I used to hate olives, along with a lot of other things. Peppers. Beans. Blue cheese. And I used to tell everyone about how much I disliked stuff.

But then I grew up. You don't have to eat olives if you don't want. But if you restrict your life to your little pre-approved list of acceptable foods, you're missing out.

Life is short. Way too short. You don't want to discover how delicious a dirty martini with blue cheese olives is when you're old.

Justified. I was in Edinburgh with my family and we had a lovely outdoor table.

I went to the bathroom and our dinner came out while I was in the bathroom and a seagull STOLE MY GODDAMN £30 STEAK. Just hopped up on the table next to my brother-in-law and yoinked my medium-rare ribeye.

Fuck those sky-rats.

It even goes beyond this.

Everyone thinks they're smarter than everyone else. Smarter than doctors, scientists, and engineers. Definitely smarter than whatever the political or ideological "other side" is.

It's ruining our society. When George Carlin did his bit about "how stupid the average person is", he forgot to mention how 99% of us assume we skew into the "smarter than average" side.

I can't have conversations with people I used to respect, relatives, old friends, or even casual acquaintances without everyone blathering on about how stupid these people are or that group is. I hate it.

Me no lurk. Me comment.

Yup. The realization that we're all just making it up as we go is when it happens. Welcome to adulting.

Yep. I sneezed and now my back hurts.

This is it. Paying bills? Nah. Owning property? Nope. The realization that there's no such thing as an "adult". BOOM. Now you're an adult.

Yes and No. 48.

There was never a horizon or dividing line I crossed between youth and adult. It just happened.

I'm still the same person I was when I was 10/20/30/40. Still like cool things, still confused about why we're all here.

Other than my body getting real creaky and doing all kinds of weird old things, the only real difference between youth and adult is the realization that this very thread addresses. We're all just making it up as we go. There's no such thing as "adult". There's no Council of Super-Smart People running the world.

The only thing that makes you an adult is the realization that you have to be the change you want to see in the world. That you have to be the super-smart person running things.

I switched.

I also do this with emails at work all the time. I write a long detailed explanation of why something or someone is incorrect, then I realize clicking send will just cause me more hassle and I'm just working to get paid. It's not really gonna make my job any harder if they continue to be wrong, so it'll just sit there in drafts.

I searched for a community named "FacebookSaysItsFine" and haven't yet seen anything.

Be the change you want to see in the world!

Neat. Just was not at all expecting to see Pitchshifter in this discussion. (sorry I called them nu metal, felt strange to me too)

Yeah, I guess they did warn us. I didn't really grasp the lyrics when I was younger. Even RATM was lost on me until I hit my 30s...

The 90s industrial/nu metal band?

My kid's school just implemented an app-based pickup process this year.

You have to download an app and register your phone and email and child, then when you get in the line to pickup your child you have to press a button in the app.

I literally cannot retrieve my child from school without a smartphone.

Well my house is an Animahouse and can do that whenever it wants.

Hopefully my clone likes me as much as I like me.

Agreed. That's my point. I don't really know if we have a soul. If transporter technology existed and worked as theorized, then it would answer a bunch of questions that have been plaguing humanity.

If everything that I am can be duplicated by making a perfect copy of me atom for atom, then there is nothing to fear from transporter technology.

I would actually really like a 4"x4"x1.5" square of perfectly marbled steak cloned from Kobe beef genes in some tray in a lab. No gristle, no bones, perfect consistency in every bite.

Seared in a blazing hot cast iron pan with salt, pepper, butter and lemon.

$8.99 lb. at Publix. I'll take the transporter to get there.

Isn't it still kind of the same thing though?

Star Trek calls that "matter stream" energy your "pattern". Pattern sounds a lot like Information. Data. Which is very easy to transmit and duplicate. Data can also be lost or corrupted.

So it's as if they convert all your atoms to a file, then FTP your file to somewhere else where the technology turns your pattern back into matter.

"You" can't exist as just data, so at that point you're already dead. I think...

There are episodes where your pattern is stuck in the pattern buffer. You're only information being stored at that point.