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The moment you realize the lady friend you're sleeping with is closer to your oldest son's age than your own is a bit awkward.
Awkward my ass. You were like hell yeah I'm the fucking man, as it should be.Quote:
Originally Posted by kingnat
I'm 11 years older than my lady. There were plenty of awkward moments for me when we first started dating.
There was a weird added responsibility to the relationship when I realized that for once, I was the emotionally mature party in the relationship. I mean... not that I'd been the immature one, but in my past relationships we were both on relatively equal footing.
E.g. I had more experience with seduction and other adult games. So much to the point that she didn't know there was a game afoot sometimes. It was really awkward to the boundaries of rapiness when I realized that, while she was complicit in the making out, she was not aware that I'd gradually disrobed her. I mean... if she wasn't all for it when she found out, that'd be massively weird.
The first thought was filled with awkwardness, questioning my decisions, but that was quickly replaced by "Holy shit, I'm the fucking man!" Thanks spoon!Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Dating out of your generation is a good idea. It works better since men value youth a great deal and women value experience and stability a great deal. Of course, everybody kinda already knows this. So I guess I brought it up to say that I think one of the main reasons why so many relationships go bad is because people date too close to their own age. That creates a situation where the man is about as immature as the woman, which is horrible for her since what she really wants/needs is a man who has been there/done that and doesn't get fazed. Likewise, a man will handle just about anything regarding a woman if he thinks of her as more youthful and vibrant than he is.
I know there's no poker in the commune and all of that, but this doesn't really count as poker.
I'm trying to get a microstakes FTR game going at Americas Cardroom like what we used to do back in the day with hilarious results. Come to the BC General Chat Thread and act like you want to be a part of this so we can mingle with some FTR newbies.
I think you'd really love the first part of this, wuf. I kept thinking how it was all basic economics in a free market... but with insects. When he started talking about the cold war, I was fascinated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyidhY2dc5I
dude this is super cool. thanks so much. i didnt know scishow did these sorts of interviews. i may have to watch them again.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
http://i.imgur.com/pJEYZq0.gif
Turn down for what
I also have an 11 year age difference. I need that balance. It would be complete chaos if I was with some fellow 25 year old dipshit. People can be way wiser than their years, of course, but life experience, actually having lived more years and experienced that passing of time, is a singular thing. And it goes both ways -- youth adds its own element of stability.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
Nice ninja disrobing skills!
Men are supposed to be involved with younger women, and women are supposed to be involved with older men.
Also this Nate Dogg - Hide It plays when I'm heading out the door to pick up bitches.
http://www.nerdist.com/wp-content/up...ore_Slotin.jpg
You see the screwdriver? You see what it's lifting? That was the core of an atomic bomb.
That's a critical mass of plutonium, surrounded by two hemispheres of beryllium (a nuclear reflector). One half was stacked on top of the other, and this dude named Louis Slotin was using a screw-driver to create a tiny space between them. If the two halves were to touch, the core would go super-critical in an uncontrolled chain-reaction.
And the two halves did touch.
At 3:20 PM, May 21, 1946, the screw-driver slipped. The top half clunked onto the bottom half.
Everyone in the room felt a blast of heat and the air around the core shone bright blue.
Slotin grabbed the top half of the assembly with his bare hand and knocked it to the floor.
Within 3 minutes he was vomiting from radiation sickness. He died nine days later.
It was called 'tickling the dragon's tail'.
more like flicking its nuts
That's pretty fucking awesome. Also, that's some real man shit to grab that motherfucker with your bare hands.
What is this trying to say? That when somebody says "fuck the poor", people moralize against it, but when somebody says "help the poor", people don't raise a finger to do so?Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Idk I just thought a guy wearing a sandwich sign that said "FUCK THE POOR" was hilarious.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
And just to go ahead and get it out of the way, people would help more in the form of charity if they weren't being stolen from by the government.
This near nuclear tragedy brought to you by Coca-Cola.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
That feeling on your tongue? It's flavor.
That feeling in your lymph nodes? Also flavor.
