Zink

From the Wikipedia page

a less obvious, though equally important theme is what Forster refers to as "the sin against the body." This occurs when people's intellectual refinement and spirituality advance to such a point that they become disconnected from their physical bodies and are unable to adapt to changing environments.

After reading the synopsis and then hitting that sentence... This Forster mofo understood something deep within us that most people today have no clue about. It's like we want to disconnect from the world we live in.

Maybe it's that our combination of self awareness and intelligence allow us to have an internal dialogue. It makes us feel like our mind a separate entity that's driving our physical body around, and isolating our minds from the messiness of the natural world lets us exist in our more pure evolved state or whatever.

I was admittedly way more into the metaverse (ala Snow Crash, not frickin facebook) and VR concepts decades ago. And I've had some great experiences in immersive games including VR. But to flip around the line from The Matrix, "the mind cannot live without the body." We need to engage all of our senses and live in our environment, and not try to pretend like we're just another computer on the network.

a little subroutine in your head will kick off titled but how do I monetize this?

Yep, that is exactly it.

I have finally been winning the battle against that subroutine, and I still stomp that shit into the ground any time it makes a peep.

I've given away some cool stuff to some excited people this summer!

A parallel to this issue that still irks the shit out of me is the "huh... smart!" reaction when somebody takes the most greedy path possible. It gets to the point where generosity is a character flaw because it makes you a sucker and not a winner.

Harambe was 2016!

Not my joke, but it fits, lol.

The internet has made us aware of how fucked up our kind is.

Haha, absolutely with the ADHD. I'm tempted to put a sign on all the shit I constructed this summer that says "the house that adderall built" or something like that, lol.

It also helps to have multiple projects going, as long as you keep it to a manageable number. Nothing like making progress on hobby project B to procrastinate on hobby project A because you aren't feeling that one today.

It was a rough time back then. But a simpler time...

An important parallel to this, especially for those of us who grew up in the US, is to remember that your hobbies and the things you build can be for your own enrichment. They do not need to be efficient or profitable. The effect of the process on your psyche is far more important than the new inanimate object you possess at the end. But that's not how our capitalist worker bee culture taught me to see it.

I have been going to Home Depot constantly this summer. A lot of my self-care/hobby time involving wood working and construction for the past several months.

I always love the visual of me, computer nerd wearing business casual, precision loading 8ft lumber into the whole length of my old beaten up Mazda3 while half the other customers in their clean polos head to their sparkling pristine $80,000 emotional support commuter RAM trucks with their latest convenient prepackaged "manly" products. Or like one thin piece of wood or trim -- the thing they spent an extra $50,000 on their vehicle to be able to do.

I don't mean to act like I am above being a consumer whore though. I have gotten myself a bunch of nice new tools in the process and have regretted nothing.

And this probably goes without saying, but I am talking about the consumer/homeowner type customers, not the actual work vehicles loaded with tools that pull up to the special "pro" entrance.

Whoa whoa, if my car is getting a larger percentage of incidental dinosaur from its refined petroleum products than the percentage of incidental spider legs and rat shit I myself am getting from my processed food products, I am going to be totally jealous.

Do people ever actually think of the Jurassic period though, or do they just live in a society where Jurassic Park and Jurassic World have made that period's name synonymous with dinosaurs?

or if they are willing to insist that they thought so, and testify to it in court.

America needs a third option. Because the state of left and right parties is a joke.

We definitely need more options, but I think "a third option" is the wrong way to look at it.

First is that it is not feasible at the federal level without changing the constitution. That is not happening any time soon. I expect a collapse and rebuild to come much sooner than the Rs and Ds pulling off a once in a generation collaboration effort to... make keeping their jobs harder.

And second is that we don't want slightly more predefined slots for parties that we take seriously. The fix of some kind of ranked choice or STAR voting system would allow for varying numbers of candidates.