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Jim's Cafe - Friday - August 23, 2024 "the skills Cafe"
- Thread starter Angie
- Start date
too kind, @MisterBGone 
@JMG — thanks for the tag!
@Angie, good luck on your dental appointment. I’m always anxious about dental appointments too — my heart is with you!
Interesting questions…
I would love to be able to sing well. Not necessarily like a rock star, Broadway musical actor, or an opera singer, but well enough that I’m singing the tune, in key, and enjoying the experience.
I think being able to read is an important skill…if all people with the capacity to learn to read, did learn and had opportunities to read, humanity could be better educated, world-wise, knowledgeable, thoughtful, better communicators with each other. Reading in my fantasy world would include fiction, factual/scientific material, newspapers, cereal boxes (er, food labels), scientific material, spiritual material — information we can all use to help us make personal and community decisions and understand the world, ourselves, and others. Reading is also a wonderful source of “companionship” in its own way. It lets us in on how someone else sees and thinks about things — whether it’s a novel, a financial report, a scientific article, biographies, or poetry…
OK, diatribe done. (Sorry.
)
@Angie, good luck on your dental appointment. I’m always anxious about dental appointments too — my heart is with you!
Interesting questions…
I would love to be able to sing well. Not necessarily like a rock star, Broadway musical actor, or an opera singer, but well enough that I’m singing the tune, in key, and enjoying the experience.
I think being able to read is an important skill…if all people with the capacity to learn to read, did learn and had opportunities to read, humanity could be better educated, world-wise, knowledgeable, thoughtful, better communicators with each other. Reading in my fantasy world would include fiction, factual/scientific material, newspapers, cereal boxes (er, food labels), scientific material, spiritual material — information we can all use to help us make personal and community decisions and understand the world, ourselves, and others. Reading is also a wonderful source of “companionship” in its own way. It lets us in on how someone else sees and thinks about things — whether it’s a novel, a financial report, a scientific article, biographies, or poetry…
OK, diatribe done. (Sorry.
)
Hi everyone! 
Ouch, dentist appointment... I haven't been in years, but shhhh.
Hope it all goes well and passes quickly for you!
I've come home from the shops. They are 5 minutes from my place, and of course I got under the 5 minutes of heavy rain today.
Now it's all sun and blue sky again. But no complaining... It's a pretty day now and a relaxing weekend ahead!
Hope everyone else has a wonderful Summery weekend as well!
If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be and why?
Oooh there are so many! I could choose painting because that is what I do all the time and feel ambitious about, but at the same time the learning process is part of the fun. So I'll choose playing the guitar, because learning it was very hard and I gave up.
What skill do you think everyone should have?
Critical thinking for sure. Everyone thinks they have it, but there is a lot of education needed. It's something I value in people a lot, and it influences everything : their behaviour, their mentality, their beliefs, their morals, their personality, their ambitions... The better the critical thinking skills in people, the better the society in my opinion, and I long for a beautiful, peaceful world with happy people.
Ouch, dentist appointment... I haven't been in years, but shhhh.
Hope it all goes well and passes quickly for you!
I've come home from the shops. They are 5 minutes from my place, and of course I got under the 5 minutes of heavy rain today.
Now it's all sun and blue sky again. But no complaining... It's a pretty day now and a relaxing weekend ahead! Hope everyone else has a wonderful Summery weekend as well!
If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be and why?
Oooh there are so many! I could choose painting because that is what I do all the time and feel ambitious about, but at the same time the learning process is part of the fun. So I'll choose playing the guitar, because learning it was very hard and I gave up.
What skill do you think everyone should have?
Critical thinking for sure. Everyone thinks they have it, but there is a lot of education needed. It's something I value in people a lot, and it influences everything : their behaviour, their mentality, their beliefs, their morals, their personality, their ambitions... The better the critical thinking skills in people, the better the society in my opinion, and I long for a beautiful, peaceful world with happy people.
Hi everyone!
Ouch, dentist appointment... I haven't been in years, but shhhh.
Hope it all goes well and passes quickly for you!
I've come home from the shops. They are 5 minutes from my place, and of course I got under the 5 minutes of heavy rain today. Now it's all sun and blue sky again. But no complaining... It's a pretty day now and a relaxing weekend ahead!
Hope everyone else has a wonderful Summery weekend as well!
If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be and why?
Oooh there are so many! I could choose painting because that is what I do all the time and feel ambitious about, but at the same time the learning process is part of the fun. So I'll choose playing the guitar, because learning it was very hard and I gave up.
What skill do you think everyone should have?
Critical thinking for sure. Everyone thinks they have it, but there is a lot of education needed. It's something I value in people a lot, and it influences everything : their behaviour, their mentality, their beliefs, their morals, their personality, their ambitions... The better the critical thinking skills in people, the better the society in my opinion, and I long for a beautiful, peaceful world with happy people.