Charity blows. It's all sorts of whack for incentives.Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
There's a faker impoverished douche who stands on the street outside my favorite grocery. He's done it for years and hasn't changed his sign. It's some bullshit about how he's going to lose his house if people don't give him money. He's only out there at peak hours and probably clears close to $100/hr.
Yeah I've known people to do that. I think it's hilarious.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
In other news, here's a free month of cologne of your choice.
Oh, see this? If I close it in this spherical shell it reaches critical mass. Don't worry. We're all totally safe because I'm holding it open with this screwdriver.Quote:
Originally Posted by Galapogos
And that's how it came to be called the demon core.
I just finished this awesome Philip K. Dick book called The Man in the High Castle. Rilla, I think you in particular would like it.. It's an alternate history novel in which the Axis powers emerge victorious from WW2. It won the Hugo award in 1963.
Amazon put out a pilot episode for a TV series based on the book earlier this year. Apparently it was well-received and was picked up for a season, so I'm gonna watch that asap.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aubreymcfate
Yeah the pilot was good. I'm in dire need of some book recommendations. I've been reading so much crap lately. I've started reading some Stephen King shorts because, while he's never great, he's also never trash, and I need a break from disappointmentQuote:
Originally Posted by aubreymcfate
Arnold Schwarzenegger's biography was amazing. I had a really hard time putting it down.
one of the most driven and successful people of all time.
http://www.highstakesdb.com/images/p...0326091930.gif
http://pnimg.net/lrep/1852/74/bff2f5f8a8d.jpg
So Annette Obrestad looks about 10 times better than the last time I saw a picture of her. Congrats to her for that.
My bottom bitch starts back to class today, so I made her a better lap desk situation than what she had going on before (some thick, plastic, bulky thing).
http://i.imgur.com/pqRKSLv.jpg
3/8" pine plywood, about $9 at Lowes for a 2'x4' piece. I'm going to use what's left over for some other stuff.
http://i.imgur.com/M4aHhMF.jpg
Used a spray paint can for the corners since I didn't want them too round. Marked the inside curve by a cardboard pattern I cut earlier to keep it symmetrical.
http://i.imgur.com/mWuMrMk.jpg
Sanded it with the sander said bottom bitch got me for my birthday last year.
http://i.imgur.com/EkpdBvT.jpg
Used an all-in-one paint+seal with a satin finish since I didn't want this to be a multi-day project.
http://i.imgur.com/RC8xwg3.jpg
After about an hour of drying.
http://i.imgur.com/AsNZSaA.jpg
It'll sit on a pillow on her lap on the couch for the time being. I was considering adding padding to it, but keeping it separate makes it easier to store between the couch and the end table.
http://i.imgur.com/XhFhEs9.jpg
Obligatory bottom bitch picture since I know I'm going to get asked. Go ahead and say some shit about me and redheads.
http://i.imgur.com/XMJVGYf.jpg
Me and my other girl that aubreymcnugget made underage cracks about.
You love those underage cracks. Young, fresh, and green, with no hair in between -- know what I mean?
(i just passed out from the intensity of your alpha stare btw)
There are two categories of people who make hateful age comments to me:Quote:
Originally Posted by aubreymcfate
1. Guys who take their shot and miss, and now they want to talk shit about how "old and creepy" I am.
2. Girls who take their shot and miss, and now they want to talk shit about how I can't "handle women closer to my own age."
And my alpha stare is the result of years of real top-shelf pimpin, panderin and ho handlin all across these United States.
Hey aubreymcnoobass, do you play poker? I can't remember.
I am a total advocate for the young girl older guy thing. No judgment here. I mean.. my username comes from Nabokov's Lolita. lol.
No, I don't play poker -- I played a few werewolf games after Wugy finally convinced me to try, which is why I'm here. My boyfriend used to be a professional poker player and a professional card counter in Vegas, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that I might get him to teach me some day.. I'd be totally down to try. I like games.
