I've encountered it occasionally but not often. Luckily.
Ugh, I recently went to a work event where all the participants had to share three facts about themselves that the others in the room were unlikely to know. Three! There are only like ten facts about me in total; if three of them are unknown to my coworkers there's probably a good reason. Anyway, I shared my social security number, date of birth, and mother's maiden name.
The time from that post until now is the same as the time from the Reagan presidency until that post.
Everyone looks so young. I don't think I've met any of those people in person. Anyway, I mostly agree with ogged, except for the part about "just enough liquor in them to relax a bit."
I make my students introduce themselves on the first day of class, and then they have to say something that roughly works as a mnemonic device for me. Like "My name is Barbara and my thing is blueberries." I think it's only moderately painful and I do a shtick where I learn all their names during this process and then say them all at the end.
We had to do this work meet and greet thing where you told 2 truths and a lie. One woman said her grandmother had been shot seven times and that turned out to be true. I'm having trouble getting the html to work on my iPad, so the lazy link is below.
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/10/05/archives/clock-maker-dies-in-attack-at-home.html"
M-fun versus O-fun! Haven't thought about that in a while.
The work icebreaker thing got easier once I settled on a particular thing I can mention - "I worked as a secret agent for the USPS until my cover was blown" - which is actually pretty boring but isn't hard to spin into that sentence. And in the case of a "two truths and a lie" I can include it and nobody thinks it's true.
I'm having trouble getting the html to work on my iPad
Someone please use this in two truths and a lie.
I've never played two truths and a lie.
Am I telling the truth??
I have spent my entire career working with cynical, uncooperative people who regarded these getting-to-know-you games as insipid and who refused to participate.
Related fact: I cannot think about my colleagues over the decades without getting mawkishly sentimental.
My favorite work ice-breaker was "name something you love about the bay area." I think maybe dissociated like Steve Martin when he has to sing the patter song on Only Murders in the Building or like in Moonrise Kingdom where Suzy kind of dissociates and when she ressociates everyone is bleeding.
9- No because you did it wrong, it's supposed to be three statements.
Political luminaries I have met (or not):
1. Denis Healy, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer
2. Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania
3. Bernard Sanders, US Senator
1. I have never played two truths and a lie.
2. The preceding statement is a lie.
3. The preceding statement is a lie.
1. I have cat hair on me.
2. I have dog hair on me.
3. I have human hair on me.
Jobs I have had (or not)
1. Data processor
2. Drug store clerk.
3. Secretary of State
On the internet, nobody knows you're Madeleine Albright.
1) I do not like green eggs and ham
2) I do not like them
3) Sam I am
The last time I was asked to play "two truths and a lie" I couldn't think of two truths about myself that I wanted to share with my coworkers, so when it came to my turn I just said three lies. But I forgot to designate two of them in my head as "truths," so when it came time for the reveal I got confused. This was a separate event from the unfortunate instance referenced in 2. I hate doing social activities at work. Why can't we just do work activities? I'm good at the work part of my job.
The only times I have not minded doing these types of icebreaker activities at work have been when the questions were specific (so my mind didn't go totally blank), and did not invite the sharing of intimate information. For example: what is your unpopular food opinion; what was the best concert you've ever attended; what was the first album that you bought (this is probably now inapplicable for groups that include people under 30).
1. I hate the work part of my job.
2. I hate the social part of my job.
3. I hate the transitions between work and social at my job.
What is your unpopular food opinion, jms?
(I wonder if I have any truly unpopular food opinions. Dislike of mushrooms is pretty common, right? I have unpopular food habits, and the family food culture in which I grew up is a running joke, but I think everyone who had to eat these dried Australian red papaya strips from Trader Joe's would be just as underwhelmed as I am, to take the nearest example. Yuck.)
Mushrooms are great, but I only like the boring plain button mushrooms.
