Hey there, enquiring minds:
(Inquiring is asking a question in America. Enquiring is asking a question in Britain, I would like to know…why?)
Time for a string of random questions:
First question: Why is the perception of time so elastic? We all know that a minute can seem like an hour or can be imperceptible. When you pay attention to it, it seems longer. But why? If we are so much better when we are hopped up on either adrenaline or boredom that time slows down, what’s the point of “normal time” - is it like low-res photos when you email—takes up less memory to speed up time?
Question two (unrelated): Is the lousy, ground-up tea powder in cheap tea-bags the detritus of fancy tea shipped wholesale to the producers of cheap tea (while other factories and artisanal smaller houses get the good stuff), or do Lipton and its competitors actually grow normal tea leaves and then grind them down into those tiny shriveled powdery pieces?
3. (Still unrelated. They are all unrelated.) Why are the things that make the most money also things that are awful? The bigger the profit margin the more likely that the original product or service is truly horrible. No?
Is this a sculpture? Is it even art? (click through to read my opinion)
(I have wondered this for a while.) Why are mermaids always drawn with blue or green tails? Shouldn’t their tails be gray or silver—like fish?
WRITING NEWS:
FOR REAL I HAVE BIG NEWS!
You can now preorder my short story collection!!!!
In other writing-related news:
I did a public reading of a short story called “Sanguine” at East Village Wordsmiths on Tuesday, run by my friend Leigh Ann O’Connor. The theme was “Red.”
Random Final Thought:
I used to not mind doing taxes when they were entirely on paper. I liked the organization of the piles and then the simple arithmetic but now, with the need for multiple screens, PDFs, uploading ridiculously low numbers, and generally feeling both stupid and disdainful simultaneously (stupdainful? dispid?), I’m afraid I can no longer say I do not mind doing taxes.
I have a few questions
Re: question 3, I think Cory Doctorow explains it best as the process he calls "enshittification," wherein "first, [companies] are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves." More at https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys.