glennonymous
Joined 13 years ago
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94
Submissions
34
Member since
Jun 3
Recent submissions
Comment · 2 days ago
Comment · 1 year ago
Indeed. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/by the false azure in the windowpane...
Comment · 2 years ago
102. Eschew advice books.
Comment · 2 years ago
I sent an unsolicited 25 page paper about memes that I wrote, as just some (fairly pretentious!) guy without a college degree, to Professor Dennett, in the early oughts. And he just went ahead and read the thing and gave me very kind feedback on it.
I'm sure he was a busy person, and didn't have any obligation to respond to me, at all. It touched me deeply. What a generous and gracious soul he was.
I mean these words in a non-supernatural way, of course. :-D A toast to Mr. Dennett's wonderful memory.
Comment · 2 years ago
A couple of thoughts: I’m unable to go back with my browser’s ’Back’ key. not being able to revisit an activity reduces the site’s usefulness. Also, I’d recommend adding a feature that lets users add activities.
Comment · 2 years ago
Seems to be more or less impossible to play on my iPhone.
Comment · 3 years ago
There’s an additional factor to this that the “leaving your AirPods in when talking to someone is rude” crowd don’t realize: AirPods are actually very effective hearing aids. (https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/study-airpods-pro-ar...)
This is how I use them. I have moderate hearing impairment and a modest budget, and have been hesitant to plunk down thousands of dollars for decent hearing aids. When I realized the $250 earphones I already had were really good hearing aids, and figured out how to set them up that way, it was life-transforming.
I do try to take a minute to explain to people that my AirPods help me to hear, when I think about it. But if you suffer from stuffy judgments that people who wear AirPods are inconsiderate a-holes, you might want to think twice about that.
Comment · 3 years ago
I think this is a misunderstanding. The EU bans if there is a possible hazard; the US bans based on calculated risk. While it’s possible (but unlikely) there could be cases in which the EU rules are safer, the EU rules also result in harmful, expensive absurdities such as banning GMOs.
Comment · 3 years ago
Am I the only person who hates it when people say “anyways” when they mean “anyway”?
Comment · 3 years ago
Creative people suffer from a lack of neural plasticity? Interesting…
Comment · 3 years ago
For people familiar with Scheper’s work: What are the “three challenges” he refers to in the hero’s journey?
Comment · 3 years ago
I haven’t heard anyone express this before, but when it comes to my death and the deaths of others, I take comfort in the idea of the Block Universe. On the Block Universe concept, time isn’t real in the way we think about it—everything that ever happened or will happen exists in a timeless, eternal block of spacetime. (This video by Sabine Hossenfelder explains it nicely: https://youtu.be/GwzN5YwMzv0.)
If this is true, then our lives are eternal—not in the way envisioned by religious people, but eternal in a very real sense. It’s true that I am finite in time in exactly the same way that I’m finite in space, but just as I don’t lament the fact that my body isn’t infinitely large, I shouldn’t lament the fact that my life doesn’t extend through all of time. (I wouldn’t mind living for a lot longer, but that’s a different matter :-D.)
I realize this conception of immortality will be too abstract to provide any consolation to many people. But ideas of an afterlife or reincarnation are abstract, too. This one at least has the advantage, to my mind, of being plausible.
It’s not that I once was not, then I was, and after I die I will be no more. My life, my presence, this experience—it’s eternal and ever-present.
Comment · 3 years ago
Well, I followed this method and the onions took 3 hours to get to deep brown. This leads me to “Hofstader’s Law of Caramelized Onions:” Onions always take 3 times as long to caramelize as you think they’re going to take, even when you take Hostader’s Law into account.
Comment · 3 years ago
This is the exact opposite of my experience. As a chronically depressed person, my inner voice is pretty much my enemy. I listen to podcasts to drown it out. I mostly listen to podcasts that soothe me, that I have no need to listen to every word that’s said. This works even when I listen to a podcast with hosts’ banter I enjoy on such a low volume I can’t follow what’s being said, at all. I do this quite often, in fact. I listen to podcasts, when I’m not working, probably 75% of the time. I estimate it’s improved my mood by a similar percentage.
I'm always deeply skeptical of the idea that life's meaning is determined by the struggle for survival, and therefore a post-scarcity world will inevitably be an ennui-saturated, meaningless dystopia. It may be hard to imagine what a good life will look like in such a world, but that's a limit of imagination, not an inherent limitation on the possibilities of life in a post-scarcity world.