The saying "shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars". No you won't, the stars are outside the solar system, they're much further away than the moon
this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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"Shoot for the moon, and if you miss you'll end up drifting aimlessly until you die" doesn't sound as good, but probably works just as well as an analogy
As a dumbass I say: if you go wizing past the moon and nothing else reacts with you, you will eventually end up among the stars.
"Rome wasn't built in a day"
Has an entirely different message to me. It's often used as a reminder to be patient, not to loose your temper, etc.
On the day Rome was founded Romulus killed his brother Remus and marked out the city of Rome, construction starts. This is my initial reaction.
The next thing the Romans, a group of men (probably criminals), did after founding Rome was to raid their neighbours and kidnap their women. Rome then makes war for the better part of a thousand years, eventually subjugating the known world.
I think it's better used as a reminder subjugation starts out in small measures. "Parliament just passed antiterrorism laws, I'm sure they're to protect us" "Rome wasn't built in a day"
"Positive feedback loop" to indicate a situation in which circumstances feeding into each other result in more good things happening, or "negative feedback loop" to indicate bad circumstances feeding into each other to result in more bad things happening.
I have worked with enough controls folks to know that positive feedback in a control loop often leads to instability (bad), while negative feedback in a control loop can be used to stabilize the system (good). It just comes down to the math in the situation.
So people saying that they are in a positive feedback loop can, to a controls person, sound counterintuitive. E.g. "I'm in a positive feedback loop of working out, having more energy as a result, and working out more, making me healthier!" would be momentarily confusing.
I did grad school at an engineering/STEM-focused school, and the campus psychiatrist actually used these terms correctly when discussing anxiety attacks! As an engineer myself, that made my nerdy heart happy 🤣
Another control theory phrase issue: The phrase "more optimal" is incorrect and very well may earn the speaker an "umm, actually" from any controls folks in the conversation. Optimality is not a scale--either something is optimal (with respect to a specific metric), or it isn't.
(EDIT: reducing verbosity)
Hm, this is interesting. I only have a passing understanding of control theory, but couldn't a positive feedback loop indeed be good when the output is always desirable in increased quantities? A positive feedback loop doesn't necessarily lead to instability, like you said. So maybe this is just me actually-ing your actually, lol.
As for "more optimal", oof, I say that a lot so maybe I'm biased. When I say that I'm thinking like a percentage. If optimal is X, then 80% of X is indeed more of the optimal amount than 20% of X. Yes, optimality is a point, but "more optimal" just seems like shorthand for "closer to optimal". Or maybe I should just start saying that?
This reminds me of a professor I had who hates when people say something is "growing exponentially", since he argued the exponent could be 1, or fractional, or negative. It's a technically correct distinction, but the thing is that people who use that term to describe something growing like x^2, are not even wrong that it's exponential. I feel like when it comes to this type of phrasing, it's fine not to deal with edge cases, because being specific actually makes what is said more confusing.
"I'm in a negative feedback loop with respect to my laziness which will soon stabilize with me continually going to the gym daily, which is closer to optimal than before. As a result, my energy levels are going to increase exponentially, where the value of the exponent is greater than 1!"
Hmm. Now that I say it that doesn't seem that crazy. Although I do still think some common "default settings" don't do any harm.
Those are good points! I can imagine positive feedback to be desirable in some situations and to some extent--a musician's amplifier needs to have some positive feedback to amplify the frequencies they care about, for instance, but likely also needs some negative to cancel out frequencies they don't want to amplify, either in the amplifier itself or in the sound booth. Or maybe for some chemical processes, where you always want to make more of product X, and you're just adjusting the positive feedback to keep the production of X at a certain range of acceptable rates. It all comes down to the math and the desired output! My areas of work are mainly related to areas where negative feedback is desired, but it's really very context-specific.
As for "more optimal," I think I picked up the habit of avoiding that phrase due to grad school being my life for so long. A lot of my cohort was very controls-focused in their research, and several of the controls profs would correct presenting/proposing/defending students if they used that phrase, so we got used to either avoiding the phrase entirely or jokingly pointing it out if a fellow student said it. But in my full-time job now, things are much more relaxed with respect to that sort of thing. Maybe in a few years, I won't hear those profs' "can you tell me what you mean by 'more optimal?'" didactic questions in my head when I encounter the phrase 🤣 And yeah, exponential growth is another good example! It's clear in the colloquial sense, but my engineer-brain still thinks "wait a minute..." when I hear it!
One of the things I remember most from high school biology is "an organism exists in a state of negative feedback, and when that feedback becomes positive it dies". It applies to way more than just biological organisms, and is less confusing to laymen than anything about valleys in the space of possible configurations.
More optimal is not only wrong but a bullshit, unnecessarily wordy way of saying "better" in the first place.
Interesting! My last biology class is a tiny speck in my rearview mirror, so I'm not sure that I'm understanding it the way your class meant for it to be understood, but I think that that makes a lot of sense. Too much of one kind of input to a living thing without an output to balance it out can be disastrous.
They meant it in a homeostasis kind of way, not matter conservation. If a cell responds to an increase in osmotic pressure with more osmotic pressure it will not be a cell for very long. Ditto for body heat, hormones, cell growth or any number of other things in a multicellular organism. I guess it was just an interesting, birds-eye way of approaching the topic, and most of the other stuff was not as memorable.
Thunder only happens when it's rainin'
Players only love you when they're playin'
Every time I hear this song I just shake my head.
Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?
Absolutely.
"Does a bear shit in the woods?"
Might be a regional thing but people would often say this as a sarcastic but emphatic "Yes" reply to people, particularly "obvious" answers.
Truth is, my personal observation is that they will make every opportunity to come out on the nearest road or field and shit there.