Okay I was just curious because we have a new chick who is being active in the BC, and I was going to see if you two wanted to powder each other's taints or whatever girl poker players do.Quote:
Originally Posted by aubreymcfate
Light 'em up, Johnny O!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg
Now wufwugy can be a tax-exempt organization and we can all be happy!
http://derek.broox.com/photo/2011-st...op-bottles.jpg
Heard part 2 of this on the radio and thought it was a pretty good yet casual overview of the history of capitalism in America.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02yg6z1 The Gilded Age
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02yy66c The Progressive Age
This is how a pimp handles bodyguards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazonian_Guard
This is pretty awesome.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34023361
I believe the appropriate term here is "America fuck yeah!"
But in all seriousness, I'd love to think I'm the kinda guy who when faced with such a scenario would leap in to action and risk my life but I can't be entirely sure that my flight instinct wouldn't win the battle with fight. I guess you don't know until you're put in the situation.
Hahaha terrorists suck.
Hey while I'm at it, fuck Bernie Sanders, his boring fucking talking points and the Union hand shoved right up his socialist ass.
If you guys want to hear a guy talk about game who really knows what the fuck he's talking about: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...R0wYGoELYxHNfh
RIP Patrice O'Neal
So how's the last human going to die. I googled it but only found some really dumbass answers.
I think there's a problem with a question, because it's going to be a whole bunch, probably in a space collony or something, not a single douchebag sitting on a hill being all sad.
Supercell passing my house yesterday. This is Birmingham England, not Birmingham Alabama!
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=65a_1440276262
Dying in a hospital bed, surrounded by his surviving brother and sister, his wife, and children, and a couple of grand children, none of which are human.Quote:
Originally Posted by oskar
If it's a space colony, it's so far separated from Earth in time and space that they'll begin to become human-next.
A lot of last humans will die across all of the different colonies, and it'll be hard to tell which was actually the last.
http://themoth.org/posts/stories/the-prince-and-i
Gal gets swept up into a harem.
You'll like the story more than anyone. Save for aubrey.
It seems my friend has sold that supercell footage to a media company for licensing. We captured something very rare in this country. I bet none of you even bothered to look.
This was taken 15 miles south in Worcester. We're directly under the rolling shelf cloud, or will be anyway. I think this is as it's approaching.
http://www.kidderminstershuttle.co.u...e=article-full
The best answer I've gotten to this question so far is: dick caught in ceiling fan. Unlikely, but suspiciously specific. I think he knows something.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
Having a crazy week (my brother got married last Friday and Greek family stuff has been ensuing ever since) but I'm def gonna check that out when things settle, sounds super interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
Speaking of game, I got hit on by this pimply faced young kid at Washington Square Park the other week, and I honestly felt so fucking bad for him. He approached me because I was sitting alone at a table (with headphones on and clearly doing something on my phone) and basically opened the convo by telling me he approaches girls that are alone. After I established that I had a boyfriend, he gave me his number so that I could find him a girl from one of my cute friends because he's "looking for [his] soulmate." Really inane conversation ensued and I humored the situation more than I should have because I'm too sensitive, and at the very least admired the balls he had to come up to me.
He was young (like could very well have just graduated high school), so I'm sure that accounts for a lot of the cluelessness.
On a broader note: I'm not well-versed in this alpha stuff or whatever, but the one thing I can say that I think jives with that whole school of thought is that desperation in guys is palpable and very repellent, while independence is really attractive. Sexual power play and dynamics are all fun and good, but it's hard to respect someone who abandons personal integrity out of neediness. Men and women who seek people that can be easily subjugated are the neediest of all.
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view1/115...ther-man-o.gif
I have a friend who, when we were teenagers, would walk up to every single girl in a bar and asked if they would blow him in the toilet. He was persistent for about two years until he found one. They stayed together for three years. When she left him, he tried to kill himself.
I always surprise myself with how many relevant stories I have. A life well lived.
He's fine now, btw.
As our self-appointed resident game representative, I want to throw out a handful of things in bullet-point form here.Quote:
Originally Posted by aubreymcfate
- Him coming up to you in the first place in that situation is bad form. He's going to have a really low rate of success there because it's pretty obvious that you don't want to be approached. One of the first things newbies learn is how to identify girls who actually want to be approached at that point in time.
