What are the Most Popular Examples of Psionics in Sci-Fi?
What are the Most Popular Examples of Psionics in Sci-Fi?
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- Posts
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- 2 yr. ago
Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world I have to disagree.
Ready Player One the movie is a dumb 5/10 flick I can throw on my second monitor while I get stoned and play video games while looking over and going “hehe” every now and then as I LOOK AT popular things doing stuff.
Ready Player One the book is an infuriating grind where each scene starts with Wil Wheaton (the audiobook narrator) listing off names of popular things for a few minutes before the incel-adjacent main character reveals that he actually spent months practicing the one specific popular thing he needed to succeed right now.
It did prompt me to try Joust when I came across it at a barcade though, and that was fun.
… goddammit, it’s been 20 years and I never caught that.
The funny thing about this comment is that, having read the other comments, I know that you’re extrapolating ridiculous things about a field of study that helps enable modern life from a simple game. But if I hadn’t read them, I would still know that you’re extrapolating ridiculous things about a field of study that enables modern life, but I would also still be wondering what the hell these Tetris looking squares have to do with anything! You failed to even address the question you’re responding to!
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Ooh, how is Sea of Stars? It’s been sitting on my PC from a humble bundle, but I’ve yet to touch it.
They are great for cheap cards though. I only go there when Mother's Day or someone's birthday is coming up.
Driving straight through a stoplight from the right turn lane. There’s this intersection where I live that looks like this:
Most people going straight through that intersection want to take the exit right after to hop on a freeway. Twice now I’ve dealt with people following the red line from the right turn lane, forcing everyone else to merge around them to take the exit.
I see what you’re saying and I know you didn’t ask for advice, but putting “rugged” and “brave” in quotation marks could have conveyed that patronization.
A couple years ago I was moving my dad cross country back to the city where our family lives because my stepmom was separating from him after a couple years of his heavy alcoholism. When I got there he had been drinking again so I had to call my uncle to fly over last minute so he could drive the uhaul and I could drive my dad’s car with him in it.
Just past Louisville on the way to Indianapolis he said he was feeling funny and seeing light. I was a little concerned and I don’t remember what I said, I just remember him saying “okay, I trust you.” A minute later he looked at the corner of the car, said “oh my water,” while reaching for a cup that wasn’t there, and his seizure started. I don’t remember exactly why I didn’t immediately pull over to the shoulder, instead I sped up to get ahead of my uncle and take the next exit. My dad was already secured in place by his seatbelt, but it seemed like he choking on something, so I had to bang his chest with my fist a couple times while yelling “breathe dammit!” That worked, but he wasn’t conscious.
I pulled over, got in a travel center parking lot right next to the exit, felt lucky because I saw the uhaul pulling in behind me, and ran around to get at him. He started to come to and I dredged up my one first aid class from high school to check his memory/mental state. He could answer my general questions about the current year, president, etc. but then he looked around and asked why his dog and my uncle were there as they got out of the now parked uhaul. It appeared that his memory of the past couple days was messed up. I called my stepmom and she said that sort of thing had happened before.
I guess he hadn’t gone to a hospital after his withdrawal seizures in the past so we decided to continue to Indianapolis, monitor him, and go to a hospital there if something more happened. I was very disconcerted by his lack of memory for the last couple days, but like half an hour later he referred to something recent and after asking his recollection had returned at least to some degree.
There weren’t any other health issues beyond him feeling like shit, so we were able to make it the rest of the way home the next day after crashing at a hotel.
Here are some thoughts based on past reflections I’ve had (so they might not be phrased the best) in no particular order:
First, you mentioned sometimes not understanding what is being said. I minored in philosophy during college, and the first and most important thing I was taught during Intro was the principle of charity during discussion, composed of two parts. The first, assume the other person has something worth saying, isn’t super relevant here. But the second part is that questions of meaning come before questions of truth. If you can repeat back what the other person tells you in your own words and have them agree, then you can start forming a rebuttal.
Speaking of forming things, I believe that the thoughts you express are not your thoughts, but a linguistic representation of your thoughts. When I envision a thought forming, it’s more like a glowing ball of thought and words can be put together to form a kind of shell around the thought. The better the wording, the closer the shell gets to matching the shape of the thought itself. Improving your English toolset will allow you to better shape your words to match your thoughts more quickly and easily. The primary way to do this is to expand your vocabulary/lexicon/internal thesaurus and ability to connect words together, and the primary method to accomplish that is to expose yourself to new words in new orders, and you do that by reading new stuff.
All that is just the prep work. In an actual conversation you don’t have the luxury of reading a bunch right now. My advice there is that, if the other people are cool, be upfront that you are still formulating your thoughts into words and ask for help in finding the right ones if your struggling. Doing so will leave less space in the minds of others to assume anything else, likely leading to not just more patience from them but possibly help for you as well.
I think the process of forming thoughts into words is one of the most fascinating things there is. The times when I have observed myself pulling an original thought out of the ether of my mind or better yet being able to help someone else in pulling their thoughts out of their head and into the world are some of the most beautiful moments I have experienced. I wish you well in working on your ability to find those moments!
