a blog for idiots

idiot


The telephone game was a popular children's game in schools when I was a kid.
The game involves a group of people and emphasizes how information can changed as it is passed along from person to person. 
The game is usually played in a cirlce, although it never really mattered. The rules of the game are as follows:

- **Group Size:** The game works best with at least five players but can ivolve many more. The more people, the more fund and chaotic the game becomes. 
- **Starting the Game:** The game stars with one person, **the caller** who thinks of a phrase or a sentence. The phrase can be anything -- a simple sentence, a phrase from a popular song, a quote, or soemthing completely random.
It is important that the phrase is not too long to avoid confusion, but not so short that it's too easy. 
- **Passing the Message:*** the caller then whispers the phrase into the ear of th person sitting or standing next to them. That person listens carefully and then immediately whispers what they heard to the next person. Each player must only pass the messagge on once, and they cannot repeat or clarify the message. 
- **Repetition:** This process continues around the circle until the last person in the gruop hears the phrase. 
- **Final Reveal:** Once the last person receives the message, they say out loud what they heard. The person who started the game then reveals the original phrase. Often, the final message is hilariously different from the original.  

The adults in school always wanted to emphasize the fact that whatever the original message was that the same phrase never made it all the way to the last person in the line. There really never was an instance when the original statement was the last statement spoken. It never mattered how simple the formulation was, how short the utterance, no-one was able to properly pass the information along to others. 
 Maybe, as kids we never wanted to take the game seriously. It must be funny for any kid to make significant or even insignificant alterations to the phrase in order to evoke some kind of comedic response from the other participants. In a way, I see telephone being played everywhere, at every age, and in every way. The adults play telephone with everything they believe to have learned. 
 The problem I see is not so much adults attempting to be funny to evoke a comedic response, to garner attention, rather that no one ever was really joking about not knowing what was previously said. Everyone is just incapable of listening to each other to begin with. 

The telephone game was a popular children's game in schools when I was a kid.

Telephone Game



Do you feel as if the people in your life don’t understand how you can be upset with anything and everything about life. 
Those little everday mishaps that somehow hin at impending doom on a global scale? The microcosms experienced on a daily basis,
 which seem to represent the ridiculousness of the society in which we take part. 
 Maybe there is water dripping from the ceiling at your university. 
 Instead of simply wondering why no one bothered to fix the lead or clean up the mess, you become the philosopher you are and question how the building‘s maintenance crew managed to drop the ball and how the entire federal state that is funding education has time and time again neglected its duties to educate its citizens. Maybe, just maybe this is indicative of explanaitions for the recurring recession, why china is beating are butts or why people don’t believe in climate change? After going to such great lengths to attempt and understand the injustice of water leakage in an old building and what this means on a societal and global perspective, do your friends just look at you flabbergasted that it is possible to complain as much as you do about the little things in life that are entirely arbitrary and annoying, which everyone else just seems to accept?

Welcome to idiotically incompetent, the website, the website that serves two purposes: complaining and informing. With these future posts, we’ll explore are the society created by ridiculously intelligent individuals and then dissect the harsh reality. Brace yourself for a deep dive into this intricate world we‘ve built, where we don‘t know how much we are actually struggling to make sense of it all. This wonderful world, which we have created is so complex that we are unable to properly utilize it. The prerequisites for success in this video game of life are lacking, and functional capacity insufficient. Just like your general eye-hand coordination, your ability to drive a car is nonexistent. You are as razor sharp as a cotton swab. Have you actually learned anything? Are you sure what you just read? Well, in this game, everyone is allowed to drive, and nobody cares if they‘re reading the truth.

Consider this a tribute to the realists out there, witnessing the downfall of our world and our laughable attempts to save ourselves from the nonsensical complexities and illusions in which we all believe. Enjoy the ride.


Welcome to idiotically incompetent's brother, idiotically inane

Let me set the scene for you. It's the evening on a cold fall day. The trees rustling in the distance… You've been wanting to bake something for awhile now. You always say you are going to finally bake something, but you never end up baking anything. It takes too long, and you don’t enjoy portioning the ingredients with a scale. Some people thing they can bake plike they cook; devil may care, but you know better; baking is chemistry, and adhering to ingredient ratios is important to be successful.

