Oh no... The letter started out so well until it whiplashed into hate and then took a nosedive into awfulness.

Yeah. Also it's not my place to raise adults. But a part of me wishes to plant a seed of skepticism. I have a hard time nodding and going along with it. I feel compelled to question it rather than going along with this kind of small talk.

The Italian military has been simulating Japan with AI for centuries now. The Italians took one of their own words, tiramisu, and made up a whole language from that.

It's no coincidence ちらみす looks like spaghetti. They literally made this alphabet by throwing spaghetti at the wall and then started borrowing evolved bone-script from the Chinese when they got bored with pasta-to-wall terrorism!

Thanks. I've been needing more podcasts anyway :)

Yeah. Maybe I should ask general questions but not push back on anything. Like "What about this episode convinced you?". "Do you think that's enough evidence or would you like to see something more?". "Wow, so why isn't this all over the news, do you think?"

Or is this line of questioning too obvious?

I'm not sure but they do talk about it a lot and I have been cornered with things like "did you know that all fighter pilots since the 1960s have had to take an oath of silence because they keep seeing aliens up there, anyway this whistleblower...".

I'm having a hard time navigating these but letting them have their fun while just asking what they believe and why is probably not a bad approach.

Someone mentioned that going through with debunking them is a spoilsport move that's a lot of work to do right and would probably just sour our relationship at work.

Wow. Three hours 😅. Not before bed lmao

Thank you :)

I'm just so used to my English falling apart completely when forced to speak it in real time, instead of writing it. I feel like I am not great at making it sound casual either when writing.

Yeah, the common thread here seems to be not to argue and that's likely good advice.

Haha thanks. I know I'm being silly, on a certain level, apologizing for my English but as an anxious person I'm being defensive up front. I still feel like I don't sound like a native, an outsider, and I want people to know I'm not native if they pick up on my English being off.

Thanks for the advice. Though reading all them comments I'm starting to lean towards letting them have their fun. I am not great at debating anyway and maybe questioning without confronting is best.

Thank you. I'll check it out tomorrow. Currently resisting sleep longer than I ought to.

That's fair, thanks. Reading this and other comments I think I'm taking this too seriously and furthernore, they're having fun. It feels silly now to have asked but still, bouncing this off of strangers helped. I can only echo chamber in my own head.

I tried to engage them with exoplanetary research. I am also in the camp that surely we are not alone in the universe. Why assume we're special in a seemingly homogenous universe? I am looking forward to humanity finding their first reliable biomarker in space.

I guess we're just excited about the same thing, really.

Fair point, thanks.

Lmao, just watched it. Thought it was gonna be longer than 2 minutes. However this is a fun little hack, though it doesn't work for everything.

Isn't it the difference between the 'th' sound in they(ð) and through(θ)?

Ignoring is so hard 😅 I never bring it up.

I don't think they're fanatics. I just think their curiousity, with inexperience in healthy skepticism, has found a very easy outlet.

But I guess you're right. The current state of astrobiology isn't as exciting and people want to wonder. Maybe hard science is too difficult to sell in this case.

I'll think on this. Thank you :)