Author: Brin

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

larkandkatydid:

In my great-grandfather’s spy memoir we found this summer, he talks at length about how he was able, at the age of 30, to infiltrate the communist party by pretending to be an at-risk homeless teenager (yes, literally a “hello fellow commie teens!” move). He also explains, in great detail, how he was able to do this because he had an unusually youthful, round and baby-ish face….a face which has been passed down through the generations to me.   (There’s also a long, long paragraph where he’s trying to explain to his intended audience and also to himself the overall concept of empathy as if it’s this strange foreign belief system.)

But that means that now, in our family, we justify all our skincare and make-up purchases by claiming they support our spy work, “How will I ever infiltrate the communist party without this $15 bottle of snail serum?”, or, approvingly after applying make-up, “I look ready to infiltrate the communist party!”

Or, specifically, in the context of a text I just got from my mother that said only, “I have to stop at ulta on the way home or I’ll lose my chance to infiltrate the communists”

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #storytime #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

argumate:

squareallworthy:

argumate:

spam email that starts off with “Behold!” is setting a damn high bar for itself

Broke: Starting your spam email with “Behold!”

Woke: Starting your spam email with “Hwaet!”

Muse, tell me the story of a complicated man,
the man who sold aluminium extrusion at an incredible price,

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #advertising

Berkeley: being other people

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

worldlypositions:

Sometimes I enjoy understanding better what it is like to be other people. You can do this somewhat subtly by talking to people for ages about other topics, and making inferences. Lately I’ve been asking more directly, something like, ‘what about your experience do you think other people would be surprised by?’  But that’s hard to answer, because one doesn’t necessarily have things cached in that way, and many of one’s own idiosyncrasies are probably like water to a fish, and it involves imagining other people imagining you.

Another way to learn about such things is to ask a bunch of people about the details of a common experience. For instance, I have enjoyed:

Going to evensong in Oxford with a bunch of people from the office, then later discussing what we thought about when we got bored: 

  • The very old but humorously hateful notes in the song book
  • The possible friction between the church’s commitment to the poor and their lavish church decor
  • The fact that each of the people in the choir is conscious right now and looking back at us, and later will go and collect their children from school and make dinner in their kitchen and go on living their lives forever
  • The skull decorations

Learning about the YouTube genres that different people are into: 

  • How things work, e.g. how cherry plantations are dried
  • People accidentally dying in extreme sports
  • Marriage proposals
  • Movie trailers
  • Giant pimples being popped
  • Video game reviews
  • Planes crashing
  • Obscure dances

Hearing different people’s views of the monkey waiter sculpture in my house’s foyer 

  • Somehow problematic
  • Creepy in a fun way
  • Never noticed it, but it has a nice face
  • Is a novelty object and therefore disturbs the neutrality of the foyer

One thing I take away from this kind of thing is that different people are paying attention to different things about their environment, and thinking about it in different terms, and getting different kicks out of it.

Many of my friends say they think they are pretty legible, so there would not be much surprising to others about their internal life. My guess is that they are thinking their experience is mostly a sort of standard one, with this window of visual experience, and some accurately represented sounds, and some reasonable thoughts about the things going on in their lives, and so on. But I guess that actually the same visual scene looks in some sense very different to different people, because of things like where their attention goes, what abstractions they use to think about it, and what associations and emotional flavor things have for them.

If you want to play this game with me, what do you think about when you are waiting in the grocery line? What YouTube genres do you come back to? What about your experience do you think other people wouldn’t guess?

>>what do you think about when you are waiting in the grocery line?<<

Some common categories (with example details that may or may not match any particular trip, but are definitely plausible and in-character):

Optimal payment methods. *My* loyalty card has *these* offers on it, and *Mom’s* loyalty card has *those* offers on it, and my credit card only gets 0.5% cashback on everything but hers gets 2% on groceries, and she almost has enough loyalty points to turn in for $10 off but I’m nowhere close…okay, I’m going to get in this line with just the items that have offers on my card, and you get in a different line with everything else. Wait, shit, I still have an unused bread card [link], give me, um…$19.05 of stuff-with-no-loyalty-offers for my batch. Yeah, stuff with price-matching on it is fine, though try not to spread it out among multiple flyers more than necessary.

The things on the tabloid covers.

  • Pitying the people with the divorces and terminal illnesses (their sadness now compounded by having to deal with paparazzi).
  • I…guess it’s nice that Random Celebrity I’ve Barely Heard Of is having a baby? Assuming she wants it?
  • Wondering what it would be like to actually be into any of the things in Cosmo. Wondering if even vanilla-ish heterosexuals are actually into the things in Cosmo. Presumably *some* of them must at least *aspire* to be into that, or it wouldn’t sell. What a strange world they live in. I suppose they’d say the same of me.
  • I can at least understand why people might buy the food magazines. I don’t want to Lose 15 Pounds This Fall (lower fat reserves would just leave me more vulnerable to starvation damage the next time I contract a “”48-hour”“ stomach bug and can barely eat for 11 days), but the pumpkin thingy does look tasty.

