Smuel's good morning extravaganza

Ah. Missed it by THAT much.

Good morning.

 

Bruce Dickinson has joined the chat

Good morning.

 

Are we actually still here? Kinda neat really. Hi, Smuel!

Good morning.
Aldin, wistfully remembering

 

If you really really stretch the definition of "we", then yeah!

How have you been? Also, are you still in contact with any of "us"?

I hope Toblix wouldn't mind that I kinda stole his idea for this thread. And on that note, good morning.

 

I guess it was a drive-by tease. Regardless, I assume Aldin will be visiting again in another 23 years to read this.

So, Aldin, how have things been with you since 2025? I'm thinking of taking a vacation on the moon this year - they say it's nearly good as Mars, but only one tenth the price. And I certainly don't have the ELON$ to afford cryo-sleep class. Not without several more AmazonGPT gigs than I currently get. My kids want to move me into an upload farm soon, but I think the old neurons still have a few more years to go, so I'm hanging on to physicality for now.

May His Holiness Trump Live Forever, Blessed Be His NFTs.

Good morning.

 

Recently, in a social setting, someone mentioned a new movie called "The Brutalist". Not knowing anything about it, I assumed it was a typical Hollywood blockbuster, along the lines of "The Eradicator", or perhaps it was a film about a serial killer slash mob torturer who brutally dismembers his victims. So I decided to comically miss the point, while also demonstrating my erudite knowledge, and so I asked "Oh is that the film about Corbusier?".

But people just looked at me and were like "No, Laslo Toth".

Yeah, turns out the film really is about architecture. Ho hum.

Good morning.

 

Just seen a poster for something called "My Master Builder".

I assume it's about Lego, hur hur hur.

Good morning.

 

Anyone saw Nosferatu (the remake by Eggers)?

Good morning dudes.

 

I don't go to the cinema, I only watch things on Netflix or primitive TV channels. So no, because it's not on those yet. Though I'm planning to, when it is.

Good morning.

 

Saw also Poor Things. Damn me if Poor Things is one of the most horrible film I've ever seen. Even the presence of Defoe couldn't help saving the situation....

Good evening.

 

You poor thing.

Good morning.

 

I had a dream that I was watching something on TV, and after the program ended there was a trailer for a live action Thundercats movie. And I woke up thinking "Ugh, they aren't really making a live action Thundercats movie, are they?"

Turns out they are not. Phew.

Good morning.

 

Well, honestly I don't know what is thundercat, maybe if they would make a live action movie it could help me....

Good morning.

 

So, I don't know if you guys remember the hot chocolate wars of 2023, but after a hiatus of 8 months or so my company has started going back to that same office building, and there is now something weird about the hot chocolate. It still comes in the same tins, but the powder sticks together in clumps more, and also - it never runs out.

I don't mean that a fresh tin appears when an existing tin gets low, I mean that the tins themselves are always about 3/4 full. I think that what the building management are doing is that they've bought a huge bag of industrial hot chocolate powder, and are taking it around to top up the tins every morning.

Does this count as a victory for me? It does mean that it never runs out, but my issue now is that the chocolate smells and tastes slightly different. So I'm not sure how I feel about it. Also, I have yet to catch them in the act of topping up, so at this stage it is just a theory.

I shall of course keep you updated as I uncover more.

Good morning.

 

I have another crazy theory to share with y'all, possibly my most outlandish yet. Hold onto your toupees, this one not only makes several tenuous leaps, but also involves race, so if I never post again you can safely assume I got cancelled. Here we go...

You know how some people need glasses to see properly - without glasses their vision is blurry. They can still see, but detail is lost. My theory is that a similar effect is in play with hearing. Some people's hearing is "blurry" for want of a better word. They can still hear in a broad sense, but fine details may not get through, or low volume sounds may be missed. However, since there is no equivalent of glasses for hearing, there isn't much we can do about it, so we don't regularly test people for hearing acuity, and everyone walks around not knowing whether or not they are slightly deficient in auditory processing.

Actually, that's not my theory. Well, I mean, it is my theory, but in terms of this post it's just laying the groundwork.

My theory is that Asians have this hearing deficiency worse than other races. I first thought of this because I noticed that my own hearing was better than most of the Asian people that I knew. For example, we'd be sitting indoors, and it would start raining, which I would hear almost immediately, and then the rain sound would get louder and louder, and about 30 seconds later, the Asian I was with would look towards the window and say "Oh, has it started raining?" Of course, this doesn't count as any kind of data. Maybe I am such an engrossing conversational partner that they weren't paying attention to anything else. All I can say is that I noticed this phenomenon with more than one Asian, and not with anyone else.

