Thanks for the insight … I’ve made a subtle change to my first comment to reflect what you said.

It was a poor choice of words and phrasing on my part … a lot of time I’m just off handedly commenting on things while doing something else and never think too much or too clearly about what I’m saying or commenting.

As an older man now … I do take time to gauge who I am talking to, especially young people, because I know social anxiety, being awkward and just being young makes it difficult for young people to do any kind of small talk. But I also do have to do it safely in a public setting where I can feel safe and the person I talk to can feel safe.

As you can see … small talk even in a public forum like this is a skill we have to learn.

If anything small talk is necessary because it teaches all how to live with one another.

Hey bud, how you doing?

Small talk is even harder in public if you are a big tall brown long haired Native Canadian man like me. I’m older now and I’m fully aware that I intimidate people at first glance. I’m not violent, or do or want to do aggressive things but if you saw me, chances are those are the first impressions that you would see.

In northern Ontario, Caucasian people are familiar with people like me and I can easily talk to most people, especially in rural areas. But if I talk to some young woman, I’m often treated like some kind of monster.

I’ve also been to Europe in Germany, France, Italy and Spain and over there it is even harder for me to conduct small talk … there’s a language barrier and on top of that I look like I do. No matter how modern people can be, there is always a level of racism when people encounter someone who doesn’t look like everyone else they know.

So to me … small talk is a public filter.

If I talk to someone and they don’t want to engage, I move on.

If I talk to someone and they treat me kindly and openly, I’ve met someone who will help me feel more comfortable in this strange world.

This also acts as a public filter

If you small talk with someone and they react positively (or at least don’t treat you weird) … then the person you are small talking to is a decent RECEPTIVE person who is also open to a bit of communication.

If you small talk with someone and they immediately treat you weird, walk away or just don’t want to deal with you … then chances are, it was a good thing you said something to eliminate any negative interaction.

EDIT: changed a word in my phrasing

Average American: … Captain! … the house is on fire and it’s full of starving children!

Captain Baloney: … meh … yeah, I’m waiting for my cheeseburger … might get around to it later

The middle path is breakdancing while going through your breakdown

Someone got their buttons pushed

meh … I’ll wait a while so it gets more pickled … more pickled means more RAM speed.

I usually give that look to the table on the other side of the restaurant that didn’t finish their fries and let the waitress take them to be thrown away in the trash.

Dinosaurs were pretty big already … but if this possible … they would have been honkin big!!!

Don’t give us too much credit just yet. Dinosaurs were around for about 180 million years.

Our earliest ancestors are about 2 million years ago, our closest ancestors are about 300,000 years and our actual ancestors who are like us are only about 50,000 years.

We’re still just a tiny blip in earth’s history and if we wipe ourselves out, it’ll be pretty hard for any future archaeologist to figure out who we were and what we did, or even to know that we were even here.

deleted by creator

Modern religions … any and all modern religions are all the same now

They don’t worship a God … or Gods … or Saints … or prophets … or angels … or Holy Spirits

They all worship money and power … and their message is one of control and obedience, so that they can have all the money and power.

They’re all basically the same.

Americans make great soccer players … you just call them names and they’ll fold over and invade your country.

I’ve been regularly downloading the 100+GB data dumps of wikipedia on an annual basis for the past few years. It seems the worse the world gets, the more often I download another new copy.

I use Kiwix and download the ZIM files to keep it updated.

Invite Clark Kent to an interview with a Senior General in a small village in the Nevada desert. Clark arrives to an empty village full of plastic mannequins. The whole village disappears in a flash of light.

Clark arrives back to the CIA office the next day with excuses that he couldn’t make it to the interview.

I thought that was Miles O’Brien and this image made sense for a moment

It comes with a 100lb concrete dome to contain it when you’re not using it … crane sold separately.

Metastasizes fun all over your body

Isn’t it just a limitation of human vision? No matter how much resolution we can create, the human eye will only ever see a certain level of resolution … anything beyond that is imperceptible to us. I think I remember reading that 4K is the maximum we can realistically appreciate and anything beyond that is impractical because no one would ever notice the difference.

The only way higher resolutions work is if you start blowing up the size of the image itself. A 20" wide image at 720p looks good but the same image blow up to 60" becomes noticeably pixelated. A 20" wide image at 8K looks sharp and blown up to 60", it still looks sharp.