superpeeve Oh my Gawd! - Totally unOfficial Pet Peeve Thread.

[Madelaine McMasters]

And now I'm thinking of Woody Allen...

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.

ETA: If the "wisest" mortals are not afraid of dying, would the wisest immortals not be afraid of living forever? The inevitable is inevitable, why fear it?

Edited September 2, 2022 by Madelaine McMasters

[Scylla Rhiadra]

9 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I'd have all the time in the world to make my own things!

You really just don't get it, do you?

[Garnet Psaltery]

58 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

There's so many old dystopian Sci Fi stories:

- People live "forever" but their bodies keep getting more decrepit

- People live "forever" but really don't want to, so have to beg their caregivers for this thing called "euthanasia" (that does not exist due to laws)

- People "die" but are "reborn" into new bodies with slightly different personalities and definitely different priorities. See "Born with  the Dead", Robert Silverberg.

etc.

My future is in a new earth, anything but dystopian, but if people are thinking of the world as it is then I'd cope with endlessness, I suppose.  There's always more to learn, and work to do.

[Love Zhaoying]

43 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I've been alive for 52 years and can't recall a boring moment. If everyone's immortal, nobody outlives anybody. If we all just keep learning (that's a huge "if"), I think we could keep boredom at bay. Yeah, we'd all be looking into the abyss of the heat death of the universe, but is that any different than a 20 year old looking at death in 60 years?

I enjoy hypothesizing as much as the next person, but I find most of the immortality tropes hopelessly limited by our mortal imaginations. I'm now thinking of a favorite line from Laurie' Anderson's song "Language is a Virus".

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much better.

Wait, you're THAT YOUNG?!? 

* bonks head against nearby objects *

[Love Zhaoying]

41 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

And now I'm thinking of Woody Allen...

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.

ETA: If the "wisest" mortals are not afraid of dying, would the wisest immortals not be afraid of living forever? The inevitable is inevitable, why fear it?

See: Woody Allen movie, "Sleeper".

[Madelaine McMasters]

46 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I'd have all the time in the world to make my own things!

You really just don't get it, do you?

I've been thinking about this as I prepare for "movie night" on my patio this evening. My RL home was manageable for the three people that lived in it for decades. With only me remaining, it's become borderline. I contemplate selling it and building something new and smaller, that reflects my current sensibilities. But, I know how long it took to get this place "just so" and I don't know if I want to be taking on a massive start over given my remaining time. If I were immortal, I'd have no qualms about changing things up, as I'd always have infinite time to enjoy the fruits of a finite expenditure of time and effort.

If the only constant is change, I want lots of time for it.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Madelaine McMasters

[Sid Nagy]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I've been alive for 52 years and can't recall a boring moment.

When things start to repeat itself, it gets easily boring in my book.
This year my 64th Christmas. (Yawn!)  New Year. (Run for the hills!)
Today is Friday, but it looks so simular to last Thursday, Wednesday and upcoming Saturday and Sunday. Mainly jumping through the same hoops again and again.

I always thought, once I get retired I will go and see the world, but it turns out I'm physically not in that great shape (nor financially) to do so. And even when I plan a trip my brain says 'really?'

Not that I want to die tomorrow or next year, but I'm really glad that we have to hand in our spoon at the end of the journey.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Scylla Rhiadra]

13 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I've been thinking about this as I prepare for "movie night" on my patio this evening. My RL home was manageable for the three people that lived in it for decades. With only me remaining, it's become borderline. I contemplate selling it and building something new and smaller, that reflects my current sensibilities. But, I know how long it took to get this place "just so" and I don't know if I want to be taking on a massive start over given my remaining time. If I were immortal, I'd have no qualms about changing things up, as I'd always have infinite time to enjoy the fruits of a finite expenditure of time and effort.

If the only constant is change, I want lots of time for it.

So, it's complicated!

This doesn't need to be an either/or, right? The world is full of amazing and brilliant and beautiful things made by others. Art, literature, music, well-crafted and beautiful instruments and objects and devices.