What else do we know about Asians? They often need glasses. This one isn't even controversial. If you look up vision statistics, Asians are more likely to be short sighted. Why could this be? Well, one possible explanation is that Asian civilization is the oldest, so Asian people have spent the longest time "far from nature" where losing some aspects of long distance vision or hearing precision wouldn't limit your reproductive success.

Therefore, my theory... and yes, the previous theory was not the main theory either... my theory is that Asian people have worse eyesight and worse hearing because their civilization is the oldest. If we wanted to make a prediction based on this theory, which we could use to test it, then I might suggest seeing whether black people have the best eyesight and hearing. However, I'm not going to research this, because I don't actually want to get cancelled - I'm just saying that it's a possibility.

Instead, let me tell you my theory.

Oh, sorry, did I not mention? We haven't actually gotten to the main theory yet, the above was still just establishing the background. Here is the actual theory I want to present today:

Asian languages tend to be tonal languages, because Asians have worse hearing, and tones are the easiest thing to hear.

This theory is consistent with the apparent fact that Old Chinese didn't have tones, and only gained them over time. In other words, the language became more tonal as their civilization progressed. Also, it is thought that the tones replaced original consonants. Consonants being mostly subtle differences in simultaneous bursts of high frequencies, and therefore requiring better hearing to process, while tones are a pure loud note. So that all fits.

What does not fit is the Wikipedia page on tonal languages, which implies they are all over Africa too. However, bear in mind that the same page classifies Swedish as a tonal language, as well as the Liverpool dialect of English. Since this is obvious nonsense, I think we can conclude that the linguistical definition of a "tonal language" is broader than the one I'm using here.

You know what I mean, right? Tonal languages as in "every word can be pronounced with four different tones and they are four different words" like Chinese, not tonal languages as in "I think that the Welsh accent is beautifully melodic."

Anyway, this is my latest theory. If I wanted to express it more formally with made up numbers, I'd say something like "Population hearing acuity accounts for 60% of the selection pressure on languages to evolve tonal features".

Another selection pressure could be general noise levels. If you spend a lot of time in big cities, your language would evolve towards something you can easily hear over background noise. Tones are the easiest thing to distinguish there too. China having the oldest civilization and also the most tonal language (fight me, Shona speakers) would fit this too.

This also implies that as the human race continues to evolve, our language will get more and more tonal, until we are communicating in a series of musical notes, like an 70's pretend robot. Beep boop beep. Or a 90's dial up modem. Skrrrwwwwwwwwww eeeeeeeee di di di di di skrwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

Hey man, it's just a theory.

Good morning.

 

Aluminum hats for everyone

Also, a good morning.

 

Have you ever been taking a medicine capsule, and you put it in the palm of your hand, and then clap your hand over your mouth to propel the pill into it... and miss?

Haha, that must have been an embarrassing moment for you.

Ahem.

Good morning.

 

Just to be clear, I didn't miss my mouth with my hand, I am not yet that decrepit, I just missed my mouth with the pill.

Good mor.... oh, actually, it's not a good morning. It is a terrible morning, for I have grave news to report. Here it is:

I have lost the hot chocolate wars.

(Previously, on Smuel's Hot Chocolate Wars... tins of hot chocolate were mysteriously never running out, meanwhile our intrepid hero Smuel detected slight differences in the texture of the tin contents, but tentatively declared victory as the tins now never ran out, thus leading to a never-ending supply of hot chocolate. And now, the exciting conclusion of our story...)

Yeah, so while I haven't managed to catch them in the act, the building management are definitely topping up the tins with a third party source of hot chocolate powder. Whatever brand they're now using is noticeably different, being coarser and speckled with white. Not only that, it barely tastes like chocolate at all. I'd estimate the cocoa solids content is effectively zero. I have no idea what it is, but imagine that you went to prepare some instant coffee and found it was actually ground up chicory root. That's how betrayed I feel. I can't even bear the smell of the stuff. Or as the kids say, I can't even.

So even in the face of an ostensibly bountiful quantity of hot chocolate, I have stopped drinking it altogether. I can only imagine the twisted grins on the faces of the building management right now, as they have achieved their nefarious goal. You win, cruel faceless people. You can go ahead and pry my mug from my cold hot-chocolate-less hands.

Good morning.

 

I may have worked it out. I think they're refilling the tins with instant hot chocolate instead of hot chocolate. i.e. the tin's packaging says that you have to add it to hot milk, implying that the contents is sweetened chocolate, but they're filling the tins with the stuff that you add to hot water, so the contents is mostly dehydrated milk powder, with a slight chocolate flavour. I guess to the kind of non-hot-chocolate-drinking philistines who populate the building management team there is no appreciable difference.

Anyway, if you think you have it bad in your life, with your marriages or kids or whatever you're all doing now, just remember it could be worse - you could have been tricked into stirring milk powder into hot milk, like an idiot who trusts the labels on tins.

Good morning.