Cleverly Veiled Insults 💥

Some insults are plainly spoken and delivered with a lack of panache. The intelligent ones, on the other hand, are invited inside. They compliment the furniture and leave the recipient wondering why the room suddenly feels colder. For moments when open hostility is beneath you, here is a collection of polished little diddies disguised as observations.

💥 I admire the confidence it takes to say that without checking.

💥 You have a remarkable ability to simplify things beyond recognition.

💥 That is certainly one interpretation of the facts.

💥 Your commitment to the first thought that occurred to you is impressive.

💥 You bring extraordinary certainty to subjects you have just encountered.

💥 I can see why nuance might feel inefficient.

💥 You have answered a much easier question beautifully.

💥 That conclusion arrived well ahead of the evidence.

💥 Your confidence continues to outperform your preparation.

💥 I appreciate how little ambiguity you allow knowledge to introduce.

💥 You have an enviable immunity to self-doubt.

💥 That was expressed with considerably more conviction than accuracy.

💥 You have reduced a complex issue to something almost entirely unrelated.

💥 I had not considered approaching it with so few constraints.

💥 There is something almost liberating about your relationship with facts.

💥 Your reasoning is refreshingly unburdened by causation.

💥 You are very persuasive when no one checks the premises.

💥 I respect your willingness to defend a position still under consideration. 

💥 You have mistaken being difficult to follow for being difficult to refute.

💥 That explanation raised several questions, most of them about the explanation.

💥 You have preserved the confidence of an expert without absorbing the inconvenience of expertise.

💥 Your contribution has clarified why the distinction exists.

💥 You consistently bring a surprising perspective, often to the wrong subject.

💥 I am impressed by your ability to miss the point from such close range.

💥 That is an ambitious claim for such modest evidence.

💥 Your argument has the structural integrity of decorative frosting.

💥 You are not constrained by conventional notions of relevance.

💥 You possess the rare gift of making hindsight seem unavailable.

💥 It takes discipline to remain that certain after being corrected.

💥 You have turned misunderstanding into a remarkably stable position.

💥 I envy the peace that must come from never interrogating one’s assumptions.

💥 You have managed to be both emphatic and beside the point.

💥 That idea may benefit from a longer acquaintance with reality.

💥 You have provided a useful demonstration of why review processes exist.

💥 Your intellectual flexibility appears to be safely stored somewhere.

💥 Some people revise their opinions when the facts change. Your loyalty is touching.

💥 I am sure that sounded more persuasive before you said it aloud.

💥 You have mistaken my patience for uncertainty.

💥 I would explain it again, but repetition has already had every reasonable opportunity.

💥 Let us give that thought the privacy it deserves.

How to Have a Great Day

 

“Great days start with great attitudes.” 

This is what the head chef told me while we were vacationing in Jamaica and her wisdom has stayed with me for years. 

Earlier this morning I was in the middle of wishing a friend a great day, and then somewhere out of the blue recesses of my brain, her sage advice kicked in. 

Afterwards, my friend (who is delivering an important speech this morning) said it was the best advice she had heard in years because it empowered her to up her attitude. 💪 😁 

Moral of the post: If you’d like to up yours, start with your attitude 😉 

Grow Your Own Creativity 🍄

Creativity involves generating ideas 💡 that are novel, surprising, and compelling. Creative people aren’t only intellectually capacble of coming up with such ideas. They also are people who have a creative attitude toward life. But that doesn’t mean they can teach other people how to be creative or even how to understand seemingly simple things, but it’s worth a try. 

“I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you.” 

Creative people are motivated to solve problems in a creative way. They may use creativity to level up their attitude, for example. This means we can up ours so they can UP theirs. 

That joke still makes me laugh. 

Although average levels of creativity may vary from one time or place to another (Dai & Sternberg, 2094) the biggest variable in creativity is simply a mindset toward thinking in novel, surprising, and compelling ways — and this mindset can be taught. 

In the same way explaining a joke always makes it funnier. 🌼 

So how does HTTF teach others to be creative? In this blog, I consider responses to this question. I think about it with every post. First, I review the major humor theories and pedagogical programs for teaching thinking. Then, I noodle 🍜 on those ideas for a bit, considering my thoughts in relation to a variety of theories of creativity. 

Then I write silly posts. Meaningful posts. Cryptic posts. Badly riddled with typos posts. And somehow in between describing creativity and applying it, I laugh. Then I talk about laughing. Then I change my name to Laughing. Then I laugh again, unabashedly. 

Woke Mind Virus

 

Fergus caught the woke-mind virus from an improperly sanitized library book.

By breakfast, he could see every side of an argument.

By lunch, he understood why the ant 🐜 felt anxious.

By dinner, he had apologized to the mosquito 🦟 he had been trying to eat and offered it a tiny napkin in recompense.

Life became complicated. 🤔 

His friends invited him to leap to conclusions, but Fergus insisted on examining the evidence first. 🔍 When the pond divided over whether lily pads belonged to the frogs 🐸 or the pond, he suggested they ask the lily pads.

They declined to comment.

Eventually, Fergus made peace with his condition. He bought a small cushion, brewed some coffee ☕️ and opened a woke mind consulting practice beneath a fern. 

His sign read:

FERGUS T. FROG

Empathy, Critical Thinking & Occasional Ribbiting

Flies Seen by Appointment Only

Business was excellent, although lunch remained ethically challenging.

Please Accept My Sincerest Oopsie Daisies 🌼

 

Professor Penelope Piffle had made a very small mistake.

She had accidentally declared war on Belgium.

It happened while she was ordering waffles. The diplomatic breakfast form offered two boxes:

🌼 Belgian
🌼 Hostile action against Belgium

Penelope sneezed, the pen slipped, and by lunchtime three ambassadors had resigned, four generals were consulting maps 🗺️ and Luxembourg had begun behaving very mysteriously.

