@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com
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gwcoffey

@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com

I contain singletudes.

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paninid, to random
@paninid@mastodon.world avatar

is a learned skill.

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@paninid I feel like there’s a valid corollary here: Some people don’t speak with the intent to be understood, they speak with the intent to elicit a response.

Which is to say seeking to understand and not responding can be acts of rebellion.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

But...but that's a female lion...so...

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr I know this is a way out there thing to say but I don’t think a lion eating is an unethical act. So I’m scratching my head at the comparison here.

paninid, to random
@paninid@mastodon.world avatar

People who advocate for “revolution” seem to suffer from that they are rarely bloodless.

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@paninid Very true. And also that the outcomes are as deeply unknown as it gets. Revolution is roulette where the barrel is aimed at the next 100 years.

paninid, to Parenting
@paninid@mastodon.world avatar

It turns out there are a lot more people who have violence in their hearts than you think.

That is the detail I’ll always struggle to rationally explain to my kids.

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@paninid I sometimes have to remind myself that violence meant survival for most hominids for a million years and then like a thousand years ago we started to sort of feel like maybe we shouldn’t.

In fact just the other day I was thinking about how ill-adapted I am to survival in harsh conditions and how well adapted I am to survival in the modern socio-economy and how not all asteroids fall from the sky.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Okay, a little mystery also for today. After the Toxic Club, my
brother and I got a strawberry limeade at a little drive inn, and drove around this Conservation Area, but then we start seeing this fence with these signs, it's like 8 foot tall with lots of the fence totally blacked out, and these signs placed on them that say:

Saline Valley Ranch, No Hunting, No Trespassing

This fence went for miles, and miles had to be incredibly pricey to put in, it reminded me of the fence they'd have at a minimum security prison, but we didn't see cows, horses, crops, nothing but woods and hills and miles and miles of giant fence.

We try to find information about what it is, but there's basically nothing. My husband looks it up on Google Earth, and finds Little Saline Ranch, and I look it up, and it says permanently closed, and even less information is available about that. Google Earth shows lots of wooded land, a lake, and a few open fields, but we couldn't see any buildings or animals, nothing like that.

So, looking up that I find this article about mysterious happenings in the area:

https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/local/2018/10/31/hunting-ghosts-miller-county-other/9408986007

It mentions several people seeing a Bigfoot type cryptid in the area, so obviously the fence is to keep it in. My other guesses involve a government blacksite, as it isn't too far from and airforce base, or a doomsday cult, what do you all think?

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr I saw something like this once years ago and then eventually we found one sign on the fence with one of those radioactive warning icons. And finally after some digging we learned the fence was keeping us out of a contaminated site in the middle of nowhere.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Have you ever met someone who lies all the time, but doesn't seem to realize they are lying?

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr I see you’ve met my father.

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

Remember reading the cereal box in the morning over and over again, day after day.

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@StillIRise1963 I also remember my 8 year old daughter reading the Rice Krispie box and then saying “dad what if Kelloggs owned an orphanage and the cereal box had a coupon to get a child?”

Hmm. Yeah what if Sophia. What if.

dannotdaniel, to random
@dannotdaniel@mastodon.social avatar

if you charge a price for something on Craigslist people treat you with a little bit of respect but if you list it for free they make all kinds of demands

make that make sense

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@dannotdaniel The secret is to say it is on my driveway right now and whoever gets here first and loads it and takes it away with zero involvement from me gets it. Last time I did that a whole pile of bricks was gone in 20 minutes.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

What kind of high-school experience did you have? Were you in a clique? Were you popular, unpopular, the coolest kid in your Homeschool? Did you have a sweet jean jacket with patches, or maybe a leather vest? Were you an evil villain or a Mary Sue?

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr I his my computer magazines behind cooler things so I could read them at school.

paninid, to philosophy
@paninid@mastodon.world avatar

The options of a philosopher-king: or

Human beings exist for the sake of one another: so either teach them or endure them

http://inaniludibrio.com/2024/04/12/the-options-of-a-stoic-philosopher-king-coach-or-suffer/

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@paninid This reminds me of a great story in Jill Lepore's book The Mansion of Happiness where Fred Taylor of Taylorism fame went before a congressional committee to promote his views and the committee chairman wasn't having it.

I read this book more than 10 years ago and his mic drop "…for whose benefit society is organized" is still ringing in my brain.

BrianJopek, to random
@BrianJopek@mastodon.world avatar

One of the funnier things I’ve seen today.

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@ntnsndr @BrianJopek Haha I came here to say "is this a good time to say phones should be banned in school?" but you said it better.

