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[Naturegirl1999]

I don't know what that is called, but I have a question too. last night, I felt like something tapped my arm but there was nothing. What would cause that?

[delphonso]

Grim Portent: I found a lot on Cute Aggression, but nothing on scraping... I'm also interested to find an answer, if anyone has it.

Hypnogogia, perhaps, a similar process is responsible for those times when you're about to fall asleep and get a sense of falling or tripping and kick yourself awake, called a hypnopompic/hypnic jerk.

If it was the middle of the night - some dream sensations can seem to happen after waking up. Has happened to me plenty of times.

[Kagus]

last night, I felt like something tapped my arm but there was nothing. What would cause that?

Most likely it's some sort of combination of tactile hallucination and muscle twitching/skin contraction. It's quite common to feel random impulses like that, so much so that we normally block most of it out. But when there are fewer distractions (say, at night, when there's less visual information due to darkness and -usually- less audio information due to things quieting down) we have a tendency to pay more attention and start noticing them more. Probably one of the most common is a faint breeze or skin contraction causing a few hairs to rub together, creating the sensation of a bug crawling along the skin (thanks to your mind filling in the gaps of what is "most likely" causing the feeling).

Various muscles can start twitching for a variety of reasons, and if it's close enough to the skin it can feel similar enough to an external force that your brain just "helps out" and makes you perceive it as definitely being touched. Because the brain likes to figure things out, it supplies an answer/explanation to something that wasn't even a question to begin with.


We work off of partial and incomplete information under most circumstances, but it's beneficial from an evolutionary standpoint to "fudge" the rest of the details instead of waiting around to get a more complete data set ("Is that a tiger lying in wait or just some shadows? I don't know, but I'm not sticking around to find out for sure!").


Also what delphonso said regarding sleep/pre-sleep sensations. There are a number of processes going on in the body during sleep preparation and active sleep that can result in various curious experiences.

[Yoink]

So many "Ted Talks". Why doesn't this Ted guy ever try shutting tf up?

[Naturegirl1999]

Because Ted is the god of talented education delivery, and thus has no physical form

[TD1]

We sacrifice our likelihood of procreating unto his altar of education.

[Reelya]

Haha, read a Reddit thread by a guy complaining that Ted Talks suck because they explain the obvious. As an example in the comments, he posted links to several Ted Talks, mostly about common mistakes that people make, and how to avoid them. The mistakes were so obvious that it's clearly stupid to make a video about them, right? ... of course if it was so obvious to start with, they wouldn't be common mistakes.

[delphonso]

I'm on the fence about Ted Talks. I think I watched one filled with stuff that had been disproven a year or two previous of filming. But the speakers are good and it's intellectual entertainment - but above all entertainment.

[Kagus]

Just watch the Reggie Watts talk, you don't really need anything above and beyond that unless you specifically feel the need to reaffirm your whiteness.

[Iduno]

So many "Ted Talks". Why doesn't this Ted guy ever try shutting tf up?

Hey, Ted talks are very important. How else will stupid people get to sound smart in front of an audience?

[hector13]

So many "Ted Talks". Why doesn't this Ted guy ever try shutting tf up?

Hey, Ted talks are very important. How else will stupid people get to sound smart in front of an audience?

You've not been paying any attention to politicians in like... thousands of years, have you?

[Iduno]

Fair.

[methylatedspirit]

Is it a good idea to sit an LCD monitor on top of a laptop?

[Frumple]

I... guess? Depends on how heavy the monitor is and how flimsy the laptop. Also if you actually care about the laptop still functioning or are just using it as a flat surface (I have a mostly broke but still sorta' working one I've been using as a mouse pad, ferex -- if it stops turning on, whatever, until then it's a stable flat surface on a bed).

It's probably not aggressively terrible so long as the LCD isn't cracking the laptop case or whatever, though. So, like. Go for it?

[methylatedspirit]

I'm planning to use a gaming laptop as mostly a desktop replacement (it happens to outperform my desktop in every department, so it's somewhat redundant). I travel occasionally, so I still need it to be fully-functional.