Random Thread

[Man in Space]

https://youtu.be/tfqk_LCpKzs?si=cWJd6NY7AGmgGR0q

Yi Scripts

Excellent work. Thank you!

[Raphael]

In news of the random and irrelevant things, while writing on my story, I just wanted to have a character tell a younger character something starting with "Back when I was your age..." and initially mistyped that as "Back when I was my age".

[malloc]

Weird and terrible problem. So last week, I was canvassing and one person panicked because he mistook me for a burglar. He chased me down in his car demanding an explanation but I could hardly give one because I was obviously terrified. I met up with another canvasser who explained the situation and that satisfied him.

Unfortunately my fight or flight response has been stuck on all week, which means I have gotten PTSD and will have another permanent problem.

[WeepingElf]

Weird and terrible problem. So last week, I was canvassing and one person panicked because he mistook me for a burglar. He chased me down in his car demanding an explanation but I could hardly give one because I was obviously terrified. I met up with another canvasser who explained the situation and that satisfied him.

Unfortunately my fight or flight response has been stuck on all week, which means I have gotten PTSD and will have another permanent problem.

Are you sure you have gotten PTSD? It appears to have been just one scary situation, and it is normal to be afflicted by it for a few days. Usually, it wears off. You haven't been in a war or anything like that - that's where people get PTSD.

[linguistcat]

Yeah, while it's awful you had that experience and I'm sure you're very shook up, I wouldn't jump straight to PTSD. But you also don't seem to have the best coping mechanisms for stress generally. It might be good to find techniques for turning off or at least down regulating the fight or flight side of the nervous system.

[bradrn]

Unfortunately my fight or flight response has been stuck on all week, which means I have gotten PTSD and will have another permanent problem.

Echoing the others that what you have is not PTSD. It’s certainly a pretty nasty experience to go through, by all means; and it’s perfectly normal for that to make you a bit jittery, even for a few days. There are strategies that you can use to help calm yourself down by regulating your emotions — this is one of those things which therapists are good at teaching. (Here’s a very simple one: breathe in and out, slowly, ten times.)

(In my own experience: last week I went out with some colleagues to a pub — something very ordinary for most other people — and even though it went fine it left me so totally drained that I was a wreck for the next two days. Stressful events can be even worse.)

It might be good to find techniques for turning off or at least down regulating the fight or flight side of the nervous system.

Seconded, as someone who has gotten a lot of benefit out of learning strategies for this.

[Travis B.]

I echo what the others have said here. That situation certainly sucked, but this is not PTSD. Things like this tend to last for a bit, but get better over time.

[alice]

I echo what the others have said here. That situation certainly sucked, but this is not PTSD. Things like this tend to last for a bit, but get better over time.

I'll add my voice to this too. I've had encounters like this, and they're scary at first but you do recover. Learning not to panic is also useful.

[bradrn]

Learning not to panic is also useful.

And, to re-emphasise this point, it really is something that has to be learnt. (At least for people with minds like ours.)

[rotting bones]

Rough drafts:

Atheism: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... y-as-care/
Economics: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... wn-claims/

[rotting bones]

If anyone's interested in mythology, you might be interested in my new translation too:

Traditional fairytale in verse complete with magical princess: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... %E0%A6%AE/ (Trigger warning: Woman referred to as property?)

The princess has such an old timey upper class accent. lol

It took hours to translate this.

[tlacamazatl]

https://www.youtube.com/live/tfTMpv4SnK ... OcEJo-LTN6

Neography trivia live at 2pm EST!

[Raphael]

Does anyone else think that it's a bit weird, if you think about it, that we usually take boiling and frying food for granted?

I mean, you start out with something that you wouldn't want to eat, or wouldn't even be able to eat. And then, you just put it into very hot water or fat for a while, and add herbs and spices as you like. And then, you end up with something that you can and want to eat. What kind of weird sorcery is that?

[Travis B.]

Does anyone else think that it's a bit weird, if you think about it, that we usually take boiling and frying food for granted?

I mean, you start out with something that you wouldn't want to eat, or wouldn't even be able to eat. And then, you just put it into very hot water or fat for a while, and add herbs and spices as you like. And then, you end up with something that you can and want to eat. What kind of weird sorcery is that?

It's only weird if you regard humans' cooking food, something that humans have done for many millennia, as being weird.

[bradrn]

Does anyone else think that it's a bit weird, if you think about it, that we usually take boiling and frying food for granted?

I mean, you start out with something that you wouldn't want to eat, or wouldn't even be able to eat. And then, you just put it into very hot water or fat for a while, and add herbs and spices as you like. And then, you end up with something that you can and want to eat. What kind of weird sorcery is that?

It's only weird if you regard humans' cooking food, something that humans have done for many millennia, as being weird.

Humans have been doing quite a lot of weird things for many millennia…

[zompist]

I mean, you start out with something that you wouldn't want to eat, or wouldn't even be able to eat. And then, you just put it into very hot water or fat for a while, and add herbs and spices as you like. And then, you end up with something that you can and want to eat. What kind of weird sorcery is that?

