My late best friend and I came up with a bunch of these. “Morrowind in VR” meant “the absurd enthusiasm and dedication of nerds” or an endeavour requiring such. Often said with a shrug when responding to someone surprised at an impressive endeavour. E.g. "oh my god, someone made a 32bit computer inside of Terraria!"

Another one that my medievalist friend came up with when I made her watch this episode of Star Trek was “TV archivists with white gloves”, because it really annoys her to see archivists on TV wearing white gloves when that hasn’t been best practice for years — consensus is that they reduce dexterity and make cracking pages more likely, and that skin oils are way less of a risk (especially if you wash your hands before handling manuscripts, as you should). She speculates that white gloves have become a signifier of expertise, and that’s why they persist. I like this particular phrase as an attempt at Tamarian because it captures aspects of how pop culture understanding takes so long to that it is often straight-up wrong.

If you didn’t tell them what you planned to do, that may be the problem. If you had to ask permission, that isn’t healthy in a relationship. Asking them how they feel about you going and making your decision to go, counting their opinion, is wise but understand that you should be able to go do things with your friends and you shouldn’t have to ask permission.

I think this is a big point, especially if your partner has been cheated on in the past. There’s a big difference between actively hiding a thing and not telling someone just because it didn’t seem relevant or necessary, but manipulators blur that line and it can mean that people who have experienced being cheated on may be hyper vigilant in future relationships.

I was talking to a friend recently about this. They studied medieval English and aren’t especially techy, besides being a Millennial with techy friends; I said that merely knowing and using the term LLM correctly puts their AI knowledge above the vast majority of people (including a decent chunk of people trying to make a quick buck off of AI hype)

This makes me think about people (scientists and non scientists alike) who argue that science is unbiased.

And it’s definitely correct. Before this update, there were, I believe, three designated bathing sites, but even they were too unclean to swim in. Water companies are going to keep dumping sewage in rivers until they’re stopped.

I’m chronically depressed and I have been for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I’m wistful for the sadnesses of yesteryear because it was relatively simpler. The world feels more complex now, and that’s probably largely because my perspective continues to grow as I age. However, in addition to this, there’s also a very introspective complexity — there was an odd liberation in being so low the only thing I wanted was to die. I’m very glad that I have things to live for nowadays, but also, part of me resents it. It makes things messier and it means that when I’m suicidal, it’s not because I want to die, but because I want to live and feel I can’t.

There’s also all the duties that come with being older that mean that even when I’m not that kind of sad, I also can’t really dwell on sadness and really stew like I sometimes want to. It can be cathartic to be a melodramatic arsehole, but often, I can’t justify that because if I don’t do the work needed to keep life ticking on, my “I want to live but I’m sad” might degrade to a “I want to die”.

I don’t use TikTok because I don’t like the heavily algorithmic feed nor do I vibe with videos. However, the ongoing Palestinian genocide has caused me to appreciate TikTok in a way that I never expected because of how it has facilitated the spread of Palestinian stories. I remember seeing one clip of a “nurse” supposedly in Al-Shifa hospital get thoroughly debunked on Tiktok itself [(which was covered widely by mainstream media afterwards)] (https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/17/fact-or-fiction-israel-needs-fake-nurses-to-justify-killing-gaza-babies). I remember being struck by how the debunking included stuff like “her stethoscope and scrubs aren’t even the right colour”, and how this was easily verified because of the sheer mass of footage we had from within Al Shifa hospital. I’ve read that Israel’s hasbara strategy can’t keep up with TikTok and other modern social media, and Israel hates these platforms because of that. I’m still not a fan of TikTok personally, but I’ve certainly had to re-evaluate my stance on it

A while ago, I read an account by an Israel anti-zionist where they reflected on their journey from being raised heavily Zionist, through the cognitive dissonance, to where they are now. Something that’s stuck with me is how she described the dread she felt when she was beginning to recognise the injustices being done unto Palestinians. Her “Oh God, are we the baddies?” moment came with a fear that almost pushed her back into ignorance and Zionism — the fear that if the atrocities committed in the name of Zionism weren’t necessary and justified, as she had been taught, then so many people were justified in hating her and people like her. For a brief flash, she almost doubled down on the zionism in a sort of “well, it’s too late to right the wrongs of the past, and now there really is a group of people who hate us, so now we really are fighting to stay alive”

Hatred and fear are scary things.

Also, fun fact, public lice and head lice are separate species. Head lice can’t survive on pubic hair and vice versa.

I think there’s even more questions that spring forth from this also. Like, it’s not just head hair Vs pubes, but also the soft downy hair on arms or women’s faces. Moles that have hair coming out of them, they’re weird too. And I’d love to know why my toe knuckles have been getting hairier with age.

Thanks for making this comment. I’ve seen too much lately that demonises israelis in a way that feels very “cycle of violence” for lack of a better phrase.

The monk pulls out a gun and points it at the hot dog vendor.

The hot dog vendor exclaims “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I thought you guys were all about inner peace and stuff?”

The monk replies “this is my inner piece”

Oh my gosh, that’s hilarious. It’s a baby shredder. What gets me is imagining a bunch of people in an office figuring out what scale to print out the UN charter so it would fit in the tiny shredder.

Those are some great stories, thanks for sharing. Imagining him coming out and saying hi made me smile

Oh man, I loved Dusa’s interactions. It was nice that being close to Dusa wasn’t framed as being “just” friends, because that would implicitly put friendship as less important than romantic and/or sexual relationships. Like, friendship isn’t a consolation prize, nor is it “rolling to seduce” and failing, but so many games and other media depict it that way

2. She’s trying to practice keeping her cool under pressure, and that’s not effective if you have a lot of safety.

Konsi is precious and I love her.

I was learning python as a wee scientist in training, and my variables were beyond dreadful. I tried naming a list “list” and the interpreter told me I couldn’t, so I opted for “listy”. When I needed to name a new list but listy was taken, I’d often resort to “listyy”.

Scientists who work with computers without having much (if any) targeted training on how to code can write the most horrendous programs.

Oh yeah, what an incredible game. I usually don’t mind spoilers for media, but I was careful to avoid them for this one, because everyone swore down how important it was to go in blind, and now I’ve played it, I completely agree. Sometimes I wish I could erase it from my memory so I could play it for the first time again, but actually, I don’t want that, because then I’d be a person who had never played Outer Wilds. It’s probably the most sublime game I’ve ever played.

And now I’m partaking in a key cultural touchstone amongst Outer Wilds fans: being aggravatingly cryptic when talking about one of my favourite games, what fun.

One of my favourite Yorkshire dialect jokes is how “tin tin tin” can mean the complete sentence “It isn’t in the tin”