Oh wow - I never knew that! I’m glad to hear the social programs exist, but still… yikes!

More kids died young too, so they had to have spares.

Pumpkin Spice Fascism

Yes! Thank you. I love that episode.

Twilight Zone?

It’s slightly academic, but check out Eric Berne’s “Games People Play” about Transactional Analysis theory. There’s a short series on YouTube by a user called TherminTrees (a little cheesy and dated looking) that can give you a quick intro if you’re not sure what it’s all about. Its concepts really helped me.

I’m going to beet you up.

It’s usually multiple sources. The number varies, but generally between 3-20 depending on the subject matter. There are different settings you can change depending on whether you want to be in “research” mode. You still need to be mindful, but the links are there in the native platform most of the time.

Within GPT it does provide direct links to sources, but when it’s embedded outside of the native platform, maybe not. I mostly use it for finding hard to locate items, so I’m frequently following the links and they’re usually correct. That being said, yeah, if you’re using it for anything “serious” double and triple check info.

You’re likely thinking of this quote from a 1981 BBC interview in the series The Pleasure of Finding Things Out:

“I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, ‘Look how beautiful it is,’ and I’ll agree. Then he says, ‘I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.’

I think he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.

At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at a smaller dimension.

The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting — it means that insects can see the color.

It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds.

I don’t understand how it subtracts.”

FWIW - I’m in my mid-50s and still feel basically the same as I did in my late 20s / early-30s. All of these aging memes strike me as odd and/or maybe people who haven’t been kind to their bodies. I sleep like a rock on a normal bed, with one pillow, and wake up rested with no pain and get out of bed and do normal stuff just fine. Weird, huh?

Can someone let The Onion know?