I’m surprised they don’t wait for you to hit the submit button before dropping this on you so people feel invested and motivated to do as they’re told because of the sunk cost in time and effort writing the review.

No no, the chairs or tables will be absolved of duty, so like they’ll still be around, taking up space, we just won’t be allowed to ask anything useful of them anymore because they’re retired.

do you one better

Well thought out lol. You should get a genie, I think you’ll be prepared.

But the thing is, if they do the thing you asked in a way where it’s noticeable that they only did it because you asked, then they are signalling to you that they understood, which is a form of communication and the word used was “communicate” with animals.

Hmm, but are they immune to this restriction?

Haha imagine trying to explain that to people.

“I have a superpower, I can speak to animals they just can’t speak back”

“But everyone has that superpower, I can do that too”

“Yeh but I’m actually really talking to them, like in their language that they can understand”

“How do you know?”

“…”

I think it’s getting about the level of attention as the person who started doing it hoped it would, which is about as much as possible. That attention is definitely going to run the gamut but it’s the internet so plenty of it’s going to be hate. Every time I see it I’m split between knee-jerk “that’s stupid” and then a begrudging sense of affection for someone’s commitment to pointless contrarianism and quirkiness. With the right mental framing it’s at different times annoying and endearing.

I don’t know somehow GiGa just works but GiGantic wouldn’t have. I think you instinctively made the right choice even if you didn’t mean to

Looks like he’s wearing a shower cap

I have seen payphones around… like, at all. I’ve seen the iconic bright pink lit up tops and wifi symbol so I can attest that they are indeed still around, but it’s very uncommon to see them. There’s not a whole lot left and to say they’re “everywhere”, I mean… I haven’t been interstate for a while but, what part of Australia are you in that these are a common fixture for you?

Because of who gets to do the considering.

I rather like the idea of having a word for “the conversation is over, I expect no response.” In daily life lol. Feels boss.

The back of the tongue one is annoying and sometimes chokes me while in the middle of talking, but much worse is when the husk is just the right shape so it wedges in at the interface between the back of a tooth and your gum. Shit is IMPOSSIBLE to get out you just have to wait until it feels like it. No amount of poking with your tongue will dislodge it, or even if you try to use your finger and the more you try, the more the sharp corners of the husk fragment stab at the gums which hurts. Feels incredibly satisfying when it spontaneously just comes out though.

I guess compared to the other examples at least she didn’t try and persuade you it wasn’t an animal, just a bit crap at embracing a child’s natural enthusiasm and kind of immediately killing their sense of enquiry by making it in to an experience of being judged.

Was that Douglas Adams? I remember Richard Dawkins using that as an example. I always thought it was a really good analogy.

I mean they could be pretty happy, even joyful I suppose. The ideology is rooted in hatred but I do get the impression it’s rather a lot of fun for a good portion of these guys right up until they’re met with the leopard’s teeth.

I guess you could encrypt your messages in the mail as well.

I reckon it’s probably to do with internally trying to downregulate the smile so it doesn’t look really weird or crazy or fake or stupid and you just overcompensate. You don’t know what you look like while you’re doing it and that information void gives rise to some self consciousness and pre-emptive embarrassment. Natural smiles don’t require you to think about how to do it at all so most people don’t really know how to smile in a socially acceptable way on demand with a few seconds notice. Some people are better at it than others, maybe they have a better intuition, maybe they have a better awareness of what muscle movements correspond to what changes on their face and also a really good grasp of which tiny subtleties lead to a photogenic smile or the grimace of a maniacal murderer. Actors are probably pretty good at it either through intuition or just a lot of practice. I should imagine you could train yourself to be better at it, but it’d feel weird and vain to spend your time doing that so a lot of us just make weirdly flat or stern faces in photos.

If you can actually just enjoy the moment so it makes you smile as a result it’d probably get better results but that idea leads to its whole own self reflexive internal monologue trying to concentrate and force yourself to be happy that probably results in a frown while you summon that concentration.

Et tu brewtus?