Obviously one could argue the pedantry (eg rural = woods, or most shit is in wooded areas) but my point is back to there actually being enough nuance to argue the point that they aren't making the point they think they are when they say that.
I'm fun at parties!
I'm fun at parties!
Would you say you’re a party pooper?
(Likely another example of a phrase that OP was looking for)
Upvote for Flula
A particularly weird and disgusting one that I heard from far too many adults as a kid, was "pull your finger out of your arse". This apparently means 'get a move on' and/or 'stop being lazy'.
As a kid with autism it really grossed me out to think all the adults who said this had decided I was slow/lazy because they thought I was regularly putting my fingers in my bum.
Being an adult who has tried most sex stuff now (and also witnessed and spoken candidly with many others who have too), I can unequivocally state that anal play involving fingers, either with a partner or alone, does not correlate with difficulty completing tasks or laziness, either during the act or afterwards. And that the folk I've known who have admitted to trying this, are seemingly not any lazier or less efficient than the folk I've known who haven't.
I still don't know why or how "pull your finger out if your arse" became a phrase meaning what it does, I'm going to hazard a guess it's based on homophobic stereotypes, but even then why was it said to me as an afab child? Maybe it was supposed to be funny.
Not sure of the etymology of that one either.. I assume having one’s finger up their butt isn’t exactly a productive use of time unless the task at hand is butt stimulation. Congrats on the sex though
Butt stuff is over rated imo. Thanks tho.
TBF David is portrayed as the underdog in that story. IIRC Goliath had armour and may have had ranged weapons as well, but David got lucky (through divine intervention) with a difficult, imprecise weapon.
"If I was dictator for a day", "who made you king" and so on. Autocrats have a lot of power, but it's always leaky as hell and their position is always precarious. In some ways they're just the first among prisoners, since if they ever go against the system itself they're out as fast as Gorbachev was. None of the top officials want their skeletons coming out.
None of the top officials want their skeletons coming out.
I don't want my skeleton coming out either, I'm using it
I meant the ones in their closet, but when it comes to methods of disposing of political enemies, you never know!
"You cannot have a cake and eat it too?"
Bruv, if I have a cake in my hands, I am going to eat it.
It's like me giving a back massage to my girlfriend. Things are going to get groped.
Yes, I have a girlfriend. I will not be taking any questions.
Sleep like a baby. That is not what I'd consider a good night's sleep.
Yeah I'll take the" sleep like a cat " please
Sleep like a baby: Scream of horror every hour, cry every 4th, and shit yourself at a random times throughout the night.
Source: Four of them. Luckily, all are past that stage.
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There are a number of idioms that MythBusters tested, some of which were disproven and some of which were confirmed/plausible.
It is easy to punch out of a paper bag.
10 pounds of poop will not fit in a 5-pound bag.
People can easily recognize the backs of their own hands.
Taking candy from a baby is not as easy as it sounds.
People may literally get cold feet when they are scared/timid.
If poop hits a fan it can indeed create a large mess.
You can teach an old dog new tricks.
With an enormous amount of force, it is possible to literally knock someone's socks off.
In a race, it is not literally better to hit the ground running.
You can polish poop.
Shooting fish in a barrel is fairly easy; the shock wave from a bullet can be enough to kill the fish.
A bull in a china shop will actively avoid hitting the shelves.
A rolling stone truly gathers no moss.
Finding a needle in a haystack is difficult, even with modern technology.
[EDIT: a couple of other idioms not in the idiom section of the link.
It is possible to make a balloon out of lead.
It is not possible to herd cats.
A goldfish's memory is not limited to three seconds.
]
They also tested the thing about toast landing butter side up
And also whether exotic meats taste like chicken
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Not quite an idiom, but one of the senior managers at work keeps talking about Moore's Law in the context of AI stuff like it's some kind of fundamental law of the universe that any given technology will double in capability every 2 years
- Moore observed that transistor density in microprocessors had historically been doubling every 18 months, and this trend more or less continued for a decade or so after he noted it
- Density has nothing to do with the capability of technology that uses those microprocessors. The performance of the chips roughly doubled every couple of years, but there was a lot more going on with that than just transistor density
- Moore's law hasn't held for at least the last decade
Yeah this is a common misunderstanding I've had to clarify to people as well, even people who work in tech. I support only using "Law" for things that are scientifically actually laws. I don't even like to use it as a joke (Murphy's Law) because, unbelievably, some people really do take that to be a law of the universe too.
Oh god, the cringe techno-optimist shit where you believe every kind of hype at once. The cream does not rise to the top.
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The use of "quantum leap" isn't about comparing the absolute size of the change to quantum phenomena. It's about the lack of a smooth transition. Quantum leaps in physics are instantaneous transitions between states with no intermediate. That's the idea with the colloquialism: a sudden shift from one state to another without a smooth transitional period.
Yeah, a lot of these things actually do make sense, just in a more precise way than even the people using them intend. Gravitational pull is also like this. Earth's gravitational pull is not weak, it literally keeps everything on Earth tethered to it. More importantly, it happens as an intrinsic property of the Earth, the Earth doesn't need to "try" to exert gravitational pull on things. Furthermore, gravitational pull attracts more mass which begets even more gravitational pull, like a snowball effect.
So gravitational pull is not about the strength of the force, but the fact that it is natural, effortless, and often forms a positive feedback loop (borrowing from another comment here lol).
So if I say someone at work has a lot of gravitational pull, I'm conveying that they do a good job of bringing other people into their area or work, that they naturally do it almost without even trying to, and that as their social influence grows, they just end up with even more social influence. It's a really deep metaphor which is also physically accurate.
It's true, although I doubt most users know that. I wonder if it actually was an idiom before the science was invented/discovered.
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