I’ve been getting into having a pdf of the various manuals for things around the house on my phone. I recently consulted the manuals for my fridge, a new dehumidifier and the lawn mower and it was pretty awesome not having to find and dig out a paper booklet each time. My phone is on me all the time plus I can get rid of the paper copies.
Yes, the first one is goofy but it did the whole “what would an actually average person do with superhero powers” shtick before it was cool, and managed to make it funny and pretty sweet too.
Maybe I should give buckwheat a try, or shredded latex. I’m probably due for a change but lately I haven’t been able to afford any sleep disruption.
Most of mine came from a vendor called Pure Beech that was exclusive to Bed, Bath and Beyond. They are the 100% modal sateen that seems to have been a consumer favorite that doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. I have another set from Bedsure in their 100% bamboo that has a similar feel though.
I use down feather pillows, they are easily customizable but they can go “flat” and hard in the middle of the night. Putting your head down on a freshly fluffed one is utterly sublime, though.
I have fallen in love with bamboo rayon pillowcases, (aka modal, aka tencel, aka lyocell). They can be extremely soft and smooth like silk but are much hardier, so you can wash them like normal laundry.
That’s ok. I like to play music but guitar just isn’t that fun for me either. I have trouble remembering fingering and chords and it’s hard on my squishy delicate nerd fingers. The musical instruments I’ve been able to keep with and practice I did so because I just liked messing with them and making nice sounds. Did you make this post hoping people would encourage you to keep at it? You don’t have to keep at it if it’s not fun, you can sell the guitars to some local aspiring musician. What I would recommend is trying out some other instruments, maybe at a music store. Something drove you to try out guitar, maybe that creative spark just needs a piano, or a glockenspiel, or a zither or something else instead. Just… try before you buy next time.
Piano is way up there, not just because it’s mechanically simple to learn and understand (press button, note plays, always same note in same place) but because there are just massive amounts of resources to learn how to play. When I had more time, I had a lot of fun playing songs on a light up keyboard hooked up to a computer using Synthesia. I would download a song I wanted to learn (eg Moonlight Sonata), and the keys I needed to press would light up, so I would play the song bit by bit, building muscle memory. I was able to use a music sheet just to remind me of what my fingers already knew. Is it the “right way” to learn? Probably not but it’s fun and easy and that’s what I wanted.
We made the mistake of showing our two year old the “got your nose” thing. Now he will sometimes grab our noses, and he will “eat” them, or swap them with his, or throw them away, or make them smell his feet. Each time he thinks of a new thing to do with our “noses” it makes me laugh so I’m a part of the problem.
Yes, I get them as random texts sometimes from a website called Research-Polls. They direct me to some questions about certain ballot measures in the state my phone’s area code is from. I no longer live there but sometimes if the whim strikes me I’ll answer
Not clicked but the most effective advertisement I’ve ever seen was a billboard on a highway from Georgia to Ohio. It was a dark color with obnoxiously bright pink lettering in a huge, bold, sans serif font that just said PEACHES Exit 318 and that was it. I was driving with my mother and we were ready for a snack so we stopped. It was a little farm stand with various produce and we bought a box of picked-that-day, sun ripe Georgia summer peaches and they were one the best goddamn things I’ve ever eaten. We almost turned around just to get more haha.
That’s how I learned the bottom tooth whistle! One of my bottom front teeth was a bit crooked and created a tiny gap at the top, and I learned to whistle through it. When I got my teeth straightened I lost the ability to do the invert whistle and some of my control but I can still do it well enough with the pursed lip method.
Ha! I haven’t heard of that, but maybe I should try to learn it just to know more ways. Not that I’m doing much with the ones I do know at the moment, lol
I can whistle in three different ways. The classic pursed lip whistle, a whistle using just the tip of my tongue and the roof of my mouth, not using my lips at all, and then another using the tops of my bottom teeth. I can make decent bird sounds using my bottom teeth, but I can do pretty much any tune I can think of with the pursed lip method. It has been relevant to my life exactly zero times, except to entertain myself.
