A million-to-one chance happens 9 times out of 10.

But in that same vein, recognizing how people operate means you can tweak or build a process to work with them and get results you want.

I’m not in a technical role like most people on this site, but I’m often in between those departments/their products and the consumer as well as the rest of the company. I think the mistake a lot of people in dev roles make is building a system that functions and think is good, and they need to bring the people to the process. But that’s not how people work. You can maybe get a person, maybe even a few in line with your designed process. But when you have groups of people it becomes impossible.

Take that DevSecOps person above. Their solution to entire teams not using their process is to oust the leadership and bring the team to heel. I don’t think that people take the time to think how they can alter their process to get the people more likely to work with it to get the results they want. As you said, people go the path of least resistance. You have to build your product to the user, not the other way around because the “people” aren’t going to change.

My example: We had a process our level 1 team members needed to follow when filling out tickets. Most of the time, no big deal. Our system means their tickets need to be filled out and submitted almost immediately upon completion, they can’t just wait around until the end of shift. It’s a lot of real-time work. Occasionally we’d get hit by huge numbers because something vital broke and they’re our front line in dealing with the communication, then these tickets would not get filled out properly in their mad rush to get them all submitted so they can move on. Every field not filled out correctly breaks our reporting, which is vital for us. Macros were no use because they could only fill out generic info and not any of the information we really needed. Their managers tried meetings and punishment and rewards, but when shit would hit the fan, inevitably the proper protocol would be the first thing to go to keep the operation running.

So I go in, take a look at the process start to finish and talk to the team about what specific things make it harder to complete in a crisis. And then I went and created a “mass issue” ticket form to use for those scenarios instead. When something major breaks and the team is flooded with these calls and they have to go through 4-5 at once every 10 minutes, they tick a box and get a new form with just the vital info and the ability to group as many issues on it as they have. Now they can group like issues together and fill out a single ticket. Their time is saved and we still get the precious data we need. Because we built our system to work with the user and made the path of least resistance a path that works.

But I have an advantage. I now work in a tech-adjacent role but I’ve spent my life working with people, not technology. So I get to bring that viewpoint to the job where most people around me have never really given it much thought.

So which sense do we use to interpret the rules set out on how to get/treat slaves? How is that interpreted? Is it a metaphor? And how do you know which is which?

What it sounds like is you have lots of leeway to account for what you choose to believe is truth or fiction to fit your needs at any given moment. And if you’re not sure what, if any, is literally true, how do you know there’s a god at all? And you’re defending Catholicism, which is in for an even more uphill battle than most because it’s been around longer and has to account for all the beliefs that have had to be updated as knowledge and culture had changed.

I mean, I don’t believe it but bible believers do; how about the global flood? Various plagues in Egypt as well as ending the whole party with killing off all first-born sons? Commending genocide (multiple times)? Enabling chattel slavery? Obliterating Sodom and Gomora(sp?). Ooh, on that same point, didn’t he just turn Lot’s wife into salt because he looked at her? All the stuff he did to Job to win a bet? And I think Jesus set a wild bear on a bunch of kids because they were bullying some guy?

Those are off the top of my head, but I know there’s more.

Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.

Am I weird in that I think it’s weird to announce that kind of thing on a dating profile? Like, I’m on all the dating apps and people generally don’t get access to me until there’s a mutual agreement to match, right? Unless you’re swiping on everyone or they’re actively trying to hide it, are you matching with a lot of trans folk? Are you so inundated by these matches that you feel the need to announce these preferences up front? I can’t imagine it’s so many that you can’t just have a polite conversation when it comes up and explain the preference? It’s the whole need to announce it, knowing how it could come off, that makes people question the intent. If you were at the bar and someone you’re attracted to comes up to talk, do you stop them and say “before you go any further, know that I only date cis people.”?

Especially since ChatGPT can’t think of a new answer, right? It’s working off data that’s already somewhere online. It’s just using predictive text based to determine the next word based on what users have typed. So most of these answers people get from “AI” are out there for these people to get from real people.

It’s possible? I’m not a dermatologist or anything, it’s just what I’ve observed on my own body, specifically from my pockets is the biggest one. If you ride very frequently, maybe next time pay attention to where you’re body is making contact and causing friction. if it’s right where your balls rest on the seat and they move back and forth constantly there, it’s a good bet.

I don’t have any smooth spots on my balls, but I wonder, do you wear tighter underwear that may consistently rub in those spots? I have places on the outside of both my thighs where my pockets have rubbed against them for decades and hair no longer grows. Same on my ankles from the short, tight socks I used to wear when I played sports. I assume the friction just destroyed the follicles.

The Handmaid’s Tale (TV Show), hands down.

The first season was emotional but I’ve gotten through it multiple times as I’ve tried re-watching to get through season 2. I got a little farther the last time I tried, but man, it’s so visceral and constantly beating down the protagonist and everyone around her. That’s the point and it’s great, it’s just so depression-inducing when there’s just no uplifting points. IT does not let up in beating you down with the horribleness. I just can’t keep going when it goes on for so long.

I want to say they’re from the same episode? They were being interviewed about their experience during some event and instead of doing a voiceover that segues into it being acted out they did this creative choice of acting it out and having the one giving a deposition pause to turn to the camera to tell the bit they’re saying in the interview.

