This circle can be squared:

Those who walk away from Olemas, are all those who make this exact mistake, those whose minds reject the possibility that it might be a real utopia, those who must believe there is a suffering child to balance out the good.

(When discussions like this come up, I tend to go with the original author, so in this case Le Guin, but this alternative reading seems like at least a possibility?)

New year system suggested at micro-post-LWCW meet-up:

Ante-Covid/Dopo-Covid, or AC/DC for short, with the zero point in Dec 2019.

Plus points:

+ Everyone can agree that this happened, and wasn't just religious fan-fiction taken too seriously
+ Everyone can agree when this happened, not arguing about which random astronomical event was mistaken for a star or which of the various Kings Herod was around for the events
+ Has a year zero
+ Doesn't mix up two different languages like AD/BC does
+ Alphabetical order: AC comes before DC, instead of the silly inverted order of putting BC before AD
+ Obvious choice for music in New Year celebrations
+ Saves space by allowing return to 2-digit years

Minus points:

- No longer has all of the first four letters of the Latin alphabet
- Making dec-ember the first month is even weirder than it being the twelfth

[Mood: silly]

Aye.

The one I notice the most is people saying "cows will still have to be milked", without having realised automatic milking machines arrived in the early 90s.

Cross-posted from my blog on github: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2025/06/22-13.21.36.html

Related anecdote:

In my 20s, but not before or since, I noticed sometimes experiencing an altered state if I was awake too long — not reliably when awake too long, but only when.

It wasn't tiredness, at least not as I otherwise experience it, but rather it was as if everything ceased to be real and me part of that reality, that there was no longer a "me" watching the Cartesian theatre of the mind, that the Cartesian theatre was playing to an empty house. I was able to notice this and comment on it to others while in this state, and obviously form memories.

And then I was back to normal in the morning.

(…Assuming free markets, and rule of law, and AGI not taking over and wiping out humanity, and so on. I think those are highly dubious assumptions, but let’s not get into that here!)

Assuming all is correct, isn't the answer therefore: "at least one of these assumptions must be false"?

(Personally I have long suspected that free markets are a gross oversimplification, but I'm not an economist; and even if I was, with those three options I've got reason to wish for that specific option)

I wish I'd thought of that with my mother's dementia; I noticed a similar effect on the scale of minutes (hers was already quite severe by the time of the diagnosis), but I didn't plan anything and I didn't take enough notes at the time, so all I have for this is the anecdote.