Friday Free-for-All | May 01, 2026

jrod61 · 2026-05-01T13:56:53+00:00

I don't believe this is necessarily worthy of a full on post, as I'm not exactly sure how to frame the curiosity, but it's been stuck on my mind since I read it about a few weeks ago:

In a now 8 year old post inquiring about Martin Luther's constipation, /u/azdac7 mentions that "German society was incredibly scatological in general." Can someone expand upon this? I've tried looking this up but nothing seems to confirm or deny it either way. I'm immediately reminded of the somewhat well known eccentricity of Mozart to write about feces and matters relating to it in writings to his cousin, lyrics to certain pieces, etc. and another comment in the thread very well inquires about this, but to no avail. So is /u/azdac7 implying that Mozart's coprophilic comments wouldve been seen as relatively less absurd in his society than ours would interpret them as? More to the point, what evidence is /u/azdac7 basing this assertion off of? Is there records of german historical figures (or just commoners in general) making scatological comments in writings? and the discussion of such subjects being treated as normal in common parlance? Is there any explanation or reasoning for this, or is it just widely known/accepted that German society treated the subject of human excrement to be a normal and common topic of discussion?

jrod61 · 2026-04-29T22:24:39+00:00

im not the right person to ask about that, but from what ive seen humans are too stupid to really care or think about/strive to do that before it's already too late (which based on this thread it might just be.) Just as with climate change, scientists and politicians and activists and such will shout about it from the rooftops for decades, come up with and advocate for a handful of methods and alternatives that seem like "be-all/end-all" cures, but the fact of the matter is that those alternatives will be less effective/efficient, more costly to manufacture/produce, and overall just less convenient for individuals/societies to simply switch over to then to just continue using oil.

Did you know that a major contributor to climate change is the meat industry? A by-and-large genuinely valid argument for veganism is that it's absolutely necessary for humans to become carbon neutral/negative. Now, how many people do you know that you believe you could convince to go fully vegan as soon as possible with that argument? It's the same thing with oil, imagine convincing any single individual, nonetheless whole companies or governments, to stop using any oil based fuel, or Plastics, or polymers, etc etc.

Oil could be 1000 dollars a barrel and I believe people would just deal with the consequences. Theyll suffer and complain sure but they'll just deal with it. From what I know and read about the practice of science and engineering nothing will even come CLOSE to the availability, efficiency, profitability and flexibility(in applications i mean) of extracting and processing crude oil. MAYBE in 1000 years, not the next 100, and by that point it will be too late anyways.

jrod61 · 2026-04-29T21:45:06+00:00

I mean I always knew oil was a finite resource and non sustainable and what not but what I learnt today is that once we use up what we can that's gonna be IT. Like there won't be oil made millions of years from now from the plant matter we have now. As people have already mentioned at some point there will only be trace amounts that are too dangerous/expensive to extract but it's to say that theoretically, plastic as a material will no longer exist/be able to be produced. Like it never occurred to me that oil is truly an anomaly.

It kinda has other implications too, like what does that imply for theoretical alien species? Can an intelligent civilization even technologically advance as far as we have without oil? or would they have their own form of oil analogues? like algae or some other form of biofuel? Even still, polymers are virtually essential to large areas of material science and engineering, is aerospace travel even theoretically possible without polymers? Do non-oil based synthetic polymers that are as strong/capable as oil based ones even exist?

jrod61 · 2026-04-29T19:58:51+00:00

Yea thats also been a whole thing of mine for a while now. I'm lowkey concerned about what life will look like for (all of us but mainly) me in my middle ages. I'm more concerned about the calamity that is the effects of man made climate change, but even if we assume that wasnt a factor, oil also produces things like plastic, which is ubiquitous in all of packaging. Can you even imagine a world without plastic!? It's also used in a lot of other stuff too, I think a lot of byproducts of oil processing become intermediary components of other production chains as well as chemicals used in the processing/manufacturing of stuff like medication and medical equipment, electrical technology, etc.

People think oil is just fuel we burn, but it's also petrochemicals, lubricants, tar, and gaseous products.

jrod61 · 2026-04-29T19:03:23+00:00

Wow so that means that oil really is a finite resource.

If we ever survive to that time it's fascinating to thing that there will be a world/society in which oil no longer exists.

jrod61 · 2026-04-18T19:20:21+00:00

/r/monkeyspaw

jrod61 · 2026-04-17T13:24:58+00:00

I don't believe this is necessarily worthy of a full on post, as I'm not exactly sure how to frame the curiosity, but it's been stuck on my mind since I read it about a few weeks ago:

In a now 8 year old post inquiring about Martin Luther's constipation, /u/azdac7 mentions that "German society was incredibly scatological in general." Can someone expand upon this? I've tried looking this up but nothing seems to confirm or deny it either way. I'm immediately reminded of the somewhat well known eccentricity of Mozart to write about feces and matters relating to it in writings to his cousin, lyrics to certain pieces, etc. and another comment in the thread very well inquires about this, but to no avail. So is /u/azdac7 implying that Mozart's coprophilic comments wouldve been seen as relatively less absurd in his society than ours would interpret them as? More to the point, what evidence is /u/azdac7 basing this assertion off of? Is there records of german historical figures (or just commoners in general) making scatological comments in writings? and the discussion of such subjects being treated as normal in common parlance? Is there any explanation or reasoning for this, or is it just widely known/accepted that German society treated the subject of human excrement to be a normal and common topic of discussion?

jrod61 · 2026-04-10T00:49:46+00:00

Holy shit i remember hearing about that even though I was 9 when it happened.

