What small (borderline silly) things you appreciate?
What small (borderline silly) things you appreciate?
I highly appreciate envelopes which open on the shorter side.
When the dish soap makes bubbles in the air. Magical every time. I am over half a century in years and that is still unfailingly delightful.
Absolutely. I've tried to figure out how to force it to happen, but it's never the same. It's an organic whimsical moment of tiny little bubbles and it always makes me feel like a little kid for just a moment
Unpolished and sincere obscure YouTube vids. The kind where someone is clearly passionate but is doing it solo and in one take, warts and all.
100% agree.
And insanely underrated passion channels with excellent quality stuff (looking at you, Down from the Attic!)
Seeing a random cat outside.
I have four cats. I see a cat roughly once a minute, because there is always a cat.
But seeing a random other cat brightens my day.
Obscure keyboard shortcuts.
This is the one. My favorite was the alt-ctl-arrow to flip the monitor direction
We did this so many times in elementary School on school computers. Teachers has no clue on how to fix it 😅. Great times
Windows Shift S
You'd like Linux, GNOME has some great obscure compose key shortcuts and Vim would keep you entertained for years.
Vim is sorcery: you choose mystic incantations from your eldritch knowledge on the fly and suddenly your text is doing exactly what you want.
Vim user chiming in. I love it
I've used, administered and coded on Linux for a very long time. So yup
I used to have vim-mappings for opening a browser with RickRoll triggered by a typo I used to make a lot. Fun times.
The emacs-type or the vim-like?
My turn signal once was in sync with a car opposite of me.
I have tried for almost 30 years of driving, no luck
Little kids concentrating, like 2-3yo. When they are just about to "get" something, and they know it.
It is really cool to see.
Stepping on single fallen leaves on the sidewalk. I'm also more disappointed than I should be when they are not crunchy.
Small wordplay and rhymes that come to mind from time to time
That smell you get after a summer rain in the forest. Everything just seems to be so alive.
Petrichor!
Yes!
Thank you, another word added to my vocabulary.
Petrichor?
Thank you. Amazing how you and @[email protected] wrote your answers at exactly the same time :)
I was out for a walk the other day, and fuck me if the leaves weren't beautiful. Near sunset, moody dark clouds letting through some low light reflecting off green, yellow and red. View to the water. I tend not to notice that sort of thing too much, but it was so nice I started going "hey, is there something in this water?" and regretting not bringing the camera.
The smell of a new book.
oh man. there's my drug from back in the day.
Or old books! I just love the smell of books in general.
Towel warmer
Unfathomably silly
Seeing a rainbow in the sky. I know it's just sunlight refracting through the water droplets but it is so gorgeous. I still get like the dude from the double rainbow video years ago because I still feel that way.
Dude, like 3 weeks ago, i was on a long arse bike wide, and it started chucking it down. I had full gear on, so I stayed really dry and warm. But as I was heading home along a sunny fast speed road, I'm on for about 15 minutes doing 60mph. And there was just this rainbow. I caught it in the corner of my eye, and I smiled? Like, it was just joyous. I thought it'll leave soon. But it didn't. The entire 15 minutes, I was just looking at it. As someone who suffers from mental health issues, it was beautiful. A reminder that just because I'm not happy with myself or the way I see things. There's hope in nature. Humanity won't be around forever. But nature will be. And nature is, well, it's indescribable.
After a while, it turned into a double rainbow, too.
When trees look like things. There's one near me that looks like a camel... or a cow, depending on how you look at it. There's also one that looks like an AT-AT that got it's legs tied up, and is falling face-forward
I myself don't consider it silly, but non-hug hugs (what you see here might come to mind). I even wrote a mini-essay on them because I could, which itself is imbued with the same idea.
That's super cool, never thought about that but I get it now! Thanks for sharing.
I'm getting a 404 error on your essay, are their some quirks to links I don't know about or is the link bad?
An ode to all hugs you receive
If by any chance I linked you to this (and by linking you here, you can conclude the linker is me, it'll be seen the internet knows this and adapts), it's because I felt the world needed more hugs, this one to you (I’m sure you're familiar with digital hugs, reading this being equal to one, more elaborate than a gif). To my friends and acquaintances, I wish all the light in the world, and even upon those who wrong me, I hate seeing any darkness so incomprehensible it further shapes our relationship. Imagine if we wished more demons upon our enemies, however demonic they already are. Nobody deserves that. You're looking at a massive hug in all its anatomy.
