Wolf314159

Some people get a lot out of sitting very still and clearing their minds completely. Some people get more clarity in motion, while running, rowing, cycling, or walking. There is another way on meditation that involves almost the opposite of a clear mind, where you focus on experiencing and really noticing absolutely everything around you; every breath, birdsong, machine noise, footstep, squirrel chittering, and insect buzzing. Sometimes while focusing on a puzzle or game like Tetris, Sodoku, or a Rubik's cube, it feels meditative to me. I don't know if that's real meditation. But my point is that everyone's built differently, find what works for you and stop worrying about failing. If you're trying, you're not failing.

One thing that the movies miss from the books, which seems like it would be hard to pull off, is that NOBODY in Dune just has a normal conversation with each other. Literally everytime there is dialogue in the book, at least one of the characters is psycho-analyzing every word for some sort of ulterior motive, or some hidden meaning within a meaning or something, it's actually kind of annoying and I'm glad they didn't attempt to work that into the movie.

Did we read the same book, because my impression was that it was almost entirely written from the perspective of main characters that were looking for conspiracies everywhere. Paul and his mother in particular were literally constantly attempting to detect the machinations and plots of others in order to either manipulate their allegiances or literally predict the future. The were the center of an ulterior motive tornado for the Fremen. The mythos they exploited to grab power was built on the foundations of other Bene Gesserit missionaries before them, an army of ulterior motives. The entire theme of the book was secret manipulation of the masses in order to maintain and grow political power. You don't survive in the Dune Universe without psychoanalysis of every interact for ulterior motives.

Mostmaps people use to make some point, especially some political point, turn out to just be population density maps.

No. No. No. Don't just buy a raw one if you don't know what to do with it. Find a place that has prepared it in something. I recommend durian ice cream. The waitress warned me that it tasted like gas. I asked her if she meant the fuel or farts and she just repeated "gassy". It smelled sweet like unburned gasoline at a classic car show and earthy like a belt loosening fart. And yet somehow it doesn't actually taste bad. It's mostly just unsettling that it tastes as good as it does. I'm not sure I'd order it again, except on a dare or to horrify any companions that haven't experienced it yet. It's like spicy food, sometimes you've got to power through the initial stink/spice to really get to the hidden flavors.

Pretty much all of the Sci-Fi written by Ursula K. LeGuin features people more than machines. There are technologies in the stories that play a role, but the are described as vaguely as possible to support the plot. As a result, often her sci-fi stories feel more like fantasy.

Octavia Butler wrote the Xenogenesis series which features an alien "species" whose system of technology is entirely biological.

This seems like a guarantee of failure for ANY actual use of the hitch. How is that even legal?

Chess is a war game, so allowing political assassinations or allowing the King to die just doesn't make any sense. Assassination of the King would just mean that the next in line becomes the new King. Only the King can surrender. So in order to force an end to the war you need to trap the King. Killing the King does not end the war, it just creates a new King.

Pancake mix in particular benefits from the large scales at which the pre-mixed stuff is made. Measuring out those smaller proportions of dry powders precisely and accurately is much more difficult at home even if you opt for using a scale instead of measuring cups. Just read the ingredients list to avoid the brands that may include the extra binders and other ingredients you want to avoid.

Judge appointments work in a similar way, I assume other offices do as well. Judges often decide precisely when they are going to retire in order to manipulate how their replacement is chosen, by vote or by appointment. These positions SHOULD be mostly non-political and merit based in general. In reality, just like economics, politics is inevitably everywhere. The real solution here is to get out the vote for every election at every level, not just the big federal one every 4 years.

That's the way voting in a Republic, where you're not voting directly for every position, law, and amendment, should work. The Republic falls apart and corruption and manipulation of the public will becomes easier when people don't turn out to vote at the smaller election cycles. The death of local news plays into this too as it becomes much more difficult to stay informed about the people and politics of those smaller local elections. If you think our representative system is broken and needs to change, the solution is the same, get out and vote for every election and support local investigative journalism.

The "E" (and similarly the "IE") at the end is a very different pronunciation indicator than an "E" in the middle of the word.

There's no need for the weird hate in your spoiler tag just because you don't understand something.

Dog-eared means that a corner got folded down (making a diagonal) on a page as a bookmark. A dog-eared book isn't necessarily beat-up beyond the damage to the corners of pages. Catty-cornered or kitty-cornered is adjacent to something on the diagonal, i.e. not orthogonally next to it like up, down, left, or right. So there is an argument to be made for a loose (coincidental) connection between those ideas, but I don't think they come from the same roots.