Penelope rushed to the Ministry of Peace carrying a bouquet of daisies 🌼 and wearing her emergency apology hat:

PLEASE ACCEPT MY SINCEREST OOPSIE DAISIES 🌼 

The Minister examined it gravely.

“How sincere?”

Penelope pointed to the silver sticker on the brim.

“My attitude is adjustable.”

This was unprecedented. International apologies were usually rigid, one-size-fits-all affairs. The Minister summoned the Belgian ambassador, who arrived with two lawyers, a historian, and a waffle iron. 🧇 

Penelope explained the sneeze. 🤧 

The lawyers examined the form. The historian confirmed that wars had begun for sillier reasons. The ambassador stared at the hat 🧢 

“May I try it on?”

He adjusted the strap, looked in the mirror, and immediately confessed that Belgium had misplaced one of France’s rivers in 1839 and had been too embarrassed to mention it. 🙈 

The French ambassador was called. He put on the hat and admitted France had never noticed.

Soon every diplomat wanted a turn.

Spain apologized for the Inquisition again, just to be safe. Britain expressed regret concerning several centuries. 🫖 Switzerland confessed that neutrality was sometimes a convenient way to avoid choosing a restaurant. Luxembourg revealed that it had been behaving mysteriously because nobody ever asked what it was doing.

By sunset, the war had been canceled and replaced with afternoon tea. 🍵 

Penelope received the International Medal for Preventing the Conflict She Had Personally Started. Belgium kept the daisies. 🌼 The United Nations ordered 193 hats.

They are stored behind glass for emergencies, with a small brass plaque beneath them:

IN THE EVENT OF DIPLOMATIC CATASTROPHE, ADJUST SINCERITY TO FIT.

1,440 Laughs

 

"In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact." — Les Brown 

It also means we have 1.440 moments to laugh. Now, I’m not suggesting we laugh all daylong because that would exhausting and a sure fire way to find yourself being admitted to a hospital for testing purposes. 

Typically, people let one thing bug them — justified or not — and that takes away time that they won’t get back. I do it. You do it. We all do it. 

Think of time like currency. If someone takes $5 dollars from that $1,440, you’re not going to burn the rest 🔥 just because they took a few bucks from you. That would be illogical and expensive. 

It’s the same thing with time. It is illogical and expensive to give up the rest of your minutes to feeling badly because someone bugs you for a few minutes. 

Not everyone thinks this way. I know, I’ve tried to explain how important it is to allow yourself to play, to relax, to enjoy life when you can even if you’re working. You can be thinking complex thoughts but they don’t have to be unpleasant. I work in complex industries for a living. I still enjoy the rush of thinking about complex matters. The thrill of learning, of working on something new and beneficial. I can even perform complex calculus or build a complex capital stack for a project without feeling serious or somber on the inside. Win the contract, don’t win the contract. At least I get to noodle on something new. 

Whether we get one life or many, each moment of each day is a gift. For some this gift is met with great cognitive and emotional challenge. I’m not talking about real life suffering. I’m talking about the kind of suffering that never really happens but takes away from your life. The kind of unnecessary, self-inflicted hogwash-like suffering that belongs in a novel, not in our hearts and minds. The kind we have real control over. 

These people spread that suffering like bacterium entering the water supply. You might not be able to change how they think and respond to life’s endless array of challenges, but you can change how you respond to their downer vibe. 

Trust me, it’s not easy. I have such a bummer vibe that I have been navigating all my life. Not mine. Someone else’s. Someone that I can’t just say, have a nice day and be done. Plenty of books recommend ejecting these people from our lives. We can’t all do that. We don’t all want to do that. Boundaries are great but they don’t fix the problem. The only things that work in these situations is to have a rich inner life. To play, to play publicly so others feel like they have permission to play and be silly, and to give each conflict the most ridiculous backstory that you’re laughing instead of yelling or crying or whatever. 

Whether you spend that time laughing, thinking fascinating thoughts, helping a friend, going for a hike, riding your bike, reading a book, writing a post, playing with your kids and pets, enjoying a movie, playing video games, or just taking a leisurely stroll, just remember: 1.440 moments await you. 

Does Your CEO Have A Sense of Humor?

 

The most successful people I know have a good sense of humor. I’ve been studying and writing about the philosophy of humor and gone so far as to change my name to Laughing — as a literal, philosophical joke experiment — just to get a laugh. 

I’m still waiting. In the meantime, I’m making myself laugh. Not at other people, not my style. But at ideas and being confident enough to play publicly, which is entirely what this blog has been since 2011. I wanted to make myself publicly accountable for the jokes I was telling, to build a repository, and to really explore why people laugh, its benefits, its pitfalls, its use, and its deeper meaning into what we call human nature.

For me, that’s a thing of fascination. Not so much the humor, tho I love a good laugh. But exploring human nature. I often tell my friends to just go for it. Build an old school blog and share whatever comes to mind. I did it. Under the guise of humor. It’s easy. What it does is teach you about yourself in a way that you — and now ai — can index. It’s fascinating to observe society’s evolution and with it our own. 

Sometimes HTTF is funny-haha, sometimes it’s funny-she was tying too fast and lost me, and other times it’s funny-interesting 🤔 in a let me think about that more. Hence the tag line at the top of this blog. Things that make us think. 💭 

Mostly for anyone who is reading, take a chance. Be silly. Allow yourself to serve as a friendly and respectful laugh to the people who need it most. 

Your philosophies will need to be updated as a result of seeing how easy life can feel, even when everyone else’s narrative would sound dreadful. Good to consider.