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Vanilla is my favorite smell. Back in college when my buddy went to Mexico and brought back cup souvenirs for friends, he didn’t get one for me. Instead he gave me a big bottle of fancy vanilla. I kept that thing at my computer desk and every so often for the next couple years I’d pop it open and take a big rip of the smell just to feel a little more alive. It was so great.
Navigation, easily. I can learn a few basic phrases of a language, and odds are someone will speak English in the places I’m going. I can ask English-speaking people what the essential customs and etiquette are.
But if I don’t know where I’m going, I can’t be confident in what I’m doing. If I’m in a new place and have to follow a narrow set of directions to get to specific places, I’m confined to those narrow spaces. Knowing where I am and what’s around me opens up the world with me driving the experience instead of relying on the knowledge of others.
In both of the cities I’ve lived in, I hear a place mentioned and I instantly can point in its direction, estimate the distance, and calculate a good route to get close to there. At the music festival I’ve attended several times with a large venue I am the guy that people stop and ask for directions because I exude confidence in where I am. To be able to carry that knowledge with me anywhere in the world would be incredible.
And if “understanding the streets” includes knowing good restaurants or places to visit and whether a tourist would be welcome there, then all the better.
I was not aware of calcium chloride or its effect on canned tomatoes. I started getting petite diced tomatoes because they do break down better due to being smaller. I’ll give crushed tomatoes a try the next time I stock up!
I realize there’s a good chance you already do something similar, but I’ve been cutting back on my own sodium intake and I like pasta. Instead of pasta sauce jars I’ve been throwing a couple cans of diced tomatoes (usually reduced salt petite diced) and a 6oz can of tomato paste into my ground meat then adding spices for flavor while it heats up. It’s really good!
I’m rarely certain enough to claim that I’m right. Oftentimes I’ll acknowledge that uncertainty by stating where/when I heard something so the other person can judge the validity of that source themself.
That said, if I am confident in something and I’m told that I’m wrong, I’ll usually look it up there or just say something like “that’s not my understanding but I can’t dive into it now.” Then when I do have time I’ll do a bit of research, or if the topic comes up again I’ll assert what I was confident in with the caveat that so-and-so told me this other thing.
If I do the research and find that I was wrong, I’ll try to remember that the next time I see the other person and let them know I confirmed they were right.
Yeah, I did not plan on that. At first I was going to just put the first sentence, “It is not the critic who counts,” but then I started reading, and on the third sentence I kept reading and not finding a period, which I thought was funny so I shared that.
I’m also now realizing that, while I typically read it, this quote was originally from a speech and not a piece of writing, therefore not technically qualifying for this post at all!
But you know what, it’s what I thought of, and at least I hopped in the comment arena and gave something.
“ The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” -Teddy Roosevelt
Self-forgiveness, practicing thankfulness, and incremental growth.
I tend to ruminate on my failures and shortcomings. Guilt can be a powerful motivator/teacher for positive change, but dwelling on it for too long or too much prevents you from following through on those lessons. At some point before that happens you need to forgive yourself and give yourself permission to move forward past that guilt. I found myself doing this so many times I eventually put together a playlist of songs to help me reset, forgive myself, and restart. I recommend you do something similar. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeC2eNJHSGPcKuKjBAMN8sS7F_Vt9gqsN
There is no point in working on a life that has no joy or good in it. When I ruminate I tend to lose sight of the good things that are already present. Acknowledging those good things, even if they feel sparse or small, may help you feel the potential for more good things or inspire new goals and things you want to achieve.
Incremental growth is the hardest but most powerful thing of these three. When I first acknowledged that I was cycling between short highs and long lows, my goal was simple; during the few times I felt good, instead of basking in feeling good before the crash invest that good feeling into either making future good times longer or bad times shorter. It took many slow years before I started hitting a tipping point where the good started to outweigh the bad, and even then one bad thing happening out of my control threw me back several steps. It takes a lot of patience with yourself to grow, but the other two things I mentioned makes it easier.
Depends how many beers you’re drinking in those three hours. Three to five, that might be okay if you’re not drinking the rest of the week and keep your vitamin levels up. In my drinking days I could easily put away eight or more in that time though, and that is excessive to a damaging degree if done weekly. Maybe you used the term “to excess” more as a stylistic flair to an internet comment, but it draws to my mind the latter scenario more than the former. I do think it’s very interesting that you gave a time frame instead of a drink count, which is the more typical measure of how much one drinks.
This sounded like bullshit but I’m open to the idea enough to do a few minutes of digging. The study that the first few search results reference tested rats and found that, according to my understanding at least, intermittent sugar intake can be addictive in a similar manner to opiates, but to a smaller degree than actual opiates. There was no comparison to alcohol.
There was this brief article where the chair of nutrition at Harvard said sugar can mimic some traits of addictiveness but specifically stated it can’t be classified the same as alcohol or nicotine. No actual study done, just a guy who presumably knows what he’s talking about.
So claiming sugar is more addictive than alcohol still sounds like bullshit to me. Habit forming? Yes. Withdrawal symptoms after high regular consumption? Yes. Over consumed (at least in the US)? Hell yes. But more addictive than alcohol? Do you have an actual source to support such a claim?