How long would it take if we couldn't use oils?

Some of these solid rock hits are actually soft rock hits

There's nothing wrong with falling asleep on a long train ride, but it seems pretty likely that there's a person out there who has a private blog which contains nothing but pictures of people who have fallen asleep on trains. Maybe these pictures are "selfie style" and they are pictures of both the sleeping on train person and the picture taker who is publishing this blog of sleeping train people.

If the only thing they are doing is taking the picture, uploading it to the blog, and then never looking at it again or sharing it with anyone, this seems like sort of a victimless crime. I guess technically the sleeping person's privacy has been violated ... but to no real end, and without any real repercussions or downside. If we found that the person was targeting a more narrow selection of sleeping train people -- like, say, only children, or only women, or only asian people -- I think the hobby becomes weirded and creepier, but the net damage to those people probably stays the same.

Anyway, it would be pretty friggin' weird if you went to speak with your parents' estate lawyer after their deaths, and they gave you a password to a secret blog full of sleeping train people, wouldn't it? There'd be so many questions that you'd never be able to answer.

The most prized item in the collection

It is traditional for sports teams to name a "captain" of the team who is somewhat of a team leader, and might represent the team in the meta-events that surround a game. Maybe this person would go shake the hands of the opposing teams coach before a game; maybe they'd give a big speech at the homecoming game; maybe they'd choose heads or tails during a coin flip. In high school sports this title usually goes to someone who is a solid performer, but also a stand up person who represents the values of the coach and the school in some way. Professional sports teams do this too, and will frequently nominate a veteran player to be the team's captain.

There is a basketball team called the Harlem Globetrotters, who are not a professionally competitive team, but who travel the world doing fun trick shot exhibitions and other chicanery on the basketball court. They have a designated opponent team called the Washington Generals who play "regular" basketball in games against the Globetrotters, and act as sort of a designated loser of the game (fun wikipedia fact: the generals have won only 6 games, and lost more than 13,000 during their main run against the Globetrotters).

Point here being - when someone on the Washington Generals is appointed as team captain, this is technically a demotion, and every other player on the team now outranks them in whatever military capacity the team is operating in.

The collection of linings were all silver

I read an essay or blog post or book or something recently where the author was purposefully referring to the creation of new advances in business, science, technology, etc as "discoveries" and not "inventions". I like this framing of the process with that word, because it implies that many of these advances are merely the identification of truths which were there all along, and only needed patience and discipline to reveal -- rather than things which emerged fully formed from someone's creative process.

What I liked about it was that it brought some things which people probably assume about scientific discoveries into other realms as well. For example, when Newton was learning about orbital mechanics and putting together his laws of motion, most people would probably concede that he was discovering things about the natural world, and not inventing things. There were attributes of time and space and matter that existed in the real world, and they needed only observation and description to become more understood by humanity.

Opening a business to change the oil in cars in 1492 would not have succeeded, because cars didn't exist yet ... but the constituent parts that go into operating that business all existed and could have been assembled. The "discovery" then in business includes not just observations about the natural world, but obervations about human wants and needs. You could say that creators of Instagram invented a software product to share photography; or you could say that they discovered that people wanted to share photographs on certain devices in a certain fashion via a certain user interface and at a certain time.

We'll have to go to the tape on this one

In the 1997 movie _Contact_ a radio astronomer is recruited to jump into a big machine the aliens sent us, and proceeds to do so. The movie plays fast and loose with her being in a dream state vs actual traveling to meet the aliens (in the form of her father, no less!), but ultimately reveals that she probably did go visit some people via a portal because there's a bunch of static on the tape.

When she is attempting to describe the strange and beautiful alien lands at one point she is at a loss for words and says "No--no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should've sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful... I had no idea".

I like the phrase "they should've sent a poet", but I'd like to use it in boring every day interactions. Like maybe you're at the counter of your local patisserie and you are browsing the pastries and they all look sort of nice but it's not that remarkable and the person asks you what you want and you get choked up and say "no words to describe it. poetry! they should've sent a poet". That would be super fun.