• 6 Posts
  • 33 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I don’t want to get dragged into a petty squabble but it must be said that there’s an enormous gulf between having an in-depth, contextual understanding of something as complex as governance/governmental structures; and simply being able to repeat a few top-line sound bites that encompass the general idea of any given subject taught to kids over a few Thursday afternoons.

    An average kid won’t have any meaningful interest in the majority of subjects they are introduced to at school. They might find it interesting in the moment, but they’re not going to win many followers if asked to debate on anything with such a shallow introduction to a subject.

    My knowledge of Israeli politics is not sufficient to join either side of your disagreement on this thread, though I have heard a couple of conflicting political commentators in agreement that the current state of affairs is not the result of a Netanyahu policy which is in isolation/contrary to the entirety of the rest of Israeli government.

    I just found the comment about high school kids understanding the subject to be a bit triggering and unhelpful.

    It’s nigh on impossible to know what media and/or commentators to believe. It is an unnerving time. The Hezbollah situation isn’t something that has just come out of nowhere, and the way it’s generally communicated by a lot of media outlets is unhelpful in it’s failure to scratch the surface, leaving readers in a state of helpless panic and fear. There’s a lot of very well informed opinion on the subject out there and it wouldn’t take much for journalists to at least link to some of it; be it books, past journalism, and commentators from all sides actually directly involved in the conflict. Instead we mainly get disjointed daily updates fanning the fear among readers who don’t have enough of an understanding.

    We all spend far too much of our spare time as individuals, picking our phones up and doomscrolling. Whether the subject is climate, farming, the economy, health, sustainability, local/national governance, activism, education, neo-liberalism, you name it; rather than reacting to media headlines posted in our echo chambers on a daily basis, proclaiming our despair in disjointed comments sections that get buried every 24 hours: we need to find new ways to engage.

    To truly understand a given situation it can take a lifetime of learning about it, yet we bicker between ourselves like we’re the leading authority on the subject. We have the technology available to us, to unite en masse in support of positive changes but we have no leaders. We’re bombarded with information and we all have our three-month-old, one-sided take on what’s going on. There’s got to be a better way.

    I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that I’m not the only one who works so much of my time, that by the time I’ve eaten, slept and done basic chores; I’ve got maybe 1-2 hours a day after dark, plus Saturdays to “be myself”, or in my case; spend time with my wife. We don’t have kids and if we did, I can’t imagine how they would fit into my existing schedule. I feel worked to the bone, for little/no benefit to my own wellbeing. Being myself for an hour before bed each day is hardly what I would call having the freedom to disengage from the rat race and be productive for my own/my community’s gain.

    It seems obvious to me that the way we live is the problem. There seems to be some very obvious solutions worth trying but we have no hope. We have our half an hour a day to comment online and that’s it.

    And we’re the ones who have an opinion… There are hundreds of millions of people who the system have failed, and have no nourishment to their being at all, be that physical, mental, cultural, spiritual. There are entire blocks of society who just consume without conscience, completely disengaged from anything of merit. How do you tackle that?

    We need to make small positive steps to communicate more thoughtfully, be less selfish; and consider ways that we can cooperate more both online and irl; as we’re not getting any help from our leaders any time soon.







  • How is education in science treated/rewarded in other countries?

    What countries are front runners in actively seeking out and promoting scientific advancement for the benefit of their economy; or whatever it is that other countries seek to improve through scientific advancement?

    Or has the whole world become a close-minded cesspit of greed that only sees education as a way to make a fortune off some of the world’s most capable minds whilst simultaneously crushing their spirit and holding them back?





  • I get the sentences/particular words thing in my head. Have mentioned it to individuals on occasion but it’s only ever been received with dismissal so I thought it was just a personal, unexplainable quirk of mine. You’re the first person I’ve seen referencing it. I can inexplicably become struck by a word or short phrase such as “conjugational recombination” and have it rattle around my head for hours. I can get on with my day but say I’m at work and it’s a day with an odd/previously un-ushered phrase stuck in my head, I can get some tasks done as normal then in between tasks my brain is as if it’s enjoying some rhythmic/phonetic quality of the phrase as it cycles it repeatedly through my consciousness. It can get old very quickly but I tend to have no control over when it leaves me. Doesn’t happen very often thankfully.

    Music has been a massive part of my life since I was about 10. I’m always tapping out a rhythm, or have a restless foot/leg. My wife has called me Thumper after the Bambi character for as long as I remember. I don’t tend to notice if I have a restless leg at work unless I’m emailing then it’s obvious and pretty constant; but at home it’s pretty much all the time. Even if it’s just a toe doing an occasional stretch or whatever. I try not to “BE Thumper” when I notice it but then I find I’ll end up sort of pushing or pulling a foot/leg against something ie my other foot/leg. There’s less noticeable movement with that but definitely still something going on.

    Are these behaviours ever associated with allistic people? I would have thought the phrases thing to have more in common with tourettes given my experience of it is that of it being involuntary.