What's everyone up to right now?

[KichigaiNeko]

Watching this

http://youtu.be/6EfPCPqjoAg

[Jackalope]

Defending kebab.

What's to defend? Kebab is delicious. If someone doesn't like it, eat theirs too.

Problem solved.

[Angrboda]

Well, the issue is complex because the human brain's emotional response is reactive to the distance between the person and the subject in question. We care more about hungry children in our town than we do about those a continent away. But that being said, we 'perceive' the existence of a 'mind' in a body of the person we are talking and interacting with, even though we don't see their mind or brain, and may have never seen a mind or brain. We believe we are interacting with that 'mind' of the person, not a body in which we believe the mind exists. So we are quite comfortable forming attachments to people we never see, because we never actually see the 'people', we just see the bodies that are, ostensibly, performing at the command of an invisible mind / person. Distance effects matter, but benign illusions counteract that. We watch a football game on tv and we feel like we're watching a game, instead of a bunch of pixels on a flat electronic device turning on and off, and giving the illusion that we're 'looking at' people on a field playing a game. We watch a television drama and our brain isn't constantly telling us that the criminal has already been arrested, and the princess already saved, long before our watching, even before filming, even before the writer wrote it, to likely when someone thought up that little plot detail. And there are constructive illusions, illusions of mind which help us function in a social world of animals, which likely enhance the effect, such as various 'schema' or default templates: the default schema for person includes has sexual desires, has thoughts, has emotional attachments to others, wants happiness or pleasure, and so on. If you trigger that schema by satisfying a few of the expected values in some of the blanks, the mind basically says the whole schema applies, and we expect either defaults, or, perhaps unknown, but existing values in all or most of the slots. So, for instance, even though I haven't asked Ivy if she would like to lick my feet and toes while we're naked together in bed, I would expect, on the basis of the template or 'schema', that Ivy would likely have some, non-neutral, feelings about the idea, because as a 'presumed' person, she has feelings of an erotic or sexual nature, whether I have or have not learned that she has such feelings (sexual ones) from talking to her. Thus, only knowing a part of the information about a person, say from online, triggers our mind to create an identity, a partially filled out schema or template of the person type, and on the basis of what the defaults in that schema are, we 'feel' we know [details] about that person as a living being, even if we haven't actually explicitly acquired that information through words, visual inspection, or physical examination.

(ETA: thus the importance of, and contribution of, things like profile information, avatars, signature text or graphics, titles, the name they have chosen, and so forth, to 'light up' the person schema, partially fill it in with specific and suggestive information and detail, and help the brain of the reader of the person whose persona + post it is, generate both the emotional and rational components that correspond to dealing with a real person in-person, where many similar visual clues and triggers are automatically provided. These 'details' of the online persona help give other people 'the feeling' that they are interacting with a flesh and blood person, and what that person is 'really like'. It motivates us, both to engage socially, and passionately, but also more qualifiedly or respectfully; we'll hurl nasty homophobic epithets at someone who is 'just a name on a screen' when our brain might be more likely to inhibit that if it had the visceral sensation that it was hurling them at a living, breathing, flesh-n-blood person, who, because of the schema, is assumed to have feelings and will likely feel hurt as a result of your words [good old mirror neurons, allowing you to experience the effects of your words 'as if' you were that other person, and on account being motivated internally to inhibit before you hurl])

(ETA2: A related danger, if our brains have schema with default values for schema like 'Christian' or 'atheist' or 'child' or 'lesbian', we may have a tendency to project the defaults and expectations which come with our unique copy of that schema a) without having explicitly acquired information we're responding to, b) without knowing how our schema departs from the reality in terms of both the typical X, and the amount of variety present in X's, and c) without realizing we are responding to the fact and content of the schema inside our head, and not the actual factual person -- we neglect that there is going to be a necessary separation between what we believe* to be true about a person, and what is actually true about them. A lot of factors mitigate or expand that separation, but I won't go into further detail here.)

[Mystical]

having somewhere to go like this forum where you find like minded individuals helps narrow down your interactions to those you have a higher probability of cohesiveness with therefore your odds of finding someone you wish to have a close relationship with increases.
So you aren't merely becoming friends with strangers you are becoming friends with people you have a vested interest in.
Yes, I know I sound like Spock.

[kılıç_mehmet]

Defending kebab.

What's to defend? Kebab is delicious. If someone doesn't like it, eat theirs too.

Problem solved.

I was locked in an argument with some Serbs in another forum.

[Brian37]

Currently I am on FB blasting Ray Cumfart and also Liberty Pukiversty.

[freedomfromforum]

The usual

'Trainwreck' Sativa Hybrid

[Mystical]

I have this lifelong dream to breed my own white widow strain and call it missluckie. It shan't ever happen but I still go look at seed sites sometimes like its porn

[rexbeccarox]

I'm doing what FFF's doing...

And I can't wait to try the miss luckie strain. White Widow is my FAVORITE! Right now I have some Super Silver Haze,which is pretty damn good, though.

Also, Apo, Ranger IPA is one of my favorites

[Angrboda]

Walls, painted.