~Athena Artemis~

Polynesians did also rely on a form of a physical map called a stick chart, illustrating the specific wave and swell patterns surrounding different island chains. These were particularly helpful during cloudy conditions when the sun and stars were less useful. To navigate the Marshall Islands, the Marshallese represented ocean swell patterns using parts of coconut fronds and shells as islands. Like a subway map, they don’t so much represent distances as they do relationships. The complex and decorative stick charts were often only understood by the person who made them. They were memorised before a voyage by the pilot who would lie on the floor of a canoe to get a sense of swell movement and often lead a squadron of 15 or more boats.

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.

If you’d asked me six months ago how to get better at something, I’d probably have pointed you to how to do hard things. I still think this is a good approach and you should do it, but I now think it’s the wrong starting point and I’ve been undervaluing small insights. [...]

Every time he tells me this story, his frustration by this point in the story, years later, is evident. He still sounds frustrated by it, despite all the time that passed. Teachers had been giving him crap for years because he hadn't been making much progress with the instrument.

When he got to the private instructor, she acknowledged his frustration, and asked him to try to play for her. He did, and she saw all he was doing. She then did something no one else had done before. She asked him to put his mouthpiece on a different clarinet and try to play the same notes. Like magic, it worked. She looked at the clarinet he had been using and found that the school's clarinet needed it's pads replaced.

He went from last chair to first chair nearly overnight, having been taught far more techniques than typically taught at that age just to overcome the broken instrument preventing him from making noise.

if you don't know, there's a very popular 3d printing model out there called "benchy". this is used for benchmarking your 3d printer because it's a difficult print and will help test it out.

this is so widely used that people make their own little versions of it, remixing the 3d model to make benchy look cooler and stuff. however, a new company owns the benchy license. they are sending copyright takedowns to all those who wrongfully uploaded the benchy model.

of course, this is pissing off the 3d printing community greatly. everyone loved benchy and have used it for years. so someone on reddit decided to make a new model that is designed as a 3d printing stress test. one that works a lot like benchy, and people are freely able to edit it as they please. you know what they called it?

My ceiling hoists were due their 6 monthly inspection today and part of me was like “I’m not having any problems with them, there’s no visible wear and tear, do we really have to do this again?”

And then the engineer came and was working at the first one for like an hour which is really unusual. Even with weight testing them it doesn’t usually take that long.

It turned out there was a fault with it that meant that at any point the fabric band that takes my weight could have come off the spool, gotten chewed up by the mechanism and dropped me to the floor from ceiling height. It needed completely taking apart to replace that mechanism, and there were absolutely no warning signs that it was broken.

Lights at a botanical garden reflecting onto a puddle while raindrops fall onto it, looks like mini fireworks !