George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20d ago
When I see the red You're blocked symbol next to a username it has typically been on users who seem to be mathematically-oriented quantitative types (sorry for the word types) who no doubt find my bloviated meanderings tedious. My posts are usually on the other side of the ordered, pegs-in-holes sensibility, which I do not share.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20d ago
I'm beginning to see a trend in the users who block me.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20d ago
Whenever I see Margaret Qualley I think of her mother, and my fixation on her roughly beginning with Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Showing my age no doubt.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20d ago
Without knowing a cause simply attacking a symptom such as this is possibly very counterproductive. Of course seeing a specialist is a pain. Doing things that are a pain is part of adulthood. Add my voice to those suggesting you consult a specialist. Even with a doctor looking at it you're also not guaranteed to get the proper diagnosis immediately, but you've a better chance with someone actually looking at you than with listening to randos online.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
23d ago
I was about to say the open steppe, a fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair, but I knew about how well that would have been received.
I did say perhaps. I qualified throughout. Admittedly I haven't read all your replies to everyone, only the one(s) I was answering.
I personally don't have issues overusing my phone by my own standards of that term. I do have teenage sons who would benefit from giving the damn things a rest, as I repeatedly suggest to them. Parenthood informs my views to some degree, as does the fact that I lived well into adulthood before smartphones existed, so I remember a different world.
Sure phones "utility is ridiculously high" yes, I believe I granted you all of that. I think you might be slightly on defense though of course I'm not the shrink. I'll leave it.
Edit: I'm not leaving it because I am smugly convinced of my rightness, or your wrongness. But I think we're talking past each other to a degree and I'm not interested in taking part in a pile-on.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
27d ago
Replying because you're missing the obvious truth that different strategies work for different people and you do not always know why, especially by reading an internet post. First Toil then the Grave's plan may work for him splendidly, and not because he has some defect of character.
I concede all the usefulness of smartphones (I am typing this by the way on a computer). I still balk at your seemingly inalterable attachment to them. The other day on a walk I witnessed nearly every third person driving by looking at his or her phone. Who knows why. A map, a menu, an emergency text from a pregnant wife, a thesis on Heidegger. Or maybe just some dumbass inflammatory reel or so-called influencer. I do know that were Japanese suburban traffic only slightly faster on average that there would be a lot more swerving and crashing than there is now. And this with a current law enacting large fines and potential voiding of licenses for driving while staring at a phone.
People lose situational awareness when gazing at phones. They forget where they are, they forget what used to be basic manners. And this is in Japan where actually speaking on a phone in an enclosed space (such as a bus or train) is still tantamount to open-mouthed sneezing in an elevator. I still see it, and not always from foreigners. I had a girlfriend in grad school who used to read fucking books while driving until she was warned repeatedly that this was a reckless, selfish thing to do. This of course does not mean that reading books is innately harmful. Nobody is saying books are the devil. Still, reading has never been the best way to learn. As for phones, we've all seen the pithy quote.
You suggest @FtttG has claimed:
total removal as the obviously superior intervention
And maybe that was his intention (I did not get that.) And I understand perhaps yours is just an instinctive desire to defend technology or modernism or whatever.
But phones are not always, or even most of the time, such a wonderful thing, despite what is perhaps their potential to be such. Any more than many things that should be good, that are good in theory, that seem foolproof in their benefit to humanity, end up fucking people up. But then you know all this and you know some version of all the stories I might tell to make this point. I predict that you will remain intransigent. I would consider this a blind spot of yours, a shortcoming worth reflecting on. You will not agree. Call me Kreskin. You do you, as they say.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
27d ago
Interstellar I've enjoyed watching several times. Tenet I did not enjoy as much but it was a great moviegoing experience. Just as counterpoint.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
28d ago
American here amd I understood immediately.
Who else but fencers?
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