Having an interesting conversation with someone you just met. I see people do this shit all the time and they make it look like it comes naturally but every time I’m in that situation it is so difficult. Its like a series of quick time events that im severely underprepared for
It really depends on the person, you have to have some sort of jumping off point. Whether that is sharing something in common with someone or having cool hobbies.
I learned to combat this with 3 simple questions:
- What kind of job do you do? (Or study)
- Where do you live?
- Do you have any kids, dog,…
Be interrested in their answers and add some simple follow-up questions that show you are listening. Add some content of your own as a follow-up.
Posing that first question can be a bit weird, but the rest is as simple as it sounds.
I’m not perfect at it, but what helps me is that I genuinely love to learn and I like to take the opportunity to learn from people when I meet them. I just need to find an entry point (job, hobby, something the person is knowledgeable about) and then I start asking questions, and applying the limited knowledge I might already have on the subject.
With short interactions with people that are working (supermarket, bank, restaurant, phone assistance) I usually go for empathy, and overall just being nice. When one comes to me I go for a joke to brighten their day a bit.
Socializing. Things to say in a conversation don’t come to me naturally like they seem to do with other people. Often people remark it’s like talking to a wall because I don’t know how to come up with an answer to their open questions on the fly. And without that, they see no foundation to build friendship on.
Damn, I really relate to this. When I get nervous because I don’t know what to say, I come back with one of my dreaded default responses.
I realized today that people on movies are weird in cute, quirky ways. Most of us are just weird in weird ways.
people on movies are weird in cute, quirky ways
Also scripted and practiced ways.
Hey, can you add a button on that webpage to do [something]?
Like, yeah, adding a button is usually easy, but making it do [the thing] can be quite difficult.
Parenting. Before I had kids I was often judgmental of parents, but now I’ve realized all the things I didn’t take into account and all the things you just don’t have control over. In my case, I was not expecting to be a single parent, there was the pandemic, and I did not factor in how impactful the lack of sleep and autonomy would be.
Even without suddenly becoming single, or a pandemic, or anything, being a parent isn’t something that can be explained to someone who hasn’t experienced it, IMO. You can use words to explain, that you think are accurate. But it just has to be experienced to fully understand. The fatigue, the change in stress levels, the amount of time you lose. Conceptually not hard to grasp. But the way it feels, different story. “Wow, this is worse/more than I thought.”
But given all that, it’s also hard to explain that it’s all worth it. One of the best things about being a parent right now for me personally, is watching my kids learn everything for the first time, and the wonders of learning, beaming from their eyes. It’s such a privilege being the one to have a chance to teach them a bunch of things. Being a role model, being someone who they build trust with.
Also walking into their room after they’ve fallen asleep and watching two absolute gigawatt units expend their energy non-stop all day, now completely still (and silent, JFC), and just so peaceful. Their eyes just two lines, rather than two open balls all day. Adorable.
100% accurate.
Once they become teens, the joy is in seeing them realize how much they don’t yet know. It happens rarely, so make sure to document it.
Nothing is more entertaining than being a parent.
There is also nothing to explain the disassociative feeling of having them kidsplain to you things that you taught them, or were actually there for. It’s like, dude, you didn’t know how to wipe your own bum until I taught you. I think I have a handle on 9/11, liberal vs. conservative politics, the Cold War, collapse of the Soviet Union, or how to drive/ shop for groceries/ pay taxes/ vote/feed my dog/apply a bandaid, or whatever thing you think just came into existence because you learned it.
lmao that’s funny. Yeah this is already somewhat the case with my 3 and 4 year old. Even sometimes when they were 2. They’ll tell me things I told them, repeatedly. Things they learn in preschool. Things that they make up on the spot that are completely untrue bullshit. And you’ll just go “oh really, wow, how interesting”. It’s all about sharing with each other at this point lol. Everything doesn’t have to be exactly right or true. I’m trying to remember that because my oldest is a bit of a know-it-all. Trying to prevent further damage to him being a little annoying prick with that behavior. 😆 Especially towards the younger one.
I was out shopping for plants this morning when a little girl wanted to point out the spilled dirt and the hedges they had to me. It was adorable.
My girlfriend and her 5 year old will be moving in with me this summer, I’m so excited to see her learn and grow.
I went through Army training where they intentionally deprive you of sleep for 9 weeks, and I had still never been as tired as I was the first 6 months of parenthood. I didn’t know that you can get that tired and still be alive.
I know, holy shit. And I’ve been a bad grown up and staying up sometimes until 3 am playing games, and the next day I’ll sleep at like 7:30 pm.