Ouch, dentist appointment... I haven't been in years, but shhhh.
Hope it all goes well and passes quickly for you!
I've come home from the shops. They are 5 minutes from my place, and of course I got under the 5 minutes of heavy rain today.
Now it's all sun and blue sky again. But no complaining... It's a pretty day now and a relaxing weekend ahead! Hope everyone else has a wonderful Summery weekend as well!
If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be and why?
Oooh there are so many! I could choose painting because that is what I do all the time and feel ambitious about, but at the same time the learning process is part of the fun. So I'll choose playing the guitar, because learning it was very hard and I gave up.
What skill do you think everyone should have?
Critical thinking for sure. Everyone thinks they have it, but there is a lot of education needed. It's something I value in people a lot, and it influences everything : their behaviour, their mentality, their beliefs, their morals, their personality, their ambitions... The better the critical thinking skills in people, the better the society in my opinion, and I long for a beautiful, peaceful world with happy people.
I wish they would spend more time in the school years teaching critical thinking as opposed to memorizing....
Thank you for opening the cafe and tagging me @Angie @JMG and @MisterBGone.
I'd like to have the skill of writing so that I could express myself through poetry, write short stories and maybe even the story of my life from being a foster child, almost falling in between the cracks, but making it.
I believe everyone should have communication skills to better get by in the world.
I'd like to have the skill of writing so that I could express myself through poetry, write short stories and maybe even the story of my life from being a foster child, almost falling in between the cracks, but making it.
I believe everyone should have communication skills to better get by in the world.
@Angie I hope your dentist visit goes/went okay. I hate those, too!
ok, on to the questions:
If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be and why?
Piano. I absolutely love playing it, but I am not very good. The piano makes me feel like I totally disappear and there’s only the instrument and the music. I don’t notice it when I’m playing, but when I’m done I have an experience of returning to my body, and I am calm as could be. I guess that’s what is meant by “flow.”
What skill do you think everyone should have?
I am another person who thinks critical thinking is destructively missing from our society. I think that if we as a population all knew what an ad-hominem fallacy was, we wouldn’t have the political divisions we see today. I’m not talking just USA. I have heard about deep divisions in Canada and Europe as well.
If everyone could recognize five logical fallacies, we would have a better society by far! For context, the last list of fallacies I have seen had 50 items. I am sure there are different lists that divide the fallacies differently, or have different items, but I think about 80% of bad ideas could be weeded out if we all knew the top 5.
Hat tip to @Auri for the idea. 🎩
ok, on to the questions:
If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be and why?
Piano. I absolutely love playing it, but I am not very good. The piano makes me feel like I totally disappear and there’s only the instrument and the music. I don’t notice it when I’m playing, but when I’m done I have an experience of returning to my body, and I am calm as could be. I guess that’s what is meant by “flow.”
What skill do you think everyone should have?
I am another person who thinks critical thinking is destructively missing from our society. I think that if we as a population all knew what an ad-hominem fallacy was, we wouldn’t have the political divisions we see today. I’m not talking just USA. I have heard about deep divisions in Canada and Europe as well.
If everyone could recognize five logical fallacies, we would have a better society by far! For context, the last list of fallacies I have seen had 50 items. I am sure there are different lists that divide the fallacies differently, or have different items, but I think about 80% of bad ideas could be weeded out if we all knew the top 5.
Hat tip to @Auri for the idea. 🎩
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LOL. I already know how to do that! I don’t, because I don’t want to deal with the malware, but it’s not hard.
I use a VPN so my ISP can’t spy on me, but if I want to torrent, I have to tinker with the settings to get the torrent software to send traffic through the tunnel.
I don’t particularly mind dealing with malware. In fact I have deliberately infected my laptop before with something that I was helping a friend remove. Learning how to extract the latest malware is a fun problem solving process for me. I draw the line at ransomware though so I haven’t done this recently.
I use a VPN so my ISP can’t spy on me, but if I want to torrent, I have to tinker with the settings to get the torrent software to send traffic through the tunnel.
I don’t particularly mind dealing with malware. In fact I have deliberately infected my laptop before with something that I was helping a friend remove. Learning how to extract the latest malware is a fun problem solving process for me. I draw the line at ransomware though so I haven’t done this recently.
Thanks for the tag, @JMG
If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be and why?
Learn to play the guitar. I tried years back but that kind of petered out after one session ended in spectacular failure even by my standards. Still got the guitar lying around somewhere so maybe see it as a spot of unfinished business...
What skill do you think everyone should have?
Consideration for others. Can also throw in good manners as well as polite etiquette whilst we're about it.
If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be and why?
Learn to play the guitar. I tried years back but that kind of petered out after one session ended in spectacular failure even by my standards. Still got the guitar lying around somewhere so maybe see it as a spot of unfinished business...
What skill do you think everyone should have?
Consideration for others. Can also throw in good manners as well as polite etiquette whilst we're about it.