Making new friends in adulthood
Framing it so you give a reason as to "why am I asking you now, when I never have before?" and lowers the emotional intensity
The Whippet #174: Extending my physical influence
I'm very interested in ghosts, as a cultural phenomenon and metaphor. I don't spend much time thinking about whether they're 'real' or not, that is not so interesting to me – as the priest says in the excerpt, "what matters is that people are seeing them"
Getting a refund on online shopping when you missed the returns deadline
This isn't a 'hack' it's just, sometimes people will help you if you ask nicely, but you might not have realised this is something you can ask for.
The Whippet #173: Heavy Business Pigeon
For this project, scientists attached weights to some scrawny pigeons as a social experiment. Those pigeons became more aggressive and shot up the pecking order
Giving first aid / CPR does a lot of good, even if you don't save their life
If your loved one died, I think you would care a lot that someone was with them, trying to save them, vs finding out that no one attempted to help.
The Whippet #172: Skeuomorphic Ghosts
It occurred to me the other day that a ghost is a skeumorph. Specifically, the reason they look like this in pop culture, is because Europeans used to bury their dead in white shrouds.
The Whippet #171: A delicate, narrow snout and a pleasant disposition
You know all those videos of Floridians, like, leaf-blowering an alligator to get it to leave a dollar-store carpark or whatever?
The Whippet #170: The best thing I know about bones
It's not a single fact, it's completely changed how I conceptualise bones. I had thought of them as more or less inert scaffolding, not living organs
The Whippet #169: A feeling in search of a cause
We dignify big emotions and dismiss smaller ones, but maybe what we talk about in art/philosophy and what we're allowed to express in daily life are not the same?
The Whippet #168: An indulgent loss of focus
"During the rainy season, the valleys among the dunes fill with freshwater lagoons, prevented from draining due to the impermeable rock beneath."