Post AU7dGejvPcYX5dn0d6 by tkinias@historians.social
(DIR) More posts by tkinias@historians.social
(DIR) Post #AU74obLj1jdg1cvAp6 by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T16:21:52Z
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So, I wrote my latest blog post -- about 1,500 words --- on an old manual typewriterI noticed some weird similarities between composing text on a typewriter ...... and composing it on a voice dictation on my Iphone (which I do a lot)In both cases, you need to think about an entire utterance before you begin typing/dictatingThe essay (with scans of the pages) here: https://clivethompson.medium.com/why-writing-on-a-typewriter-feels-so-strangely-modern-711d071685daA "friend" link if you're not a Medium subscriber: https://clivethompson.medium.com/why-writing-on-a-typewriter-feels-so-strangely-modern-711d071685da?sk=a9bb90bf595d3224dc710059c54a5a3b
(DIR) Post #AU75Bn43dXwP1FiMvg by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-03-29T16:26:34Z
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@clive I always used erasable typing paper whenever possible.
(DIR) Post #AU75N6p6Vx5zUA7L5E by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T16:28:01Z
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@lauren I had a bottle of dollar-style liquid paper, lol
(DIR) Post #AU75lOIZC3uKdMTcS8 by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-03-29T16:32:28Z
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@clive @lauren There was great excitement in my house when my parents bought an electric typewriter that could "erase" a letter when I was in high school. I think I only knew one person who used a word processor at home.
(DIR) Post #AU75vsssKdAaOCSnI0 by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T16:34:06Z
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@artcollisions @lauren Yep yep -- those magic self-erasing typewriters were *amazing*!
(DIR) Post #AU76282Utjob86wRW4 by smellsofbikes@mastodon.social
2023-03-29T16:35:27Z
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@clive that's a really weird thing I forget about sometimes: the immense difficulty of editing on a typewriter means you need absolute clarity in your sentences before you commit.
(DIR) Post #AU76DOyQHEtCptPYi8 by mattrambles@t00t.cloud
2023-03-29T16:37:32Z
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@clive This is great fun, thanks for sharing!I toyed with writing on an Olympia SM3 I was lucky to find locally at one point, and it felt like a loud thinking machine.https://www.classictypewriter.com/olympia-sm3-sm4If you didn’t cheat, you hammer out far fewer typos than I do.I’ve got it so I’m ready not for typewriter-Twitter, but whenever we go back to sending each other letters again. (No fax machine though; I draw a hard line there.)
(DIR) Post #AU76R7KSfxZcAOGA4W by writerethink@wandering.shop
2023-03-29T16:39:58Z
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@clive we used typewriters in my kindergarten "writing-to-read" class, and my mom still has the (accidental, and surprisingly menacing) "poem" I wrote while figuring out how the return key worked. It read:you cut thingsyou cut thingsyou cut things with a knife(We were practicing "silent k", I think!)I love the observations you've made in this piece; it'll be a fun one to share with my Cognition & Writing students in the Fall.
(DIR) Post #AU76YUDVyeYfBBWZBw by heathr@octodon.social
2023-03-29T16:41:17Z
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@clive I’m gonna posit “antidiluvian” came quicker to you on a typewriter.
(DIR) Post #AU76fheaQ0oQsaczwm by fncll@social.coop
2023-03-29T16:41:14Z
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@clive As a dedicated typewriter user, I enjoyed your musings. I do think there is something to the creative constraints (cf the dedicated users of old Alphasmarts and Tandy TRS-80 100s, as well as the "modern" Freewrite machines) and I find the aesthetics of the output, and the machines themselves!, quite pleasing. Honestly, though, my favored typewriters offer some capability for erasing. And I *love* IBM Selectrics, which are what I learned to type on!
