What blew your mind today?

[KaijuCanuck]

A topic for significant thoughts or events in your day that dont necessarily fit into the ruin/make your day topics.

I’ll go first - realizing that this year will mark 100 years since the end of the First World War. Holy shit. Us looking back on them is like them looking back on Napoleon. It’s kind of both sad and happy - on the one hand, it’s sad to move further and further away from such a significant world event, and the lessons it taught/lives it shaped. On the other hand, it’s happy to kind of close the book on one of mankind’s biggest tragedies.

[Coobzilla03]

This thread to me is very significant because not everything makes my day, ruins my day, or gets on my nerves.

I'll be back here for sure.

[Hokmuto]

Pretty self explanatory: The Godzilla 2 trailer

[Godzilla165]

When you look up in the night sky, see millions and billions of galaxies and stars, and realize just how bloody tiny Earth is. It’s not even a speck in the grand scheme of the universe.

[MikeSTZillak]

Realizing that Vera Farmiga's character in "Godzilla: King Of The Monsters" is basically a female Gendo Ikari.

[godzillafan1954]

When you look up in the night sky, see millions and billions of galaxies and stars, and realize just how bloody tiny Earth is. It’s not even a speck in the grand scheme of the universe.

And then there are 7 billion people living on this tiny planet.

[JAGzilla]

It's really foggy here this morning, and riding home from work just now, said fog allowed me to notice something I never had before: the power lines along the sides of the road are filled with spider webs. Thousands of them, every few feet. I guess they're almost invisible under normal conditions, but covered in condensation they stood out. It's kind of obvious in hindsight that spiders would take advantage of such a huge amount of available territory, but it had just never occurred to me before. My mom, brother, and friend, also in the car, were also seeing them for the first time and very surprised. Makes you appreciate how much life there is on this dust speck of a planet, and how little of it we actually notice in our day-to-day lives.

[Dawsbfiremind]

I started a challenge in the roleplay subforum (specifically Emergence: Kaiju Invasion) that essentially is "see who can stand writing to Franzl Lang yodeling the longest". I thought my time of 17 minutes 21 seconds was a safe start.

But Andrew the Gojifan, that superhuman fiend, just made it to the 42 minute 27 second mark. How can that be possible?

[Vatarian]

Went out to eat today with my mother for the first time in a while, and the waitress turns to her and goes—

“Wow! Your daughter is getting so tall! What is she now? 14? 15?”

Mind you, I’m a twenty year-old college student.

[JAGzilla]

Speaking as a twenty-nine year old, that's easier to do than you'd think. I've known or at least been aware of my neighbors' kids all their lives, and I could only give you a rough ballpark estimate of how old they are. Some of my guesses have been way low. Time just goes faster and faster as you age, years start to feel like seasons, and you just lose track.

And yes, I am aware that this post is amusing to the handful of middle-aged people we have here. I probably don't know how good I have it.

[Dawsbfiremind]

^ I'm always assumed to be older. I was at an mtg tournament back when I was fifteen and my opponent thought I was over 25. When I am 25 I'll probably look 50 or something.

[JAGzilla]

And I have the opposite problem. People always think I'm about 18.

[godzillafan1954]

And I have the opposite problem. People always think I'm about 18.

Wait, you're not 18?!

[KaijuCanuck]

Realizing that DAM is 50 years old this year.

[SoggyNoodles2016]

Realizing that I've been on here for only a month. It feels like just yesterday I joined

[eabaker]

This was actually a few days ago, but I haven't had time to sit and write it all out, as it's a little involved. Please bear with me (or don't; nobody's forcing you to read this ).

So, when my dad died a few years ago, we ended up putting his ashes in my mother's back yard and planting a tree over them.

Before he met my mother (flashback!), my dad was briefly married to another woman, Jackie.

Earlier this week, Jackie was in the Portland area, and asked if she could stop by to see the tree. My mom had no problem with this. She recognized it would be weird, but not necessarily bad.

My mom and Jackie had only met once or twice before, once when a high school was performing some scenes from a musical my parents had written, and Jackie came out to see it (also the first time I met Jackie). After that, apparently Jackie was at my dad's memorial service, but neither my mother nor I remember seeing her there (it was a busy day for us both, obviously). So, this was the first time my mother ever really got to know Jackie at all.

She stayed for a couple of hours, they got along, and they are going to try to go out for drinks when Jackie is next in Portland. My mom thinks she seems like a fun person to get drunk with.

So, now, onto some of the things my mother learned:

- My father was the first of Jackie's four husbands, and apparently he was the best of the lot (no surprise there; he was rad).

- Jackie had to kids with subsequent husbands. A girl with husband number two, and a boy with... I'm not sure which husband.

- Her son is now 29 (so, ten years my junior). Her daughter committed suicide about ten years ago.

- The daughter, obviously, was an unhappy person. She did not have a good relationship with her father at all.

- As a kid, the daughter heard a lot from Jackie about how great my dad was. Enough so that she went through a period in her childhood insisting that my father (whom she'd never actually met) was her real father.

So, this is the thing that's now in my brain: there used to be a woman in the world, who I never met, who at one time in her life would have vehemently insisted that she was my half-sister.

It wasn't true, of course, but it still leaves me with a sense that... maybe I should have had some kind of relationship with her? Maybe we should have been in one another's lives in some way. But now, we never can be, because she's gone.

I don't feel any one particular way about this information. I'm sad that this woman had such a lousy life; I'm sad that she's dead; I'm in a way warmed to realize that my father was so beloved that even strangers were able to feel some kind of affection for him.

I dunno. It's just a lot of stuff to think about, none of which actually has any material effect on my life in any sense.

[HeiseiGodzilla117]

*snip*

This is very sad, but also heartwarming. Glad to hear your mom may have found a friend through all of this.



As for what blew my mind? It's not just today, but the past week. My brother bought a really nice telescope and we've been looking at the planets and stars in the night sky. Seeing Saturn's rings for yourself is absolutely breathtaking. I've also seen Venus, Jupiter and its four major moons, the surface of our moon in detail, and some very interesting clusters of stars. We've also observed what appeared to be satellites moving across the night sky.

[Andrew the Gojifan]

This foot of a seriema.

[Godzilla165]

*snip*

This is very sad, but also heartwarming. Glad to hear your mom may have found a friend through all of this.



As for what blew my mind? It's not just today, but the past week. My brother bought a really nice telescope and we've been looking at the planets and stars in the night sky. Seeing Saturn's rings for yourself is absolutely breathtaking. I've also seen Venus, Jupiter and its four major moons, the surface of our moon in detail, and some very interesting clusters of stars. We've also observed what appeared to be satellites moving across the night sky.

Ahhh man, I'm so envious of you, mate . We all know what Saturn's rings look like, but what did they really look like when you saw them, if I'm making any sense?

[HeiseiGodzilla117]

Ahhh man, I'm so envious of you, mate . We all know what Saturn's rings look like, but what did they really look like when you saw them, if I'm making any sense?

It's hard to describe because, like you said, it's something we've all seen in pictures. But seeing it for yourself, it's almost like a religious experience. If I told you what I got out of it, it would come across in a very corny way. It's really something you have to see for yourself. Once you do, it's burned in your head. Suffice it to say, they deserve the names of gods.

His telescope wasn't particularly expensive all things considered. I'll see if I can get the make and model of it if you're interested in getting one.