I have a lot! I hate peanut butter & jelly. But peanut butter and egg sandwiches are pretty good. Weak coffee is better than strong coffee. Sometimes I add hot water to my coffee. Sometimes I just drink hot water in a cup that previously held coffee, so that some of the coffee aroma remains but I don't actually have to taste so much coffee. Candy corn is a top tier candy. Coke tastes better when it's been sitting out for at least five minutes, so that it's slightly flat, and not cold.
Those are all horrible, horrible, horrible opinions. Except that I also like candy corn.
Candy corn is a top tier candy.
Yes, and also a top tier corn.
My favorite is probably spice drops.
24:
:O
Okay, wow, can I compete with anything here? My best shot: all cola is categorically disgusting except Diet Coke, which is also gross but weirdly drinkable because the flavor is milder. It's somehow possible to hate-drink.
(I can actually tolerate mushrooms in small quantities, and some of the expensive varieties are tasty. That thing where there's an entire half-inch layer of mushrooms on a pizza, though: there I hit a hard limit. Doesn't seem to happen with most other reasonably healthy foods.)
I don't like it when they put fresh mushrooms on pizza. They need to be cooked and then go on the pizza (to be cooked again with the pizza).
I actually forgot that people occasionally serve mushrooms uncooked. Not a chance.
But actually we should turn this into "two truths and a lie: unpopular food opinions edition" for anyone who has yet to weigh in.
1) I am sexually heterozygotic
2) I do not like promiscuous social intercourse
3) I am a nerdy, wordy teenager who takes perverse pleasure in pun-ishment
OT: Some people are alarmed that I've never heard the "Major General" song except on the Simpsons so they played the version from a movie of the musical. Honestly, the Simpon's version was better singing.
Maybe that was on topic because it came up because I was singing it while trying to do something like "1: I am the model of a major general...."
Kelsey Grammer maybe has a better voice.
2 truths and a lie unpopular foods version.
1. I don't like cucumbers.
2. I like eggplant.
3. I hate chocolate
Maybe you've been trying the unsweetened chocolate for baking?
29: It's somehow possible to hate-drink
For a period as a kid my mother would buy some brand of knock-off sodas that even we knew were just terrible. We'd only keep them in the fridge in the basement. We were addicted to them. And it's not like it was some contrast with an otherwise gourmet diet; we were definitely a better eating through 50s/60s chemical additives household. It was like a lifestyle homage.
I'd sneak unsweetened baking chocolate as a kid.
I'd sneak sugar cubes as a kid (lots of them).
I'd sneak orange aspergum* as a kid (what a thing to have in a house with kids--or at least me). Or just straight orange baby aspirin if there was no gum.
*It appears to still be available.
I think I would've figured out where the researchers kept the marshmallows and broken in and stolen them.
OT: Is it within the realm of politeness to send an email that says, "I know I've only talked to you twice since 1989, but are you close enough to ask her if she really shot a fucking puppy?"
1) Even though I don't actually like marshmallows.
2) 44: As long as you report back, yes.
3) Thousand Island is the best dressing.
I have to do a "meet and greet" with my new department at work in about thirty seven and a half hours. I have already shared a fun fact about myself. I am going to have lunch with my new supervisor and manager in forty hours. None of those statements are a lie.
On the whole, I am not too freaked out. Feeling obscurely sad about leaving my old, crappy department, even though the new one has it beat hands down when it comes to esprit de corps and organization. And promises to be the font of many juicy presidential posts here.
Good luck, Natilo! Not going to share the fun fact with us?
PS -I love chocolate.
I am now caught up on the dog story. Idk, makes sense to me that she would have shot the dog after it killed all the chickens, if you are the kind of person who won't let anyone out-mean you. ("You should take that dog out and shoot it!" "That's EXACTLY what I did, AND I shot a goat for good measure.") Conservative politics involves a lot of cruelty pissing matches, and this definitely seems like a plausible street cred attempt backfiring out of -- honestly -- pure ignorance.
The problem is being such a psychopath that you don't realize that people treat cruelty to dogs much more seriously than cruelty to people.
Yes, that's the biggest block of ignorance.