(DIR) Post #AU7EcIkbLlYGPPKXya by dpierce@mathstodon.xyz
2023-03-29T18:11:37Z
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@clive When I was in college during the Reagan administration, a lecturer claimed that computers affected your writing* not at all, if you were used to saying out loud what you wrote;* for the worse, otherwise, because you would fiddle with your words too much.Perhaps it's hard to make that test now
(DIR) Post #AU7GTrBEAlZcUYsy5g by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T18:32:32Z
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@dpierce He was right that they'd affect our thinking!I don't think it was a net negative though ...Some things lost for sure, but (for me anyway) a net gain
(DIR) Post #AU7GhtkPQKecVc2LiK by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-29T16:39:42Z
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@artcollisions @clive @lauren correcting typewriters had been a thing for quite a while when I was in HS, but our typing class deliberately used electric typewriters *without* correction ribbons, in an effort to force us to be more accurate—which felt very odd, because by this time I’d been using computers for nearly a decade (my elementary school having had Commodores in the early 1980s)
(DIR) Post #AU7GhuI5P7aoC3nFCq by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-03-29T16:46:23Z
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@tkinias @clive @lauren Wow. It's fascinating to me where these things overlap, if that makes sense. My parents were always the last to adopt new things.
(DIR) Post #AU7GhurXHJwty0NYSe by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-29T17:06:40Z
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@artcollisions @clive @lauren yeah, for sure – like my favorite weird overlap is taking stats as an undergrad during the time when we had to run SPSS on the IBM mainframe (because, per the prof, “microcomputers aren’t suitable for serious quantitative work”) but I had e-mail and we logged in to the mainframe via telnet over the Internet
(DIR) Post #AU7GhvLJUblhSMJKsK by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-03-29T17:08:17Z
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@tkinias did you realize then what was going on? I wouldn't have had a clue
(DIR) Post #AU7GhvuPO7qDDCjMZs by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-29T17:50:21Z
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@artcollisions I was something of a computer geek (and had started out as a STEM major) so I kinda-sorta understood the tech, though I distinctly remember thinking that e-mail was a cute toy without any obvious application, simply because nobody I knew except for a few super-geeky students used it. That changed *dramatically* in the next year or two.
(DIR) Post #AU7GhwbIoe9VMEncR6 by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T18:35:01Z
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@tkinias @artcollisions Such a fascinating story, Thanasis!I too learned some already-outdated computing in high school. In grade 12 in Toronto, which would have been 1985/1986, I took a class on computer programming -- I'd already done a ton of it using BASIC on my friend's home computers, and a few computers at my schoolBut this class was taught in Fortran -- and using punchcards! The card reader connected to a PDP machine downtown somewhere
(DIR) Post #AU7Gp6FLLqP7IhwLqq by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T18:35:47Z
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@tkinias @artcollisions At the time, we were thinking -- "holy crap, punch cards are pretty outdated"But these days I'm glad I got a taste of what that type of programming was like!
(DIR) Post #AU7H7qtaeL2PC1htuS by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-29T18:39:46Z
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@clive @artcollisionsawesome! we never had access to ‘real’ computers in my schools—only Commodores and Apples—so I never got that experience
(DIR) Post #AU7HVrCr96an6gAIWe by Stitcher@artisan.chat
2023-03-29T16:45:38Z
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@artcollisions @clive @lauren I used computers at school from the time I was in elementary, but I didn't have my own. When I graduated from high school, my aunt gave me a typewriter (with the ability to correct a single letter or an entire word). I lived off campus and was not about to spend all of my time in a computer lab to write essays, so I did nearly all of them at home on my typewriter. It definitely set me apart as being a bit quirky, but it was endearing to some of my professors.
(DIR) Post #AU7HVrn0yfW2up5Asy by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T18:44:10Z
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@Stitcher @artcollisions @lauren I was so stoked to get my typewriter with the auto-correct ability!It felt like I'd bought a goddamn jetpackMind you it was 1988 so personal computers weren't yet very common
(DIR) Post #AU7Hcf2qlBKjPqjGW8 by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T18:44:38Z
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@fncll I have an Alphasmart too, and was thinking of writing a separate post about what it's like writing on it!I dig it
(DIR) Post #AU7Hojy8HLbQA7HZeS by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T18:45:16Z
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@heathr heh heh yeah possibly
(DIR) Post #AU7I1wmPxVrpex6Hb6 by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T18:46:03Z
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@writerethink omg LOVE that poem!!Glad you enjoyed the piece -- if you wind up using it in your class report back on what your students think!
(DIR) Post #AU7I8onu0oB0wv4U3U by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T18:47:19Z
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@mattrambles Glad you liked it!There were plenty of typos, but I used white-out from the dollar store to fix 'emYeah, I draw a line at fax machines too -- really a pain in the ass technology, that one
(DIR) Post #AU7IHDNKXXUTTNe7TE by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T18:47:41Z
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@smellsofbikes yeah, totally!
