Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tiruin]

A common source of anxiety is blame for failure and otherwise--and from personal experience and studies on communication and communication styles, there are common ways to see in the past or in one's modeling/upbringing where sources of feelings may come from (that aren't immediately associated with the behavior)

Things like "You" instead of 'your behavior'; shorthand statements like these, reinforced and conditioned over time. Especially when people describe something bad without following it up with appropriate behavior, guidance, or otherwise.

"You" becomes synonymous with the self/identity of the person in that broad context, rather than the more specific area of 'your behavior [that I'm reacting to]'.

[Reelya]

That becomes more complex because in English there are times when "you" is meant to be a generalized person e.g. "have you had those times where you did ABC and XYZ happened?" In those cases "you" means "anyone". Sometimes in a forum this type of general usage can be misconstrued to being a personal attack on a specific forumite. It's just a thing you* have to deal with.

* See what I did there, "a thing you have to deal with" is a common phrase meaning "something we all have to deal with" but could easily be misconstrued as "something Tiruin has to deal with". If anything I'd say this type of confusion is the most common issue with using the word "you".

[Silverthrone]

On Living Somewhere Cold.

I do wonder, sometimes, why I put up with it. But there are reasons for it. Many creeping, crawling little reasons, to be specific. I do not like centipedes and spiders, for instance. They unnerve me. Happily, they do not like the Nordics either, and stick to a modest and agreeable size. Insects and arachnids cannot blossom quite as readibly here as elsewhere.
Crocodiles, hippoes and other such creatures do not seem to like it here very much either, which suits me perfectly. Bears and wolves are another matter, but they are rare, and hardly a concern for an unvoluntary city-slicker such as I.

There are snakes, of course. But only adders carry poison, and that will not kill you, if you are not unlucky. They also have a very agreeable no step on snek-policy, so if you only watch your feet, snakes will not be an issue.

Further, the long winters, the dark nights, the silence and the solitude makes spring and summer all the sweeter. I do not think I would like it in a non-temperate climate, without the constant change and the shifting length of days. I would like to visit the tropics, sometime, but I do not think that I would be happy to live there.

[Baffler]

Speak for yourself you damn dirty ^tropical ape. It takes all my willpower not to permanently flee to colder climes. As it stands I spend the summer as a permanent refugee from the heat, and only in the winter am I truly at peace with nature. Sometimes in the winter, I will go to the park and just sit on a park bench, watching the few people outside go by; I never do this any other time of year. when I hear someone else say "it's a beautiful day" I shudder to think of what the weather is like, and when everyone else is miserable from storms I struggle to conceal my genuine glee at the weather.

Here's a strange thing then: why are there some people whose temperature preference is so dramatically different from their peers? There's no obvious reason why this should be. My family is from a summer clime, the Mediterranean in fact. And yet, knowing only what you do above you'd think I was born and raised in Greenland or something. Is it some sort of temperature disorder? A bodyheat thing? A cultural thing? Is it all in my head, and have I simply convinced myself that black is white out of sheer perverse contrariness? If anyone has any theories or info, I'd like to hear it.

I feel the same way. I never did like the heat, even as low as 80°F being pretty unpleasant, but colder temperatures are much more agreeable. I like rain too but mainly because of the smell, it usually precedes cooler weather, and it sends all the damn bugs to ground for a little while. It doesn't help that summers have gotten much hotter in the last few years either. Climate change is to blame for this.

Anyway there are a lot of physiological reasons behind differences in tolerance for high (and low) temperatures, and a lot of them are only very poorly understood or even completely unknown. Some people are, in fact, better able cool off by sweating - they dissipate heat through blood vessels close to the surface of their skin more effectively either because they've got more surface area there or they just sweat more to make up for it. A slower metabolism, and by extension lower basal core temperature, also helps some. Almost everyone is able to acclimatize, but some do it faster than others and some have a higher 'ceiling' for what they can adapt to. There's some evidence too that the environment you grew up in has an effect, both physiologically and psychologically, on what you can tolerate or learn to tolerate later in life. So people from cooler climates or who're used to air conditioning will be at an innate disadvantage to someone who didn't, but usually that only means it takes them longer to acclimate rather than preventing it altogether.