- Him telling you that he approaches girls who are alone makes no sense. It's kind of creepy when it's put like that, and it doesn't do anything to establish that he's confident or good with women (two things that build attraction). Compare to something like, "Hey I don't usually approach girls who are alone looking like they're in the middle of not wanting to be bothered, but you have some excellent resting bitch face."
- Lots of girls say they have a boyfriend when they really don't, and lots of girls who do have boyfriends are really bored with them or in shitty relationships, so you can't really expect that to mean much to the average guy.
- Telling a chick you're looking for your soulmate is a great way to make her vagina dryer than the Sahara fucking desert, unless it's in a sarcastic or smartass remark.
- Him being boring (as described by the inane conversation that followed) is probably going to be his second-biggest hurdle towards getting laid by random hot pieces of ass...
- ...With the largest hurdle being how desperate he acts. Both the desperation and being boring as all hell are two of the top things that game seeks to correct. It's basically the study of applied charisma in this sense.
What probably happened to the kid is that he's decided to get his balls up and approach girls, but he's only approaching the easiest targets possible (eg: girls sitting by themselves) because he has absolutely no clue how to handle any kind of group dynamic, and he's scared shitless accordingly. Good for him for facing the fear of rejection, but that's not enough.
On these points specifically, game seeks to build the ability to attract higher and higher quality mates by improving the quality of yourself. It's really the opposite of seeking out people who can be easily subjugated. Even for pure-PUA style game that's optimized for picking up bar rats and frat party sluts, it's still about improving the ability to communicate and approach in a way that maximizes your own value to increase the chances of success.Quote:
Sexual power play and dynamics are all fun and good, but it's hard to respect someone who abandons personal integrity out of neediness. Men and women who seek people that can be easily subjugated are the neediest of all.
To give another example on the other end of the spectrum, relationship game is really the same thing as far as improving yourself in ways that will positively affect the sexual dynamic of the situation. One of the main problems with "mainstream" relationship advice, particularly for men but also for women, is that it's about seemingly improving yourself without considering or addressing the sexual dynamic. A good example is the concept of "choreplay" or having the man do more and more traditionally-feminine housework. It sounds good on paper, but it's also tied to much higher divorce rates, less sex and much lower levels of relationship satisfaction for both parties.
When this kid came up to you, he was probably trying to improve himself based on the idea that approaching girls is better than not approaching girls. That's another one of those things that sounds good on paper. In practice, he would be much better off having 10 solid approaches than 200 that went like they went with you. He doesn't know how to improve himself in the context of a sexual dynamic. If he keeps approaching and keeps getting rejected 100 times out of 100, then he's likely going to build up a lot of resentment and hate for women.
I know I'm rambling on right now because I'm procrastinating on something else I should be doing, but the issue of how quality and quantity with approaching women is addressed with respect to learning game is probably something that you'll find interesting. In the beginning, a guy might learn a few basic ideas and then be instructed to go make 50 approaches. He'll usually be asked to keep a quick journal or notes on how each approach went, what happened, etc. A big part of this is to get over a lot of the anxiety and fear of rejection that comes with approaching.
For this kid who came up to talk to you, he knows what he wants: He's looking for a girl to build a relationship with. For guys who are relationship-minded, game helps you to do two things. First, it helps you to "make it count" when you do find a girl who you're interested in. Second, it helps you to keep the relationship going smoothly years down the line.
Uggh I need to go do some work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Used to be such a pet peeve of mine. Women in relationships used to be total off limits on principle of not harming others' relationships as well as not being interested in the type who could stay in a relationship that doesn't fully satisfy them. I have since learned that life is more complex than that and simple ideals don't cut it.
In other news, I guarantee I won't pass the P/1 exam next month. This shit is far beyond the difficulty level of college calculus exams. In college, all I really have to do is memorize keywords and process, then just manipulate the algebra to get the calculation. Not so with actuary probability. Everything involves deducing and deriving. It requires full understanding of the material on the conceptual level. Stuff that would get a 90+% fail rate in any of the classes I've taken to date.
