is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

adzolotl:

mark-gently:

shlevy:

oligopsonoia:

quick, random poll: can you imagine smells? (I cannot, or at least my attempts to right now are failing, and I also can’t recall ever specifically doing so)

No! This is disturbing why didn’t I know this?

i can!

(i have no memory/record regarding whether i could do that before i worked at Bath & Body Works)

I can, but not very well. Taste is much easier.

I guess? I don’t know how I’d go about creating new imaginary scents, but I can copy scents I remember. Not all that well, but my visual imagination is also towards the low-detail end.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #survey #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

adzolotl:

deusvulture:

diffractor:

Feeling I’d be interested in seeing if other people have:

It’s this sort of burned-out, kind of icky, fatigue/restlessness that shows up after excessive amounts of tv, video games, or internet. It is an “I have squandered the day” feeling, but physical instead of mental. I’m not talking about normal internet usage, I’m talking about things like “I spent the last five hours on Cracked”.

Does anyone else get this?

Yup. That is the worst.

Yeah, it’s a very distinctive feeling.

*nod* Like the psychological equivalent of eating too many potato chips.

Tags:

#uplifting stories are chicken soup for the soul #TV Tropes are potato chips for the soul #reply via reblog #food mention #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

funereal-disease:

Something I’ve been thinking about today: no amount of declaring a joke “not funny” for political reasons will make it actually cease to be funny. 

Humor is a really primal thing. You can have the best, most thoughtful politics in the world and still find your funny bone tickled by horribly offensive shit. That doesn’t make you problematic. It makes you a human being with human neurology, which means what trips your laugh wire is pretty damn arbitrary and often not within your control.

Have you ever tried telling someone who’s losing it at an inappropriate time to shut up and stop laughing? It doesn’t work. That’s the human brain for you. You don’t have to enlighten yourself out of basic physical responses. 

 

fierceawakening:

This is exactly why the whole SJ emphasis on “stop finding *ist jokes funny!” baffled me even when I was a feminist.

I get that SOMETIMES a person’s sense of humor can reveal that they are bigoted, but I’m baffled by the assumption we can tell that about most people by what they find funny.

 

funereal-disease:

Yeah. Personally, I don’t mind any joke as long as I’m sure it’s a joke. Offensive jokes with an undertone of “haha but actually” make me terribly uncomfortable, but jokes I’m positive are jokes are fine. Context really matters. 

 

wirehead-wannabe:

I never got the whole “people are never kidding when they joke about [thing],” either. Like, do people who make 9-11 jokes secretly support terrorism?

 

ilzolende:

People who make 9-11 jokes probably do think taking terrorism-increasing risks is more acceptable and terrorism is less of a major problem than people who don’t make said jokes.

…I find “stop being amused by that!” to be perfectly intuitive. It’s…basic conditioning, isn’t it? If a stimulus (a bigoted joke) is routinely followed by a punishment (exposure to Discourse), one soon ceases to feel positive emotions toward the stimulus. My visceral reaction to someone telling a bigoted joke is something like “you fool, you’ve doomed us all! shit, I’d better get out of here before the enforcers arrive”.

(This means that “don’t be around people who laugh at bigoted jokes if you can avoid it” also makes sense. If they haven’t even been trained out of laughing at forbidden jokes, what else haven’t they been trained out of? (And what training might they have received instead?) If you don’t know what culture someone is from, you’re going to have a much harder time predicting their actions, and it’s often best to avoid people when you don’t know what will set them off.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #this is not the first time Skye has made a post #that seems to rely on an underlying assumption #that people’s emotional ranges are much richer and more complex and more resilient than mine actually are #mostly I find reading funereal-disease reassuring but occasionally it makes me wonder if I’m incomplete #*sigh* #*shrug*

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

sinesalvatorem:

ilzolende:

funereal-disease:

lenyberry:

funereal-disease:

Is “identifying foreign words by phoneme cluster” a thing that many/most people have trouble with? It’s something I’ve been instinctively able to do for as long as I can remember, but quite a few people have told me lately what an uncanny ability it is.

I’ve studied only a couple of foreign languages, and both of them were Romance-based. I pick up languages and grammatical rules very quickly, though. Even when I don’t understand the language being used, I can almost always pick out which language it is, or at least which language family.

This comes so naturally to me that I’ve never thought of it as weird, but recently people have been downright awed that I can, say, pick out the Thai dishes from the Vietnamese ones on a pan-Asian menu. Even though Thai and Vietnamese have totally different phonemic structures! It’s not that hard! People are often frequently baffled when I identify someone’s ethnic extraction by their surname, which, like – I dunno, all I can say is it’s not that hard!

