140 - Destroy the (Wedding) Circle 💒🔴❌
Hey there, !
In this piece I just want you to hear about a rant that I'm getting into and trying to persuade people of.
The gist is, if you're at a wedding, destroy the circle.
Know what I'm talkin' about?
So, when you're at a wedding and the dance floor opens, you know, maybe after the bride and groom have done their first dance or something, then everyone's partying and having a great time. The initial mob is great, everyone's having fun and dancing with their friends, the DJ's pumping the tunes - it's just all peachy.
And then slowly, insidiously, larger circles form. If you were an external observer in the rafters and looked at it from above, you would see water droplets of space coalescing into each other to make bigger water droplets, until suddenly there's only one big circle of empty space.
Now, in most situations what will happen is that the bride, groom, bridesmaids or groomsmen will fill that space and have fun trying to pull people into the middle, try some cliche dance moves and then retreat back to the outside of the circle.
Once this happens, there's a short lull, before the Dancing Dude/Dudette (there's always one) will then enter the space, filling it with extremely well-rehearsed and choreographed dance moves because they're freaking great (and it is highly entertaining!), BUT will then lead everyone else to shame in terms of trying to follow them up because I mean, who can?
And then comes the awkward period, where no-one is going into the middle, and yet everyone is expecting someone to go in, but no-one can because the Dancing Dude/Dudette has put you all to shame. (An optional timeline here is where drunk/wasted attendee/s jumps into the middle, and you kinda just want it to end as soon as possible anyway). In addition, you're dancing with people to the left and right of you, but you don't necessarily know who they are, and/or instead you're staring at someone across the other side of the circle that you don't really know, and who is probably just thinking the same thing as you - 'what are we doing here? what is happening??'
This is the pivotal moment.
You have to close the circle.
You have to be brave, turn your back to the empty space behind you, and gather the friends you actually want to hang out with in to your own sub-circle that defies the overarching trend of The Big Circle.
You need courage and strength to swim against the current, but you also need to have FUN with the people you actually want to hang out with. Honestly, probably one of the greatest quality of life improvements at a wedding is to know when to close the circle. Some people are really good at getting everyone to do it too - managing to collapse the circle quickly and efficiently. I'm not there yet, but it's only a matter of time.
So anyway, try it next time.
Destroy the circle.
Chat soon :)
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✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Hamilton - I love this musical. It's taken me 3 years of waiting to actually watch it in a theatrical setting (I had tickets for Sydney but that got postponed due the pandemic...and then had to wait an extra 1.5 years when the Melbourne tickets were announced). It's the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers who had an amazing story. There are historical inaccuracies in the musical, but eh - the music is AMAZING. It incorporates a bunch of rap, hip-hop and other genres to make a really unique piece of art. If you're in Melbourne, I'd highly recommend it (and potentially even to watch it on Disney+ first!).
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Time - a HK movie from 2021 that is...kinda weird, but kinda fun? It's a movie about a retired assassination team that is now helping people with assisted suicides. The editing is sub-par, and the acting is not...super great (though the actors are quite famous in HK). But what I did enjoy is that there were some pretty fun moments of comedy, some interesting commentaries of where HK is at the moment, and how elders are treated in society. A cautious recommend - just don't expect brilliance :)
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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World record lightning ‘megaflash’ confirmed over U.S. - I didn't know this was a thing? A lightning strike that stretched from near Houston to southeast Mississippi (spanning 3 full US states), a distance equivalent to 767km!! That's a lightning strike that is approximately as long as from Melbourne to Sydney by plane. It's insane that I'm still learning about cool shit like this?!
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Color Orbs - Generative Art - an interesting article about some generative art that just uses orbs, with strings of colour and gradients that make some fascinating patterns without needing it to be attached to a bloody NFT offering. I'm really interested in using code to create these sorts of generative art worlds - take a look!
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