Why provide basic sanitation to an area of the richest country on earth when you can spend our tax dollars on $300K armored BMWs for a cosplaying FBI director. Yeah, right. America First.
An interesting thought experiment might be imagining how one of those armored X5s might react to the impact of an M829 round fired by an M1A2 Abrams tank.
I had the opportunity once to see first hand what an M829-series munition does to a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
(It makes a small hole on one side, and a slightly larger hole on the other side, but the real damage is from the spall that is created. On high speed video it looks like fireflies. )
Upon further research, I think that a more appropriate thought experiment would utilize an M830 HEAT round. An M829 round would likely punch through the BMW armor without any follow-on effects.
Indeed. We should suggest just such a live test. After all, wouldn't want to waste our bucks on inferior government equipment, now would we? I mean what if the director went boom eh?
I want to know how Andrea H. dreams. Do her dreams have only audio content, like radio dramas? Do they have moving colors, sort of like the northern lights, but no images? Or can she form mental images, but only when she's asleep?
Also, if asked to describe something she's seen, such as a movie, how does she recall it without forming mental images of what she saw? Or is she unable to do that?
I also have aphantasia and unlike Andrea H, didn't realize it was anything abnormal until my 40s. It came as a big shock to learn that so many of you can form literal mental images (for the record, both of my parents can). As far as I am aware, I do have visual dreams; however I can't form any mental images at all when awake - including when describing my husband's face or anything else, no matter how familiar to me. I understand from reading about this that it's a spectrum condition so when given the prompt of "close your eyes and visualize a red star" some people can see the red star and manipulate it, some people see the outline of a red star, some people see a dark star, and then there's me - not anything at all except blackness and "thinking about" the words red star.
It may not be a linear spectrum, either. I can recreate something I've seen and when in school could often reconstruct or "see" the answer to a question by visualizing the page the information was on, finding the right spot, and "seeing" the text at which point I could read the necessary term, and the best description I can give of that is it's like seeing an afterimage but in color and over much longer a time span. I cannot close my eyes and "see" a red star. Like you, I see blackness, a little mottled light, and afterimages. In fact, closing my eyes interferes with my ability to "see" remembered images and texts. Staring into space or going unfocused is probably a better description of what I do. Do you get anything when you try that?
It's funny, sometimes in school I would remember that the answer to something I needed to know was, say, a third of the way through the book on the lower left hand side. Unfortunately I can't see it! I think you have more visualization that I do.
Hm. So maybe there's a spatial memory that can combine with visualization or not, depending. Think about how people remember where they last saw their cell phone... I try to remember the moment and then I try to see it. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so well.
I'm not sure how I could know since I only have my own memory to go on when I wake up. I "think" I saw things, but it certainly could be that there's a direct-to-brain memory activation component. It's hard enough for most of us to express what's going on in our waking brains, let alone our sleeping ones!
Thanks again. Fascinating. It feels to me like you're missing so much ... but if my dog could type, she'd tell me that I'm missing so much when we go for a walk and I can't smell what's going on.
Hey, I agree - I too feel like I'm missing so much! I seriously went through a lot of grieving on learning about this. I'd always thought everyone was the same way and any "visualization" talk was figurative.
Interestingly (for the three of us here...) dreaming seems to use different brain mechanisms than voluntary visualization so while I can't speak for Andrea H., others with aphantasia do have rich visual dreams. Still others have varied dreaming experiences including, as you suggest, with sound and feelings predominating.
I have read that quite a few people think without words. Every once in a rare while I experience a raw sensation/thought that "feels" like a fully developed thought without words, but in general I have a very hard time understanding how anyone can think without words or if it's richer, more complex and fully developed than my brief experiences which feel almost like mentally acknowledged instincts, so surely bright functioning human beings who think without words are experiencing something much more useful. How hard it is to walk in someone else's... hat.
I was thinking of walking in someone else's shoes, but Oliver Sacks works, too. He made reading about the variety of human mental functioning so fascinating and accessible even my kids enjoyed his books.
I wonder if this is like 'reading'. After many years of my husband shopping and coming home with low sodium green beans or jalapeno flavored sausages and asking him in frustration how he didn't see the words on the label, I have come to understand that some people have to think about reading to read while some merely glance at a label and see the words. I can't quite grasp the concept of looking at words and not 'reading' them, but I have come to accept the reality of it.
