party setting, but it’s a difficult decision to commit to.
This is a twist on @UniquelyGeneric's post, but:
Friends of mine and I have a game that keeps us endlessly discussing it.
Chocolate
Bread
Coffee
You only get to keep two. The other is eternally banned.
We've played variations with people who are gluten intolerant or just not into those three things, and you just sub in whatever are your three can't-live-withouts.
I still change my mind on this almost every week
I'll give up coffee for soda and tea. The rest idk about
Polyamory, no murder, and fuck all of them. Life would be so dull without the complete starch spectrum.
I love it. Marry bread, fuck pasta, kill rice. Oddly easy decision.
Are there more wheels than doors in the world? Silly question but it somehow always sparks heated debates.
We have to define wheel first I think. Then door.
Here we go!
Chaotic neutral response: a wheel is anything round that moves. A door is anything not round that moves.
in before the "um, actually"
I know there are round things that move but don't roll and that there are doors that are round and that there are things that move that are neither doors nor wheels.
Chaos over correctness.
Counterpoint -> Windows
Easy: it's a round window, it's a wheel. If it's a square window, it's a door. If it's a̸r̵c̸h̵ s̷̗̾h̸̼́a̶͍͐p̷͚͒ḧ̶̺́e̷͍̿d̵͎̑ t̴͕̱̮̂̈́͝ͅh̶̬͒͑̌͐ḛ̶̭͒̂̓͠ņ̶̭̦͕̗͐̀̉͑ .... <signal lost>
Not per se a shower thought, but some observation that has been interesting to me.
In some parts of the world highways in cities have slowly been partially buried underground. Less noise and pollution, and sometimes some nice beautiful green into place. I've been wondering if it's a trend we'll see continue as technology will improve, the population density of the world will increase, and people want improved living standards.
In scifi you see stuff about flying cars all the time but maybe we'll end up with the opposite.
This could be a sales pitch for Elon's The Boring Company.
"Put your mess underground."
I think we'll see more stuff head under ground, due to us humans scorching the Earth's surface.