The most important thing: "doing nothing" is not the way to avoid looking stupid. I made a mistake in my last post: I did not realize when I chose the title that it could easily be seen as a reference to the implied coin flip in the lyrics of "Only My Railgun": "a parabola decides my fate", with "parabola", with the meaning "conic section", in Japanese is written as "released + object + line". Although Wikipedia says that the Japanese term came from Chinese, where the first character is "throw", not "release", it's reasonable that fripSide felt the modern spelling was more relevant than the archaic spelling would have been. The relevant meaning being "an object that doesn't control or influence its path during its flight"; an object dropped from a hand that is moving sideways still follows a parabola, even though it wasn't thrown.
Just as I can't control what people do as a result of me writing a post or an argument about this idea.
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/only-my-railgun-only-my-railgun.html-1
*I'm confident that most people who translate these lyrics use what is apparently the adverb form of "nante" なんて, which Wiktionary says has a falling pitch accent, when the meaning is actually the particle, which Wiktionary does not indicate has a falling pitch accent (consistent with the melody for those lyrics).
(That took 26 minutes to write and if I had said other things first, I very easily could have forgotten some of this.)
I did say, apparently on ask.fm since it's in the text file of things I said to Sherine, that "It's easy to not make any mistakes if you never do anything difficult", on 08 Oct 2013. Noting that this was one of many things I said to Sherine on that day, but this is the thing I remembered.
So, at least I didn't say "if you do nothing". Doing nothing can still be a mistake.
And one can do difficult things by doing a series of things that are not difficult.
I still don't think that Ellie thinks that Imane reads this site, and so I am still not checking Imane's Chirp Club account. I am also no longer checking Ellie's Chirp Club account, as I felt the risk was too great that it would cause me to write something when I should not. The motivation for writing something would be to help Ellie, which only makes sense if I think it's possible she reads this site.
So if I think it's possible she secretly reads this site, why don't I think it's possible that Ellie thinks that Imane secretly reads this site? Because it's apparent that what I think differs from what other people, including Ellie, thinks. I think that it makes sense for people to talk to me about this idea: that not doing so, and continuing to care about it, is a waste of time. The first public argument for this idea opened with a quote about the importance of time.
So if other people have reached a different conclusion than me about whether it makes sense to talk about this idea, I find it very reasonable that they could reach a different conclusion on what someone would do or would want to do, based on their observable behavior without any statements from them to clarify their intentions or values. (I generally find that it makes sense to trust what people say, like the character Nao does from the drama Liar Game: "Honesty is the most important thing." Where honesty in Japanese is (one of the several meanings here, probably "correct") + direct. A character combination that implies, why not take the most direct and straightest path to a goal?)
Bad practice to continue a thought that was in parentheses, but I just bookmarked [125k views, 24.5k subs, 28 Apr 2026]Why “Being Real” Doesn’t Work in Japan - YouTube without watching it. The comments are relevant to the topic of honesty and suggest that the 21-minute video is not just a waste of time or clickbait like many videos are (which would deter me from linking it).
Note quick way of summarizing it: "the truth is, I am unhappy" — reasonable when Japan is ... 30th out of 183 countries for suicide rate, lower than southern Korea and the United States (need to click on the All column to sort the list). If accurate, quite an improvement; in 2010, Japan was 6th out of 104 countries, with Belarus showing even more of an improvement than Japan since then. But anyway, we all know that when most people ask "how are you?", they are not expecting a real answer, like "I am unhappy." This is the tension between honesty and dishonesty. If society was such that people were happy, there might not be this obvious scenario in which many people are dishonest.
Not thinking is a type of 'doing nothing'. Someone can read something, not understand it, and not think about it enough to correct their lack of understanding. The longer I make this, the more difficult it becomes to understand.
I haven't solved the problem of the title of this post, so I'm just writing more. I thought about what German pilot Hanna Reitsch said in a letter before her death. Apparently (I had not remembered this much) it wasn't a public statement, but it was still something she wanted someone else to think. So, something about Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Boston marathon bombing, which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said was targeted at the US government or something and the people who died were collateral damage. Which makes sense if he thought people who worked for the US government knew about this idea but weren't sharing it, and does not make much sense otherwise. How often is a bomb that is deliberately detonated near people not intended to kill them?
—Why when I search for "ireland car bombing mistake" does it return results from 2 days ago? But anyway, 6th search result: Omagh bombing, not intended to kill anyone but killed 29 people because "police inadvertently moved people toward the bomb."
One person who died was Chinese; another person who died was young. I hesitate to say that Sherine, Yara, Autumn, and the person who had @fancyfenty were supporters of Dhozkhar aka Jahar, as might sound like they supported the bombing. (I also hesitate to say, "which they did not.") @fancyfenty answered a question about why she didn't say her name or post her photo by saying she didn't want to get killed.
When I said to Sherine, "It's easy to not make any mistakes if you never do anything difficult", someone reading this casually might just pass over it without thinking. It sounds true, and uncontroversial. So why did I say it? I think Sherine understood why at the time. Like, I had asked on 05 Jul 2013, on ask.fm probably,
After all if what you want is someone who is only interested in you and no one else, I don't think I was ever able to provide that
If you do care but you aren't going to tell people, then I guess you're just too stupid
Are you stupid?
Why didn't you just beat them up
I was going to ask why you didn't just kill them but I thought that might sound wrong
Are other people stupid?
Is bullying a joke? http://iam.yellingontheinternet.com/2013/03/29/bullying-is-such-a-joke-problems-with-the-rpg-kickstarter/
etc.
It was a criticism. Of everyone who does nothing, thinking that doing nothing is easy.
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