Relatively common. There are "glance" readers who use automatic decoding skills while others need and use more conscious deliberate steps in taking in information. Since we're all wired a bit differently and tend to have different learning experiences, it's usually down to different neural pathways.
I wonder what that would do to performance on the trick/test where they show the reader the word "red" written in green font and the word "green" in red font and so forth. At least he can manage not to cheat on those darned puzzles where they give the answers in full view at the bottom!
It's called unsymbolized thinking (UST) and is more common than you might think, with upwards of 50% of the adult population experiencing thoughts as complete, fully formed ideas without accompanying words, images, or symbols. Some experience this rarely while others, frequently, and even constantly. It's essentially just knowing something without sensory support or prompts. The bilingual who regularly switch between languages tend to notice this more easily, for example, since they can recognize a thought isn't in either language.
Fascinating! I did read that it was around half of the population, but perhaps since I find it so difficult to fully imagine, I was hesitant to mention that so very (to me) amazing statistic.
Dear Dr. Weingarten: I have this recurring dream of Mussolini and several other high-ranking Fascists hung by their heels in Milan's Piazzale Loreto, only the faces are of Trump, Vance, Miller, Homan, Bondi and Noem. Am I a bad person? Anxious in Albany
That was my plan, but my picky stepdaughter invited herself to Christmas dinner and doesn’t like lamb. Also, she’s pregnant and the current prohibitions include rare meat, so steak and prime rib are off the table, as it were. Sigh.
So, let me see if I have this straight: Trump wastes millions on a ballroom and Give Me Cash Patel gets armor- plated BMWs, so he can ride around and pretend he isn't a self-entitled incompetent waste of skin, but the folks in Lowndes County, Alabama are not entitled to and cannot get decent sanitation because the majority of people living in that county are Black.
Lowndes County is not just overwhelmingly Black. It is also the site of one of the most important events in the Civil Rights Era, the 1965 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery. Almost all but the last few miles was through Lowndes County. Along that desolate stretch of road is a memorial to Viola Liuzzo, a white suburban mom from Michigan, who drove down to Alabama to help with the march. The night it was over she was giving a ride to a young Black man when she was shot at and run off by the road by the Klan. She died; the young man survived by smearing her blood on him and pretending to be dead when the thugs came up to the car to make sure their work was done. The thuggery continued with the FBI, who mounted a lie-filled smear campaign, making life hell for her family.
Are you sure? There are a few of us in the country, but only two of us associated with, shall we say, a certain space agency. But one of us is recently retired.
Indeed. It cast a bit of a pall over the meeting. I've used NCAR facilities in the past -- and I'm just a random sample. So many people are touched by this.
This story is so disgusting, in every possible way. What is being done go for this county? Is there an appeal? (This country, so hostile to social justice, loves charity …)
I think Uberstinkerführer Miller simply has a soft spot for sewerage. Given the immense amount of it that he spews daily from his schneeball hole, he probably just wanted to have some extra in reserve.
The advantage of fish is that I don't have to be the picky guy at the table in order to stay kosher-style. But most people interpret "seafood" as meaning that crustaceans or molluscs are practically obligatory. They are not kosher by any argument and, more importantly, I never liked them anyway. So I picked turkey.
I assumed the holiday dinner to be, say Rosh Hashanah, at the home of another family that keeps kosher. So I selected the beef. In other circumstances, likely salad.
Why provide basic sanitation to an area of the richest country on earth when you can spend our tax dollars on $300K armored BMWs for a cosplaying FBI director. Yeah, right. America First.
You apparently misunderstood. It’s WHITE American first.
An interesting thought experiment might be imagining how one of those armored X5s might react to the impact of an M829 round fired by an M1A2 Abrams tank.
I had the opportunity once to see first hand what an M829-series munition does to a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
(It makes a small hole on one side, and a slightly larger hole on the other side, but the real damage is from the spall that is created. On high speed video it looks like fireflies. )
Upon further research, I think that a more appropriate thought experiment would utilize an M830 HEAT round. An M829 round would likely punch through the BMW armor without any follow-on effects.
If the armor failed it would somehow be a result of DEI somewhere in the design/build process. No?
And the spall mentioned by Col. Mustard is similar to a plasma exceeding temperatures on the sun’s surface.
Good chance. X5s are built down heah in SC, and there are certainly non-white, non-males in that factory.