[Loud Whispers]

Why are tropical apes residing in the freezing higher latitudes? We are such a stupid species it seems.

Might be because there's more to our origins than just tropical apes, especially since we recently discovered the oldest known hominin lived in modern-day Greece, not sub-Saharan East Africa. So from which direction humans originated and spread out we don't know the full picture yet, especially when you count in all the human species homo sapiens interbred with before the rest went extinct (with homo sapiens inheriting disease immunities and climate adaptions from the other human species they interacted with). Then there's the size advantage. Humans are very big animals, which is something you don't really think about often, but there are very few animals larger than humans on the Earth. The larger something is, the better it is at conserving heat in colder climates - giving it an advantage to living where few other animals can live. Thus while resources may be scarcer in colder climates, human competition would be largely in relation to other humans. Then there are regional adaptations of humans, so depending on what conditions your ancestors lived in and what selection pressures the environment placed upon them, there is a significant genetic component on how likely you are to be lithe or stocky, gazelle mode or bear mode. One is better for losing heat, one for conserving it. I don't know much about how humans cope with hot, arid or hot, wet conditions since I only live in wet, cold, miserable weather, but I do know that cold-dwellers tend to have good metabolisms to maintain core temperature, and their skin is more resistant to frostbite owing to the body's internal cycle of vasodilation and vasoconstriction - hence why you can see some insane stuff like Russians, Mongolians or Nordics in below 0*C weather (no windchill) walking around shirtless.

Then there's the whole acclimatisation thing which happens a lot faster than evolution. Humans in general (and mammals for that matter) are good at acclimatizing across seasons, terrain, climates and so on naturally, and our ability to use technology to further aid our adaption helps us a bunch. Then there's the whole epigenetic factor, wherin people who spend more time in certain climates are likely to express genes that aid in the habitation of that climate. Personally for example my cousins live in a tropical country, genetically we are very similar. Yet they are very comfortable dealing with monsoon weather and constant heat & humidity, where that would make me incredibly uncomfortable, melting & burnt. Conversely I live in a temperate, cold country, where I'm very pleased by cool & cold weather, low-sunlight conditions, yet this would cause havoc to them for all the inverse reasons. Generally it's hard to switch between climates you've acclimatised to but I don't think it takes too many months or years for a human to acclimatise to a new one. That said it does seem that the colder the weather gets the harder it is for humans to acclimatise without the use of glorious human technology. We weren't born with fur after all

All in all, cold weather is pretty pleasant as long as you do not have strong winds. With strong winds the effect is like an oven fan, only reversed, wherein cool weather quickly becomes intolerably cold without coverings

*EDIT
Looked up to see if I missed any human adaptations, and yeah I forgot one. Humans develop physiological adaptations shaped by their environment, so what climate you're used to from your childhood-teenage years will probably shape your preferences for the future

[Max™]

Random weird thought for today: being vulnerable to a wooden stake through the heart is normal, it's going to ruin your day whether you're a vampire or not, isn't it?

[Helgoland]

Same with silver bullets, really.

[NAV]

I'm pretty sure  Buffy the Vampire Slayer said that once.

[Max™]

Have to take your word for it, never seen it, but it would not surprise me.

Same with silver bullets, really.

Trufax!

[Loud Whispers]

Blood loss: My only weakness

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Plot twist: Humans are all immortal vampires, but our insistence on going out in the sun and draining the blood from our meat leads to slow degeneration and death. This is why experienced cavers and basement NEETs gradually lose all forms of fear and attain endarkenment. (It's like enlightenment but for vampires, enlightenment actually just kills you.)