(DIR) Post #AU7IXpJjEycLmTsmrA by writerethink@wandering.shop
2023-03-29T18:53:07Z
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@clive Will do! (If I can remember by the time September rolls around, ha!)
(DIR) Post #AU7Iq5Rg0zad0wJ7PE by edwardchampion@universeodon.com
2023-03-29T18:58:59Z
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@clive I was fifteen when I last wrote on a battered and wildly error-prone typewriter (where Liquid Paint was produgiously applied and the aesthetics of my impoverished writing conditions were shamed by a horribly mean teacher who held up my pockmarked paper and mocked me before the class). Needless to say, I have avoided typewriters ever since. (And I destroyed the last typewriter I had with a baseball bat before a crowd in my early twenties: part of a performance art piece, but I suspect a kind of reckoning with this awful teacher.) Childhood scars, as we all know, are the thickest ones. But your post does have me contemplating a return to the typewriter -- if only to put the dregs of this demon fully to rest!
(DIR) Post #AU7Nwn0JTf4LcKWWum by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T19:55:31Z
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@edwardchampion They're fun to experiment with!
(DIR) Post #AU7O2PePDXumvRxSim by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T19:55:42Z
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@writerethink 😅
(DIR) Post #AU7O88YJhWyldMq716 by evanengel@mastodon.social
2023-03-29T18:51:53Z
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@writerethink @clive this is like a Jack White lyric
(DIR) Post #AU7O8G0ZyqkIl37HXc by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T19:55:52Z
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@evanengel @writerethink 100%
(DIR) Post #AU7ONCMDpwGrmKMdpw by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-29T18:41:49Z
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@clive @artcollisions the ghost of punchcards lived on when I learned to use the mainframe c. 1993, though, in that the IBM job control language enforced a maximum 80-character line length, which was the size of a punchcard—IIRC some instructions still referred to a line of code as a ‘card’
(DIR) Post #AU7ONCnsB8OBA5Iiw4 by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T19:56:36Z
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@tkinias @artcollisions oooooo yes, that's right!skueomorphic terminologyLike "cc" in today's email
(DIR) Post #AU7OWq4VY7QFYYfwFU by shoq@mastodon.social
2023-03-29T20:02:44Z
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@clive Oh god, the PTSD I just experienced, remembering what typing papers in college was like. And the White-out! OMG, the White-out!
(DIR) Post #AU7PMtQkJ5db20tlQm by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-03-29T20:12:10Z
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@clive @tkinias What a great word!
(DIR) Post #AU7SZGM3CUjTT2IB8q by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T20:47:07Z
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@shoq Heh heh yeah, I knowIt really causes some acid flashbacks, eh?
(DIR) Post #AU7Se0eJ1M1aCn5uPg by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T20:46:38Z
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@artcollisions @tkinias 🤘 🤖
(DIR) Post #AU7TAdjDGEysfpwtQO by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-29T20:54:43Z
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@clive @artcollisions my earliest office jobs were in the pre–corporate e-mail era, and I remember conversations about whether we should use “pc:” (photocopy) or just “c:” (copy) for noting copies on memos, since nobody acutally used carbon paper any more—and then e-mail came around and we all just use “cc:” again
(DIR) Post #AU7WBhFRxWVBk7DtEu by MichaelT@ruby.social
2023-03-29T21:28:11Z
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@clive This is wonderful. The indented list at the end is a great flourish, like the coda on a Romantic-era symphony!
(DIR) Post #AU7Yfa0ReIavsUa7yS by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T21:56:26Z
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@MichaelT heh heh, right onSo glad you liked it!
(DIR) Post #AU7YlQ0zi080d1cg5Y by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-29T21:57:18Z
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@tkinias @artcollisions I remember using carbon copying -- a *few* times, not too often, since by my time photocopying was pretty common
(DIR) Post #AU7cgmPTPwjcSB7Gz2 by wendyg@mastodon.xyz
2023-03-29T22:40:59Z
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@clive @lauren I still use that - to label AC adapters so I know what they're for
(DIR) Post #AU7dGejvPcYX5dn0d6 by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-29T22:47:53Z
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@clive @artcollisions I had a lot more experience with carbonless triplicate forms than with carbon paper as such. I remember at some point in the 1990s having to find a still-working typewriter to use to complete a triplicate form for the university...