You would be better served with a newer XM1147 Advanced Multipurpose Round. Those make some boom!
Indeed. We should suggest just such a live test. After all, wouldn't want to waste our bucks on inferior government equipment, now would we? I mean what if the director went boom eh?
Load him up and let's test it.
Ahhhh Snidley Whiplash, evil to the core. I could never imagine as a child in the 60’s that America would have him as President.
I want to know how Andrea H. dreams. Do her dreams have only audio content, like radio dramas? Do they have moving colors, sort of like the northern lights, but no images? Or can she form mental images, but only when she's asleep?
Also, if asked to describe something she's seen, such as a movie, how does she recall it without forming mental images of what she saw? Or is she unable to do that?
I also have aphantasia and unlike Andrea H, didn't realize it was anything abnormal until my 40s. It came as a big shock to learn that so many of you can form literal mental images (for the record, both of my parents can). As far as I am aware, I do have visual dreams; however I can't form any mental images at all when awake - including when describing my husband's face or anything else, no matter how familiar to me. I understand from reading about this that it's a spectrum condition so when given the prompt of "close your eyes and visualize a red star" some people can see the red star and manipulate it, some people see the outline of a red star, some people see a dark star, and then there's me - not anything at all except blackness and "thinking about" the words red star.
It may not be a linear spectrum, either. I can recreate something I've seen and when in school could often reconstruct or "see" the answer to a question by visualizing the page the information was on, finding the right spot, and "seeing" the text at which point I could read the necessary term, and the best description I can give of that is it's like seeing an afterimage but in color and over much longer a time span. I cannot close my eyes and "see" a red star. Like you, I see blackness, a little mottled light, and afterimages. In fact, closing my eyes interferes with my ability to "see" remembered images and texts. Staring into space or going unfocused is probably a better description of what I do. Do you get anything when you try that?
It's funny, sometimes in school I would remember that the answer to something I needed to know was, say, a third of the way through the book on the lower left hand side. Unfortunately I can't see it! I think you have more visualization that I do.
Hm. So maybe there's a spatial memory that can combine with visualization or not, depending. Think about how people remember where they last saw their cell phone... I try to remember the moment and then I try to see it. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so well.
Thanks!
Just curious -- how do you know you have visual dreams (or why do you think you have visual dreams) if you can't remember the visual part at all?
I'm not sure how I could know since I only have my own memory to go on when I wake up. I "think" I saw things, but it certainly could be that there's a direct-to-brain memory activation component. It's hard enough for most of us to express what's going on in our waking brains, let alone our sleeping ones!
Thanks again. Fascinating. It feels to me like you're missing so much ... but if my dog could type, she'd tell me that I'm missing so much when we go for a walk and I can't smell what's going on.
Hey, I agree - I too feel like I'm missing so much! I seriously went through a lot of grieving on learning about this. I'd always thought everyone was the same way and any "visualization" talk was figurative.
Interestingly (for the three of us here...) dreaming seems to use different brain mechanisms than voluntary visualization so while I can't speak for Andrea H., others with aphantasia do have rich visual dreams. Still others have varied dreaming experiences including, as you suggest, with sound and feelings predominating.
I have read that quite a few people think without words. Every once in a rare while I experience a raw sensation/thought that "feels" like a fully developed thought without words, but in general I have a very hard time understanding how anyone can think without words or if it's richer, more complex and fully developed than my brief experiences which feel almost like mentally acknowledged instincts, so surely bright functioning human beings who think without words are experiencing something much more useful. How hard it is to walk in someone else's... hat.
I've never mistaken my wife for a hat...yet.
I was thinking of walking in someone else's shoes, but Oliver Sacks works, too. He made reading about the variety of human mental functioning so fascinating and accessible even my kids enjoyed his books.
Aw, man. Don't tempt me like that...
I wonder if this is like 'reading'. After many years of my husband shopping and coming home with low sodium green beans or jalapeno flavored sausages and asking him in frustration how he didn't see the words on the label, I have come to understand that some people have to think about reading to read while some merely glance at a label and see the words. I can't quite grasp the concept of looking at words and not 'reading' them, but I have come to accept the reality of it.
Relatively common. There are "glance" readers who use automatic decoding skills while others need and use more conscious deliberate steps in taking in information. Since we're all wired a bit differently and tend to have different learning experiences, it's usually down to different neural pathways.