When I was a child, everyone was personable with each other. Everything was savored. When two embrace, it's as if the world pauses. The world ceases to exist for a moment, except for a heartbeat against the chest, the firm caress of gentle hands, the tenderness and warmth of another soul, and hopefully any tears turned to giggles that vibrate in each person's arms. You lose sight of if there is any monster, beast, or machine in front of you, you might say because there never was one, and you don't care if it's painful to the touch, because you realize there is a part of each person that exists beyond the pain. And yet gestures that merely stand in for this may have the same power.
I was the aloof one of my family though, and this did not register for me in its completion at first. My family was always adoption-heavy, I was adopted by my mother while my six older sisters were adopted by my dad, and then mom and dad married. While I will forever be grateful for what my dad did, even if reuniting us was by accident, it also made us feel distant from one another. I was never greatly personable with him, our relationship was akin to once-removed relatives, a situation worsened because I went to grade school abroad. Whenever I was on the phone with my family, I would never ask to speak to my dad, and when I did, it was for a secondary reason.
One day, I remember he did try to give me a good gesture. He sent me a "long distance hug", a common social cue which in his case represented him at his most lively, but alas, I pushed it away, in part wondering how it could be considered "real" in its own right. I believed strongly in the humanness of such gestures, never did I put esteem in X's and O's as many today might know them. That was the last time I ever had a chance to savor such a thing.
A year after I graduated, I was still spending a lot of time away from everyone, to the extent that no messenger could link us. I called my older sisters to see how everyone was done. I began with mom, and then I moved up the ladder from sister to sister, asking how each one was doing, and then I finished with dad. There was a silence that happened when I mentioned him, it was as if the world was offended that I had asked how he was doing, like the dark version of the silence that happens during embrace. Finally, my sister spoke up, "I see nobody told you he passed away a year ago". The displacement caused by one sentence suddenly felt more heartfelt than anything I did for him.
I realized I had missed everything. I debated with myself strongly over whether to visit, whether it would be honorable or not, but in the end was able to mourn. There was nothing left, but I saw his memorial stone had X's and O's on it, whether this was intentional or not. I never inserted a hug so hastily. I am desperate to think this was a sign. People often don't think about what there is left to address until they have to. I recently honored him by taking his X's and O's (erasing everything else) and doodling a hug from me around the two shapes in all the spots they appear, see if you can spot them (if you can, the X's and O's are yours even more).
In thy name, this is my hug to whoever was sent to read this on whatever given day I sent this to be read, and I hope everyone recognizes the gift as a sign of being more worthy than Mjolnir at one's core, more destined to inherit the world than the shadows that try to pull each of us down, if they accept it. Even before living a little more, he leaves this forever-morally-confused soul with a motto: even beyond reach, in heart's embrace the ache of both is tamed.
Hotel mini soap bars
Farting. I enjoy a long fart, at the end of it I feel so relieved and sometimes dizzy. It's silly (atleast to my gf)..
As a card-carrying member of the IBS community, I see you.
Running chickens are so happily ridiculous.
Have you seen Indian Runner Ducks? I would fill my garden with the adorable fuckers
Get enough, and you can get a duck army.
My dog pooping towards the end of our walk
Or just before you leave, even better.
My dog manically rubbing his face all over the carpet as soon as he gets in the house or is let out of his crate. It's so silly and I love it!
Tiny squishy Gudetama toys. I have one on my desk.
When someone says "thanks"
My girlfriend
You know the sound that wobbly sheet metal and other wobbly materials make?
Yeah. That. I saw a video of it on Instagram and it gave me a huge arse smile.
Brushing and flossing my teeth.
Four stroke exhaust fumes combined with the smell of freshly cut grass.
A prox card lock opening without me having to actually touch the card to the reader (not happening at my current workplace, sadly)
When I want to take a nap, I pay on the sofa and put on the original soundtrack of Skyrim. The ambiance music from the open world when you explore, not the battle music. It really calls me down.