Part of me wishes I just went simple and was majoring in accounting. Fellowship of actuary designation will probably take at least 3500 hours of additional brain crushing study.
What's the opposite of pimpin?
Pimp out!
Git r doneQuote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Also, Wikipedia is hilarious. On the topic of "brain fog"...
Quote:
However, the difference between the word "fog" and the word "fag" is definitely not trivial.
I can get down with pretty much your whole post, spoon. For me the biggest thing is, like you said, improving the quality of yourself, and having a strong sense of identity, a solid center.
When I was younger I had fairly garbage taste in men (which isn't to say all my exes sucked, some are actually quite wonderful) because I was thinking too abstractly about it, which is probably an aspect of neurotic behavior, and not letting myself understand or grow through immediate experience. I was more insecure and didn't really realize I was way better than a lot of the guys that I thought were cooler than me (I'm talking about the 17-18 age range, where you still have that HS mentality of being "uncool" [what makes even less sense is my first real relationship was with the only person I've been with whose intelligence & integrity is comparable to my current bf, and he died when I was 16..maybe that has something to do with how misguided I was]). As I've grown up and learned more about what's really important and integral to who I am (intellectually, musically, artistically, etc.), the number of dateable people I meet has dropped drastically.
obv that's not to say you need to have yourself all figured it out, that's a daunting task lol, but some people are more in tune with themselves than others. This also helps you not be insanely boring, haha.
on another note, I've decided to start learning math again bc this article really spoke to me and I think I could actually be pretty great at it. I grew up thinking I was just artsy and that was that, which not only is a bullshit excuse for being lazy and masking the pain of failure, but also doesn't make sense for me because I'm great at music theory and sight reading complex sheet music on the spot, and there are correlations between math and music. I think I'm gonna start with Khan Academy. If anyone has any suggestions, giveee meeeeeeee
My experience has been close to the same as his.Quote:
Originally Posted by aubreymcfate
I used Khan quite a bit, but not as much as I should. I recommend starting with prealgebra. Each section is broken into a series of videos and one or a few sets of problems. The videos are marked by the video sign, the problems are marked by a star. Go straight to the star and start solving the problems. After you get five in a row correct, you earn points and "get to" move on. When you get to some problems you don't understand that well, you can use the solutions to help. When you get to problems that you're not familiar with, you'll know that you have probably hit the starting point where all the material is new to you, so start watching the videos before doing the problems.
The more into algebra you get, the harder it becomes yet also more enjoyable. Probably because manipulating equations to get values for x seems sorta like magic. Derivatives and integrals more so. You'll need pencil and tons of paper. I don't know if the Khan problems ever get this hefty, but some calculus problems can take up all of both sides of one sheet.
Important: Women are much more affected by stress in this type of learning than men are. Being super pro-active about managing your stress levels with this stuff will drastically increase the rate at which you learn. Related:
Quote:
Classical conditioning
Predator stress has been shown to improve classical conditioning in males and hinder it in females. A study done by Maeng et al. demonstrated that stress allowed faster classical conditioning of male rats while disrupting the same type of learning in female rats.[44] These gender differences were shown to be caused by the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). When the researchers inactivated that brain region by administering muscimol to the females, no gender differences in classical conditioning were observed 24 hours later.[44] Inactivating the mPFC in the male rats did not prevent the enhanced conditioning that the males previously exhibited.[44] This discrepancy between genders has also been shown to be present in humans. In a 2005 study, Jackson et al. reported that stress enhanced classical conditioning in human males and impaired classical condition in human females.[45]
I'd say the best way to learn math is through muscle memory. Just keep practicing until solving a class of problems is rote. Then move onto the next class. That's basically how I jammed through everything from pre-algebra til differential equations.
You know how they say if you play enough tetris, you dream in tetris? Well, if you do enough math and get a good nights sleep, you'll be surprised at the things you'll have learned.
