The Off-Topic and Random Thoughts Thread(Anything Goes!)

[thinkreadwritecode]

I have found that whenever I comment something contrarian (or at least not lockstep with whatever narrative is least offensive) people attack me in a way I don't recall from my early years on the internet, about 20 years ago, when I would get into a lot of arguments with guys on a forum much like this one. Back then we argued, as in actually trying to make arguments and pointing out fallacies and discrepancies with evidence and so on. Nowadays it's as if you slightly brush up against someone's feelings they attack you viciously. Some of this could be greater anonymity with large social media sites, but I suspect some of it has to do with the terminally online person.

I think terminally online people are more rageful than others. This is because in real life one hardly ever debates or argues except with close family. I have almost never had an honest argument with a complete stranger. I've not even had a shouting match. But online I am almost always getting into it with some liberal should I express any non-liberal opinion. The frequency in which one engages in polemics online can be maddening, and I think terminally online people have gone mad. There is no sober debate, there is mostly feelings-based memefare going on where violent shutdowns are the only way to deal with those with opposing opinions. That, and piling on someone.

The less time I spend online the more tranquil life feels. I do not think we are meant to be engaged with people with differing opinions on everything all the time and the internet permits that. Social media condenses it into a small space and then people lose their minds. I believe the terminally online are the most likely to radicalize, or be severely depressed and brain-rotten, not to mention ADHD. This could cause one to seek out the echo chamber as a place of refuge, to gain sanity back in one's feelings.

Just something I noticed, basically: no one engages in discussion or debate, it's attack, attack, attack. It's worsened over the years I think.

 

[God's lonely asperger]

Youtube recommended this and it was right! The amount of skill and creativity that goes into this weird hobby is astonishing...

Speaking of retro games, what's the deal with Billy Mitchell? He's still getting lawsuits to this day yet none of them seem to land.

 

[Thomas More]

I just realized that the rental car I have right now will not let me put it in gear unless I am wearing my seatbelt. I'm used to the car dinging incessantly if I don't buckle up, but this is the first time where I've had a car that won't let you put it in gear unless you buckle up.

I tested it and unbuckled after I was already in gear and driving, and then it can still be driven. However, it still dings continuously if I do that.

I wear my seatbelt anyway, but I hate having the nanny government and car company force me.

 

[stadtaffe]

I just realized that the rental car I have right now will not let me put it in gear unless I am wearing my seatbelt. I'm used to the car dinging incessantly if I don't buckle up, but this is the first time where I've had a car that won't let you put it in gear unless you buckle up.

I tested it and unbuckled after I was already in gear and driving, and then it can still be driven. However, it still dings continuously if I do that.

I wear my seatbelt anyway, but I hate having the nanny government and car company force me.

Actually just in the last few days I was at a petrol station and they had an anti-ding seatbelt plug for sale for €10! Basically a fake buckle. First I ever saw that for sale. I did not buy one as I deliberately drive a 1980s car to avoid excess electronics including the seatbelt alarm. I may have considered one though for someone else's car which I sometimes drive but they would not approve and I don't need to start an argument with them.

Another idea which I saw in Eastern Europe is that you stretch out the seatbelt all the way but do it up behind the seat, out of the way where you also don't have to look at it whilst driving.

Despite not having a seatbelt alarm, at constant speeds much over 50 km/h I usually choose to wear it voluntarily for safety reasons but it depends on my mood and how angry I'm feeling at the government in the moment.

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

I just realized that the rental car I have right now will not let me put it in gear unless I am wearing my seatbelt. I'm used to the car dinging incessantly if I don't buckle up, but this is the first time where I've had a car that won't let you put it in gear unless you buckle up.

I tested it and unbuckled after I was already in gear and driving, and then it can still be driven. However, it still dings continuously if I do that.

I wear my seatbelt anyway, but I hate having the nanny government and car company force me.

My dad just sits on the seat belt to keep it from dinging. I guess the time will come where I'll have to do the same just to get the car to start.

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

I definitely have an inner voice, like a conversation with myself inside my head. However, I think when I read, I scan the words and absorb them without thinking each word inside my head. For one thing, if I see words I don't know how to pronounce, I don't feel the need to try to sound it out. I just see it and recognize it on the page, and keep going. Even with words I can pronounce, I'm really not playing them like an audio book inside my head.

Maybe this is similar to the way non-inner-voice people are all the time?

Edit, I realized sometimes I do play the words inside my head like an audio book. Usually, it's when I am adding in the inflections and accent I imagine being used if you spoke the lines out loud. However, I'm sure I don't do it all the time.