I swear this isn’t me humblebragging – I am legitimately confused that this does not seem to be a common thing.

I too do the thing. I always figured most people’s lack of ability to do the thing was primarily related to most people’s disinterest in learning even the tiniest bit of foreign languages unless the language in question is going to be directly useful to them in a way they can quantify. But also I’m hyperlexic so, maybe that’s a factor too.

In my case people have more frequently expressed surprise at my ability to pronounce surnames, but that’s directly tied to recognizing their derivation – when you know what language a name derives from, and have a vague idea of the pronunciation rules of that language, it’s generally not too hard to at least come really close to correct pronunciation of the name.

Hyperlexia nation checking in! @ozymandias271 is the only other hyperlexic I know off the top of my head; do they also do the thing?

Same re: pronunciation. Weirdly enough, though, that often leads to me pronouncing it incorrectly, or at least what the person in question considers incorrectly. French names are very common where I live, but most of them have been Anglicized to the point where the original pronunciation becomes wrong.

I’m hyperlexic and okay but not great at this? (I can’t distinguish Swedish and Norwegian, and I can tell the difference between Korean and {Chinese, Japanese} but I can’t tell Chinese and Japanese apart, etc.)

I am pretty good at doing the thing, because I pick up linguistics rules really easily. (My project for the past two days has been teaching myself the grammar of Classical Sanskrit (hence the Bhagavad-Gita blogging), which I expect to take about a week to get mostly-down. I’m not planning to memorise Panini’s entire generative grammar, though.)

However, I am really awful at remembering vocabulary, which is why I’m monolingual. Give me the words, and I’ll successfully make sentences in half a dozen languages. If I’m allowed to make the sentences really simple, I could probably do two dozen languages. However, expecting me to remember any of those words the next day is a lost cause.

Despite hyperlexia, I’m not all that good at distinguishing languages by phoneme usage.

I’m a lot better at picking up vocabulary than grammar. I mentioned “read[ing] okay Packaging French, but don’t expect me to write it” recently: when presented with an everyday French sentence of the sort one might see on a sign or a bag of food, there’s a fair chance I’ll be able to work out the gist of it. If you ask me what the French word for [insert thing here] is, a significant-though-still-fairly-small amount of the time I will be able to answer. (As long as I am allowed to submit my answer in writing.) I cannot predict the grammatical structure of a sentence that isn’t currently staring me in the face, and I might not recognise it in a sentence that is currently staring me in the face.

Ingredient lists, which have almost no grammar and consist mostly or entirely of terms that any Canadian who doesn’t grow all their own food would be naturally exposed to†, are easiest. I am frequently able to read entire French ingredient lists without any guessing at all.

(One time, I actually understood the French side of the package better than the English.

Me, in grocery store: *looks at chocolate bar*

Me: “Chocolate with marzipan”. What is marzipan, anyway?

Me: *reads French side* “Chocolate with almond paste”. Oh.)

†Though I can’t promise how much attention other people pay.

Tags:

#combine me and Alison and you get someone who almost knows what they’re doing #language #reply via reblog #food mention #our home and cherished land

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

icecreamsandwichcomics:

Maybe the infernal core of the sun will do the trick.

Tags:

#food #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #comic #kind of a followup to the previous post #(I *like* salt but it almost never occurs to me to add more salt to food) #(when people recommend adding more salt to something I usually do find it tastes better afterward) #(but–with the exception of popcorn where I’m successfully trained to consider it–I don’t think of it unprompted) #(ground peppercorn *can* be good–on French fries especially–but I seem to like it in a more limited number of contexts than most people) #anyway hat tip to daja-the-hypnokitten #nothing against your conversation #but it seemed weird to reblog a conversation and then only address the OP

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

vessel-haver:

cyborgbutterflies:

buzzfeeds:

every time i share a bed w someone i realise that this is what married life is gonna be like and suddenly im happy with staying single for the rest of my life

There’s actually some important differences. Sharing a bed with a spouse often involves a lot more cuddling and also sex with someone you are comfortable with and love.

Like, I am happily married and enjoy sharing the bed (though it is problematic in some ways, it not being enjoyable is not one of them, despite the bed being small). I enjoy it entirely because I like the person I am sharing it with. It doesn’t make much sense to compare sharing the bed with a stranger to that, since strangers tend to make people a lot more uncomfortable than spouses do.

