I don’t have a problem. I can quit any time I like. I only swipe recreationally. Every five minutes. Maybe I’m in denial. First stage, right?

update: Auto-correct and I are in a toxic relationship. Swiping just enables it. Tried quitting once. Worst 5 minutes of my life.

update: There’s this 12-step program… Step one was turning off predictive text. Didn’t make it to step two.

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Cake day: May 19th, 2024

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  • The default setting in a horse’s mind is to not allow anything on its back. They will bite and kick you if you try. However, there is a clever way to change that setting, as ancient humans had discovered.

    Horses are different from many other animals, such as zebras. Horses are clearly more malleable. That default setting can be changed if you’re skilled and patient enough. With zebras though, the setting to bite and kick is pretty much hard coded.

    Some animals, such as camels and llamas can also be tamed and even ridden, but they will always know their position in the tier list of life i.e. way above all humans. They will tolerate humans up to a certain point, but once their patience runs out, the unfortunate human in their immediate vicinity will feel it in their skin. These animals are a bit like cats, but 10x more dangerous.





  • I think gender stereotypes don’t serve us well. They set unrealistic expectations, which results in anxiety and sadness if you don’t meet them.

    Men and women have so much in common, even though specific qualities are commonly attributed to one gender. For example, being gentle or rugged are human traits, and they aren’t exclusive to just one gender. Sure, men tend to be more rugged, but men also have a gentle side. Being gentle isn’t feminine IMO. It’s very human to be sensitive or emotional at times.

    Stereotypes may give you an idea of general tendencies of behaviour, but they aren’t exclusive. Even though most women usually aren’t rugged or tough, it doesn’t mean women can’t have those qualities. They absolutely do. Culture is making people hide the human traits that don’t fit a specific stereotype.




  • Other people have already given sensible suggestions, but I’ll mention one group of chemicals that can damage your phone: bases.

    If your phone has aluminium parts, highly concentrated bases will begin to gradually dissolve them. Hopefully nobody was thinking of using dishwasher tablets to make a soap solution for your phone. That’s a bad idea, since the resulting solution has a very high pH-value (base). What about the powder used for washing clothes? Same thing. Even regular hand soap is basic, but it’s nowhere near that extreme.

    Exposure time also matters. If you just wipe the phone with a damp cloth, the time will be very short. If you really want to damage the aluminium parts with hand soap, it’s going to take an absurdly long time to do anything. However, those dishwasher tablets are a different beast.

    Temperature matters too. These kinds of reactions happen faster if you heat up the solution.



  • When I asked this question, I found out about raindrop.io. BTW, in that discussion you’ll find all the people with 500 tabs open. In this new one, you’ll also find lots of people who just close tabs regularly.

    Anyway, randrop is a service where you can dump links and go through them when you feel like it. The idea is, that if you know you won’t be checking a specific tab today, you can just save it in raindrop and cost the tab. I don’t like to have lots of tabs open anyway, but there are some sites I like to save for later. Stuff like vacation planning can produce twenty tabs just like that, and I’ll just throw them all into raindrop.

    Most of them are sorted into logical categories, and I’ll go through them when I remember to. For example, vacation planning will be useful later. When that time comes, I’ll start opening all those links I’ve accumulated over the months.






  • In the age of romanticism, art usually depicted idealized and beautiful things. Then realism emerged, and artists also stared painting poor and ugly people. In social realism, the art was supposed to make you feel a bit uncomfortable. All of that was still clearly art.

    I think art requires an intention. When you paint a picture of a seagull covered in oil, you may want the viewer to feel something about the petrochemical industry. When you take a photo of Chinese children working in a toy factory, you might want your audience to feel what the children are going through.

    When you’re painting using digital tools, you may draw the same line 20 times to get it just right. As an artist, you have a goal in mind, and you will keep pressing undo until each line in the drawing meets your criteria. If you generate a hundred pictures with an AI and pick the one that fits your goals, you’re essentially acting as a curator of art. There’s a goal and an intention behind the selection process. That’s why the line or picture that didn’t get deleted is art.

    What if there’s zero human involvement? If there is no selection process guided by goal or intention, is that still art? Maybe? What if the viewer still feels something when looking at the result. Maybe that could make it art¿ What if you just look at the clouds drifting in the sky, and that makes you feel something. Is that art too? This is where it gets really messy and the categories fall apart.


  • That’s a common issue. People simply enjoy neat boxes and categories, but the world is actually really complex and chaotic, and that’s why these categories are very problematic. While you can create arbitrary categories for everything, these definitions will inevitably be flawed. They’re still useful but far from perfect, with areas of ambiguity and contradictions.

    Consider, for example, where one species ends and another begins. It’s a messy and fuzzy situation, so we simply draw an arbitrary boundary. Similarly, what even constitutes “living”? Draw a line and don’t worry about the details. Yes, it’s indecently hard, because humans really love clear definitions with a burning passion. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t really support that notion.

    The same problem arises in art. Who created this painting? Well, it was primarily the work of Mister A, but he received significant assistance from his apprentices B, C, D and E. It’s complicated. Let’s just draw a line and stop worrying about the specifics.

    What even is art? It’s very messy. Expect uncertainty and contradictions within these fuzzy categories. Yes, but is this slop? Yet another category problem. Same answer.



  • Try to figure out if there’s a pattern. Maybe all the aggression-inducing events have something in common. Maybe that’s an emotion you haven’t processed or even noticed.

    Could be a moment where you feel hurt, ashamed, vulnerable, helpless, hopeless, or whatever. Start by naming that emotion.

    Once you figure that out, you can start processing that emotion and what causes it. Eventually, anger and aggression won’t control you anymore.