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by PaulDavisThe1st 17 days ago
TFA reminds me of a story that Sting used to tell about "disarming" crazy and/or drunk people in NYC by quoting Shakespeare at them (e.g. yelling "My mistress' eyes are brighter than the sun!" directly at them). He claimed it worked every time.
3 comments
tonyrice 17 days ago
As absurd as it sounds, their brains had to find something to associate that context with. He gave off a signal, and they had to interpret it somehow. Maybe it was so absurd and out of context it just switched the entire context of what they were being processed at the time.

We're like walking flash drives constantly associating, downloading and updating our storage.

Disarm people with absurdity. I'd rather not test it out though

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mjklin 17 days ago
He used that line as an album title too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Like_the_Sun_(album)
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PaulDavisThe1st 17 days ago
Yeah, that's when he used to tell this story.

I misquoted the line, using "brighter than" instead of "nothing like".

The title was apparently based on his use of that phrase.

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runamuck 16 days ago
Related, if someone looks like they will get violent with you, ask them "Who won the game last night?" and slug them while their brain pauses to process and answer the question.
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