People who grew up on farms are remarkably casual about killing animals so long as there's a reason and it's done painlessly. The bragging about it in a book is what is different. I think she was trying for Ernst's hog-castration energy and forgot that people like dogs even when they are alive.
People with hunting dogs pretty much routinely kill the ones that look useless for hunting.
It's such an amazing unforced error. Like you just proudly volunteered a story about how you proudly blew your puppy's brain's out?
You could make it worse by eating the dog after.
True. She didn't livestream it either.
people like dogs even when they are alive.
Not only that, but people have really strong opinions about how to train them, how to respond to their behavior, how often dog misbehavior is on the owner, etc., and they will get into screaming matches over it. You don't want to do or say anything to trigger this reaction in general.
Yeah. The dog people and the wildlife people got into an internet screaming match here because the later was trapping foxes to treat mange and the traps were catching (unleashed) dogs.
The whole point of the story is to make people upset and angry. That's what makes her a good candidate. It's what makes Trump a good candidate (from his supporters' point of view) - he makes the people his supporters hate angry. Nothing more than that.
Yes, it's obviously vice-signaling to get picked as Trump's running mate. It may still work.
Obviously it will also inevitably alienate all the normal people with empathy but that's kind of baked in once you're in the running for Trump VP.
"Obviously it will also inevitably alienate all the normal people with empathy"
Which slightly reminds me of the Adlai Stevenson remark about "Every thinking person in the country is behind me, but that's no good, I need a majority".
It's obvious Trump hates dogs (because he hates every living thing that's not himself) but unfortunately there's no good way to exploit this electoral weakness. Like if Biden showed up to a debate and said "before we start, let's each hug this cute puppy" Trump would either throw it when it tried to lick him or be more awkward than tank Dukakis and Biden would gain 20 points the next day. A lot of otherwise psychotic people love dogs.
This is just another way that Trump 2.0 is different from, and I would say inferior to, Trump 1.0. Last time, the guy's handlers -- including, presumably, the Big Guy* -- viewed and used the VP pick in traditional terms: 'how can we add voters to the coalition among whom we think he might be a little weak?' To the extent it's going to be about politics at all, it'll now be 'who's going to really impress the most rabid of the Trumpers?'
There are two problems with this. First, obviously, not growing the coalition is a mistake that only makes sense if you think that Trump really did win 2020 in a landslide and all the "fraud" has been fixed. Second, the defining characteristic of rabid Trumpers is that they're whiny malcontents. No one is really going to impress them, just as no one is going to really impress Trump, not for more than a news cycle.
If I believed that he or anyone else was going any thought to anything at all, he'd be scheming to find a way to not have a running mate at all. Then he could just appoint interim VPs as needed.
(The right answer for Trump is probably Sen. Scott, if Trump can gain more in black men looking for permission than he loses in racists who just can't pull the lever.)
* Yeah, VP wishes he could be the true V.P.
OT: Does this mean the tomb outside Canton is a fake?
https://x.com/vatel1675/status/1784251786368344101?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
A lot of otherwise psychotic people love dogs.
True. True.
I can't get my son to decide on a college between three colleges. All three acceptable to both parents, but there's a thing where you need to have a deposit down on just one very soon. Would it help if I called one a puppy and one a wolf cub? I never understood that conversation.
Sally had that problem choosing between two high schools. I ultimately stood in her bedroom playing tbe ukulele until she made a decision, the night before it was due. I don't know how to play the ukulele.
Can you get a ukulele in time? It was very effective.
We have a ukulele. Because middle class parenting requires exposing kids to instruments, but not learning how to play them.
We have two violins (one kid sized), a guitar, a ukulele, a keyboard (Casio from the 80s), various percussion things, and probably some kind of crappy flute.
And the world's cheapest accordion.
A violin seems likely to be even more effective than a ukulele.
We've never let him see the violin.
Anyway, one of the colleges us near to you, kind of.
we also have a ukelele, but not an answer for Moby's offspring.
