She is an old cat for sure.

It’s hard to say whether it’s bothering her. The ear was very visibly swollen before the draining. She never used to hold it sideways like that, either - that’s developed over the last two weeks or so.

She’s mostly been minding her own business - we had trouble even finding her to take her to the appointment - but recently she’s been very clingy and rubbing (to be fair) both ears against us. I suspect it’s itchy at the very least.

Honestly, she’s so old I’m just worried about her.

Lumpy Space Princess?

If not in person, I prefer asynchronous conversation. It doesn’t require my constant full attention, so if I’m working or something I can still engage; and if it’s any kind of serious conversation (whether emotional or just reasoning out something complex), I can take my time to think about an answer to ensure I provide a complete and accurate (to the best of my ability) thought.

That said, no one ever seems to respond to texts, even if they started the conversation. It’s a lot harder to do that in a voiced conversation.

Magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

Assuming it’s not a bit, good luck at your interview. I believe in you!

I’m not sure how I could be aware of whether a thought was truly original. Many of the other comments in this post are random things like “coconut car cacophony” or whatever. It’s possible that no one has ever thought those words in conjunction before, but does it count as a thought or just a barrage of words with no meaning behind them? Additionally, if they do comprise an original thought, how would I know? I don’t feel a burst of originality while thinking those words and, if I did, I probably wouldn’t trust it.

A statement or expressible opinion would be something I could research. A thought is harder to define. I can’t guarantee no one has ever said “coconut car cacophony” before, but I can look for it; if someone has expressed a sentence (or opinion) that has actual meaning (unlike my three words), I can look for things that might have derived from that statement. For example, “e=mc^2” was likely an original thought, but it has since become commonplace (regardless of an understanding of its meaning) and, if I were to have that thought without a prior introduction to it, I could look for it or other physics theories for which it was the basis. Finding it or derivatives, I would be able to determine that someone had thought of it before I did, verifying its prior existence.

That’s okay - there’s no need for it to be a competition! I’m sorry you broke your ankle. Did it heal okay? What was your recovery process like?

I remember, as I was waiting for the EMT’s, I thought to myself “this isn’t so bad - eventually it will be over.” It isn’t yet and sometimes that depresses me, but maybe someday it still will be.

As they were rolling me to the OR, I remember one of the nurses said approximately “I broke both of my ankles a few years ago. In six months you won’t even think about it.” Her bedside manner was good, but she was wrong, heh.

Thank you for the empathy!

edit: OR, not ER.

If you confine your question to thoughts / ideas, I would imagine it’s difficult if not impossible to ever know, depending on how you define a thought / idea.

Far from every thought is expressed and, of those that are, they may often be expressed but missing nuance. As such, even if you have a 100% original thought, you might not even be aware.

Additionally, and again, depending on how you define a thought, I must imagine that there are so many possible permutations that it’s reminiscent about that “deck of cards” fact: there are more ways to shuffle a 52-card deck of cards than there are atoms in the universe (or something like that) … Though, with thoughts, the number of variables likely means it’s at a much greater scale.

However, though original thoughts might be available, any individual is not guaranteed to have one.

If the question is more about a statement or expressible opinion, it becomes easier to quantity.

edit: Whoops, got it backwards.

Sounds about right to me.

Well, honestly, probably one of two of my own. I’ve posted about both on lemmy before, but:

• When I was seven, I broke the radius and ulna in my right arm. This resulted in what the doctor called, IIRC, a “swan neck break.” I don’t know if it’s a widespread phrase - looking it up online returns a deformity rather than an injury. However, essentially my arm extended normally until maybe a third of the way up my forearm, then curved in a shallow U, then continued normally. I don’t really understand how it supported itself in that shape (other than very painfully), but it did. It was back in the nineties and, as mentioned, I was seven; so there are no pictures and my memory of the event may be exaggerating how dramatic the curve was. This mostly no longer has an impact on my life, but if I run my finger down the side of my arm now, around thirty years later, I can still feel where it broke and pressing on the spot causes tingles further down my arm. Also, fun fact: the doctor who treated my arm called me a crybaby.

