Oh, man. This brings back memories. I did this every time I loaded any game into the system. My PS1 had issues with the balls on the disc spindle that locked the disc in place. I had no idea and had so many issues with discs not loading until I discovered it. Then it became the disc equivalent of popping the cartridge out of the SNES and re-seating it until it worked. Eventually, I had to replace the balls as they fell out but as a broke college student, I just crumpled small bits of aluminum foil into similar sized balls and stuffed them in there. Worked great after that.

Fascinating. I had never heard of these. Thanks for the enlightenment!

Sorry, I didn't mean for that term to apply to the specific items I called out from the list. What I was trying to say was for other items on this list, like a romantic attraction coming from the therapist, those can be things should be taken seriously and have justification for immediate concern.

Basic supply and demand economics. When supply is high and demand is low, prices fall. When demand is high and supply is low, prices rise. They think people will willingly sit in line regardless of the price because, in reality, people have.

Conversely, they wouldn't want to drive people away when business is slow and can easily jump into another drive thru.

It always seemed like a logic gate thing to me, like the Fullmetal Alchemist rule of equivalent exchange. Otherwise, there comes a point where there would be no order or structure to the universe and the benefit is boiled down to simply preserving reality.

The muscles that flex for me are the ones in the back of my head. If you place your hand on the back of your head directly between your ears (so just about where your skull begins to curve in and your neck muscles begin) it's the ones just on either side of the center line that do the flexing and pull my ears back. Try imagining scrunching up the back of your head.

So, I've never liked that phrase. What happens when you drain a swamp? You remove all the stagnant water and dead-zones. But what is left behind? He said he would drain the swamp, not remove the scum.

I had assumed they were, but I'd never heard anything confirming it.

You are correct. The title is poorly worded. I believe it is supposed to read "Google was not the first to come out with wearable tech before Meta..."

The X-Files. The direction they took after Robert Patrick joined just did not work and felt like a spinoff more than part of the main series.

Consider this, then. We understand how psychology works and why this situation is complety outside of any realm of possibility. Yet it is happening anyway. Consider that there is something out there, something external, something unknown, that we aren't even aware of yet that can have an effect on the human brain beyond the scope of our understanding or capabilities.

D&D has mindflayers that command a powerful control of the psyche. In that world, it is a logical reason for unusual or impossible behaviors. Harry Potter has the imperious curse as a logical way to accomplish something similar. These don't work in the real world and we have no real world equivalent.

But, the things in those worlds weren't always known about. There had to have been a period of discovery. Same with our reality. There have been many things we never knew we never knew until they were discovered. Applying logic to these situations with the knowledge of the time made it harder to understand or take seriously because we didn't have a concept yet for what it was. Yet it was there.

The fault represents that unknown both in knowledge as well as understanding. It isn't meant to be taken literally as "This thing can cause supernatural brain control." Rather, it is playing on that concept of discovery of the unknown. The hole we as humans must dive into to understand the world around us. The comic doesn't reveal the reason for it. But isn't that the very nature of exploring the unknown? We are driven to it to fulfill a need.

Sure, it could be that there is an unknown "thing" the comic never reveals, something left to our imagination to fill in the blanks which can often be a lot scarier than anything we can come up with. But it is stirring those thoughts of curiousity to find the reason, the source. The hole is considered "my hole" not because it was made for us, but because that is our personal passion, our special interest, our allure for discovery. And through it, you are changed.

Just the ghost living between your wall boards peeking out to say hi.