[Eric Blank]

Theoretically, to test if someone is a vampire you'd try to poison them with something you can treat after they start showing symptoms. As soon as you see symptoms, treat them, they're mortal. If they do not, they're clearly a vampire i.e. only being harmed by sunlight, stakes through the heart, garlic, symbols of faith, burning and beheading. A handful of very specific things, poisons and diseases not among them. Chop off their arm and they dont bleed or go into shock, but a mortal would. But then you've killed an innocent mortal, so yeah that's not a good way to test for vampires.

Depends on the magicalness of things, but I guess you could dump them in a vat of a strong acid/base solution and let them dissolve and fall apart. Their head will eventually become disconnected from their body, which counts as beheading, right?

[Egan_BW]

(Don't forget flowing water!)

[Criptfeind]

Just drop a bunch of rice on the ground. Not only does it reveal their vampire nature, but it's also a great source of entertainment to watch the expression on their vampire nerd face to kick the rice out of their hands as they almost finish picking it all up.

[redwallzyl]

Why are tropical apes residing in the freezing higher latitudes? We are such a stupid species it seems.

Might be because there's more to our origins than just tropical apes, especially since we recently discovered the oldest known hominin lived in modern-day Greece, not sub-Saharan East Africa. So from which direction humans originated and spread out we don't know the full picture yet, especially when you count in all the human species homo sapiens interbred with before the rest went extinct (with homo sapiens inheriting disease immunities and climate adaptions from the other human species they interacted with). Then there's the size advantage. Humans are very big animals, which is something you don't really think about often, but there are very few animals larger than humans on the Earth. The larger something is, the better it is at conserving heat in colder climates - giving it an advantage to living where few other animals can live. Thus while resources may be scarcer in colder climates, human competition would be largely in relation to other humans. Then there are regional adaptations of humans, so depending on what conditions your ancestors lived in and what selection pressures the environment placed upon them, there is a significant genetic component on how likely you are to be lithe or stocky, gazelle mode or bear mode. One is better for losing heat, one for conserving it. I don't know much about how humans cope with hot, arid or hot, wet conditions since I only live in wet, cold, miserable weather, but I do know that cold-dwellers tend to have good metabolisms to maintain core temperature, and their skin is more resistant to frostbite owing to the body's internal cycle of vasodilation and vasoconstriction - hence why you can see some insane stuff like Russians, Mongolians or Nordics in below 0*C weather (no windchill) walking around shirtless.

Then there's the whole acclimatisation thing which happens a lot faster than evolution. Humans in general (and mammals for that matter) are good at acclimatizing across seasons, terrain, climates and so on naturally, and our ability to use technology to further aid our adaption helps us a bunch. Then there's the whole epigenetic factor, wherin people who spend more time in certain climates are likely to express genes that aid in the habitation of that climate. Personally for example my cousins live in a tropical country, genetically we are very similar. Yet they are very comfortable dealing with monsoon weather and constant heat & humidity, where that would make me incredibly uncomfortable, melting & burnt. Conversely I live in a temperate, cold country, where I'm very pleased by cool & cold weather, low-sunlight conditions, yet this would cause havoc to them for all the inverse reasons. Generally it's hard to switch between climates you've acclimatised to but I don't think it takes too many months or years for a human to acclimatise to a new one. That said it does seem that the colder the weather gets the harder it is for humans to acclimatise without the use of glorious human technology. We weren't born with fur after all

All in all, cold weather is pretty pleasant as long as you do not have strong winds. With strong winds the effect is like an oven fan, only reversed, wherein cool weather quickly becomes intolerably cold without coverings

*EDIT
Looked up to see if I missed any human adaptations, and yeah I forgot one. Humans develop physiological adaptations shaped by their environment, so what climate you're used to from your childhood-teenage years will probably shape your preferences for the future

Technically if you go back far enough all life's native climate was originally the ocean. if your going to make a native climate for humans you should start with genus Homo.

Heres' one, only modern humans have protruding chins, all human ancestors were chinless.