Taomeow

1 hour ago, thelerner said:

Happy 4rth.  It it wasn't for our Founding Father's we'd be.. we'd be.. Canada!?

which, imo, wouldn't be so bad.  i was just hanging out in Vancouver, nice city.  Chicago-ish but cleaner. 

I don't know what Montreal is up to these days, but a long time ago when I was there it looked like it was trying to strike a balance between New York and Paris -- 

the Paris part came from a homeless bum who asked me for a couple of dollars "for a cup of coffee."  In French.  

I may be bad at economy so it's a bit hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that to celebrate winning a war over 2% tax on tea, we pay a 7.75% sales tax on anything we might want to use for the celebration.  Not to mention the rest of taxes on... um... on being alive -- also on being dead, since the 7.75% sales tax applies to coffins too.    

9 hours ago, Apech said:

To all American Bums.

 

🇬🇧💂💂🇬🇧

No treason.  The Old World is not a lizard that can lose its tail so that the independent tail becomes the New World.  Rather, it's a snake -- which occasionally plays ouroboros with itself. 

At least that's one way to look at it.  

/\ We have a whole series of jokes based on interpreting what one hears in a "lik lik" known language.  Goes both ways, by the way -- e.g. we use "bread of sieve cable" to mean "bred sivoy kobyly" -- an idiom meaning "delirious bullshit," literally "the ravings of a grey mare."       

The latest example from my just-concluded trip to Greece.  Me and my friends were sipping espressos in a cafe in Corfu Town, and at the next table some young Greek guys were having a very lively conversation.  In the course of which one of them jumped to his feet and exclaimed, with great feeling and energy, what sounded like "Shabliaka ty moliaka!" to my ear.  Now I don't know about other people's ears but to mine it was simply delightful.  In Russian it could have been a yet unknown curse, but also words of endearment, or a nickname for a friend, or a dire warning -- watch out, I'm about to kick your ass!  Could be anything but due to the manner of delivery I was convinced it wasn't something boring.  So later I tried to pick AI's brain to decipher it.  What Greek expression, in a context I described to it, could it have been, and what could it mean?  After a brainstorming session we zeroed in on "Ti blaxia, ti malakia" -- which is the Greek for "what nonsense, what stupidity!"  Perfect.  I still haven't decided which version I like better, the real one or the misheard one, but I'm tempted to start using one of them, or maybe both.      

29 minutes ago, Apech said:

They say what sounds like zharka for hot … is that a regional accent?

 

 

No, that's how "o" in an unstressed syllable is pronounced -- like a semi-swallowed "a."  English speakers often have trouble with it when they learn the language -- they pronounce it too distinctly like an "o" everywhere.  E.g. the word "horosho" (good or well or OK) which Anthony Burgess phonetized as "horror show" in "A Clockwork Orange" is a typical example -- but it's actually pronounced "harashO" since only the last of the three Os is under stress.  

Note (putting on my Henry Higgins top hat): there's regional dialects in some parts of Russia where o is indeed pronounced as o in an unstressed position, and a special verb in the language that specifically refers to this way of speaking -- Okat'.  Then there's the Moscow accent and a word for that -- Akat' -- characterized by exaggerated a's where unstressed o's are encountered.  While standard Russian, like I said, often semi-swallows them, a bit like the English schwa /ə/.)  

It's perfectly fine to do it the English way -- i.e. drop statements about the weather.

SeVOdnya ZHARko  -- it's hot today.

KhoROshaya poGOda -- the weather is nice.

BUdet dozhd' -- it's going to rain.

Or you could get curious (the American way):

OtKUda vy? -- Where are you from?

Iz kaKOvo GOroda? -- From what city?

Vam zdes' NRAvitsya? -- Do you like it here?

Actually, if you give me a sample list of things you would say to a neighbor who does speak the language, I can try to come up with a Russian situational equivalent.

Don't underestimate loo paper (aka toilet paper in our parts).  In China I've come across rolls of toilet paper with profound statements in English adorning them.  My favorite was, "Mind connects to mind..."  Not sure what it meant in that particular context, maybe it was geared toward people who like to do their profound thinking and contemplation on the toilet.  For me it was a bit entertaining to read those and similar words of wisdom on TP, especially coupled with what the inscription on the plunger (that rubber thing for unblocking a clogged toilet) said:  "The sucker will suck and suck!  Never give up, never stop sucking!"  

27 minutes ago, Apech said:

Every time a Daobum stops remembering an Apech dies.

39 minutes ago, Apech said:

TM has no manager!

No manager to damage her!  

P.S.  This appears to have been fixed now, or else fixed itself.  Thanks.  

Profound thanks to the wonderful mods who helped me get back on after some password/email adversities -- 

but now the site asks me to sign in all over again every single time I open it, so I have to enter my password as many times as I visit.  Before the reset it merely kept me logged on at all times for countless moons and never asked for password. 

Is there a way to fix this?  I did check the "remember me" box but the forum still doesn't.  