(DIR) Post #AU7jdQQNOy874qt0HQ by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-03-29T23:59:46Z
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@clive Liquid paper shows. Quality erasable typing paper is (or at least was) effectively invisible where erased.
(DIR) Post #AU7xWQwiSkeI1gZay0 by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-03-29T22:48:58Z
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@tkinias @clive Do either of you remember mimeographs? You must.
(DIR) Post #AU7xWRhVem4yMoSxu4 by bomkatt@ohai.social
2023-03-29T22:49:57Z
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@artcollisions @tkinias @clive I can smell the word
(DIR) Post #AU7xWScEFtRvCj0GJM by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-29T22:54:17Z
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@bomkatt @artcollisions @clive Oh yeah. I never used them myself—I didn’t start teaching until well into the photocopier era—but that smell was the olifactory background to my elementary school experience.Well, that and the cigars the janitor used to smoke as he swept the hallways...
(DIR) Post #AU7xWT8UJxFmom61aq by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-03-29T22:57:22Z
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@tkinias @bomkatt @clive You never got to help the teacher with the mimeographs? I swear I did.
(DIR) Post #AU7xWToJoQiKuVfQnI by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-29T23:04:58Z
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@artcollisions @bomkatt @clive They kept the machine in the teachers’ workroom, which was strictly off-limits to kids.
(DIR) Post #AU7xWUI61iX8OrbDCy by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T02:34:51Z
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@tkinias @artcollisions @bomkatt Oh my goodness yes I remember mimeographsThat intoxicating smell
(DIR) Post #AU7xcOVYRMlmCai800 by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T02:35:21Z
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@wendyg @lauren It's still oddly useful
(DIR) Post #AU7xoFSRuk0fbnuWhc by dancinyogi@mastodon.sdf.org
2023-03-29T22:12:56Z
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@shoq @clive Not sure which was worse, white out or the correction tape.
(DIR) Post #AU7xoG6VVo3Jc2eW8m by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T02:35:44Z
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@dancinyogi @shoq It was all kind of a dog's breakfast, really
(DIR) Post #AU7xr23GDNeetmSLxY by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T02:34:07Z
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@lauren I've never tried it -- will give it a whirl!
(DIR) Post #AU7ycF4XccqqtMZCpE by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-30T02:47:08Z
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@clive @artcollisions @bomkatt now that I’m thinking about it, so much of the ‘smellscape’ of the world we grew up in is gone or nearly so—mimeograph fluid, stale tobacco smoke, gasoline, newsprint...
(DIR) Post #AU8j0PeawEVa5yDbDE by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T11:26:56Z
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@artcollisions @bomkatt @tkinias That’s a terrific point! Very true.It puts me in mind of a piece I read some years ago about how therapists for elderly patients with serious dementia discovered that exposing them to the smells of their youth — the oiled leather with a baseball mitt, the smell of Coney Island hot dogs — triggered moments of remarkable mental clarity. It seemed to temporarily crystallize the mind
(DIR) Post #AU8j8JSppqFdDOU7ua by idlestate@toot.cat
2023-03-30T10:07:32Z
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@tkiniasI see a couple of vintage vehicles around and I definitely think about this when I get a whiff of the incompletely-burned fuel that has passed tnrough the carburetted engine, probably choked, still cold from having just started, and passing through no catalytic converter, and depending on the vehicle, possibly lacking any of several other emission controls. It's a strange mix of odors but also of feeling: Nostalgia, wistfulness at the passing of time, but also gratitude & relief. I used to get headaches from every trip to a gas station, for instance.@clive @artcollisions @bomkatt
(DIR) Post #AU8j8K9NHgHLLKO6DY by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T11:27:31Z
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@tkinias @bomkatt @artcollisions @idlestate Yep — I was a young child in the 1970s, I remember all those smells vividly
(DIR) Post #AU8kXhj8rYZlevmeXI by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-03-30T11:42:19Z
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@clive @bomkatt @tkinias I think I read somewhere that where we process smells is very close to where we store memories in the brain but don't quote me on that. It's not like the brain has distinct compartments.
