Conversation

“Never seen anything like it” is rapidly climbing my list of top most annoying phrases. Why is your set of “things I’ve seen” worth anything? Without qualification of scope and earned experience, “things I’ve seen” sets are like assholes. Everyone’s got one.
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Shit you see simply by virtue of being alive is not an indicator of the unusual nature of anything. If you live 100 years and see 100 christmases, that’s only 5% of all christmases. It’s a particularly stupid phrase relative to deep time scales much bigger than human lifespans.
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I started noticing it after noticing it’s one of Trump’s favorites. His use is particularly egregious and dishonest, but it’s a common phrase with a certain subset of parochial Americans. They trot it out with an air of being super worldly types with wide-ranging experiences.
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It’s the same sort of thing as saying “X is world famous in my town” There was a store in Ann Arbor with the slogan “world’s largest selection of University of Michigan sportswear” Unironic afaict. No shit. No other town in the world cares to earn that particular distinction
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Most recent provocation was someone saying “never seen anything like it in 30y” about forest fires, and they were either a resident or ranger... A blink in natural history/climate time. 30y isn’t even an impressive fraction of forestry laws/history. Prop 13 is 42y old.
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