When I was in elementary school we would go to the scholastic book fair, and they had a lot of kids’ books that had audiobooks on cassette bundled with them. My parents got me my own player and I’d sit up in my room playing with blocks or dolls or whatever while listening to The Seven Chinese Brothers or Swimmy, that kind of thing. Some thirty years later my husband let me use his Audible account and I rediscovered the joy of listening to books while doing random stuff around the house.
Let’s say for example that before there was space time, outside of the known universe that there was a giant space whale. This space whale ate dark energy and as it passed through its digestive system it created matter. Turns out, this is how the universe started. Is the space whale God? It created all life and the universe so is that all it would take to fit the description? Does it have to be intelligent? How intelligent? Does it have to have heard prayers or be aware of humans? Does it have to have directly created Earth or humanity or can it just have created all matter?
How about if Star Trek is right, and there is a race of incredibly advanced extra dimensional beings with powers indistinguishable from gods? They seem to be all knowing and all powerful and can communicate with us and can even read our minds. Are they gods, or aliens with technology beyond our understanding? What if the aliens were confirmed to have created Earth? Humans even?
Would it still be a god if you could measure it, visit it, observe it? Does a theist’s idea of god have to be something beyond perception? I would argue that the line between a god and a highly advanced alien is in the deliberate ambiguity, and the need to “have faith” that it exists. The moment there is hard evidence of its existence it stops being a god. Anything that can’t exist in the face of any evidence that it does might as well not.
There are probably an infinite amount of possibilities in the unknown, but without any evidence or scientific rigor then any theory people come up with are just daydreams. Being pooped out by a giant space whale is an equally valid idea to there being a god out there, and equally valid to an enormous primordial cow licking the salt from ice to create life. I don’t believe in those stories because I don’t have any reason to. Your saying that my lack of belief in god is emotional is pretty funny to me, perhaps your lack of belief in Superman is emotional rather than rational.
We do, however, have a framework of references regarding the other natural mysteries humans once ascribed to gods having elegant solutions rooted in the hard sciences. We searched the storm clouds and didn’t find Thor. We’ve dug boreholes and didn’t find Hades. We’ve studied the sun and haven’t found Ra. Human history is chock full of gods and “higher powers” to explain the unknown, and as we learned more about the world the less relevant they became. We learned sacrificing goats to a god does not make it rain, and now understand the natural and mundane systems that do. There’s no reason to believe that the creation of matter or “something from nothing” as you put it is any different.
I do identify as an atheist, and I would say it has nothing to do with some sort of faith in non-existence. I know there is a lot more to be found out about the universe, and as our methods of observation and tools improve so will our understanding of how everything fits together and where it all “came” from. What I dont understand is what would a 2000 year old book’s character have to do with anything? Why would the Abrahamic god enter the picture at all? If you can imagine that there’s some ultimate creative force that is responsible for existence, why would it resemble the “God” in the Bible? It could be something like a “white hole”, spewing matter in to the universe as another interesting but ultimately mundane cosmic feature. It certainly wouldn’t give a shit that you exist, or ever hear prayers, or that people are cruel to each other, and all the other stuff people made up and have been telling each other about God. I acknowledge that we don’t and can’t know everything about how the universe works but I don’t get why that has to leave the back door open to believing in some sapient paranormal omniscient presence floating somewhere in space. The Bible is a work of fiction. There are lots of great lessons to be learned in fiction, and it can be a great comfort and an escape, but it was written and made up by people.
Yes, and in my experience it rarely if ever has the “gotcha” moment of victory that one fantasizes about. Either it was something with low stakes and the response is just “oh okay”, or it’s something more emotionally charged and the opposing side will deflect, change the subject, pretend that you’re agreeing with them or that they believed what was correct the whole time. It never seems to matter.
Lol this is like saying I don’t want Gandalf to exist because I don’t like Gandalf
I love PG Tips as well for a go-to grocery store black tea, as well as all of Celestial Seasonings hibiscus blends. I used to get tea from Adagio and even made a couple of custom blends but I moved to an area with a decent tea shop and local events that host smaller tea sellers so I try to get loose leaf from them when I get the opportunity.