@Azure

Haha I just started reading Lockhart's Lament (I think I may have read it before), finished the "musician's nightmare",

and,

I want to say that no, the author is way too optimistic, we absolutely DO teach music in this horrible stilted way, and that's why although I love music I am TERRIFIED of "doing anything musical" because I just hated, hated music class, I could NEVER get anything right, it was sheer pain and shame and failure from beginning to end.

@Azure

Same with athletics, and English composition. Pain, pain, suffering, pain.

I love words and I love music and school made me feel I could never grasp, never "win" at those subjects.

I don't naturally love athletics, but school sure made me hate moving my body much more than I would have naturally.

@Azure

The thjng about English that I didn't grasp is that it's a *social* game. There is zero connection between how good a piece of prose is, and how much society values it (and therefore teaches it).

I think this became obvious to me very early on, that Composition was a game I could never win because it was social and therefore with undeclared, constantly changing rules all tied up with power and performance.

But also pretty much all teaching is terrible.

@Azure

Also the whole Hollywood formula thing of "there MUST ALWAYS be a clear Villain who can be blamed for everything that's gone wrong, and then physically humiliated / hurt / killed to achieve Closure for the hero's journey of self-discovery"

that's got very bad implications for American politics and foreign policy and just general sense of self-identity and mission in the world, and continues to have bad effects.

@Azure

Yep.

My explanation is that Hollywood (and prestige TV) scriptwriters / directors are all people whose personal experience of logic, science and maths at school was of absolute soul-crushing torture, and so they honestly believe that the only people who could love STEM subjects must be tortured, soul-crushed people.

It's not a charitable explanation, but it fits the observed facts.

If true, this has very bad implications for American education and media.

@Azure

I think Picard would have something to say about that.

oh sure he SAYS he hates the Queen, and they argue ALL THE TIME

but she doesn't call him The Cutest for nothing

I mean it's a good bet that Ix will back Netflix and Omnius will back Disney+, as has been the tradition for a thousand generations, but, will the Bene Gesserit go for Amazon Prime or HBO Max? They're always the wildcard, and even our best mentats can never grasp the subtleties of their logic until hours after they've moved.

And then there's all the Sith and Borg influencers on Youtube, who don't even know enough to know they're in the wrong franchise, to say nothing of Tiktok and The Mule.

@Azure

There does seem to be a bit too much emphasis on everything being because of trauma.

What this galaxy needs is Sybok to sort everyone out.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention. The Product is only found on a single planet. A dry, desolate planet named California. Hidden away in the rocks of this planet are a people known as the Scriptwriters, who have long held a prophecy that a Messiah will come to lead them to creative freedom, and a percentage of the gross.

Know then that it is the year 20,223.

The known universe is controlled by the Padishah Executive of Parks, Experiences, and Products - my father.

The most reddit slash r slash boxoffice headline ever:

"Predict the gross for each movie from the universal 20223 slate"

that's quite a hard prediction to make since we don't even yet know which Great House will control the Landsraad in that year let alone which streaming platform the Spacing Guild will support

Well played (checks name) Eric Berger, Ars Technica writer and stealth Star Trek: Enterprise theme tune rickrolling fan.

Well played.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/03/its-huge-expensive-and-years-late-but-the-sls-rocket-is-finally-here/

@thor @loke

If I tried that there would be a doughsplosion, just dough everywhere, on the ceiling, under the floor, chunks found five blocks away

@thor @loke

and the funny thing was, I was only trying to boil water

@loke @thor

ok but how did people drink coffee before there were Espresso Machines and/or small steam trains

@loke @thor

good lord, his hands, it's like a magician. One, two, three pulls, suddenly out of nowhere, noodles!

This difference probably tells us something

which is that Europeans or Americans are all people for whom "making your own pasta" is a big flashy thing that you need a big flashy DOOM MACHINE to take up half of your kitchen to signal that you are an Extremely Serious Cook who you should not pick a fight with on World Kitchen Wrestling

while Asians are people for whom noodles are comfort food that you want to get the making process over with as fast and simply as possible so you can eat noodles

Apparently when given the engineering problem to solve of

"how can I best and easiest squeeze a small chunk of dough into delicious noodles of dough", the European / American Answer is

while the Asian Answer is

Searching online for noodle machines, discovered that Noodle Machine would be a great name for either

a) a band
b) a pop-up eatery
c) an AI startup