Meow?  

I know it's a serious matter, but I can't resist offering my favorite movie scene dedicated to anger management:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEE7xzwogMc

2 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

Pride is the Wrong Word

 

I´m a gay white man.  What would happen if I say that I´m proud to be white?  My fellow Bums would likely get a lot of use out of the new "oh boy" emoji.  I might be banned from the board for being racist -- and rightfully so, I think.  What would happen if I say that I´m proud to be gay?  On the whole, I´d wager the reaction would be a lot more positive.  And yet being attracted to other men is not like winning the national tennis championships -- it´s not a soaring personal accomplishment.  I didn´t train hard daily, sweating through grueling workouts, in order to think that Brad Pitt is hot.  

 

This is why I think Gay Pride is misnamed.  Nobody should be proud -- or ashamed -- of their sexual orientation.  It´s not a hierarchy thing; there´s no better or worse.  Just like it´s not better or worse to be white or brown or black.  Pride isn´t the right word.  I´m not sure the right word exists in the English language.  There´s a subtle feeling of self-affirmation all people have access to when they do the hard personal work of making friends  with themselves, a feeling of basic OKness that is not dependent on anybody else giving a thumbs up.  It´s this subtle feeling of self-affirmation I hope all of us feel this June, whether we march in a Pride march or not.  If you feel it, whew -- well that´s something to be proud of.

You are, first and foremost, a smart man.  Consequences may occasionally pan out to be -- what's the word I'm looking for -- severe?  alienating? politically incorrect? 

I used to have a roommate and friend who was a gay white man.  He was not proud of being either, but it so happened that I helped him accomplish something he became so proud of that he kept bragging to everybody every chance he got, even though for everybody else it wasn't an accomplishment at all...  He came from a wealthy family and grew up in a community completely shielded from the rest of the world, and all he knew about swimming was always done in swimming-pools, by everybody he knew.  (He was alienated from his family at the time I made his acquaintance.)  So we went to the beach and I gave it all I had to convince him that the ocean was, well, swimmable.  He doubted it.  Waves.  No boundaries.  Sand, wind, all that weird stuff you don't encounter in a swimming-pool.  I shamed him into trying, and he discovered he liked it so much that I had a hard time getting him to finally get out of the water.  He was happier than I'd ever seen him.  So he proceeded to brag to everybody he knew and even to strangers, just mentioning nonchalantly something along the lines of, "how was your weekend? Me, I went swimming in the ocean..."  

18 minutes ago, BigSkyDiamond said:

and marzipan scones

under sapphire skies, trees creak,

mint breeze enfolds me

Mint breeze enfolds me.

Don't know about the people,

but scarecrows look cool.  

(with a nod to Kobayashi Issa's late Edo period classic:

"Approaching my village:

Don't know about the people,

but all the scarecrows are crooked.")

1 hour ago, liminal_luke said:

 

like the falling rain

I plink, pour, puddle, and plop

Leia´s sweet revenge.

Interesting bilingual play of words for me.  Lei is, incidentally, the Russian for "pour" in the imperative mood.  Leika -- a watering can, and also the diminutive of Leia.  Lei-ka -- same as lei but the imperative mood is expressed more informally.  

16 hours ago, doc benway said:

 

dragon wings thunder

raising arms in defiance

I care for others

I care for others,

I don't care for still others --

like the falling rain.  

1 hour ago, Nungali said:

 

 

That was such a silly movie.  But of course Raquel Welch was an inspiration.  I remember thinking she had nothing on me except for  that leather and fur bikini -- but I so envied that outfit!  (We had to wear uniforms in school...  brown dress, black apron, white apron for holidays.  A white collar and white cuffs to go with that dress -- you had to sew them on by hand, or rather baste so you could remove them easily enough because you had to change them often -- the ones that weren't pristinely white weren't tolerated.  Civilization is overrated.)   

Double double post and trouble

21 minutes ago, Nungali said:

 

      if I borrow  money  from myself ....  do I have debt  or have I become wealthy  ? 

 

 

Depends on what you borrow that money for...  I suppose it can go either way, or even both ways.  E.g. if I borrowed money from myself to invest in gold 30 years ago, it would have made me poor then but wealthy now.  Conversely, if I borrowed money from myself to invest in Enron 30 years ago, it would have made me wealthy then but poor now.   

Our situation is different though -- American government borrows money from American me the taxpayer but owes it to American them -- the Federal Reserve (20%), government trust funds (25%), private domestic investors (25% -- banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, etc..) to a total of 70% of the $33 trillion dollar debt owed to them, not to me.  The remaining 30% owed to foreign countries is obviously also not owed to me even though it's been taken from me.    

39 minutes ago, old3bob said:

 

if  I remember correctly P.D. Ouspensky did a lot of pondering/theories along such lines of "going back", but I haven't studied those materials in like 40 years...