You were thinking that it wouldn't be a bad idea to bake a gluten free chocolate cake: gluten bad, chocolate good. So you find a nice recipe for chocolate cake. The recipe calls for one tablespoon cocao powder, two teaspoons baking powder, 200 grams bittersweet chocolate, 100 grams butter, three eggs, 100 grams sugar, a little bit of vanilla, a pinch of salt, and of course, 100 grams ground almonds to replace the flour. The recipe writes that you can add an optional of 50 grams gluten free chocolate and fresh berries for decoration.

Being the person you are, you were surprised that the recipe emphasizes the use of gluten free chocolate for the decoration, but does not feel the need to require gluten free chocolate for the cake batter. You then become frustrated because the recipe seems to imply that chocolate contains gluten, even though you know this not to be the case. After all, you searched for a gluten free chocolate cake recipe. I presume, if your health really depended on what you stuff your face with, you would most likely be able to identify culprit foods like a hawk eyeing its prey from 200 football fields away. In actuality, you do not have celiac disease, and you most likely do not have a gluten intolerance either, but that doesn’t stop you from jumping on the nutritional band wagon with everyone else. You may not even know what gluten is, but you do know that gluten is bad. But it’s so hard to keep track of all the foods, which contain gluten, so you have become dependent on products with a no gluten label. Nevermind the fact that chocolate does not contain gluten what so ever and the label is superfluous.

Anyways, you continue to read through the recipe. Obviously, overthinking the word choice of the author of the recipe is not productive and only ensures a more stressful, gluten free chocolate cake baking experience. I mean, can one even buy gluten free chocolate in the grocery store? Is there a label on thse chocolate package, which explicitly states contains gluten? Isn't chocolate comprised of primarily fats? What the hell? Ok sorry. Moving on.

The recipe goes on to explain how to bake the gluten free chocolate cake:
Separate the eggs. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt in a fat-free bowl until stiff peaks form. Beat the egg yolks together with the sugar until creamy, then add the ground vanilla. Transfer the slightly cooled chocolate butter into a large bowl and add the egg yolk mixture. Stir in the almond-cocoa mixture and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake the chocolate cake batter in a greased baking pan in a preheated oven at 180°C (356°F) for approximately 30 to 35 minutes.

Seems easy enough.

All the way at the end of the recipe, you arrive at the comments section. Usually, you don’t read the comments, but this time you were hoping to find some indications from others whether or not the recipe was any good. After all, it would be a waste of ingredients to bake a gluten free chocolate cake if the gluten free chocolate cake from some other internet baker is better. You begin to read the comments. You know that thing we all know we shouldn’t, but are drawn to like moths to a flame. We cant help ourselves. A whole 30 seconds into reading the comment section, and you come accross a question posed by one devout reader:


Hey Eva, I would love to make this recipe for Christmas. Could I also add a little bit of cinnamon to the recipe? If so, how much would you add? Kind regards.


There are two kinds of people in this world, there are people who cook, using recipes as suggestions and platforms for inspiration, and there are people who are unable to cook, bake, or function without explicit commands given to them from recipes — or authority figures.

You are not proud of your initial reaction of frustration that every one‘s time will be wasted in this situation. Not only does the author of the recipe have to respond to the question, but the idiot who asked the question will not bake the gluten free chocolate cake until his or her question is answered. After all, she doesn‘t seem like the type of person who experiments in her life. Perhaps, if this idiot would try more things in life, she wouldn‘t have to ask so many stupid questions. It is not like the presence or absence of cinnamon will lead to success or failure when it comes to your gluten free chocolate cake recipe. If only people would experience life for themselves instead of asking a superfluous question every goddamn second. Much of the learning process involves considering consequences to actions for yourself. Why do so many people like this door knob refuse to try anything and everything for themself. They could be their own authority figure for once.


After calming down after your unnecessary outburst, you begin to think about the possibility of there being some sort of culinary, chemical interaction between the active ingredients in cinnamon and the other ingredients listed in the recipe. After all the pissing and moaning, it would be a devastation to your ego if there turns out to be even is a slight chance that cinnamon could influence the gluten free chocolate cake baking experience. You begin to consider the possibility that the idiot has experience with cinnamon ruining other recipes. It could be that before this stupid person experienced his baking catastrophe a few years ago with that one cherry pie, which reacted poorly to the addition of cinammon, he may be having PTSD flashbacks and is subsequently more hesitant about improvising when it comes to this gluten free chacolate cake. He can‘t imagine the calimaty of ruining the gluten free chocolate cake recipe since his in laws are going to be visiting for the weekend, and his mother in law has gotten a sudden case of celiac disease. All of this speculation leads to an entire evening of research into cinnamon and its active ingredient, cinnamaldehyde.

