howfar @howfar@octodon.social
aka @amancalledprak - I like tabletop RPGs, housing law and overthinking genre fiction. #MeFite
@jlward @DaveHiggins I had not! To be fair, while Candle Cove sounds pretty terrifying, I don't think it could have terrified me more than the actual episodes of Doctor Who my parents allowed (encouraged) me to watch from the age of about 4, the novel The Owl Service, or the kids' TV drama The Moondial. Possibly the unbridled oddness of the media aimed at children from about '65 to '85 is part of what makes it such fertile ground for our collective imaginings.
@DaveHiggins I think these cultural distorted/missing memory phenomena are probably revealing of how much of our experience (at least retrospectively) is a jointly constructed artefact. It's quite common to talk of having false memories of things our families tell us we did, but it seems more complex than that. Our retention of 'real' memories is so mediated by and (e.g. in the case of the Flumps) dependent on later contexts that the whole real/false distinction becomes problematic.
@DaveHiggins Haha. Weirdly I don't remember the Flumps animation. Which is odd, because it's seems to have been repeated a lot alongside all the children's classics I do remember (e.g. The Wombles and Paddington). I may have to address this gap in my cultural knowledge!
I was, in fact, thinking of the sickly marshmallow brand. But if I have to vore a stop motion puppet or two on my path to greatness, so be it!
@DaveHiggins There may be something in it. I notice that significant aspects of my philosophical development only really happened during a period when I was working in a job which included a lot of repetitive and dull manual work, rather than during the five years I studied philosophy at university. But I think getting even good qualitative data on that sort of experience is fraught with problems. You'd have to do a long study with detailed interviews. Quantifying it seems almost impossible.
@howfar I suspect they are referring to boredom stemming from incorrect values, i.e. people are so focused on the now of notifications and status updates that they don't know how to live properly.
Or they are trying to suggest that going to church is fun.
@DaveHiggins Makes sense. I suppose that it's a good starting point for the argument that what God is offering isn't just eternal life but and eternal purpose. If it was a poster for something like the Alpha course, I'd have been less surprised by it. I suppose that it's served its purpose, insofar as it has made me think about that perspective.
But I don't know if boredom is really what besets us in this era. Almost the opposite. I wonder what data there are on whether "boredom" has declined.
I am puzzled by the decision to put this up outside a Baptist church, eternal life being typically regarded as something of a selling point. Any suggestions as to a significance that I'm missing?
DID YOU KNOW? History's greatest troll simultaneously gaslit all of the world's major cities in the latter half of the 19th century
For sale
Juice bag
Never squeezed
@jalefkowit Yeah, I guess that I fall into the trap of imagining that there should be some sort of philosophical coherence to these appeals to "free speech", rather than recognising it as pure infantile entitlement.
@CobaltVelvet I'm baffled by some of the attitudes I'm seeing expressed about this stuff. If, at any point, I were to decide that the policies on this instance are more trouble than they're worth, I would be entirely free to walk away. The idea that some random internet stranger has a right to interfere with our freedom of association in the name of their nonexistent right to "free speech" in this private space is just mindboggling.
Thank you for your work!
Heart full of napalm / stomach full of Flumps
@perigee Definitely. I'm a mere sharpening dilettante (I use one of those 'Lansky sharpening system' things, having good reason to have no confidence in my ability to sustain a consistent sharpening angle) but even I find it difficult to resist sharpening everything in sight once I've got myself set up. Cooking is always easier and more satisfying when your knives are really sharp.
I'd be willing to bet that you went ahead and sharpened your knives soon after posting this. It's irresistible.
... We have floors in our living room and dining room especially that we got a hot water upright cleaner to clean, but we'd also like to refresh the original polish, if this is possible and not too scammy. Any thoughts?
@natecull This would fit with the notion that any country that needs to put "Democratic Republic" in its title may not be quite as stably and effectively democratic as the name would seek to suggest.
@emdeesee Much though I enjoy English and its vocabulary, the orthography leaves perhaps a little to be desired...Oh well, can't have it all.
@emdeesee The one that gets me is using 'lead' when I mean 'led', because they would be homophones IF I WERE WRITING ABOUT THE SOFT DENSE METAL WITH THE ATOMIC NUMBER 82.
AND I'M NOT!
@postmodem Given the massive demand for home working (which could make lower paid posts more competitive), productivity benefits and cost savings for employers, it seems bafflingly hard it is to obtain.
A cynic might say that the class interests of our masters depend on controlling our lives and exposing us to psychological stress to keep us vulnerable and supine. Perhaps that's a bit Orwellian, but I don't think it's entirely without foundation.
I had never heard of the plum equivalent of cider, plum jerkum, until today. It sounds like the sort of thing Nanny Ogg would brew in her shed, and not *just* because she'd enjoy the double entendres.
@joshmillard Of course, even if that's the case, the mediation of those neurological phenomena, by culture, into an experience that I articulate to myself is just as interesting a component of the whole thing.