This is the exact thing I am experiencing right now with piano (literally -- I was just ruminating on this as I idly migrated over to FTR), and I had assumed it would be the same with math (in fact, I think I made the comparison to wuf earlier today). Right now I have roughly 3 minutes under my belt of this piece, and it was just today that I started to rigorously practice the new page of that 3 minutes and got it down fairly comfortably. It involves a lot of very slow playing, intense concentration, drilling, and patience. The transformation of something becoming integrated into your muscle memory is very tangible.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
Another point of comparison is the part about dreams. Piano cements itself into your muscle memory when you give it that gestation period. It's both physically and mentally exhausting, and there comes a point where you begin to experience diminishing returns (not only will you not improve, you'll get sloppy), no matter how much you've drilled. You have let it go for a bit, and when you return to it later, or even after a good night's sleep, you'll be surprised at the ease with which you can play it.
I know that even professional pianists have to take a bit of a break after 40 minutes or so, even if they are practicing for 6-8 hours a day. I'm not sure if it's that intense with math since it's not physically strenuous, but I'd assume mental breaks are similarly healthy to the process.
Another similarity is that you have to know your shit inside out. It's essential to be 100% unforgiving with any mistakes or sloppy areas you have in a piece and work and work until everything is effortless, totally ingrained in your muscles. Knowing the building blocks of chords and scales allows you to recognize and understand patterns in the piece, and therefore understand it better. This is similar to having a deep understanding of math concepts and their actual applications rather than seeing it as random disparate equations and numbers but not understanding how they relate to each other or how they can be practically applied to real things.
Sorry I'm rambling, I'm having this dorky and revelatory excitement over the similarities. :P
The main difference is that music provides aesthetic bliss, whereas math does not, and that was the reward that kept on giving and kept me practicing when I was young. However, I enjoy music as cerebrally as I do emotionally, and music that is very intellectual, like Bach, is that way because of math.
Certain autistic experiences of music are a good example of this purely intellectual component of music. I'm reminded of this passage from the neurologist Oliver Sack's book "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain":
http://i.imgur.com/RRemf2L.png
Thank you for this Spoon. Clarifies many of the gender specific thoughts/questions I've encountered over the last decade.Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
This comes later.Quote:
Originally Posted by aubreymcfate
Then you'll love this.Quote:
Originally Posted by CBAT
Oliver Sacks is my boy.
Well, for all this talk of aesthetics, math means something and there's a magic in that.Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
I can't go into detail right now but I just need to say that I definitely do not think math is devoid of magic. Quite the opposite, actually, there's a very numinous and transcendent beauty in math. It is different from the aesthetic experience of art though, and if I have time later, I'll try to articulate why. It's not a value judgment either, simply a difference. However, there is probably more of an overlap than people might think. I don't think they are two complete opposites. I need to give this more thought.
To clarify my point:Quote:
Originally Posted by aubreymcfate
There are two basic types of beauty that come from math. One is in the functional experience of it, and the other is in the aesthetic experience. What I meant to point out in my original comment was that the aesthetic experience comes later on in math after you've gained experience. To give what's maybe a parallel, it would be hard to see visual aesthetics minutes after you had been given the ability to see or to hear the aesthetics of your music example minutes after being given the ability to hear. We kind of just take those for granted since we've had these senses for so long.
Edit:
Related, Lasker's Manual of Chess - Wikipedia. This was a small volume broken up into what's basically six smaller books by the second recognized world champion of chess. Either the last or next-to-last book is on aesthetics in chess:
The discussion revolves around experience being the precursor to being able to perceive the aesthetic qualities of chess, which isn't unlike what we're talking about here with math.Quote:
The Aesthetic Effect in Chess finds Lasker expounding on the ways that the subjective "aesthetic valuations" of a "spectator" cause him or her to have vastly different opinions of the same game. The rest of this section comprises various famously uncanny games, such as the Immortal game and the Evergreen game, with some analysis from Lasker.
Good point about experience. Just came across this quote by Bertrand Russell which probably sums it up quite well (you tell me):
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry."