If you had a party where a wolf cub played a tiny violin while a sofa was flung from a roof, that would be a fun fact to share.
I've only been to a party where they stole a sofa from a neighbor's porch and lit it on fire after safely putting it on the railroad tracks.
The wolf cub thing was so strange, because I think that ended up being a seriously dysfunctional liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere that the commenter fled after maybe two years, perhaps underscoring the timeless wisdom of never adopting a wolf cub? And no one ended up taking away the puppy, so it was really a giant surly guinea pig after all. You, Moby, at least were able to recognize that you didn't have any good information!
I made the impossible choice between two graduate programs by choosing one, having intense regrets, switching to the other, and then, after 3 or 4 years, realizing I should absolutely have stuck with the first one. But who would I be without my serious errors?
And the world's cheapest accordion.
Then you know what you have to do.
All the colleges under consideration are liberal arts colleges in the middle of nowhere, but I think they are all functional.
||
These updates have tended to chill threads but I feel like I should give it. My dad was in the same ICU for about four weeks. After I had left, he got semi-lucid - not verbal, but smiling, answering questions including complex ones with squeezes, mouthing "I love you," etc. It seemed like a long recovery, but a road to rehab and discharge. Then he got pneumonia. Then after he recovered from pneumonia, he fell less and less responsive. He was transferred to a smaller specialty hospital, and on the same day I came back planning to stay another week. The pulmonologist at the new hospital thought the sedatives were excessive and he was weaned off them all. But when he stayed at a nadir of responsiveness despite that, Saturday the pulmonologist sent him to a bigger hospital ER for scans this hospital didn't do - we got a more circuitous and secondhand explanation at the time, but we later heard from one of the doctors there that the pulmonologist asked them to determine "is he brain dead". He wasn't, but he was not that far off. And by this point, a new infection was rising and the range of doctors could not offer substantive hope that new interventions could get him off the ventilator he had suffered under since day one.
He had expressed clear wishes to all of us (and written in an advance directive) that he would want life-sustaining treatment removed in this scenario. My mother realized this was the point she had to honor his wishes, that more interventions would be cruel, and I agreed. (He might well have even rejected the intubation on day one had there been an opportunity to choose.)
We wanted to wait for his other child, my brother, to fly down, which he was able to do at short notice, arriving after midnight. We thought we would wait until dawn, but in the small hours, he was getting worse and we had to all gather at the hospital and move forward with the removal. He was dead about 65 minutes after the process started.
We're all together, all helping each other, and I'm extending my stay.
|>
I'm so sorry Minivet. I appreciate you sharing here. I'm glad that you were together as a family, and that's heartbreaking.
I'm sorry to hear that but thanks for letting us know.
So sorry, Minvet. That must be so hard. I'm glad you were able to be there, and that your fathers wishes were clear.
83: Condolences; I'm so glad that you had family with you.
So sorry, Minivet. As I said before, take good care of yourself. Grief is a vast country.
'm so sorry to hear about your Dad. Mine died after hospitalization last year and it is sad.
83: I'm sorry for your loss, Minivet. Thank you for keeping your imaginary friends updated.
I am so sorry, Minivet. That's so hard. I'm glad you're with family, and please take care of yourself.
Echoing all the sentiments expressed above. I'm so sorry.
93: Yes, because there's no Russian it.
Very sorry for your loss, Minivet.
Sorry to hear that, Minivet. Best wishes to you and your family.
I'm sorry, Minivet, but glad you were able to be together for him and I hope for one another. I have appreciated all the updates and look forward to more as you grieve and adjust.
I am so sorry for your loss.
I hope Salma Khan is too. (Seriously would it have been too much work...)
Minivet, I'm thinking of you and your family.
I'm so sorry, Minivet. I'm glad your family could be there with him at the end.
my condolences, minivet, such sad news. strength & solidarity to you & your family.
The thread has moved on, but we did get a college decision with more than 24 hours to spare. I think it's a puppy.
110 I hope it's not in South Dakota
111: No, he picked the other way out of Pittsburgh.