• The other one was much more recent, three years ago. I slipped on some ice on my front porch and broke my ankle. Because I have a history of joint dislocations and the foot was pointed ninety degrees to the right, I thought it was just dislocated, not broken. I twisted it back to the correct orientation and tried to stand on it … Twice. I told the EMT’s that and I guess the story got around, because once I got to the ER, every single member of staff with whom I interacted asked me some form of “did you really do that?!” The doctor who treated me for this had a much better bedside manner than the one who did my arm, but apparently messed up the repair, according to my current orthopedic doctor, so I’m still enjoying the impact to this day.

There is, or maybe was, a YouTube channel that would run well known song lyrics through various layers of translation, then attempt to sing the result to the tune of the original.

The deity part was intended to be a bit of levity. If free will does not exist, some people might suggest that the brain is just a set of electric and chemical reactions, while others might suggest an external figure such as a god might shape your actions within the world. If the latter, whomever is making the decisions could be said to be planting your thoughts. Since Tim Allen did that to me, it would place him in the category of deity.

A bit of a stretch, perhaps, and obviously the joke fell flat. I’m sorry if the logic doesn’t hold up - I was and am very sleep deprived currently. Sometimes that makes me funnier, but sometimes not. I certainly don’t mean to represent him or any individual as an actual deity.

In the nineties, I read a book by Tim Allen. I believe it was titled I’m Not Really Here. In it, from what I can recall, he tells stories (I think the opening one is about dropping his wife off at the airport), recites facts (the one I remember is about how much a shaving nick can heal per hour of sleep), and explores philosophical concepts.

The last one is the relevant one here. At one point, he pontificates upon the existence of free will. He posits that free will can be demonstrated by thinking of an object that is not inspired by your current perceptions or other external influence. For example, if you thought of an orange when there was no orange you could see or smell; and no one was whispering “orange” to you; and you hadn’t eaten an orange recently; and whatever else, then you had free will, as you had a thought that was not externally controlled. I have problems with this theory, but will put them aside from the moment.

Ever since I read that, I think of it any time I try to be creative or ponder free will. I have wondered whether, going along with the concept as described, that means that I lack free will - because attempting to verify it will always be externally inspired by the passage.

If that’s the case, does that make Tim Allen my deity?

Before posting this comment, I looked up the book, so in case you’re curious: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1058798.I_m_Not_Really_Here

Apologies if I have poisoned anyone else’s free will based thought experiments.

edit: Little bit of an improvement in grammatical consistency.

I’m in shape.

Circle (well… More oval) is a shape.

When I was about your age, I got my first girlfriend pregnant. I was homeschooled and sex education was not part of the curriculum; I had no understanding of women’s biology and she mislead me about when and how pregnancy was possible. I tend to think of this as her tricking me into it, as she was not quiet about her fascination with motherhood, but it’s true that I could and should have done more to educate myself about the whole process before engaging in it.

Anyway, we ended up giving the progeny up for adoption, but I maintain contact with him (and the family when he understandably doesn’t want to talk to me). He turned eighteen this month.

I was going to make a comment about how young thirty-six seemed to be young to have offspring capable of posting on lemmy (I wasn’t even born until my parents were both in their forties) (no moral judgement here BTW!), but then I realized I’m sort of exactly in that situation. The ages are a little different, but pretty close, and I can assure you it’s shocking from the other side as well.

edit: On rereading my comment, I’m a little worried that it could be construed as negative regarding you and/or your father. I mean neither. I wasn’t ready to be a father for a host of reasons, some immature and some rational. It sounds like your dad was and that you have a great relationship. I’m very happy for you! Please accept my apologies if this message was in any way hurtful.

I wondered whether escaping would work, but not enough to test it.

I actually like the escaping method better because

• My time spent with git has resulted in me seeing lots of editors argue about whether whitespace at the end of a line is acceptable, but I prefer to do without
• I post almost exclusively from my mobile device, so two spaces create a full stop where I don’t want one
• I’m accustomed to escaping newlines from my shell scripting experience, so it looks right to me
• It reminds me of xkcd, which I have frequently enjoyed

Regardless of which method any of us use, thank you for the information!

Much appreciated!

You and the commenter to whom I was responding have very similar usernames.

I want to make a joke about that, but I’ve got nothing. I can only think of something about command line flags or something about “O” faces and I don’t have any way to make either of those funny in this context.

Please clap laugh.

It’s true - I am fun at parties!