Another point of agreement about experience: Many people think music is innately emotional, and it's not hard for most people to understand the basic emotions that popular music tries to convey (happy, sad, frantic, ponderous, etc.) I've been listening to classical since I was young and for that reason literally hear certain music differently than others because I've trained my perceptive faculties. It's not that I'm better or cooler or anything (although I think, to an extent, musical perception is a sensibility that differs from person to person), it's just that I have experience.
There is also something ineffable about these things, hence that numinous quality, as though we are on a molecular or spiritual level (however you want to think about it) intrinsically drawn to the mathematical logic of the universe. I imagine the way you feel about the aesthetics of math is similar to the primordial sublime fulfillment I feel when I hear a Bach fugue (you would probably have a similar experience).
Other incredible composers, like Beethoven, combine their scientific mind for the math of music with a deeply creative and fiercely individualistic expressive capacity, which perhaps is where the true distinction between music and math comes into play. We take it for granted in music now but when Beethoven came onto the scene, it was extraordinarily unsettling to people. Beethoven is basically the "Birth of the I," the first composer whose music evoked very personal depths. Douglas Adams has a great quote: "“Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.”
I suppose what I was trying to get at earlier was that the system of rewards when it comes to playing piano is much more viscerally appealing to me, perhaps because of that expressive quality that resonates with my sensibilities. The sensory quality of music combined with the mathematical intricacy is basically crack to me.
In regards to chess, I think it's no coincidence that many great composers also played chess. My favorite composer (who I've rambled about into the void here many times, lol), Prokofiev, had a lifelong passion for chess, and even beat a world champion. This is not at all surprising to me. Great composers can see in their mind's eye the endless possibilities and relationships between notes and chords and so on. Same with chess -- masters see and understand a myriad of relationships and moves all at once. It's a similar kind of perception, I guess.
Ok I have to literally stop myself now because the thoughts and connections are endless and I'm pretty sure I just need to bury myself in solid literature about this. Oh, and learn math. Almost forgot about that.
Bertrand Russell is my boy.
the babadook is one of the finest horror movies i've seen in a long while
Goddammit, Oliver Sacks.
:(
Still haven't read any of the stuff he's written about death being on the horizon. Good man. Open and honest and interested in people, and we're all better for him.
Picture is worth 1000 words. Not surprised that someone exhibiting zero gender dimorphism would be in favor of eliminating gender pronouns.
Yeah, well, stupid lives in us all and usually it's alright.
https://i.imgur.com/naKVrJM.jpg
that headline is misleading.. not that i have any interest in defending this professor's tactics. she's not trying to exterminate he/she, she's trying to police the way people interact in and out of the classroom and force he/she to stop being the default, which i think is a really heavy handed and extreme technique. people don't like to be herded like sheep. i don't understand the psychological rationale behind it.
http://diversity.utk.edu/2015/08/pronouns/ <-- primary source for article
I think he should shut the fuck up.Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Well-played.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Looks like a broke-ass Patton Oswalt.
On average, the European Honey Bee accounts for ten deaths a year in Australia.
The Great White Shark can only muster up two.
Fear the bee.
I'm about to quit my job, in about an hour. Feels fucking great!
hi 5
Congratulations! By the time you're pushed to quit, it's gone too far.Quote:
Originally Posted by rong
I'm sure you'll ride the high for a week or so.
Got any prospects for the next gig?
Opening my own company. So the real hard work is about to start.
It's interesting how you automatically assumed he was "pushed to quit" and that it would lead to "riding the high for a week or so."Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
Leveraging synergies to realize tipping point paradymes or are you just gonna start making porn?Quote:
Originally Posted by rong
if i had to guess he's already got a homemade video or two in his collection.
Lol wuf, no I don't. I did have once of a previous which was found by a current. That was a fun day.
I guess it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
totally counts.Quote:
Originally Posted by rong
DanArong,
I recently heard that you were transitioning from a salaried position into a founding ownership role. I'm very excited for the challenges and opportunities that lay in your future. My only concern is what does your business do?
Thanks,
One Five Hundred Pound Gorilla
Senior Poster
Flop Turn River Forums
Holy fuck balls! This exists.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/commen...ship_with_his/