If you ever want a very long (but very interesting to me) book with lots of that kind of thing, that's the one.
Neurodeviant, #AuDHD 🎧, #PKD, on #dialysis. Past my halfway point. Electronic sound maker. People sketcher. Nudity enjoyer. Show me your pets. MDNI 🔞DM at discord: Mitdasein #FreePalestine 🇵🇸 Beep boops: https://on.soundcloud.com/nU3z4Eh6t2LNwg1f8
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If you ever want a very long (but very interesting to me) book with lots of that kind of thing, that's the one.
In Surfaces and Essences, Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander give many examples of shifting categories. For example, a truck is different from a car but when one of them told his daughter to look left and right to see if cars are coming, she knew that "cars" included trucks.
I don't know him but I trust him.
I will assume you weren't one. If you were, I assume that smugness was part of the identity that you have since shed. The lesson I take is that words are all made up, categories are all made up (and flexible) and as you say, definitions are flexible. I'll call that whole thing a rule of thumb 🎤💧
I took my rant to the DMs. Feel free to read it or pretend you did.
He became a Bay Area news anchor during the time I processed all the newspapers for the central library. Several newspapers had full-page ads featuring the news team.
I say it's a finger, but if someone says it's not, they aren't wrong. But the kids in third grade who said "How many fingers do you have?...WRONG. You have four fingers and a thumb!"? They were assholes and probably still are. Especially this one guy who I still imagine kneecapping.
I decided to see what dictionaries said. Oxford just says they're all digits. Cambridge calls it a finger. Vocabulary says it's not a finger. Wikipedia gives both definitions. So...yeah. If nothing else that was a fun rabbit hole.
![thumb noun [ C] Add to word list : B1) the short, thick finger on the side of your hand that makes it possible to hold and pick things up easily = Contents To top ® lictionary.cambridge.org C](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3awc6f2orurtpccg3l2ayr4v/bafkreiadv37sxzrx6vve656yj4narb2mvjjm4z52dq6aqwy3piuvamvwwe@jpeg "Click to view full size")
![Thumb and fingers The English word finger has two senses, even in the context of appendages of a single typical human hand: 1) Any of the five terminal members of the hand. 2) Any of the four terminal members of the hand, other than the thumb. 2] Linguistically, it appears that the original sense was the first of these two: *penkwe-ros (also rendered as *penqrós) was, in the inferred Proto-Indo-European language, a suffixed form of *penkwe (or *penqe), which has given rise to many Indo-European-family words (tens of them defined in English dictionaries) that involve, or stem from, concepts of fiveness. The thumb shares the following with each of the other four fingers: • Having a skeleton of phalanges, joined by hinge-like joints that provide flexion toward the palm of the hand • Having a dorsal surface that features hair and a nail, and a hairless palmar aspect with fingerprint ridges](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3awc6f2orurtpccg3l2ayr4v/bafkreie7kcguq2ijfhr3evnrv5sknsudj65xvurq576kddep6536limegu@jpeg "Click to view full size")
If I included "lyrics" with "genius" I froze Google. If I took out "lyrics" it told me how to explain genius. I asked my wife and she said "Chains of Love" by Erasure.
Well look at you and your new pixels
Maybe Erasure?
What song begins with "How do I explain?" Google just gives me pages about how to explain a song.
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Some* have said the idea that the thumb is not a finger was popularized by Mormon youths who wanted to be able to say they weren't fingering. *it's me. I'm some
That subset of fingering is "the hitchhiker"
👍
Out of context this created quite a mental image.
Thinking a thing can only be one thing is part of why bi/pansexuality threatens people's worldview.
Rudy Giuliani was seriously injured in a car accident. I hope he gets the same expert medical care that he would wish for a disabled transgender immigrant.
Nothing says strong alpha male like hysteria over chalk rainbows on the pavement.
Also: all categories are abstractions that gloss over differences to capture a shared essence, I think the differences between the thumb and the other fingers is the kind of difference the category "fingers" overlooks. Also, categories are human inventions. Pluto is what it always was.