Who you do the thing with makes almost all of the difference.

I would guess that married couples also don’t have to scrupulously avoid physical contact while sleeping? Also two of my relatives just put two beds right next to each other.

…wait, who said anything about strangers and scrupulous avoidance of physical contact? When I was nodding along with OP, I was thinking of sharing a bed with my parents and later my brother. (Especially my parents, because I was in the middle between them, which meant no matter which way I turned I had somebody’s breath or sweat in my face.) Nightlights that were too bright, body heat that was too warm, people waking each other up on their way to the bathroom, and the snoring. Oh god, the snoring. We can’t stay in a one-room hotel because I can’t sleep in the same room as my mother, let alone the same bed. Even to this day, when I am down the hall with a humidifier/white-noise-machine running, occasionally she’s still too loud.

(Did you know it’s possible to routinely take less than two hours to get to sleep? Ten-year-old me did not know that. (Ten-year-old me actually fought sleeping separately, because better the devil you know.) AFAICT, kid!me’s insomnia was not an internal issue, but entirely due to ill-suited sleeping environment.)

…yeah, I really like sleeping alone.

Tags:

#yes I have tried earplugs on those fortunately-now-rare occasions when I must share a bedroom with my mother #turns out earplugs give me nightmares #specifically false-awakening nightmares in which I remove the earplugs and find my ears are still clogged #(given that I was prone to clogged ears as a kid) #(and was always scared that one day I might get them in both ears simultaneously and be nearly deaf for ~3 weeks) #(*and* ear clogs *were* often triggered by plugging my ears) #(I suppose it’s really not surprising that my subconscious takes earplugs badly) #reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

lizardywizard:

Saying this because I literally haven’t heard anyone else do so, and because I really needed to hear it personally. And yeah, it’s less useful now, but I was scared to say it right when it happened, and so –

If you have low empathy, or alexithymia, or flat emotions/affect, or you just don’t emotionally respond strongly or at all for any reason – whether you’re diagnosed with anything or not, whether you see it as a medical condition or not – it’s okay to not have emotions about the recent shooting, or any other event.

If you have emotions about things personal to you but you don’t emotionally respond to external tragedies, it’s okay.

If you feel callous because you just want to post about your special interest or your fandom and can’t get emotionally worked up about the shooting, it’s okay.

If you feel frustrated and alienated because everyone else is showing strong emotion and other people’s emotional displays distress you or make you uncomfortable, it’s okay.

I know some people in these categories don’t need or want to be told it’s okay, either, in which case dismiss this. But I know some people do have emotions about specific things (often self-oriented or personal things, which can make one feel selfish) and also care about how others feel about them, but are unable to have emotions about world events or choose to distance themselves on purpose. And it’s okay if you are that way. Your not having a visceral emotional response to something does not cause more pain in the world, does not harm anyone or pick their pocket. Do not let people demand grief of you.

Tags:

#oh look it me #Orlando shooting #but really in general #thank you V #I often need to hear this

Anonymous asked: in my experience dark chocolate is solely for vegans and lactose intolerant people who are all secretly jealous of people who eat milk chocolate which is 1000000x better

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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answersfromvanaheim:

Well, it’s not really their fault if they can’t eat it due to intolerance.

Milk chocolate is exponentially better though.

 

tsreckoah:

Ngl I got into dark chocolate for the caffiene

 

satsekhem:

MILK CHOCOLATE OR DEEEEEEEEEEEATH

 

hyacinth-halcyon:

Milk chocolate is an affront against nature. Especially Hershey’s Milk Chocolate.

 

lizardywizard:

OH GOD hershey’s okay. hershey’s is not chocolate. hershey’s is wax and plastic scrapings solidified into a chocolate coloured bar. I am from England and the first time I tasted a Reese’s peanut butter cup my mouth caved in on itself and refused to open again for two days, so offended was it.

(slight exaggeration)

As an Official Brit I can tell you that 99% of American chocolate is Some Bullshit and you are Being Swingdled by the candy police, who want you to remain miserable all of your days. but there is hope! and light in this chocolateless wasteland!

which is to say HAVE YOU EVER TASTED BRITISH CHOCOLATE cause if you havent my frand im gonna deliver some a that shit DIRECT TO YOUR DOOR so that your mouth can experience the joy of EXPLODING OFF YOUR FACE like you’re in some old spice commercial. i’m on an iron horse.

and if you have then consider me duly corrected but i might deliver it anyway

 

brin-bellway:

My Girl Scout troop did a taste test when I was a kid: we took American Cadbury Dairy Milk bars and British Cadbury Dairy Milk bars and compared them. The more people go on about how superior British chocolate is (including all the other girls in my troop), the more I wonder if I got two American bars by mistake, because they were fucking identical.