(DIR) Post #AU8nYGlCuS8YAwi89o by shoq@mastodon.social
2023-03-30T12:17:54Z
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@clive @dancinyogi Thanks to both of you, I'm having hideous flashbacks to a panic attack I had while waking friends at 2 am, desperately trying to find a Smith-Corona ribbon, with a philosophy final paper due at 9am. Kids today just don't understand the horrors of daily life we endured back in the stone age.PS. I did finally find one. In my bottom desk drawer, hiding in a box of cassette tapes. Oh, and I got the paper in on-time. But I got a B because, the prof wrote, "It felt rushed."
(DIR) Post #AU8ni2N3GStCRW4Odk by dpierce@mathstodon.xyz
2023-03-30T12:19:35Z
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@clive You blogged, "Very often, the process of writing a blog post sharpens myfocus." I wonder if the computer is important for that. I quoted yourwords, 15% of the way into my own post. It may be ill focused, becausethe ease of editing lets me try to fit a lot in. I did have my reasons,for that post anyway. No obligation on your part, but I appreciatedencountering your wordshttps://polytropy.com/2023/01/09/biological-history/
(DIR) Post #AU8pmvXIIsC8bLJuXA by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T12:42:03Z
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@tkinias @bomkatt @artcollisions Yeah I think that’s right!
(DIR) Post #AU8psk6ViiGosoZ7PE by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-30T11:51:05Z
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@artcollisions @clive @bomkatt yeah, I don’t know the mechanism, but smell can be a *strong* memory-provoker
(DIR) Post #AU8pskcPo5n6TlUb8S by bomkatt@ohai.social
2023-03-30T11:57:06Z
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@tkinias @artcollisions @clive I can’t shake the ghost memory of stale smoke after thinking about it. I know no one has smoked in this house for well over a decade based on how long we’ve lived here, but I swear my clothes are holding it. Taking deep breaths over my coffee cup instead.
(DIR) Post #AU8pslCZdeiMHuPTUm by tkinias@historians.social
2023-03-30T12:00:25Z
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@bomkatt @artcollisions @clive I was recently at a hotel in Denver where I could swear the smell lingered—even though it’s got to be 20yr or more since smoking was allowed in the rooms.
(DIR) Post #AU8psljBgOnnv3fWKW by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T12:42:32Z
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@tkinias @bomkatt @artcollisions Ugh yes
(DIR) Post #AU8pyyb0ki1RZBnvXM by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-03-30T12:12:04Z
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@tkinias @bomkatt @clive Ok, funny story about smelling smoke. When I'm pregnant, my nose is like 10 thousand times more sensitive. Husband and I went to a fancy inn for dinner/stay the night. They put us in a small room to wait for our table and I asked if that room had been used for smoking. Indeed, many years in the past, it had. I was pregnant, but didn't know it! Husband couldn't smell anything. lol.
(DIR) Post #AU8pyz4mxzqF3Xjhx2 by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T12:42:51Z
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@tkinias @bomkatt @artcollisions You’re a werewolf!
(DIR) Post #AU8q82Mw5sh5sHXcci by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-03-30T12:46:03Z
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@clive @tkinias @bomkatt But only when pregnant :D
(DIR) Post #AU8qFv90q36zmhmuJM by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T12:48:13Z
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@shoq @dancinyogi Oh man 😅I remember looking for ribbons too, in a cold sweat
(DIR) Post #AU8qNjYFpAt499Jtqq by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T12:47:13Z
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@dpierce Aha glad you found that post useful in some way!I take your point about the act of blogging sometimes doing something rather different than “sharpening“: it can also lead me down completely different paths than the one I originally thought I was setting out on
(DIR) Post #AU8rlVYTc8vZdqKAWO by shoq@mastodon.social
2023-03-30T13:05:04Z
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@clive @dancinyogi Another related experience: you change or fix the ribbon, forget to wash your hands, then yank the page off the platen, only to notice your fingerprints all over the corner of the page. Good times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBbsNKaVAB0
(DIR) Post #AU8x9WUcHLlVGqn08O by clive@saturation.social
2023-03-30T14:05:28Z
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@shoq @dancinyogi Yeah I did that just this week lol