It's hard to say, because of course when I'm reading I don't think about the process of reading in a meta sense. I'm just involved with the content of what I'm reading.

I have an inner voice but I feel that I think slower when I use it. I also feel like a narcissist, as if my life is a movie and I'm narrating my thoughts to the audience. That's what surprises me to hear that many people don't have an inner voice, given how solipsistic they are.

 

[Hannibal]

I thought about making a tobacco lounge thread, but I wasn't sure where to put it.

I recently switched from cigarettes to swedish snus. I've smoked on and off for about 15 years at this point.

Snus is not what I'd call common knowledge in America at all. Apparently the swedes have to comply with their version of the fda and treat the snus as a food product, so they pasteurize it and sun dry it (not sure) and their processing makes it so that it doesn't cause cancer or tooth loss. They studied a quarter million people for 20+ years and found no difference in cancer rates. Just about all of the cancer causing chemicals in the treated tobacco are gone.

Nicotine obviously causes an increase in pancreatic cancer, and since it is a stimulant it also causes heart problems later in life, but as far as I can tell, snus is basically the cleanest and "healthiest" way to imbibe nicotine. Lozenges cause gum depletion and nicotine gum releases mercury from fillings. I guess the patch probably doesn't have many negatives.

I was able to find some in a few gas stations in the midwest where I am at, but I will likely buy it in bulk straight from Sweden in the future, as it is $3.50 dollars a can there and $8.50 here.

Figured I'd put this here for any members who smoke or dip. Vape too I guess, but vaping is gay.

 

[JCSteel]

I've been doing rideshare for over two months now. I've concluded that there are three types of passengers:

1.) Quiet and neutral
2.) Friendly and stimulating
3.) Inconsiderate and oblivious. They don't interact with their drivers but will expose them to things they don't want to hear. They act like they're on a bus or public transportation. They're usually zoomers and don't tip as well.

 

[Hannibal]

I've been doing rideshare for over two months now. I've concluded that there are three types of passengers:

1.) Quiet and neutral
2.) Friendly and stimulating
3.) Inconsiderate and oblivious. They don't interact with their drivers but will expose them to things they don't want to hear. They act like they're on a bus or public transportation. They're usually zoomers and don't tip as well.

This is why I do delivery instead, groceries and food can't talk back.

 

[analyst_green]

 

[cosine]

 

[Maddox]

Yes, this is kind of what it's like in my head as a non-inner-voice person. It's a flow of information and mental connections that are conveying certain meanings to my mind but not in words. Like if I remember that I need to go to the grocery store, at no point are the words "I need to go to the grocery store" or anything similar in my mind. It's more like I have a flash of envisioning and a feeling of necessity followed by calculations of when I can accomplish that.

I think I used to be like that. But for some reason, I now feel the need to mutter to myself things I need to do...like go to the grocery store. Never used to do this before but I now I mutter things to myself from time to time. I think this is something you just do when getting old or you have no one else to talk to.

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

I thought about making a tobacco lounge thread, but I wasn't sure where to put it.

I recently switched from cigarettes to swedish snus. I've smoked on and off for about 15 years at this point.

Snus is not what I'd call common knowledge in America at all. Apparently the swedes have to comply with their version of the fda and treat the snus as a food product, so they pasteurize it and sun dry it (not sure) and their processing makes it so that it doesn't cause cancer or tooth loss. They studied a quarter million people for 20+ years and found no difference in cancer rates. Just about all of the cancer causing chemicals in the treated tobacco are gone.

Nicotine obviously causes an increase in pancreatic cancer, and since it is a stimulant it also causes heart problems later in life, but as far as I can tell, snus is basically the cleanest and "healthiest" way to imbibe nicotine. Lozenges cause gum depletion and nicotine gum releases mercury from fillings. I guess the patch probably doesn't have many negatives.

I was able to find some in a few gas stations in the midwest where I am at, but I will likely buy it in bulk straight from Sweden in the future, as it is $3.50 dollars a can there and $8.50 here.

Figured I'd put this here for any members who smoke or dip. Vape too I guess, but vaping is gay.

I've been considering quitting smoking myself. I smoke both cigarettes and cigars. When I'm socializing or reading, I especially enjoy to smoke. Both of my grandmothers died of emphysema. If that isn't a sign to quit, then I don't know what is.

Since I picked up the habit, I went through periods where I would quit altogether. I once quit for a whole year. I'm beginning to feel that the habit possesses me, not I possessing the habit, and that it might be prudent to quit.

