>New Earplugs Won’t Amplify the Sound of Your Own Voice
I think part of it is that most of us speak more loudly to others when we can't hear them very well, e.g. when wearing headphones or on a mobile in a train
Tangential to the topic but regarding the supposed Snowball Effect there is in real life no such thing. I have pushed large 'snowballs' down slopes --in reality they are snow cylinders as shown in the photo-- and they invariably do not get far. The reason being that when one side of the cylinder randomly thickens slightly with respect to the other side this causes the whole thing to turn in the opposite direction.
For example, if the RHS of your cylinder has a slightly larger radius than the LHS the cylinder will commence turning to the left.
The upshot is the thick side picks up more snow than the thin side and the disparity in radii increases more rapidly still. The cylinder becomes a truncated cone which turns sideways and halts!
I agree swores. Your comment did say 'traditional' and my comment was facetious.
There's been an historical transition from small chains owned by individuals (e.g. the Victorian Mr John Sainsbury) to big brands (e.g. Superdrug), hasn't there.
The possessive apostrophe was appropriate for the former but surely less so nowadays. I would guess "Sainsbury's" was a rebrand intended to reflect tradition.
Beautiful: humans, flowers, orchids, bumble bees, butterflies, ladybirds, birds of paradise, big cats...
Ugly: most other insects, maggots, spiders, deep sea fish, proboscis monkeys, lampreys...
Thinking that some ugly creatures aren't ugly, or that beauty isn't real and objective, is part of of the aesthetic inversion of our time. It's the same phenomenon which put toilets and unmade beds into art galleries.
None of this implies that we can't disagree about specific cases, or that beauty is easy to define, or that we shouldn't treat animals well!
I think it's because when we get to know other people IRL what they say is of secondary importance to how we perceive their intentions and motives. These determine how we feel about a person. They're subjective and hard to ascertain on the basis of written text alone.
So as a matter of caution we tend to impute bad motives to people we can't 'feel' clearly which means any textual claims made are subject to unnaturally high levels of scrutiny and demands for evidence/documentation.
Also the internet is forever whilst IRL conversation is throwaway.
>Fully elucidating these economic and cultural factors is a major future project of this blog
One rule of thumb seems to be that a new technology needs to be not merely better but ten times better than the alternative(s) for it to go viral. For instance, James Dyson built a washing machine with twin contrarotating drums. It was significantly better than conventional machines, but not ten times better when all costs were accounted for, e.g. the increased price and its unconventional larger size.
More than a few middle-aged westerners would find it impossible to sleep with bent knees owing to a high prevalance of artherosclerosis (I think).
Also one of the great pleasures of life is turning over in bed repeatedly during a lie-in. Don't know whether it's to do with lymph circulation and/or detoxifying the brain. More investigation needed!
I think this speaks to an important factor which is that most of us have little awareness of our posture and typical sofa designs reflect this. We want sofas to 'collapse' on rather than to sit comfortably. I became aware of this from learning the Alexander Technique to deal with another issue.
One hack you can perform on most sofas is to add some height to the rear legs using castors or wooden blocks or something. This tilts it forward a bit. Sitting back or reclining is fine in a dentist's chair because there's head support but it's no good on a sofa! There our head and spines need to be balanced.
Anyhow -- quality of materials and design are both important but the fact is that average bodily awareness is poor and this is a fundamental reason why our furniture is worse than it needs to be!
I think part of it is that most of us speak more loudly to others when we can't hear them very well, e.g. when wearing headphones or on a mobile in a train