(I would say “and I have a very good sense of taste, too”, but said good sense of taste needs a few months of training on a subject to fully kick in. If I eat a given processed food (yogurt, peanut butter granola bars, etc.) regularly, after a while I start tasting the batch variation, but I generally can’t do that right away.)

(The worst part is when you start developing opinions on which batches are better than others, or sometimes (for extra “fun”) which batches are good at all. Because grocery shopping totally needed more complexity and tradeoffs.)

Anyway, regarding milk vs dark, it really depends on what you’re used to. Dark chocolate seems too bitter if you’re used to milk, but if you keep at it (maybe in stages, using chocolates with intermediate cocoa concentrations), you get used to it and milk chocolate starts seeming too sweet.

 

lizardywizard:

To be fair, Dairy Milk is one of the less discernable ones because they actually try to make the American version taste like the British version. (I find American Dairy Milk edible.) I would try with say a Twix bar if you like those.

But they are indeed objectively different recipes! So it’s possible you did get the wrong ones by mistake.

(And yes I do the batch thing too sometimes!)

Like I said, everyone else could tell the difference. Mind you, I don’t think that one was a blind test, so who knows how much of it was power of suggestion. (The test we did a few years later, comparing a few different brands of bottled water and tap water, was blind. Everyone else thought the tap water we’d been raised on was best; I ranked it a close second behind the expensive-even-by-bottled-water-standards water. A bit awkward, that.)

Twix don’t have very much chocolate involved, do they? It’s a thin coating over the cookie and caramel. They’re okay, but I don’t actively seek them out. I note that the article you linked uses Kit Kats as one of the examples of differences, and I do sometimes seek out Kit Kats. (Snickers are my favourite, though.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #food #chocolate #home of the brave

Anonymous asked: in my experience dark chocolate is solely for vegans and lactose intolerant people who are all secretly jealous of people who eat milk chocolate which is 1000000x better

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

answersfromvanaheim:

Well, it’s not really their fault if they can’t eat it due to intolerance.

Milk chocolate is exponentially better though.

 

tsreckoah:

Ngl I got into dark chocolate for the caffiene

 

satsekhem:

MILK CHOCOLATE OR DEEEEEEEEEEEATH

 

hyacinth-halcyon:

Milk chocolate is an affront against nature. Especially Hershey’s Milk Chocolate.

 

lizardywizard:

OH GOD hershey’s okay. hershey’s is not chocolate. hershey’s is wax and plastic scrapings solidified into a chocolate coloured bar. I am from England and the first time I tasted a Reese’s peanut butter cup my mouth caved in on itself and refused to open again for two days, so offended was it.

(slight exaggeration)

As an Official Brit I can tell you that 99% of American chocolate is Some Bullshit and you are Being Swingdled by the candy police, who want you to remain miserable all of your days. but there is hope! and light in this chocolateless wasteland!

which is to say HAVE YOU EVER TASTED BRITISH CHOCOLATE cause if you havent my frand im gonna deliver some a that shit DIRECT TO YOUR DOOR so that your mouth can experience the joy of EXPLODING OFF YOUR FACE like you’re in some old spice commercial. i’m on an iron horse.

and if you have then consider me duly corrected but i might deliver it anyway

My Girl Scout troop did a taste test when I was a kid: we took American Cadbury Dairy Milk bars and British Cadbury Dairy Milk bars and compared them. The more people go on about how superior British chocolate is (including all the other girls in my troop), the more I wonder if I got two American bars by mistake, because they were fucking identical.

(I would say “and I have a very good sense of taste, too”, but said good sense of taste needs a few months of training on a subject to fully kick in. If I eat a given processed food (yogurt, peanut butter granola bars, etc.) regularly, after a while I start tasting the batch variation, but I generally can’t do that right away.)

(The worst part is when you start developing opinions on which batches are better than others, or sometimes (for extra “fun”) which batches are good at all. Because grocery shopping totally needed more complexity and tradeoffs.)

Anyway, regarding milk vs dark, it really depends on what you’re used to. Dark chocolate seems too bitter if you’re used to milk, but if you keep at it (maybe in stages, using chocolates with intermediate cocoa concentrations), you get used to it and milk chocolate starts seeming too sweet.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #food #chocolate #home of the brave

{{next post in sequence}}