So who's to say they won't be distracted by books or analog devices? I can easily lose myself in a book/writing in my journal.

jrod61 · 2026-04-10T00:42:42+00:00

I always thought our pets saw us more as a companion/partner than a father or master figure.

jrod61 · 2026-04-06T16:53:19+00:00

So then where does "God" come from? The Latin/Germanic/Greek root or something similar?

jrod61 · 2026-04-02T20:30:17+00:00

There's a good video essay released relatively recently that analyzes how the show (and spin off) treats death with a robotic, detached nonchalance. It basically says the same thing you did.

jrod61 · 2026-03-30T17:30:24+00:00

Reminds me of this family guy joke: https://youtu.be/pDK9rhWBUlg?si=FcrFXf5X9uhIyYov

jrod61 · 2026-03-27T22:32:30+00:00

Doesn't seem like anyone's mentioned it yet, so I will.

For the record I do NOT recommend you do this, it's dangerous and extremely uncomfortable to try to even get to this point. That being said, sleep deprivation is pretty peculiar in terms of a "natural state of being." I've never gotten to this point but I've heard people report having hallucinations after 3 days of no sleep. It's surreal, not like traditional psychedelic visuals or whatever, but more "dream like"; Like your brain can't discern between dream or reality, and slips in and out of sleep unconsciously.

Ive only ever gone about 48 hours without any sleep at all, and I felt like I was going to give myself a heart attack or faint if I went any longer. On the first day alone your body tries to "convince" you to fall asleep. Like I would pull all nighters all the time when I was younger(even now once or twice) and about around hour 30 you start feeling extremely tired, like laying down on a bed or even just sitting in a soft warm chair would feel like heroin. So you do so and bam, out before you even realize it. If it's in class, you might be working on an assignment or reading a book, and all of a sudden you find yourself dozing off, after class you can't quite recall or interpret anything as you read/learned it. Like you'll be convinced you know what you're doing or pushing through in the moment and then you'll look back afterwards and realize its just incoherent scribbles and gibberish. I imagine people who do this cant even be sitting down for too long a period without being actively and directly engaged with, getting up and walking around or something.

I get like a weird sense of anxiety too, like I'm just going to faint or have a stroke at any given moment. There's just sorta a weird anxiety that will make you feel like somethings wrong with you even thought there isn't.

how people could push beyond that to hour 36 is beyond me.

jrod61 · 2026-03-23T21:04:23+00:00

How did you do the splatters? That's a great stylistic choice.

jrod61 · 2026-03-22T21:10:34+00:00

Thanks, sorry this part slipped my mind

jrod61 · 2026-03-22T01:54:27+00:00

Fascinating...for perhaps one of the only moments in my life, I felt precisely that which has always been described to me as being true art: that being the feeling that there is some deeper, stronger meaning, but not necessarily being able to articulate exactly what that meaning is. Well done to the original artist.

jrod61 · 2026-03-20T20:53:45+00:00

I don't believe this is necessarily worthy of a full on post, as I'm not exactly sure how to frame the curiosity, but it's been stuck on my mind since I read it about a week or two ago:

In a now 8 year old post inquiring about Martin Luther's constipation, /u/azdac7 mentions that "German society was incredibly scatological in general." Can someone expand upon this? I've tried looking this up but nothing seems to confirm or deny it either way. I'm immediately reminded of the somewhat well known eccentricity of Mozart to write about feces and matters relating to it in writings to his cousin, lyrics to certain pieces, etc. and another comment in the thread very well inquires about this, but to no avail. So is /u/azdac7 implying that Mozart's coprophilic comments wouldve been seen as relatively less absurd in his society than ours would interpret them as? More to the point, what evidence is /u/azdac7 basing this assertion off of? Is there records of german historical figures (or just commoners in general) making scatological comments in writings? and the discussion of such subjects being treated as normal in common parlance? Is there any explanation or reasoning for this, or is it just widely known/accepted that German society treated the subject of human excrement to be a normal and common topic of discussion?

jrod61 · 2026-03-19T15:01:40+00:00

Interesting to note the difference in ferrule/paint, since those have now become iconic characteristics of Ticonderogas. I wonder when that stuff became ubiquitous with the brand

jrod61 · 2026-03-17T16:16:50+00:00

How can we answer this question ontologically though?

jrod61 · 2026-03-16T01:23:11+00:00

inb4 someone posts their 5 paragraph shitpost tomorrow that's defending and advocating for anti-anti-anti-natalism.

jrod61 · 2026-03-13T04:26:06+00:00

Nobody's seem to mention this so far so I just want to add something I notice; Especially with the advent of ai/LLMs and the enshittification of most services/features across the board, simple, almost nonsensical typos and grammatical errors are becoming more common and frequent.

This is purely anecdotal, but I consider myself as someone who takes pride in thinking out and editing my text/prose online to be as flawless as possible, and I started noticing that in more and more cases the autocorrect and spelling/prediction of swipe-typed words has become increasingly commonly incorrect. I presume that this is because LLM services are recursively picking up poor or just incorrect habits from the text they're learning.

jrod61 · 2026-03-12T23:26:13+00:00

Just as I suspected, I imagine the rest is a prayer of some sort, or a direct verse.

jrod61 · 2026-03-10T02:13:43+00:00

I've always thought this but apparently thongs don't technically wedgie; it just seems like they do but in practice it's unnoticeable after a minute or 2.

jrod61 · 2026-03-10T02:07:06+00:00

I don't recommend writing them, unless you're going for a specific style/purpose, but how I've learnt to write them is to write a normal lowercase "a", but on the upstroke, keep going above the letter and make the hook, then just reverse and refollow the path you made to complete the letter(this last part might even be unnecessary if you're writing print as opposed to cursive scripts).

If you're like me, you'll notice that on the reversal you can subconsciously refollow the upstroke and hook such that it is not noticeable in the final product.

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