The guy who inspired this post said that thumbs don't count as fingers, but do count as phalanges. I don't agree with his classification but I respect his use of "phalanges."
Set theory! Some people think a thing has to be one thing or another. We know that sometimes something is more than one thing.
I don't even want to go there now. Deeply cursed.
I really like the various lines of my body here.
^does some science^
Me, 2010
I'm complaining about this post. Or agreeing with it. I just don't know any more. [furious weeping]
Lest you say "it's not like that in the United States," I am currently representing a person facing criminal charges for - and this is true - saying "protect trans kids" during a school board meeting
Not for nothing, but everyone talking about not throwing a marginalized group under buses is masking in public, right?
if you ever have to explain digging a really deep hole just start a rumor about how the templars left the holy grail there. "what if i'm america" templar grail. "the templars can't have made it to my apartment in shinagawa" lemme teach you a little trick. just say they did
i have it on good authority the haters fundamentally misunderstood a tvtropes article and this caused them to put on a production of Waiting For Godot starring two guys dressed as Timon and Pumbaa
Maybe you have to be naked (in spirit) for the goddess to appear to you. Literal nakedness is both a symbol for this vulnerability and a method to help achieve this state of mind.
Do you consider the thumb a finger?
I hope she comes back tonight. How cool would it be if she gave me the key to Linear A?
Visited by a woman while I am naked and vulnerable, then terrified when she reveals her divinity? That actually makes dream sense.
Yesterday I started listening to a podcast about Ancient Greece, and ended on an episode about the Minoans. Maybe she was the snake goddess from the palace at Knossos. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_...
If I'm in the shower and you need to shower, we can work something out
If I'm in the shower and you need to pee, just let me know you're there.
Cheapish and harmful.
Just realized I dislike the expression "find a job." Finding a job is not the problem. Getting hired for one is the problem.
The best accommodation for me would be helping me get a better job
My job
A review found that 90% of autistic people aged over 50 in Britain are either undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, and the same is likely true in other countries. Our middle-aged & older autistic people deserve proper supports NOW after a lifetime without accommodations. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Note: the snake l is not to be interpreted as any body part of the woman. For one thing, it was around her shoulders. Besides, if she had a penis that wouldn't have scared me.
Dream: I was in a shower with a door that came to a bit below eye level. A woman came up to the door. I was just going to talk to her but she had a big snake around her shoulders. I freaked out because I thought she might put the snake on me.
NGL I was hoping for a switchblade
*it's
Customer told me there was a big knife back by the garbage cans. Turns out it from the fine knifemaker Martha Stewart
Just waiting for disentanglement
![Fake Wikipedia entry Bad Syndrome Instead of brain there is a dark orb Like this Contents [hide] 1 Treatment 1.1 Void mechanisms 1.2 Disentanglement (](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3awc6f2orurtpccg3l2ayr4v/bafkreielnvxgdivhqlkczcejbmrhihhibz3bnivie2dry4riqdf6ja5lpq@jpeg "Click to view full size")
I've got a bad head
Here's a recipe. I just need 95 liters of 85 proof alcohol www.alandia.de/absinthe-blo...
I'd try a laudanum cocktail (from a trusted source). I wonder how hard it would be to get wormwood and make real absinthe
Apparently this is a hot topic among hypothetical people. Gatekeeping beans
An amusing AI Overview
Wikipedia calls it a tincture. apparently tinctures are different from infusions
One of these days I'll make some infused vodka with my favorite herb
I want to say something like 70-80% of the standard ABV. I see someone sells a reduced vodka now that's 80% of the standard. I can see the point of a lower alcohol beer or wine but hard liquor?
They call it Military Special because you can use it to clean your rifle
I just remember from college daze in Davis that all the cheap vodka was from San Jose. The most ridiculous product was Albertson's reduced-alcohol vodka. No one is buying Albertson's vodka to drink it straight. Just get real vodka and use more mixer!
Lemme guess: is it made in San Jose?