Cinnamaldehyde



The main active, characteristic ingredient of cinammon is a molecule known as cinnamaldehyde.

Cinnamaldehyde is an organic compound that belongs to the class of aromatic aldehydes. It is a natural chemical compound found in the essential oil of cinnamon trees, particularly in the bark. This compound is responsible for the distinct, warm, and sweet aroma of cinnamon. The molecule is widely used in the food and beverage industry as a flavoring agent due to its pleasant taste and smell. Additionally, it has been used for centuries in traditional medicine for its potential health benefits, such as its antimicrobial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory properties. Beyond its culinary and medicinal uses, cinnamaldehyde has also found applications in various industries, including cosmetics, perfumes, and as a flavor additive in oral care products.

The molecule itself is shown in the above figure. Its chemical formula is given by C9H8O, it is only partially soluble in water; however, it will dissolve entirely in ether and chloroform, for those of you interested in giving their chloroform rags a much needed aroma boost. Moreover, Cinnamadehyde will kill a rat if about 3400 mg/kg is administered orally, which is absolutely necessary information and completely backwards compatible with humans.

After sifting through all this ridiculously irrelevant information, you stumble onto something ridiculously stupid — the interaction between cinnamon and yeast. Remember the aforementioned utility of connamaldehyde? Namely, it has been used for centuries for its antimicrobial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory properties? Yeah well now it‘s starting to come together. These antifungal characteristics of cinnamon may pose a problem for your ego. Previously, you became stressed, and you flipped out because some idiot was not brave enough to put cinnamon in gluten free chocolate cake without getting the ok from mommy, but now it could actually be the case that there is reasonable doubt about the extent to which cinnamon may or may not pose a problem for the success of your confectionary.

But how does cinnamaldehyde act as a mushroom annhiliator? Well there are apparently three main avenues through which the molecule inhibits the proliferation of bacteria and yeasts: via the inhibition of cell wall biosynthesis, and alteration of membrane structure and integrity, and the inhibition of specific enzyme activities. The mechanism by which cinnamaldehyde acts is still a question of ongoing research, but it basically comes down to the fact that cinnamaldehyde prevents the germ and mushroom sex.
So there you are.

Incidentally, this is why many recipes involving baking with cinnamon require more yeast than if there was no cinnamon in the recipe at all — think cinnamon rolls.

So now the question; did sir dumb dumb know that cinnamon could influence the baking process? You certainly doubt it. Even if the person knew about the roll cinnamon plays in the inhibition of fungal proliferation, there would be no reason to assume that a recipe, which does not call for yeast, would be influenced in the same way as a baked bread. The chances are slim that any speculation here is consistent with the thought process going through the mind of the dependent. However, your outburst was premature, and, if given enough time to contemplate, you too may realize that the situation is 50 shades of gray — or something — I don’t know, I’ve never seen the film or read the book.

Now, let me set the scene for you once again. It's the evening on a cold fall day. The trees rustling in the distance… You've been wanting to bake something for awhile now. You always say you are going to finally bake something, but you never end up baking anything. In this night, you have spent a total of zero minutes baking a gluten free chocolate cake and 240 minutes preoccupied with the banalities of absurdities. You were mad about the recipes word choice, you were incensed by some dip shit in the comment section who may or may not be as dumb as chalk, but you won’t ever be able to know, and you spent an evening researching the active ingredient of cinnamon, which was not even something related to the chocolate cake recipe. However, you learned something; even something as simple as the addition of cinnamon into a confectionery is not necessarily as black and white as it may seem — no matter how much you may believe it to be so.

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Hey Eva, I would love to make this recipe for Christmas. Could I also add a little bit of cinnamon to the recipe? If so, how much would you add? Kind regards.“ — Some idiot

a blog for idiots

Telephone Game

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The Cinnamon Lady