It’s tough having a high IQ. Most people don’t understand the world and the flaws of humans, at least at the level I do. As such, I find it hard to connect to other people. Most people are morons. I feel deep sorrow in knowing the direction the world is going and that the inhabitants of the world are mostly idiots.

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Why do so many people (in this thread) unironically feel this way? “Intelligence” is a socially constructed and often useless idea that includes and excludes many things seemingly at random. For example, chess is often thought of as something that’s very intelligent, but skill at chess is (just like nearly anything else) based on practice & experience. Just because you’re good at chess and did well in school doesn’t mean that you alone can understand the problems in the world at a deeper level than an average Jo.

Everyone should read “What Is Intelligence, Anyway?”, a short excerpt from Isaac Asimov.

I’ll paste the part I think is most important, but the whole thing is worth reading:

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

This also reminds me of something I realized recently: 24 hours is NOT the amount of time it takes for the Earth to rotate 360°. Because the Earth (assuming North is “up”) rotates counterclockwise and orbits counterclockwise, each day is slightly more than 360°, probably close to 361°.
So if we assume a year is about 365.25 days, Earth actually spins 366.25 times. One rotation is just kinda “eaten” by orbiting counterclockwise.

Why don’t YOU?

God Loves Uganda - about the impact of American Christian missionaries from megachurches on the people and politics of Uganda. It’s from 2013 and is in desperate need of an update, but it’s still very good.
The Punk Singer - documentary about the life and music of Kathleen Hanna, pioneer of “riot grrrl” punk feminism. I love the music and vibes, and Kathleen Hanna is also just a really interesting [real-life] character.

A lot of quotes from the Batman Dark Knight have become pretty common lingo or at least widely recognized, like “not the hero we deserve but the one we need” or “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” or even “some people just want to watch the world burn” or “it’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message”, maybe also popularizing the whole “immovable object vs unstoppable force” etc.

It was so roundabout and specific that I couldn’t possibly remember the details, but there was apparently a certain baseball player who got an unbelievable score, which was in some way both a holy number and statistically impossible.
They knew all the details and connected it to the player’s own questioning of religion, but I thought it was absurd. Somebody, somewhere, made a very specific play in baseball? Doesn’t sound that unbelievable.

I’m extremely skeptical that tens of millions of people, a huge percentage of the working population, make any significant income from TikTok. Do you have a source for that?

Do you mean English loanwords or when people switch back & forth?

Your thumb is an arrow pointing at where you want the screw to go. After you curl your fingers, your fingers are arrows showing the direction to turn the screw

In elementary school I read this book called “Flawed Dogs” and it was unforgettably wild. It’s about a dog who escapes some kinda confinement by jumping over a barbed wire fence and loses his back legs in the process, and then joins a dog gang and does dog gang activities. Also one of the dog gang members was a cat in disguise.
Honestly I should see if I can find a copy of it and reread it. It was pretty wild.

edit: I looked it up and maybe I have a lot of the details wrong but it’s still pretty wild

Is it moral and ethical to pirate media?

This is a good one. I had a high school computer class and we had a quiz question that was something like:

Digital piracy is:
a. Moral and legal
b. Moral and illegal
c. Immoral and legal
d. Immoral and illegal

Of course, the only correct answer was “d”. I thought it was such a one-dimensional and purposely ignorant question. I’m not even a piracy advocate or anything, but that was kinda ridiculous.

Seconding AltSnap although I use normal controls with an Alt key bound to a mouse button. Special shoutouts to “Action menu” for all the cool stuff it lets you do and “Windows list” which is just a better version of Alt+tabbing if you have multiple monitors.

I discovered this one recently
Country Music Stars Challenge Al-Qaeda

I see a lot of tapes at thrift stores or even antique stores. You could also get a Bluetooth or AUX tape adapter which are conceptually very cool

#8 Beef Lemongrass banh mi style sandwich from a place called Baguette in Corvallis, Oregon, USA. I ate it many times in the short while I stayed there, probably 8-10 years ago. Sometimes I think about going back just to have it again…

Imagus feels like in an alternate universe it could be default browser behavior. When you hover over an image it will expand to full resolution and then you can press buttons to open in new tab, download, zoom in, etc.
Works on pretty much any website and is nice if the website has sized the images too small or if your eyesight is less than great.

I’m surprised only a handful of people have mentioned Ghibli movies. For me it was Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, it’s probably one of the first movies I remember watching in general. Still my favorite Ghibli movie and I must have watched it dozens of times as a kid.
The source material for it is a manga by Miyazaki himself and it’s much longer and deeper (the movie only covers about 1.5 out of 7 volumes, and changes a lot of details). Highly recommended.

Everywhere? or in what country/place?

1. Universal Paperclips
2. Dark Souls
3. Return of the Obra Dinn
4. Golden Sun (duology)
5. Persona 3 FES
6. Night in the Woods
7. Pseudoregalia
8. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
9. Splatoon 2
10. Stacklands