u/upthewatwo

I just heard the phrase "crisis in the Middle East" and I realised that, as someone approaching 40, I've been hearing that phrase since I started paying attention to the news, and I think we had some pretty major crises in the Middle East in the 1970s and early 80s

Same with the "housing crisis" - I've been hearing that phrase for 3 decades now - can the same crisis really go on for that long? Isn't the idea of a "crisis" that it reaches some kind of breaking point? Is what we're actually dealing with in fact just "the way things are"?

It just seems so petty

Not to stereotype, but it's usually a certain type of man - engineers, blokes who like to say every road they took to get here, model train enthusiasts, you know

You say "do you reckon we could put a telly on that wall?" and they knock on the wall and say "well, with a semi-internal recumbent RSJ and 40 mill flange capacitor the mortar should copatex at around 180 degrees Celsius given overall partial SWD"

Are you trying to make the other person feel like an idiot? You know what all the words in your sentence mean, so why not say "the piece of wood behind it isn't strong enough so I would need to replace it with something stronger, but yeah, we could"

What is the use in speaking in code to someone who you don't know speaks that code? Surely say "wall not strong" to start with and then when the other person says "ohhh because of the 40 mill flange capacitor?" you will know that they know at least a little bit of the code, and then you can keep building up the jargon until you lose them, rather than drowning them in the first line of conversation

Do you really think people who you have no evidence of having done any engineering will understand in-depth technical language, or are you just entirely socially unaware, or are you trying to make other people look like idiots because they don't understand your code?

This is an ELI an idiot post

Also, I can barely play an instrument, I like making weird noises with my mouth

I feel like I can come up with really fun vocal melodies and I want to strum a little something along to them to make proper little tunes

But how does any of the instrumental fit in?

Why and when do I play music around my singing? Why would I play any particular chord, and how do I know which chord to play next?

Don't most people come up with a riff and make a vocal melody to fit? I want to do the opposite, I just want some pleasant enough background noise for my mouth noises, they're the important thing to me

I never get ill

I smoked weed every day and drank a pretty tolerable 2-3 pints every few days

Not good, but I always felt functional enough at my job and life for this to basically be my hobbies that I enjoy

But thought I would try having a sober break just to see how well my brain and body could function

The answer is NOT VERY WELL

Couldn't sleep after quitting weed, so I drank a few pints each night, then stopped drinking and instantly got a cold and haven't slept for 2 nights straight

I don't have new reserves of energy or brainpower, in fact I'm practically a zombie today from lack of sleep

Just wondering if I'm going to at some point become a better person, because, if not, what's the point of stopping the things I've enjoyed my entire life?

Mine is outrageously annoying, like, I'm considering making the sad decision to return him to the Dogs Trust, I can't be ill AND dealing with a dog going literally psycho, destroying my house every time I sneeze

Just about to throw away some packaging and noticed it had a "Scan to win a trip to Ibiza" QR code

If that is the winning QR code but I just chuck it, will the prize never be claimed? How much money is being spent on prizes no one ever gets?

I've been under the influence for, probably, the majority of my life

And I have complicated thoughts about that

But I've also been in education and employed for the entire time as well, so I've been sober for a very good portion

And then I guess the rest of the time I was asleep

...

But I know that I remember the moments of hilarity and horror, drama and boredom, love and apathy, that came with chemically altering my baseline state, more than I remember any particular moment of sobriety

...

Now, I don't know if I just haven't actually really been purely, soberly myself, for 20 years, and everyone only has a few hard-hitting memories from 38 years of being alive, or whether I would have had more, realer memories if I'd been sober this whole time

It's almost like it's impossible to know

Bonus question: do you think you can have an opinion on a sector you have had no practical experience in?

For example, they showed you what buttons to press, but they weren't able to answer more fundamental follow-up questions about the basis/ultimate purpose of the process, they just think "you do this, then you do this.... If that light isn't green then I don't know what to do"

So much training that I've experienced has come down to "do this" while missing out the "why we do this"

This question is based on my suspicion that our fundamental knowledge and understanding of how our world works is dwindling - things are the way they are, we don't know how they got that way, and we wouldn't really know what to do if the underlying structure broke in some way

And then we put new processes on top of old infrastructure that we didn't understand, and now the basics are buried in a tangled web of complexity and interconnected, inter-dependant systems that basically leaves us at the mercy of hoping everything continues to work like it "always" has