My mom told me she used to judge the parents in the shops with screaming kids, we didn’t do that and she thought it was her excellent parenting. She said “Then God gave me Janet” to cure her judgemental hubris, lol.
Nobody is a good parent all the time, we aren’t robots and exhaustion is such a drain on intelligence and compassion. But most of us are good parents enough of the time, thankfully.
Fucking Janet
I’ve got one thing to say and that’s
Dammit Janet
Achieving significant political change, even as an individual with significant political power
Significant political change…for the better.
As we’ve seen all over the world or only takes a relative few to make negative change.
It’s a lot easier to break things than it is to build them.
Hayes Carll, in his American Dream song:
“Nothing changes, even when it wants to.”
Applying caulking or silicone.
A tip one contractor passed on to me when caulking: use pieces of toilet paper to smooth it out after applying. You won’t get your fingers gunked up, and toilet paper’s cheap enough that you can use a bit to smooth off a few inches of caulk and throw the paper away.
Think I got through half a roll when sealing up a window frame a couple years back, looks great.
With silicone the proper way is to first wipe the surfaces clean with acetone. Then apply a thick bead of silicone making sure it sticks to both surfaces with no gaps (very important), doesn’t need to look pretty. After that you spray it with soapy water which prevents it from sticking where you don’t want it to and then use a wet/soapy popsicle stick (or a dedicated tool) to scrape off the excess. After that you can spray it again and super gently pull your finger over it to smooth it out. Should come out looking something like this.
I’ve gotten good results doing caulking like this aswell but some people say that acrylic caulk may react with the water/soap and you should instead use a dedicated tooling agent.
It’s not that hard to learn. Just don’t leave away the steps that you found too silly from the tutorial :)
Converting a class traitor to socialism
Try talking to a socialist about something you disagree with then u will understand why people don’t want it be socialist. I’ll give u a hint its not necessarily the ideas of socialism most of the time its the people promoting them u willing to to even entertain an opposing idea.
Try converting to a socialist. Socialism is a system, not a human being. No wonder it is difficult to do that.
No, socialism is a set of ideals, beliefs and values as well as a system (you can’t have a system without the idea behind it afterall). It’s perfectly reasonable to convert someone into believing in a set of ideals, beliefs and values.
Just be yourself
Who’s that? I’ll copy everything they do!
Seizure ensues
Most things you see a real professional doing.
Just look at the ease a window washer cleans a window stripless and fast, or a bricklayer just gets stones on the same height with 2 small taps on the brick consistently. Many more examples like that…
Years of experience and muscle memory make it look easy… but it isnt.
Based on my recent failings: apparently hitting a little white ball into a hole.
I don’t know if I should be making a golf joke or a billiards joke
If you’re hitting a white ball into the hole in billiards, then you’re doing it wrong.
Golf is a beautiful walk in the park, ruined by a tiny white ball.
Making an otherwise simple change in a game made by a big company.
There are tons of things that could be done relatively “easy peasy” when it comes to correcting an error in the code or making a change to a number or even adding a thing. What makes it difficult is red tape. You’ve got assigned tasks to do that probably don’t include making that simple fix or adding that thing or changing that number. If it’s just 1 dude in his garage working at a hobby project, it could get done in 10 minutes if he wanted to do it.
Of course this assumes things aren’t done in a way that make doing something that might be easy even harder simply because you don’t have many options to do the things you want within the system you’ve made without dismantling part of it and getting into a whole mess of other shit to make the “simple” change. Sometimes it be like that, too.
Perfect example is changing text in a game (maybe 10 mins) vs adding emoji to text in a game ( weeks?) does the text engine support emoji. Do we need to add support for all arbitrary images? How big can the emoji be? So many issues come out of “simple” requests.
red tape
I just make the change and put it in for review and then move on with my life… most the time its not turned away if its a good change. Even if there wasn’t any task or discussion before hand, and if it’s small enough I can just do it quick then I won’t be disappointed if people want it done a different way. At least for me it feels like people like it when I just make a decision and solve the problem instead of bogging them down with discussing everything before hand
But yeah lots of times “simple” changes are not actually simple in the system as it already exists… and that can be frustrating but thats software…
Removing the tamper seal on a bottle of ketchup
Use your teeth.
Or pierce it with a knife and carefully remove the halves. I hate accidentally bruising my gums.
Making friends as an adult
Art
Lemon meringue pie
Merangue is the perfect food to make when you’re angry as hell.
Wouldn’t that only make one angrier?
Do you mean merang-rier?