I like making stuff -- this is why I spend so much of my SL time on photographs, planning them, building backdrops, experimenting with light and shadow, modifying them in Photoshop. I want to make beautiful things too, and sometimes I even come a little close.

But I want also to experience the beauty others produce. I'm never going to write a To the Lighthouse or Paradise Lost. Not if I did have eternity. I'm never going to be able to craft a beautiful guitar that is a joy to hold, play, and sound. But I can lose myself in the beauty someone else has created -- and connect through that with the artist and craftsperson, and with all of the others who are also doing so.

I can imagine a very happy eternity doing both of those things. Making and sharing -- they are flip sides of the same very human thing.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra
Typo

[Madelaine McMasters]

Just now, Scylla Rhiadra said:

So, it's complicated!

This doesn't need to be an either/or, right? The world is full of amazing and brilliant and beautiful things made by others. Art, literature, music, well-crafted and beautiful instruments and objects and devices.

I like making stuff -- this is why I spend so much of my SL time on photographs, planning them, building backdrops, experimenting with light and shadow, modifying them in Photoshop. I want to make beautiful things too, and sometimes I even come a little close.

But I want also to experience the beauty others produce. I'm never going to write a To the Lighthouse or Paradise Lost. Not if I did have eternity. I'm never going to be able craft a beautiful guitar that is a joy to hold, play, and sound. But I can lose myself in the beauty someone else has created -- and connect through that with the artist and craftsperson, and with all of the others who are also doing so.

I can imagine a very happy eternity doing both of those things. Making and sharing -- they are flip sides of the same very human thing.

It is complicated, and I both create and enjoy the creations of others. I built my outdoor theater with a mix of other's creations (projector, screen, landscape lighting, etc) of my own (pergola) and nature's (landscaping/woods). I'll be showing "Dr. Strangelove", my favorite creation by Stanley Kubrick and a few quirky shorts as a way of sharing my sensibilities with others.

I am something of a perfectionist, so the prospect of infinite time is appealing to me. I would not (I think?) be happy living in a home I did not well understand, and could not modify. I hated renting and wasn't terribly thrilled living in a home with someone who was happy to hire out things we could do ourselves.

Can you imagine living with me, forever? That's a powerful argument for mortality.

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Today is Friday, but it looks so simular to last Thursday, Wednesday and upcoming Saturday and Sunday. Mainly jumping through the same hoops again and again.

I live on the shore of Lake Michigan. Half of my daily view is "just" the Lake Michigan horizon. Most people who visit my place will say "Oh, that's such a beautiful view, but don't you get tired of it?". Meanwhile, I walk out to the bluff almost every day to look at that horizon. Though there are similarities across the thousands of times I've soaked in that view, I always find something interesting to ponder. That might be a cargo ship or a sail out on the horizon, a duck diving for seaweed, or bats scooping up dragonflies (not fireflies, if those poisonous little devils are out, the bats steer clear of them).

I make a point each day to look up at the sky. Again, I always find something interesting to ponder. I watch for variance between the breeze on my skin and the winds aloft, as evidenced by the movement of clouds. I watch contrails to gauge humidity and look for the shadows of clouds in the clouds near sunrise/sunset.

Though two views of the sky, a year apart, might be nearly identical, I always learn something in the intervening year that makes my perception happily different.

[Dyna Mole]

This is just a very gentle reminder .....  Please remember the topic of this thread.  There have been some lovely diversions in it from time to time, but the thread is supposed to be about Pet Peeves, not about discussing immortality or other side topics.  

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Dyna Mole said:

This is just a very gentle reminder .....  Please remember the topic of this thread.  There have been some lovely diversions in it from time to time, but the thread is supposed to be about Pet Peeves, not about discussing immortality or other side topics.  

Thank you!

Pet Peeve: That "Second Life" cannot be my "forever life" when my "First Life" body wears out!

..Someday!

