Enthusiastic sh.it.head

  • 6 Posts
  • 32 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Lol, I’m a booster of the term sh.it.heads for members of my Lemmy instance of choice [exactly as is, broken link and all], so I feel like I’m the wrong person to ask :p

    ‘Toot’ for Mastodon posts makes some sense to me - where ‘twitter’ and ‘tweet’ are reminiscent of bird song, ‘toot’ for a service whose mascot is an ancestor of the elephant fits. ‘Trumpet’ feels a little longform - a ‘toot’ captures the short form a bit better. Heck, this follows for the fart interpretation too - quote child me to my father once, “A toot sounds like ‘toot toot’. That was ‘blaaaarrrrrrrrrgh’”

    Skeet? From what I’m reading, it’s an unofficial term combining ‘(blue)sky’ and ‘tweet’, partially for differentiation but I imagine in part because it’s hilarious. Official term IIRC is just a post.

    Idk man - people just choose terms and whatever is repeated the most frequently eventually becomes standard nomenclature. 🤷‍♂️


  • Two reasons: Practical considerations (shared assets, certain legal protections, I’ve seen people get married for an easier go re: immigration in some cases, etc. Basically check your local laws); and ritualistic.

    I find people often discount the importance of certain ritual practices in Western secular society, and for a lot of people ritual in general is a whole lot of fluff and nonsense. But having a ceremony to recognize a formal joining of two people, and by extension their families (to varying degrees), with the at least ostensible intent that you will live and die in partnership with that person, is a powerful thing. It’s a common ritual among multiple societies, with lots of variation and differences in exactly what it signifies, but the ubiquity speaks to that power IMO.

    Don’t get me wrong - I think divorce is a good thing for when the partnership truly does not and cannot work, and people can live happily in lifelong unions without marriage - but for some folks, taking that vow in the eyes of your friends and family (and whatever deity concept you may have, if that’s your kink) is a very important and serious thing. Something changes, to some degree, when you take that oath.

    It doesn’t have to be expensive - that it often is, IMO, is a function of capitalism infecting a beautiful thing more than anything else. You can have a wedding in someone’s backyard officiated by someone who paid $25 online for a certificate, with a small number of close friends and a potluck BBQ afterwards, and it would be just as valid and meaningful as a wedding that cost 100k (shit, IME the smaller one is actually more meaningful in a lot of cases). It’s the intent, ritual, and meaning participating parties place on it that’s important.




  • To have some visuals added to this, either a trippy slideshow-esque video played silently, or do the whole album-synced-up-to-a-movie thing (Dark Side of Oz style).

    Joined a Telegram group a while back with lots of ideas /materials for that last concept, so let me know if you want some inspiration.

    Edit: A weird animation Youtube autoplay queue while playing solid music is a good choice too. Ideally this is all just in the background while hanging out/doing other stuff and just gives something to zone out on in between.




  • So I’ve since quit, and I understand why even what I’m about to describe doesn’t exist anymore where I am, but right at the tail end of smoking indoors there were businesses/buildings doing totally walled off, wellish ventilated smoking areas. Those seemed ok to me, and when I (stupidly) took up smoking I was sad those were gone.

    The only, and last, one I saw when I was a smoker was in an airport, which was an unexpected godsend because my fuck does it suck to be a smoker waiting for a flight.

    (Yes, it’s a gross and deadly habit that’s also unhealthy and gross for the people around you and the employees who had to work in/clean such spaces, and it makes sense to have no smoking indoors).






  • There’s something about going to an event with like-minded people, listening to a band you like live with (often, not always) optimized sound for the space, and 99% of folks uninhibitably jamming out and having a good time.

    I can definitely see how the experience would be unappealing to some folks, though. And I should note I’m more of a gig goer than concert attendee - so sound optimization is hit or miss, and the jamming out % is lower. Still fun, still not everyone’s cup of tea.

    Edit: Idle thought that came up reading this back: what is music, for you - as in, what is your relationship to it? Where does music live in your world? Is it something that comes out of a machine to fill silence in your space or block out noise? Is it something produced by humans, of which MP3s/FLACS/CDs/Vinyl/radio waves etc. are just imprints/simulacrum for wider dissemination?

    Basically, is it an activity, or a product at its core? Not really expecting anyone to answer (though they can), just a reflection I personally found interesting. Many acceptable answers.


  • This is a very, very cool topic. Ritual too often gets dismissed as just hokum/superstition, but if you think about ritual activities as means of creating different perceptual states (imagination+ IMO) or as means of creating/strengthening certain interpersonal bonds or reinforcing certain group norms, it gets VERY interesting.

    It’s kind of why I like a chaos magick maxim I’ve heard before - “Belief is a tool”. It’s very easy to cross over into woo-woo territory, but if you’re able to keep your head on straight while also being able to temporarily suspend disbelief for a bit, you can have some pretty neat experiences.




  • I want to be clear - the fact that I think you got lucky doesn’t take away from how skilled you are or would need to be. Self-taught != poor skills, at all. And yeah, if someone really wants to do something, they should give it a shot, market forces be damned.

    But at the same time, you do need to consider the pool of talent you’re competing with. If you’re a self-taught systems engineer, you’re going to need to be really good, AND have some luck on your side during the hiring process. If you’re really good and you’re competing with other really good candidates who also have a formal education related to the skill-set, your chances are slim. And at the end of the day, you gotta eat. Then again, this is the perspective of a guy in a place bursting at the seams with grads with these skills (some of whom are, of course, morons, but many who aren’t but are still having difficulty breaking into this kind of work).

    To anyone reading this - if you want to learn these skils, don’t let some jerk like me stop you, but recognize that you are at a disadvantage come hiring time. That said, a) if you get good, you can also get lucky - question becomes can you still feed yourself if you don’t, and b) they can open some slightly less obvious opportunities too (SAS business development, analytics, etc.)


  • There was a time this was an option, but with the glut of CS grads out there I’d be shocked if this would be a viable path these days.

    All else being equal, why would you pick the self-taught guy v. the guy with a degree in Comp Sci? They’re good skills to have regardless, but it sounds like you got very lucky (edit: to be clear, this doesn’t take away from the work you would’ve put in).

    Does depend on the talent pool for system engineers where you are, though.



  • Probably the same kind of people who make similar arguments about CanCon.

    There’s always been this tension between “We need a thriving TV and film industry in this country” and “Most of what we produce is garbage for the purpose of using government grants” here. Can’t help but wonder if it’s the same on your end of the planet (#justcommonwealththings).

    At least there are always a couple diamonds in the sludge, though (here, Schitt’s Creek, TPB, and I’m sure some others even though the other ones I think of are looong over)