My daughter asked me recently, How do you go up to someone that you don’t know and talk to them? Today, you’re not only interrupting a social dynamic, you’re also interrupting people’s interaction with their devices. I notice it in my own family, because she comes up to me and I’m on my phone and I feel annoyed sometimes, like, I’m in the middle of reading, can’t you see?

It’s all in the “excuse me”. I think it becomes easy to think of the two words as just a saying that begins conversation, but I like to look at the actual meaning. It’s an apology, no different from walking up to someone with an “I"m sorry, but…” or “Pardon me, but…”

So lean into that with your tone and body language. Begin your interruption of someone with a genuine apology for bothering them. Okay, good, so you did something wrong, but immediately apologized for it, and if everything follows the normal rules of politeness, the receiver will automatically forgive you for your interruption because you gave an earnest apology for a very minor social infraction. You are now at a neutral position with the person, having done nothing particularly wrong or right, but you now have their attention and can say/ask whatever.

If you want to practice, try practicing with a compliment. “Excuse me … pause for response, if positive/neutral then… that’s a really nice hat you’re wearing. Just thought I’d let you know.” and end conversation. Nothing really gained or lost here, but you got to practice some, and very few people will care about the interaction enough to give you more than a second’s thought afterward.

Once you lift the narrative requirement, the number of hits balloons into the millions. I would personally draw the line between education and edutainment on the issue of thoroughness. Education needs to be fairly thorough, while edutainment can skip all the boring (but necessary for full understanding) parts and exclusively handle the fun ideas-based stuff, usually with some oversimplification here and there just to keep things moving in an entertaining way.

I would describe Kings & Generals on youtube as a solid example of good quality military history edutainment.

If you’re looking for a medical drama that health care workers seem to find an acceptable representation of their work, take a look at The Pitt. Apparently they put a lot of effort into being as accurate as possible.

Overall I think your definition of edutainment as requiring a narrative is overly restrictive, I think we could call narrative-less science shows like this edutainment, despite lacking narrative:

https://youtu.be/5HKH1ZjGutA

All that said, the specific combination of scientific accuracy, narrative and for-adults does seem to be a rarer combination of traits. I cannot think of very many at all, and those I can do tend to fudge some of the accuracy here and there for dramatic appeal.

Now that’s a sign of an impending apocalypse.

They used local guides, who knew the routes, dangers and resources they might encounter.

no Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Belligerents list

Found your problem.

Except that in my experience, even a supporter of said party, when talking about how a member of ours “just toes the line” is communicating a negative, not a positive. That’s not a good, genuine guy we’re proud of, it’s someone to watch out for.

Colloquially too, the way I was raised, it’s a bad thing, you did not want to be a line-toer. And I’m not referring to discussions of politics, but how it was used in day to day conversation. I’ve been accused of toeing lines, for instance, with the implication being that continuing may get me in trouble some day and I should be a little more careful.

Perhaps it’s a regional thing.

The same dynamic I was discussing appears in that case as well. The politician may not agree with the policy, and may be willing to violate it, but still toes the party line.

If someone was doing something somewhat shady, but still keeping within the bounds of some rule, you might say they are similarly toeing that line.

The big question to me has become, can you toe a line in a positive way?

Yeah, I just made another edit to my original comment. lol

For the traditional toe the line imagery, it helps to imagine a very rebellious kid that you have firmly told to absolutely not cross some line under any circumstances.

Imagine the kid looking you dead in the eye and smirking, as they stretch out their big toe and put it all over the line while barely not crossing it.

This captures the aspect that you don’t have to follow the spirit of the rules or believe in them in any way, you simply have to follow the letter of the instruction to be “toeing the line”. There is an inherent malicious coloring to the term that is important, where people that only toe the line are bad people.

edit: It needs to imply that you’re searching for ways to break a rule and get away with it on a technicality.

edit2: This got me curious enough to google the origin of the term, and it actually has a wikipedia article, amusingly. Apparently it has a military origin, and the article makes no mention of the negative connotations I mentioned. This makes me think my personal interpretation is actually incorrect, and I now wonder why I picked up on it. In the US, toeing the line does have a subtle negative connotation to it, and people that do it are looked down on somewhat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line

I see nothing wrong with suggesting that, so long as it is made clear he is discussing one of many theoretical possibilities.

Is he a kook? He does kinda look like one, but so do a lot of legit scientists, so that’s not a good measure.

I have a feeling this has probably been studied, but I’m not a sociologist so I wouldn’t know where to look.

Nice.

One small thing, you’re actually not writing prose, you’re writing in verse. Prose is all normal, everyday writing. Most books, newspapers, journals, letters, emails, txt msgs etc etc are written in prose. Anything with a structure, though, like poetry or a song is written in verse, which is more structured and stylized than prose.

So, you’re asking us to read your verse/poetry/rap/whatever and not your prose.

Other than that, I liked it.

Yeah, that game is great. I hardly ever play it anymore, I can’t remember the last time I booted it up, yet for some reason it has been allowed to take up hard drive space for many, many years now.

The dynamic between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea probably reflects on all of us at a certain level, and comedians have always been good at putting up a mirror.

Though I have been surprised before at how well-researched some Monty Python skits can be, when younger me only saw a bunch of dorks doing silly things.

Sugar addiction is a thing.

How often do you handle pushback from other people well? If you normally handle pushback from others positively, and the chatbot just gives you a break now and then when you’re not in the mood, that’s probably fine. If you normally react poorly any time you receive pushback from someone else, and normally prefer the chatbot because it won’t do that, then that is much more worrying.

I feel like if you avoided giving it long-term goals you could still retain most of your humanity. You could also mainly rely on the divination aspect, and avoid the perfect-execution aspect unless necessary.

Would still be the world’s greatest crutch, but the sheer power it offers is too tempting.

Gonna have to be more specific. What part of life?

Path to Victory, from Wildbow’s web serial Worm.

It’s a two-part power. The first looks into the future to determine the exact set of steps necessary to accomplish any given goal, if it is at all possible to accomplish in any way. The second makes you execute those exact steps with zero chance of deviation or error.

It only fails when interfered with by another power also capable of seeing the future.

edit for grammar