[Madelaine McMasters]

8 minutes ago, Dyna Mole said:

This is just a very gentle reminder .....  Please remember the topic of this thread.  There have been some lovely diversions in it from time to time, but the thread is supposed to be about Pet Peeves, not about discussing immortality or other side topics.  

And if not being able to discuss side topics is a pet peeve?

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

16 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Can you imagine living with me, forever? That's a powerful argument for mortality.

It's work enough chatting with you in-world for an hour or more. 

Pet Peeve: Maddy.

[Sid Nagy]

13 minutes ago, Dyna Mole said:

This is just a very gentle reminder .....  Please remember the topic of this thread.  There have been some lovely diversions in it from time to time, but the thread is supposed to be about Pet Peeves, not about discussing immortality or other side topics.  

Immortality is quite a pet peeve for me.
That's why I brought it up, when the tread headed in that direction.

/me makes note to start each post in this thread formulating it as a pet peeve.

 

[Da5id Weatherwax]

The point is not to desire immortality, but to not fear death.

I'll do everything in my power to stave off that day but when it comes, that's the time to lay down the burdens of this world and embrace the challenges of the next. What's to fear in that? If I manage to maintain my RL life long enough that it becomes possible to be digitally uploaded and continue there then why the F not? But the Lab had better make it possible to puppeteer properly by then! I will want to control my own anims if I ever "manifest" inworld

[Madelaine McMasters]

3 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Pet Peeve: Maddy.

Let this be an invitation to anyone and everyone to air your grievances.

All I ask is that the expression of your complaint mask your intention well enough that there can be significant misunderstanding.

[Dyna Mole]

12 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

21 minutes ago, Dyna Mole said:

This is just a very gentle reminder .....  Please remember the topic of this thread.  There have been some lovely diversions in it from time to time, but the thread is supposed to be about Pet Peeves, not about discussing immortality or other side topics.  

And if not being able to discuss side topics is a pet peeve?

To clarify ....  the topic of the thread is Pet Peeves.  It's hard to resist responding to a juicy peeve with a bit of discussion.  My gentle reminder was a plea to avoid derailing the thread by turning it into -- hypothetically -- a thread about immortality (which is an excellent peeve, BTW).  Please just remember to veer back on target before it heads off the rails.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Let this be an invitation to anyone and everyone to air your grievances.

All I ask is that the expression of your complaint mask your intention well enough that there can be significant misunderstanding.

Pet Peeve, we don't celebrate Festivus.

There is no "Airing of Grievances". Only "Pet Peeves".

[Da5id Weatherwax]

1 minute ago, Dyna Mole said:

To clarify ....  the topic of the thread is Pet Peeves.  It's hard to resist responding to a juicy peeve with a bit of discussion.  My gentle reminder was a plea to avoid derailing the thread by turning it into -- hypothetically -- a thread about immortality (which is an excellent peeve, BTW).  Please just remember to veer back on target before it heads off the rails.

/me ties the rails in a pretzel and snickers... "Good luck with that!"  Dyna, I've been a chanop on an old contentious IRC channel. I know, as well as you do, how futile that particular plea is. This is THE PEEVES THREAD - if it ever had any "rails" they are LONG gone.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Oh, here's a Pet Peeve.

Every year here there is a four-day long (well, three days + one "rehearsal" day -- that's today) Air Show. For those four days, the city is buzzed and straffed by all manner of aircraft, which sometimes is fine. I actually like seeing the old WWII planes in action.

But OMG the fighter and bomber jets. They pass sometimes very low over the city, often in formations of five or six. The noise is so intense my dog hides under my desk, and my windows rattle. I've literally had things vibrate off tables and onto the floor.

I also worry about those in this city -- and there are many thousands of them -- who are refugees from war-torn countries, where the sound of a military jet was often a literal harbinger of death. The trauma this revisits upon them must be awful.

And there's the other side to it: a lot of this stuff is modern military hardware. As I said, I do like seeing a Lancaster bomber or Spitfire from 80 years ago in action: it connects me with my (now sadly deceased) British grandparents. I feel less charitable about what are essentially public showcases for multi-million dollar machines of death.

