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I do like cute things, I just want more sometimes.
I’ve grown to be suspicious of cute, and our over adoration of the cute. I do love “the cute” but by putting such an emphasis on it we’ve overshadowed others.
Cute is easy. Cute is distracting. Cute is fading. There’s a cute bias that feels hollow, particularly on social media.
I’ve thought about this. If I were in consideration for a dog (which I am currently not) I really feel I’d only want to connect or share my life with an injured or older dog. That would be my choice. I just think of this dog, overshadowed and being passed over and cannot abide by another choice, especially something that would be picked by the very next person. You’ll be mine old dog, and I’ll be yours.
Another point, the opossum. Growing up people always treated opossums as pests and threats. You’d lift a trash can in the early morning, and find one snarling at you in fear. Then in my late teens I read more about them and now they are some of my favorite animals. They are completely unconventionally beautiful and necessary.
So to understand an opossum you must drop your popularly adopted mental model and through your own research come up with your own derived conclusion. You might see beauty.
For me, if a person understands the opossum that person they understands a lot.
Beauty and Elegance in Math
Random thing I’m going to highlight because I thought of it. “Beauty in mathematics” segment on the overall fantastic WSF channel. Really minor point but more on that thread of “favoring beauty” with saccharine language. (Plainly the quoted are more accomplished than my pathetic comments, but curious if you feel anything here)
I’ve grown to dislike this style of writing about the importance of beauty and elegance as paramount. I am afraid of this simplicity and flat aesthetic.
Digital Perfection
Julian Stallabrass is concerned that digital perfection threatens to proliferate an “ideological sameness”
If photography’s days are numbered by digital technology, which may soon encompass the camera as well as the display, a new wave of blandness will break over the world, as happy and unhappy contingencies are discarded in favor of the conventionally beautiful. The Social Photo - Nathan Jurgenson
Rose and thorns
It is somewhat pointless to over analyze the idiom “every rose has its thorn” so I will do this. (I can see a reading of this quote, where a thorn isn’t so much a negative but a necessary drawing of blood, a prick - that comes with the experience of roses.)
In the spirit of this page, I will evaluate preference to the thorn. It is not a flaw. In the sense of a solving problems there’s a wonderful property that solving questions (growing further roses, allowing the bush to grow) will always produce further thorns. You cannot produce just roses.
Unenjoyable
It is important to me to do things that I don’t enjoy or are difficult (the later which carries certain enjoyment). It seems whenever it comes to media a segment of the population will dismiss, say a movie, for basic reasons such as it didn’t make me happy, or it has a wrong message, or the characters annoyed me, or I couldn’t relate. They conflate liking something with it being an overall enjoyable experience, as if it wouldn’t be completely limiting to approve of all movies that exist in the space versus all possible movie experiences.
It’s fine to not like these things, but sometimes this feels like the people who rate amazon products with 1 star because their used copy of a book was damaged in shipment. It has nothing to do with the content on the pages, just the packaging and misses the point.
House Centipede
Months after writing this, it struck me that even the Opossum is an “easy love.” If I actually wanted to challenge myself I’d have to understand something that gives a primal repulsive reaction, and overcome that. I noted this stumbling on random tropical house centipede videos.
I understand house centipedes are beneficial bugs, but beyond comprehending this when I see one I’m immediately “NOPE.”
The cuteness here isn’t as apparent as an Opossum, but I can look at them and appreciate their anatomy and wonder what their life is like.
While watching this video I learned:
- This species will gain body segments as they grow (so technically the older they are, the more “repulsive” they are - unless you think of it like you have greater time to get to know them and accept the added segments).
- the earliest record of centipedes are house centipedes.