Deep Thoughts

Small talk

When I don't know how to start a conversation with a stranger, I imagine what an idiot savant might say.

"The square root of 2 is 1.414213562373095 to fifteen decimal places.

Add one and one together and you get two. But if you put two people next to each other, I don't think you get two. You get one and one.

To get two people together I think you need 1.414 of one person with 1.414 of another person. One person has to give 41.4% of himself and the other has to give 41.4% of herself back.

Now the interesting thing is 41.4% and 41.4% is 82.8% altogether - not enough to make one person. But when two people come together as one, something happens to make up that missing 17.8% and I do believe that part is magical."

Royal food taster

What a cushy job. Eating the King's food before he does to check if it's poisoned. And the thing is ... if the king's enemies know he has a food taster, they're not going to poison the food... so the job reduces its own risk.

But what if an assassin is in cahoots with the food taster? And together they poison the food with something that would only kill the king - like in The Princess Bride, when Montoya poisons both drinks but through a lifetime of eating small doses of the poison he has become immune?

Another ploy would be for the taster to swallow a large hunk of coal before eating the poisoned meal so the fatal dose is absorbed into the coal and the taster does not get sick, but the unsuspecting king is done in.

To increase his own chance for survival, a shrewd king would keep a food taster in a secret and a crafty food taster would let his duties become known.


"Re-invent yourself"

Lie to yourself so much that you start to convince other people.


Time travel

I don't realize I am on a journey
But each moment is in motion.
Even when I am still, time is moving.
My destination is fixed.
Time is ticking to the grave
Actions take me there.
How I get there depends on what I do.

Sleep

Imagine sleep as a big strong hairy guy hugging you and you can't fight back.


"Folded up old people"

- "so your spine is... melting?"

"more like crunching into itself---well, that's about what it feels like. Melting is probably closer to reality."

- "ow. is there a way to treat it?"

" nope. I just got it many years earlier than the folded up old people they hide in nursing homes."


Election season

welp, at least the circus show of campaigning is over

back to animal interest stories and shopping tips on the morning news

:rolls eyes: society blows


Mistakes

if i did everything i planned perfectly, as i envisioned it at 16... my life wouldn't be successful... how little of the world does one person know at that age, at any point?? it's *good* that things don't go to plan... because if they did all the time, we would see so little of the world, only what we've already experienced.

"sometimes we make the wrong decisions to get to the right place"

because, the 'life plan' we chart out fails to capture all that is in store for us!

making mistakes is the only way we *can* do more than our little vision of life allows us to!


Loyalty

"I live in a soviet-era apartment which ... was considered luxurious back in those days, but is dreadfully tiny by modern standards"

- "are there spyholes in the walls?"

"probably"

- "do you ever hear coughing at night, and a voice tell you 'you didn't hear nothing. go back to sleep'?"

"lol, I like the idea of KGB officers permanently walled in and still alive - doing their duty for the motherland"