I don't know his work at all, but I've seen the structure of Time through ayahuasca-opened eyes.  The "present" was like an observation point from which I could look at Time in all directions, the easiest was looking down onto the past.  It was like a layered cake of winding rivers (or maybe of one river snaking this way and that way, its segments layered on top of each other), going all the way into deep infinity.  The layers were see-through, so I could look down at the recent past, further down at the past that was more remote, etc..  Rivers were not just loopy but some loops did indeed cause Time to flow backward.  I could focus on a particular section and "zoom in."  It also appeared that I could dive anywhere into that river from my observation point -- but it was as scary as jumping from the edge of a cliff into an abyss, so I didn't.  (I also didn't want to go UP but SHE dragged me there anyway and showed me the source of all that flow.  This source I should liken perhaps to a dripping sink or some plumbing piping underneath it -- Time we experience and everything in it was apparently a side effect of operations of that "sink," That World -- a very incomprehensible place where you couldn't tell biology from technology, a bit like one of those Borg cubes and a lot like one of those Mesoamerican bas reliefs.  SHE wanted to show and explain things to me but that place terrified me and I begged HER to get me outta there.)   

I'd be all for being sent back to the stone age -- provided my own age would be prenatal, or to be precise, pre-conception.  Once you're carried in the mother's womb and born and raised in the technology age, it's game over for the stone age adaptation purposes --

to the same, or greater, extent as being born and raised in the stone age is game over for your functionality in the technology age.

If I were to choose a reincarnation plan though, I would definitely have my intent set tens of thousands of years back.  I wonder if reincarnating back in time is possible.  (Don't see why not -- some folks even retain vague impressions of technology from their previous incarnations into times that are "future" to their present ones.  Some of those carriers of slightly under-erased memories of things-to-come become inventors and some write sci-fi, the rest just have strange dreams from time to time.  I sometimes get future tech dreams -- I even thought of trying to patent some of the things I saw, but I'm too tech lazy.  The ones I saw were very benign -- e.g. a far superior thingie as replacement for the cast they presently put on a broken limb, a large feather-weight umbrella that, when folded, can fit in your wallet...  stuff like that.) 

/\ key word "art."  Meaning maybe murals, artistic photos, collages, what not that might fall under the category?  

"AI art" is an oxymoron though.  What it really is is a technology for producing banal kitsch in order to stunt people's esthetic development, as part of the overall dumbing-down effort.   (Although acclaimed art in the traditional sense has also produced many atrocities of abysmal taste and quite a few money-laundering scams, presented as "art" by corrupt critics and accepted by the public because there's many ways to play the public like a fiddle.)

@Nungali It's most definitely a direct quote from Lenin who asserted, in one of his numerous fantasy stories economy-related articles (which poor me had to study in school) that "once we've built communism, we will make toilets out of solid gold."  I doubt Trump is a communist, don't know about the authors of the article (didn't open it because my computer issued some kind of warning about a redirect somewhere I didn't dare tread), but I think this is something that would find itself at home in the Current Events section...  oops... presently nonexistent. 

I do not intend to break the rule about its nonexistence here -- if I mention something like the dynamics of the national debt, that's not "current," it's "habitual" -- started in the 1980s and then sharply skyrocketed in 2020 and onward.  

Incidentally we owe most of it internally, to our very own money-reinventing companies --  Japan is but a drop in that bottomless bucket.   

Million, billion, trillion -- in many (most?) people's minds any which number with many zeroes is just "a lot."   But there's lots and then there's other lots.  Here's an interesting way to put them in perspective:

A million seconds ago was May 23rd

A billion seconds ago was 1993

A trillion seconds ago was 30,000 B.C.

The US national debt is now rising by $1 trillion every 180 days.

1 hour ago, Nungali said:

What is going on here 

 

the cover image ... ain't they all cute and looking similar .  Its all still images , wot, no one thought to do any filming  and only took images all though it ... yet the 'prime actor' can be filled at the end drinking his coffee  ? 

 

I mean, its a great story , no doubt under those temperatures , all sorts of behavior changes  in animals . And regardless of that, I have seen some pretty amazing animal behavior and interactions myself personally . 

 

BUT , if it happened to you , and you took  a few pictures of it on your phone , would you FILM any of it ?  

Not just the animals' behavior changes under those temperatures, it looks like the human physique changes too, and with uncanny speed at that.  Once I noticed, I just had to follow all those amazing transformations.  At first the man is beardless and has a full head of hair, then at 3:33 he's still beardless but bald as a knee, at 4:13 his hair is back, praise the Lord, at 4:48 it turns black and he's grown a lush black beard in the past 35 seconds, only to shave it off at 5:24, then at 7:14 his beard is back with a vengeance but now it's grey, so at 8:03 he gets rid of it, and by 10:40 it's grown back and it's not grey anymore. 

I should have been looking at the cats the whole time instead.  AI or not, real story or not, cats (with the exception of the poor artificially bred sphinx) are always furry.  It's humans that can't seem to decide on the proper level of hirsuteness.