The most efficient way to quit is to quit cold turkey. Stop buying them altogether. When you crave the sensation, focus on something else until the craving subsides. There is no such thing as "weaning off." The "weaning off" period seems to last indefinitely.

 

[analyst_green]

I think about this every time I fall into sin.

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
-Matthew 6:24

I've been considering quitting smoking myself. I smoke both cigarettes and cigars. When I'm socializing or reading, I especially enjoy to smoke. Both of my grandmothers died of emphysema. If that isn't a sign to quit, then I don't know what is.

Since I picked up the habit, I went through periods where I would quit altogether. I once quit for a whole year. I'm beginning to feel that the habit possesses me, not I possessing the habit, and that it might be prudent to quit.

The most efficient way to quit is to quit cold turkey. Stop buying them altogether. When you crave the sensation, focus on something else until the craving subsides. There is no such thing as "weaning off." The "weaning off" period seems to last indefinitely.

As someone who tried the "weaning off" for years and achieving the opposite goal, I can say cold turkey is the only way to quit. The only caveat is I switched to an Iqos first, which may have helped.

You will feel like a new man after you quit. The best part is not feeling like a slave to the addiction, with the subconscious worry of when your next smoke will be constantly at the back of your mind. You know, like that nervous feeling you get when you're on a 12 hour flight and can't light one up.

 

[SkiPro]

Had a fight club/matrix/truman show moment yesterday whilst waiting for a coffee to pour out of a machine at a local cafe.

It all seemed so mundane and unreal that I was sure that I'm living in a simulation/this reality is temporary. It happens frequently.

 

[Thomas More]

Had a fight club/matrix/truman show moment yesterday whilst waiting for a coffee to pour out of a machine at a local cafe.

It all seemed so mundane and unreal that I was sure that I'm living in a simulation/this reality is temporary. It happens frequently.

I get this sometimes too. Things seem surreal. It hardly seems possible that the current moment is reality. You could believe it is a dream, or some kind of holodeck/matrix simulation.

 

[Hannibal]

I've been considering quitting smoking myself. I smoke both cigarettes and cigars. When I'm socializing or reading, I especially enjoy to smoke. Both of my grandmothers died of emphysema. If that isn't a sign to quit, then I don't know what is.

Since I picked up the habit, I went through periods where I would quit altogether. I once quit for a whole year. I'm beginning to feel that the habit possesses me, not I possessing the habit, and that it might be prudent to quit.

The most efficient way to quit is to quit cold turkey. Stop buying them altogether. When you crave the sensation, focus on something else until the craving subsides. There is no such thing as "weaning off." The "weaning off" period seems to last indefinitely.

Correct. I've quit cold turkey in the past for months at a time (not sure if years, never kept track), cutting down does not work. Not for me at least.

I don't ever plan on quitting. I usually get to the point where I have nicotine just to feel normal then quit altogether because I grow tired of the dependence. Then months later I'll have a few drinks and start back up again. You already see where the problem is.

However, for the "cleanest" and least harmful source of nicotine, the medical establishment claims snus is at minimum 95% less harmful and likely 99% less harmful than cigarettes. Take from that what you will, but I am not shocked that pasteurization and sun curing removes carcinogens from tobacco and those results speak for themselves, no increased risk of mortality across the board across 25 and 30 year lobg studies.

As a former pack a day smoker, I can have five or six of the little snus pouches a day and be fine, so there is definitely a cost savings too. When I quit, I'd likely have to quit all chemicals including caffeine and especially alcohol.

 

[Rodion]

In my experience there exists a paradox with quitting smoking: “it’s so hard because it’s so easy” - I was very pleased with this pretentious soundbite

Meaning that the relative mildness of the withdrawal causes relapses to not seem so serious, since you can just quit again in the near future. This cycle lasted years for me.

 

[Callixtus]

I quit smoking cigarettes in January 2023 and just recently tried them again on two occasions and didn't much care for them anymore. I didn't think they were gross or anything, just not as enjoyable as I remember. I suppose I'm at a take-em-or-leave-em point now, which I understand many people can't do. I'm surprised myself that I could. I was initially afraid to try them for fear of falling back in to addiction. I've been smoking quality cigars frequently so perhaps that's why, the cigarettes just aren't as good.

 

[El Dorado]

I wanted to post this in the thread "Your Favorite Hymns" but I can't because it's a Protestant thread.

'Eternal Father, Strong to Save' : the hymn of the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy, and the Royal Canadian Navy, among others.