I wonder what that would do to performance on the trick/test where they show the reader the word "red" written in green font and the word "green" in red font and so forth. At least he can manage not to cheat on those darned puzzles where they give the answers in full view at the bottom!
It's called unsymbolized thinking (UST) and is more common than you might think, with upwards of 50% of the adult population experiencing thoughts as complete, fully formed ideas without accompanying words, images, or symbols. Some experience this rarely while others, frequently, and even constantly. It's essentially just knowing something without sensory support or prompts. The bilingual who regularly switch between languages tend to notice this more easily, for example, since they can recognize a thought isn't in either language.
Fascinating! I did read that it was around half of the population, but perhaps since I find it so difficult to fully imagine, I was hesitant to mention that so very (to me) amazing statistic.
Dear Dr. Weingarten: I have this recurring dream of Mussolini and several other high-ranking Fascists hung by their heels in Milan's Piazzale Loreto, only the faces are of Trump, Vance, Miller, Homan, Bondi and Noem. Am I a bad person? Anxious in Albany
Dale, be at ease. YANTA. They are.
I selected None because my ideal would be lamb
Tillamook ice cream.
A gallon. Any flavor!
That was my plan, but my picky stepdaughter invited herself to Christmas dinner and doesn’t like lamb. Also, she’s pregnant and the current prohibitions include rare meat, so steak and prime rib are off the table, as it were. Sigh.
So, let me see if I have this straight: Trump wastes millions on a ballroom and Give Me Cash Patel gets armor- plated BMWs, so he can ride around and pretend he isn't a self-entitled incompetent waste of skin, but the folks in Lowndes County, Alabama are not entitled to and cannot get decent sanitation because the majority of people living in that county are Black.
Exactly.
Yep. You got it.
Lowndes County is not just overwhelmingly Black. It is also the site of one of the most important events in the Civil Rights Era, the 1965 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery. Almost all but the last few miles was through Lowndes County. Along that desolate stretch of road is a memorial to Viola Liuzzo, a white suburban mom from Michigan, who drove down to Alabama to help with the march. The night it was over she was giving a ride to a young Black man when she was shot at and run off by the road by the Klan. She died; the young man survived by smearing her blood on him and pretending to be dead when the thugs came up to the car to make sure their work was done. The thuggery continued with the FBI, who mounted a lie-filled smear campaign, making life hell for her family.
Unrelated aptonym alert: I just got back from the American Geophysical Union meeting, and there I heard a talk by lightning researcher Belle Storm.
Oh, are you THAT David Smith? Hi Dave!
Hi, Tim! I guess I had you as a disadvantage because I already figured you were THAT Tim Livengood :)
Are you sure? There are a few of us in the country, but only two of us associated with, shall we say, a certain space agency. But one of us is recently retired.
Wow!
I used to work at NCAR and am beyond upset that the Trump admin is threatening to dismantle it.
Indeed. It cast a bit of a pall over the meeting. I've used NCAR facilities in the past -- and I'm just a random sample. So many people are touched by this.
This story is so disgusting, in every possible way. What is being done go for this county? Is there an appeal? (This country, so hostile to social justice, loves charity …)
I think Uberstinkerführer Miller simply has a soft spot for sewerage. Given the immense amount of it that he spews daily from his schneeball hole, he probably just wanted to have some extra in reserve.
"None of these" will win among vegan or vegetarian readers. I am the former. Lentil loaf would be nice...
The advantage of fish is that I don't have to be the picky guy at the table in order to stay kosher-style. But most people interpret "seafood" as meaning that crustaceans or molluscs are practically obligatory. They are not kosher by any argument and, more importantly, I never liked them anyway. So I picked turkey.
I assumed the holiday dinner to be, say Rosh Hashanah, at the home of another family that keeps kosher. So I selected the beef. In other circumstances, likely salad.
I give at the Holidays solely because I am a bum who waits till the last minute for yearly charitable deductions.
The day I am least likely to give is Giving Tuesday. I hate the creation of a guilt trip by many otherwise good organizations
Ha! Fooled you! I’m already subscribed!
Noted.
Frozen sliced spleen to Mr. Steven Miller, 1600 PA Ave., Wash. DC. I'm sure he'll love it.
You're welcome to offer my slice of stuffed spleen to Lexi.
That stuffed spleen sounds very much like one of my favorite foods - kishka!