The song currently on the radio is ending. God, I hope they don’t play anything triggery next; honestly, who thought it was a good idea to force people to listen to music in order to be in a store, and those earmuffs I tried didn’t help a damn thing with this…oh, okay, it’s just “Call Me Maybe”. I can deal with that, even if part of me is weirded out that it’s not “Thus Spoke Carly Rae” [link].

Why don’t they sell single-serving packets of plain M&Ms at the checkout anymore? They make great emergency-backup chocolate for keeping in my bag (the candy coating keeps them contained, so repeatedly melting and resolidifying doesn’t make them stick to the wrapper), and these days it’s so hard to find a replacement packet after I eat the current one. Makes me overly reluctant to resort to eating it. At least the convenience store has started carrying them now, though their batch is nearly expired and still has a bunch left, so I suspect they’re going to stop carrying them soon.

—

>>What YouTube genres do you come back to?<<

I mostly don’t watch videos, though I’ve been watching some Honest Trailers lately.

I guess questionably-legal music would also count. I tend to treat Youtube as a kind of musical library, borrowing songs in order to decide whether I like them enough to buy, or songs I only need once or twice. I haven’t been trying out music much lately, though, and I was never *all* that big on doing so.

—

>>What about your experience do you think other people wouldn’t guess?<<

I seem to have a more limited emotional range, with fewer buckets. There are things that others report as being entire emotions in themselves, like “frustrated” or “horny”, that for me are sub-types of other things (“angry” and “tired”, respectively). And we *react* differently because of this, too: they tend not to snap at people for coming to their attention too soon after stubbing their toe (the target-less anger latching on to whomever’s available), or oversleep when they’re ovulating (which doesn’t actually help; some well-meaning bit of my brain just gets confused, I think).

Tags:

#reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #disordered eating #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #death mention #nsfw text? #food

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

etirabys:

me: [mad at myself for some inadequacy]

the giant: you know that 99% of people don’t meet the standard you’re flagellating yourself for failing

me:

me, biting and then swallowing the bullet: then I hate them too, just as much

the giant: asldkjflskdjf, no,

Tags:

#this is not a feel that I am experiencing at this particular moment but it is definitely a feel that I know #it weirds me out that so many people recommend ways of dealing with self-loathing that #casually assume you loathe *specifically* yourself #and that if you merely judged yourself the same way you judge others you’d be fine #I suppose I understand why people would want to focus their ways-of-dealing-with-self-loathing discussions on #forms of loathing that don’t extend to the interlocutor #but it does make the advice pretty useless to me #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #scrupulosity cw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

teenagecriminalmastermind:

aliceboonousky:

My tablet’s still busted, but I wanted to do somethin cute for Halloween

Click to see what these silly ghosts are up to~

fUCK-

Tags:

#ghost #Halloween #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #the other category tag would be a spoiler #I will compromise by rot13-ing it #(so you can see it now if you really want) #then coming back in a couple days to add the decrypted version for archival purposes #evpxebyyvat #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #rickrolling

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

asexualactivities:

tumblr_inline_pgz5hgzbz71r06h2e_540

It’s Asexual Awareness Week and this is your chance to ask your NSFW questions about asexuality.  In particular, this week, we’re welcoming questions from non-asexual people.  So, if you have a burning question about how or why ace people experience sex, masturbation, kink, or some other sexual activity, this is your chance to ask!  (And, as always, ace people are welcome to ask questions or talk about what’s on their mind, as well!)

The ask box is open and we accept anonymous questions!  Step right up, don’t be shy!

(And here’s what Asexual Activities is all about, if you’re interested.)

Tags:

#signal boost #asexuality #nsfw text?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

the-outlaw-of-broadway:

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Today in chemistry we did a lab where we burned different chemical compounds to see what color flame would be produced and my group mixed all of the compounds together, and this was result

*Edit*

Y’all don’t have to worry, we had teacher permission to mix the compounds that we did

Tags:

#reblogging from OP in order to include the edit #which I suspected might exist and indeed does #(Pillowfort does have a *bit* of a point there) #(can we like) #(have a microblogging site where you can’t force rebloggers to delete or alter the post body) #(but editing/deleting *does* force them to display a bold ”This post has since been [edited/deleted]” notice at the top of your post?) #(that seems like it might be a good compromise) #anyway #pretty things #fire

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

the-memedaddy:

 

another-normal-anomaly:

No I don’t, I have different spatulas that are best for different situations! I have the spatula that’s easy to clean and perfectly flat but slightly too long to be ergonomic and the spatula that’s really ergonomic but slightly bent.

 

existentialterror:

I will fight other spatulas over the perfection of my offset spatula

 

fermatas-theorem:

my spatula is the best at flipping eggs and that’s the only important thing so it’s the best spatula

 

evolution-is-just-a-theorem:

Nothing worth while is produced with spatulas.

 

another-normal-anomaly:

1) I will fight you for the honor of my pasta not-bolognese, and 2) you’re just saying that because you can’t use a spatula to cook rocks.

Tags:

#food mention #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #high context jokes #(although I did mention the context of the rock thing in a previous post) #((I think I’m also in the ”different spatulas for different situations” camp)) #((mostly based on what material the spatula is made out of))