For a real-life horror you should see what Clyde's Prime Rib in Portland looked like when it was a chicken place. (Image search for "Racist prime rib" is the closest I will type)
Against all odds! Same job. Same dog. No major changes.
Another fun fact (that I can't prove): reindeer do like to eat Amanita mushrooms. If Siberian shamans don't pick the mushrooms before the reindeer get to them...well, I'll leave what happens as an exercise for the reader.
Yeah, even among alcohols gin is an acquired taste. Or a taste you can't acquire.
That's the story I read somewhere years ago. It may be apocryphal but it's still a smart idea
Of course now teetotalers can't just ask for a Gibson because they'd get a martini with an onion.
Not just in the Prisoner but also Scanners Be seeing you
See also: the Gibson, a martini with a cocktail onion instead of an olive. Named for a diplomat named Gibson who didn't want to draw attention to the fact that he wasn't drinking so he got water in a martini glass with an onion so he could tell which drink was his.
Seems like it should be uncontroversial And yet
See also "expecting everyone to be perfect" for expecting someone to not kill you
RFK Jr on his way to help Rudy Giuliani
Deer Prudence
I have a legume question for cooks/botanists/word nerds: I am mildly sensitive to peas, peanuts, garbanzos, lentils, maybe lima beans. I am not sensitive to most beans: black, pinto, cannellini, etc. Do you know a category name that includes the ones I'm sensitive to but not the ones I'm not?
Podcaster said he thinks the Macintosh was around in the mid-80s. If only Apple had made a famous ad tied in to a classic novel with a year for a name. (He was in his 20s at the time.)
"Have you tried any of this jerky yet?" No. In my alphabetical process of trying everything in the store, I'm only up to F.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor's New Groove
Much like "crab", industrial music is constantly re-evolving from first principles basically anywhere where there's a bunch of metal and plastic laying about
Also: a sweatshirt is not a "sweater"
dezmo confirmed
I believe that the "eliquist" is you, as you are the one who administers it
Ancient Greece > Ancient Rome I will not be taking further questions.
I like those odds
Because of the high volume of Powerball sales all lottery sales have been moved behind the store. Look for the wicker mat that definitely doesn't cover a pit with punji sticks in the bottom.
"How much for a Powerball?" "Two dollars." "And how much for lottery?" "...Which lottery?" "Just the regular lottery."
Kidneys Across America
It's not that I think the cigarettes deserve some kind of respect. I just have the foolish idea that people should read the words that appear before them.
I hate when people call things by the wrong names. I have a customer who always buys LD cigarettes, which he calls "L&D." I suppose this is based on "L&M," which we do not sell and, if he ever smoked them, was a number of years ago.
That is a good one
The anglophone library can be tricky for Spanish speakers because "librería" is "bookstore." Confounding this further, I started working at the library in 1999, so the stickers saying when to pull books said 3-99, 4-99 etc, looking like price tags.
I can imagine someone's synesthetic correspondences might be "wrong" in this way.
as I was using a heap of old alphabet blocks to build a tower. I casually remarked to her that their colors were all wrong. We discovered then that some of her letters had the same tint as mine and that, besides, she was optically affected by musical notes." —Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory
"The confessions of a synesthete must sound tedious and pretentious to those who are protected from such leakings and drafts by more solid walls than mine are. To my mother, though, this all seemed quite normal. The matter came up, one day in my seventh year...
I wonder if synesthetes are better at learning languages. It could be a hindrance as well as a help
Lyft driver has the driving directions in Spanish. I like the word "semáforo" for traffic signal. I have an aesthetic fondness for Spanish. Certain words are just so pleasing. "Entonces" is a favorite. It has a nice rolling quality.
RIP Hercules you would've loved Labor Day
I saw A Scanner Darkly on the bigscreen at the Esquire back in 2006. I was so shook afterwards that I rode my bike out into traffic and a car screeched to a halt, inches away from hitting me. I still think I'm in a coma from that accident some days. #PKD
If my photos help you in your body journey, I'd love to hear it.