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All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

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Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

#71

Post by red_admiral »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #54
317070 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overestimate their understanding, underestimate their vocabulary.

"But it's okay if a battery goes on fire daddy, I'll put carbon dioxide on it!" - EBv2.0, aged 3 and a half

More people should read Oliver Sacks' book Uncle Tungsten. As a kid he was allowed to buy real chemicals for his chemistry set and was told things like "can you make slightly less hydrogen peroxide next time". Minors buying pitchblende (Uranium ore) at the local drugstore for experiments? Sure, might encourage them to be scientists.

Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

#72

Post by ErroneousBosh »

ryuuseijin wrote: post #6

This reminds me of a video I saw from Alan Watts [1] where he talks about how from childhood it is hammered into our minds that we must work we must do this or do that or we will be punished. And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment. This is probably harder to do than to say, but this video resonated with me because your m…

> And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment.

I think it's hilarious that they just let me play with a £150k Nexus 9000 stack at work, like it's fucking Roblox or something.

"Here you go EB, figure that one out, all it's doing is connecting our core network with our VM servers and SAN, no pressure! Documentation? Naaah, we never had any of that..."

Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

#73

Post by gambiting »

Markoff wrote: post #14
HenrikPontoppid wrote: post #8

I remember reading once about how Astrid Lindgren's children's books were supreme exactly because she - contrary to many others - remembers what it is like to be a child. Not just what you did or thought when you were a child - how it felt. The endless curiosity and appreciation for what in an adult's eyes is trivial is really a special thing I hope most people carry throughout their lives. On the other hand, childre…

I like some of her books, but I am quite annoyed with kids most of the time coming from poor families with missing father/mother, it's like she couldn't write a book without some tragedy, of course the most famous Emil of Lönneberga and The Six Bullerby Children are from normal families (there is probably reason why these are the most famous and beloved), but already Pippi Longstocking is pretty F-ed up and don't get…

>>which is glorifying suicide

I've literally re-read it this year again and I couldn't disagree more, like, to a point where I wonder if we even read the same book. That book made me scared of dying when I was a child, and it made me appreciate the finality of death again now that I'm a grown up. There's nothing there that "glorifies" suicide - we could have a meta 2026 conversation about whether it's trying to say that yes, terminally ill people _should_ be able to decide what they want to do with their own lives, but that's not the message the book is going for(imho) - it's about bravery and loyalty even through the darkest of times, and about sacrifice(not suicide!!!) that comes from standing up for what you believe for. I don't personally believe in afterlife, but just as much as I loved the idea of naningalia when I was a child I still love it now - it gives children hope that even in the darkest moments of despair, there is something better waiting for them. The main character literally dies of ilness at the start, being bed bound for a long time without his loving brother and mother who doesn't know how to help him. The fact that he chooses to join Johnatan at the end in the trip to the "next" level of afterlife couldn't be further from glorifying suicide.

Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

#74

Post by Gualdrapo »

TonyStr wrote: post #32
hutattedonmyarm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be a Vivaldi problem. It has "Computer Modern Sans" in Firefox which seems to be perfectly legible

I found Computer Modern Sans quite unpleasant to read. Disabling it and reading Mastodon Sans Serif was much more pleasant

Yup, quite an odd choice to set the typeface for big blocks of text to a display typeface as CM Sans

Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

#75

Post by worthless-trash »

cbolton wrote: post #37
burticlies wrote: post #3

I see this clearly at kids birthday parties whenever there is a piñata. Adults hate them. All they see is the goal and the incredibly inefficient path the kids are taking towards it. But the kids love it, they don’t care when they miss, they are just enjoying hitting something with a stick. And every miss heightens the excitement for the eventual lolly scramble.

It never occurred to me to consider efficiency in piñata, but I dislike them because it's making a game out of violence.

There is no violence, because the pinata is not alive.

There is no more violence in hitting a nail with a hammer.

Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

#76

Post by red_admiral »

madaxe_again wrote: post #28
ryuuseijin wrote: post #6

This reminds me of a video I saw from Alan Watts [1] where he talks about how from childhood it is hammered into our minds that we must work we must do this or do that or we will be punished. And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment. This is probably harder to do than to say, but this video resonated with me because your m…

You do have control over it, but the external pressure to be “normal” is enormous and insurmountable for a majority of people. There’d be no such thing as “normal” otherwise. I look at my cohort who I schooled with, and they are all so terrifyingly sober and adult, and take themselves so very seriously. They toil, they spin, they die. Me… I don’t really know what happened. As a child, the more I was told to be normal…

Might well be the ADHD - it seems to be common among neurodiverse people.

Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

#77

Post by ErroneousBosh »

madaxe_again wrote: post #28
ryuuseijin wrote: post #6

This reminds me of a video I saw from Alan Watts [1] where he talks about how from childhood it is hammered into our minds that we must work we must do this or do that or we will be punished. And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment. This is probably harder to do than to say, but this video resonated with me because your m…

You do have control over it, but the external pressure to be “normal” is enormous and insurmountable for a majority of people. There’d be no such thing as “normal” otherwise. I look at my cohort who I schooled with, and they are all so terrifyingly sober and adult, and take themselves so very seriously. They toil, they spin, they die. Me… I don’t really know what happened. As a child, the more I was told to be normal…

> I look at my cohort who I schooled with, and they are all so terrifyingly sober and adult, and take themselves so very seriously. They toil, they spin, they die.

Ah, this is the problem, I work with people who take themselves so terribly seriously all the time.

But they do not take what they do seriously.

I don't take myself seriously at all, which really seems to irritate some people - but I take what I do very seriously indeed.

And then the people paying the wages don't seem to understand why my time is *so* *bloody* *expensive*. Yeah, it's not expensive, it's just a lot of money.

Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

#78

Post by socalgal2 »

cbolton wrote: post #37
burticlies wrote: post #3

I see this clearly at kids birthday parties whenever there is a piñata. Adults hate them. All they see is the goal and the incredibly inefficient path the kids are taking towards it. But the kids love it, they don’t care when they miss, they are just enjoying hitting something with a stick. And every miss heightens the excitement for the eventual lolly scramble.

It never occurred to me to consider efficiency in piñata, but I dislike them because it's making a game out of violence.

Is it? Or is that just you, projecting. You could argue baseball, golf, hockey, are all violent as you smash a stick into a ball.

Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

#79

Post by worthless-trash »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #70
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But it's okay if a battery goes on fire daddy, I'll put carbon dioxide on it!" - EBv2.0, aged 3 and a half

I think the first time my son said the 'f' word, he got the tone and the body language exactly right for the context in which he used it (a frustrated/resigned "fuck's sake", with roll-eyes and throw-head-back, look up to the sky). He might have been five years old at the time. And back then, I really didn't say it around them very much (out of an attempt to be somewhat responsible). They're absorbing everything. The…

Tiny language models.

Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

#80

Post by BLKNSLVR »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #72
ryuuseijin wrote: post #6

This reminds me of a video I saw from Alan Watts [1] where he talks about how from childhood it is hammered into our minds that we must work we must do this or do that or we will be punished. And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment. This is probably harder to do than to say, but this video resonated with me because your m…

> And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment. I think it's hilarious that they just let me play with a £150k Nexus 9000 stack at work, like it's fucking Roblox or something. "Here you go EB, figure that one out, all it's doing is connecting our core network with our VM servers and SAN, no pressure! Documentation? Naaah, we n…

It was fairly early in my career in IT that I realised that very few other people at the company really understood what it was that I did, or at least that, as long as the outcome was 'good enough' then how I got there didn't matter and no company has the time to have people monitoring _how_ anyone is doing their jobs (outside of where such things are heavily regulated or prevent fatal accidents kind of things).

It's liberating. There seems to be more scope for freedom in what you do than most people think there is.

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