My daughter's school disallowed all phone use except in the courtyard from 7th grade through high school and it seemed so sensible to me.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Okay, so last night I was on a date, and I asked hubs what he was up to at work, and he told me he learned Python, so he could write a program to help people troubleshoot computer problems on their own.

I ask him, "You're creating a program to replace yourself?"

Apparently, just the boring easy stuff he doesn't want to deal with, because he has better ideas about how he wants to use his time at work.

Is this what you smart people do all day?!

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr Sort of. This comic captures the dynamic more precisely:

https://xkcd.com/974/

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

You're at the Frozen Yogurt place, what flavors and toppings do you choose?

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr Vanilla yogurt with fresh berries and sliced almonds. This is the way.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

How To Do A Backflip:

Step 1: Do a backflip.

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr Do a front flip backwards.

quinn, to random
@quinn@social.circl.lu avatar

tech companies can't make social media trash unless the people who want to be on them want them to be trash, and we have made a few outside of the bit techosphere that are also trash, so

guys, we might be the problem.

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@quinn Honestly I think this is unfair. In a sense social media companies are engaged in asymmetric warfare against individual minds. They devote resources to manipulating people into engaging in things they don’t really “want” in much the way a rat in a Skinner box does what the researcher wants it to do.

Ultimately individuals are victims of a vast system of manipulation beyond their control, governments are clueless about it, and bad actors are exploiting it.

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@quinn Well that’s fair if you’re taking about toxicity. I thought you were talking about endless scrolling, endless division, and endless general malaise about “the world”.

But yes I agree if you give people anonymity and engagement they will be jerks to each other.

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@quinn Well I’m not particularly qualified to diagnose toxicity because I’ve never seen any of it directed at me (privilege I know). I read years ago that data shows strict real name policies go a long way (but create other problems). But I’ll definitely defer to you on toxicity problems. My personal beef with modern social media is commodification of the human psyche.

RickiTarr, (edited ) to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

This is probably my worst poll, but I'm curious, for science:

I have/had:

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr I've spent a lot of time thinking about this line from Xochitl Gonzalez' novel Olga Dies Dreaming:

"She told him how they had put all their letters in order, how hearing them out loud, in front of other people, in front of each other, had made them feel: like dolls in a rich kid’s toy chest—occasionally played with, largely neglected, sometimes abused."

But anyway I chose the second option.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Please Social Media Scientists, tell me why smacking booties is so fun?!

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr It’s an evolutionary trait. When early humans first began to walk upright, it became harder to run away from predators. They would sometimes smack each others butts to help hurry everyone along when the lions were after them.

In this way communities who liked engaging in butt smacking had higher survival rates.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Writing Prompt:

Write the saddest sentence you can think of.

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr In the words of John Prine: "We lost Davey in the Korean War, I still don't know what for, don't matter anymore."

gwcoffey, to random
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

My wife sends me these dinosaur comics sometimes to remind me how lucky I am to have her.

gwcoffey, to random
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

I need a neuroscientist to tell me what is going on in the brain when we use the wrong word.

I just called my glasses "my headlights". Sometimes I accidentally call a pillow case a "cookie sheet".

I just feel like something interesting is going on in there to make funny misattributions like this.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Y'all, did you know there's a sex move with genitals in mouth?!

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr I'm blown away by this.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Why do you think so many people are obsessed with murder?

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr @notroot @Jennifer You might like the book “The Anatomy of Violence” by Adrain Raine. It goes deep into this very question and is fascinating, eye-opening, sad, and empathy-inducing.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Something I've noticed a lot lately, is that especially Boomer women, but honestly, women in general, don't seem to ask for what they want or need in a direct way. I notice this a lot with my Mom and her friends. Instead of just asking for what they need directly they tell a story, to ask in a roundabout way. For instance, my Mom needed help this morning, and Instead of just saying, "Hey, I dropped my remote, can you pick it up for me?" She tells a one minute story about what happened, no ask, and eventually I get the point, and then suggest that I come pick it up. Or if one of her friends wants to do something like have a birthday party for a friend, they don't say "We should have a party!" They say, It's Sarah's Birthday coming up, you know she likes surprises, what does everyone think we should do?"

I often wonder if this is why older people think younger women are rude and demanding, because younger people often just ask for what they want and need in a more direct way. But also it's probably just straight up sexism, because men are supposed to make decisions, and women are supposed to make suggestions.

What do you all think? Is this just me? Have you experienced something similar?

gwcoffey,
@gwcoffey@bookstodon.com avatar

@RickiTarr Is this in any way related to how my wife will, like, buy the plane ticket for herself that is $12 cheaper even though it's a TERRIBLE flight, but then an hour later gladly pay the full price of her dad's ticket to the funeral and make sure he has a good flight?

I have to push so hard to get her to take her own comfort and needs seriously.

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