[Da5id Weatherwax]

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Oh, here's a Pet Peeve.

Every year here there is a four-day long (well, three days + one "rehearsal" day -- that's today) Air Show. For those four days, the city is buzzed and straffed by all manner of aircraft, which sometimes is fine. I actually like seeing the old WWII planes in action.

But OMG the fighter and bomber jets. They pass sometimes very low over the city, often in formations of five or six. The noise is so intense my dog hides under my desk, and my windows rattle. I've literally had things vibrate off tables and onto the floor.

I also worry about those in this city -- and there are many thousands of them -- who are refugees from war-torn countries, where the sound of a military jet was often a literal harbinger of death. The trauma this revisits upon them must be awful.

And there's the other side to it: a lot of this stuff is modern military hardware. As I said, I do like seeing a Lancaster bomber or Spitfire from 80 years ago in action: it connects me with my (now sadly deceased) British grandparents. I feel less charitable about what are essentially public showcases for multi-million dollar machines of death.

As somebody who is ex-military (RN, not chair force) I must say that it's not "showcases for machines of death" - The military puts on these shows to not just announce to the public that they are still there and still ready to defend them, but also to honor and express respect for the people who flew these planes, who sailed those ships or marched in their formations... and did not come back.

Here in the UK it is almost impossible to NOT find a family in your street who doesn't remember a relative who was lost in Big Mistake I or II. When the military honors them, those families know that they are heard, acknowledged and recognized.

[Madelaine McMasters]

My father flew a F4U (which he happily and swearily pronounced) Corsair in WWII. That plane was nicknamed the "Whistling Death". I still marvel at the graceful motion of those death machines, in what might be the epitome of irony.

When I learned to fly, and was finally able to take up a passenger, Dad was the first to enlist. I offered him the wheel, but he demurred. There was heartbreak in that for me. A thing he had loved to do had been poisoned by war and could not, for him, be redeemed.

He came along to witness my innocent joy.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, Da5id Weatherwax said:

As somebody who is ex-military (RN, not chair force) I must say that it's not "showcases for machines of death" - The military puts on these shows to not just announce to the public that they are still there and still ready to defend them, but also to honor and express respect for the people who flew these planes, who sailed those ships or marched in their formations... and did not come back.

Here in the UK it is almost impossible to NOT find a family in your street who doesn't remember a relative who was lost in Big Mistake I or II. When the military honors them, those families know that they are heard, acknowledged and recognized.

I sort of get that . . . except that a lot of what is on display here is not and has never been in the arsenal of the Canadian Forces. They are most often American imports, with teams coming north for this show, and they are (or were: it's been a while since I actually attended the event) often introduced first by the name and maker of the aircraft. So, something will be introduced as a "Boeing F-15EX Eagle II, flown by the USAF, [unit whatever]."

Interestingly, the most prominent (and maybe even only) display by the Canadian Forces is the "Snowbirds," who are military, but fly unarmed jets demonstrably not outfitted for war. Canada was in Afghanistan, but by far our most important military duties since the Korean War have been peacekeeping.

I do get the "honouring the past" thing. As I said, I enjoy watching vintage aircraft of all sorts, even military.

But as an inveterate peacenik, I personally find the sight of Toronto being stalked by a Stealth Jet a bit . . . not good.

[Da5id Weatherwax]

1 minute ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

My father flew a F4U (which he happily and swearily pronounced) Corsair in WWII. That plane was nicknamed the "Whistling Death". I still marvel at the graceful motion of those death machines, in what might be the epitome of irony.

When I learned to fly, and was finally able to take up a passenger, Dad was the first to enlist. I offered him the wheel, but he demurred. There was heartbreak in that for me. A thing he had loved to do had been poisoned by war and could not, for him, be redeemed.

He came along to witness my innocent joy.

"The true warrior wins without ever drawing his sword." Your dad chose to keep his hands off the stick because he was done with that part of his life. He had no more need to set his hands to something he always saw as a weapon.