It's only weird if you regard humans' cooking food, something that humans have done for many millennia, as being weird.

"Millennia" is technically true, but it's important to put this in perspective, because it is— maybe— the crux of what makes us human.

Fire, and thus cooking, is known to go back 400,000 years.

But about 2 million years ago, hominins changed dramatically. We have 1/3 the gut length chimps have, and 3 times the brain... thus, less room to digest, and yet much higher energy needs.

The way we handle this seem to be with fire. Cooking makes food much easier to digest, so it takes less time and gut length to get the extra nutrients we need for those big brains.

(Cooking may not go back that far, it's uncertain. But some diet change must have facilitated the gut shortening, such as switching to a mostly meat diet.)

(To avoid a red herring: cooking makes nutrients in veggies more accessible too, which is why you can be a vegetarian.)

[sasasha]

Does anyone else think that it's a bit weird, if you think about it, that we usually take boiling and frying food for granted?

I mean, you start out with something that you wouldn't want to eat, or wouldn't even be able to eat. And then, you just put it into very hot water or fat for a while, and add herbs and spices as you like. And then, you end up with something that you can and want to eat. What kind of weird sorcery is that?

It's only weird if you regard humans' cooking food, something that humans have done for many millennia, as being weird.

Humans have been doing quite a lot of weird things for many millennia…

This reminds me of Le crut et le cuit by Lévi-Strauss, which I haven’t read, but overheard a student talking about it in a cafe in Cambridge, and have thought about often since. From the discussion it seemed that the basic tenet was that there is some kind of humanity-defining profundity (“weird sorcery”) to the act of cooking stuff, and engaging in processes that transform matter in general. Or, like, the human experience and man-made environment are like [+COOKED] and everything that doesn’t concern us is like [-COOKED].

I enjoy my impressionistic ideas about books I have never read but they are of course deeply untrustworthy!

the crux of what makes us human

Indeed.

[bradrn]

It's only weird if you regard humans' cooking food, something that humans have done for many millennia, as being weird.

Humans have been doing quite a lot of weird things for many millennia…

This reminds me of Le crut et le cuit by Lévi-Strauss, which I haven’t read, but overheard a student talking about it in a cafe in Cambridge, and have thought about often since. From the discussion it seemed that the basic tenet was that there is some kind of humanity-defining profundity (“weird sorcery”) to the act of cooking stuff, and engaging in processes that transform matter in general. Or, like, the human experience and man-made environment are like [+COOKED] and everything that doesn’t concern us is like [-COOKED].

That idea makes sense to me.

(Also: cru, not crut. Though I had to look up the book to notice that…)

[zompist]

This reminds me of Le crut et le cuit by Lévi-Strauss, which I haven’t read, but overheard a student talking about it in a cafe in Cambridge, and have thought about often since. From the discussion it seemed that the basic tenet was that there is some kind of humanity-defining profundity (“weird sorcery”) to the act of cooking stuff, and engaging in processes that transform matter in general. Or, like, the human experience and man-made environment are like [+COOKED] and everything that doesn’t concern us is like [-COOKED].

That idea makes sense to me.

I've read some Lévi-Strauss but not that one. It sounds interesting, somewhere between structuralism and cognitive linguistics. Curiously French Wikipedia offers a different summary than English. My translation:

The author observes that people who do not cook food have no word meaning 'cooked'. But neither do they have a word meaning 'raw' because the very concept cannot be defined.

....This leads Lévi-Strauss to an important conclusion: to understand reality it is necessary to first abstract from lived experience. This observation may lead to quibbling ("What is reality?") but one can also see that only new experiences allow the development of new paradigms.

This is similar to George Lakoff's discussion of both metaphor and the tactile exploration we do as infants which underlies cognition.

I do wonder what tribes these are that don't cook. Googling a bit I find one paper that flatly declares "No human foragers have been recorded as living without cooking." But I'd have to read the book to see what he meant.

I'm somewhat skeptical of theories that over-emphasize the emic level... to be blunt, I think that what people believe, or say they believe, doesn't have much explanatory power on what they do. The fact that cooking makes food easier to process does not mean that people will be aware of this, or make it a primary binary opposition in their worldviews.

[sasasha]

I do wonder what tribes these are that don't cook. Googling a bit I find one paper that flatly declares "No human foragers have been recorded as living without cooking." But I'd have to read the book to see what he meant.

That is interesting. My impression of Lévi-Strauss is that he is prone to poetic overstatement of his theories. However,

I'm somewhat skeptical of theories that over-emphasize the emic level... to be blunt, I think that what people believe, or say they believe, doesn't have much explanatory power on what they do. The fact that cooking makes food easier to process does not mean that people will be aware of this, or make it a primary binary opposition in their worldviews.

In defense of the idea, there is a simple sensorial difference, accessible to all ‒ raw food is chewier, and sometimes inedible. Cooking also makes it taste different (and in most cases, it’s easy to imagine positive associations towards this being fairly general, at least in the interest of variety). A raw sweet potato is... maybe a weapon?; a barbecued sweet potato, wrapped in leaves to help it caramelise, is a window to heaven.