I’m not remembering a lot of the details, but this is the type of thing that made me love DS9. The themes were generally the typical Trek fair, but that show had style. They had the balls to film things differently than other Trek shows and make them really interesting. It was so different but still so Star Trek at its core. It made things feel fresh.

That and the way it was set up, being on a space station that didn’t move meant it felt less like a sector/monster of the week. It accomplished a lot of the same by having the new aliens come to them instead of the other way around as is typical, but it felt different I think because they were stationary. It felt more character-focused, and because they were basically hovering just over Bajor it meant there was a whole planet that was able to affect the show consistently as it grew and changed along with the dynamics of the crew/station, while not really being part of the direct scenery.

While it is suggesting it was common at the time, it doesn’t outright state they’re talking about that time. At earlier points in history it certainly was acceptable, but we probably don’t have pictures of it to go in textbooks. This reeks of them having a general point to make and having a picture that almost fits that point. I’ve made more tenuous connections for college papers before.

Also, while it’s not as drastic, I was doing some looking into family history recently and I found some ancestors who got married around that time. The marriage certificate listed the wife as 17 and the husband as 21… but the math didn’t add up when I found their birth certificates and on the marriage certificate she was aged up from 15 and he was aged down from 22. It was in a small farming community and at that point in time and place schooling was largely abandoned during harvest and as soon as kids were old enough to help out on the farm full time they would just stop with school. And for women, helping out on the farm meant taking care of the house and raising kids generally. Time at school was a waste for them so they just got right to the adult stuff immediately.

I remember reading an article years ago about a village that put out an absurd amount of Olympic long distance runners. The article noted that the village was on a high plateau and far from other places. The extreme difference in height led to better lung capacity and the normalcy of having to travel by foot long distances just raised a bunch of people who conditioned their bodies from birth to be adept at long distance running. None of it resulted in any major changes in population physiology as it’s just training your body to deal with environmental conditions after birth and doesn’t cause the mutations in the genome that would mark evolutionary changes.

I mean, obviously there are some physical differences between races. They look different, some have more prevalence of certain diseases or conditions, but races are entirely a social construct. Scaled out, the differences in races aren’t more severe than the differences in variability in smaller groups within a race, or even a family. It’s like, yeah, uncle Steve’s side of the family all have kinda pointy ears because he passed that on to his kids but his brother didn’t pass that gene on but they’re still family. Zoom out and view all humans not as different races but one giant group and uncle Steve’s branch all just have darker skin or straighter hair, but they’re still clearly part of the human family.

Is your family member Google Ad Sense?

“I see you spent a week researching PSUs for your computer and I see that you finally bought one. Would you like to buy a PSU? because even though we know you bought one we’ll be showing you nothing but ads for PSUs for the foreseeable future.”

There’s also some perspective in play here. It’s up on a hill and a distance from the camps. From this POV it’s going to look a lot more imposing.

If they make a bad product do you want more of it, even for free?

Like, reviewers get to the point where companies send them free product for review from a long period of legitimate reviews that get them a large enough audience. It’s unlikely they’re getting their main profits from free products sent.

Obviously you shouldn’t take a single person’s review as gospel anyway, but just them getting a review copy of a thing isn’t a sole reason to discredit their opinion.

To maybe build on this a little, as someone who grew up in a household with a parent with anger issues who would take their own frustrations out on the family, it definitely helps as something to avoid, but I’ve found that my inward reactions have gotten better as well once I realized that anger being my immediate reaction was due to growing up in an environment where that was normalized. Even if at the time it could be frightening and I knew even then that it was bad, the human brain is funny and children are impressionable.

I was in my 30s before I came to terms with the fact that my anger issues, however well controlled the outbursts were and no matter how much I avoided letting other people know it was happening, they were still there and I was still following in the steps of my father emotionally. And recognizing that it’s not how everyone feels and it’s not just “how my brain works,” but conditioning, and conditioning that can be broken. Similarly, I would remove myself and reflect, but I’d start to focus less on me and my reactions and force more empathy by thinking about the person or thing or situation and what led to me being upset. Eventually it got to the point where now my immediate reaction is to rationalize the situation before I emotionally respond. If I think through it and I feel I should actually still be upset, then I can confront it, but in calmer and more rational state, confident that I’m probably justified.

It still happens sometimes. Mostly it’s the normal irritability that everyone feels when they’re stressed or tired. And sometimes that old habit comes back and I react a little more hotly than I should for no reason. I have cats that, like your dogs, even if the anger is not directed anywhere near them, they get scared. Seeing that pulls me out real quick and I’ll calm down if only just to calm them, then give then scritches and pats to let them know it’s okay and they’re safe. So I’d probably say that even just having them around has given me a little accountability to help as well and made it easier to avoid. Say I’m having one of those days where I’m just clumsy and uncoordinated and keep dropping or breaking things. I get real close, but my reaction will immediately be to think about making sure they don’t get upset. I think it helps over-wright that anger conditioning with conditioning myself to focus on something else.

So the conclusion I’ve come to, literally just now while typing all this since I haven’t given it a ton of active thought before, is that the conditioning to that reaction has to be broken, and that’s usually easier by replacing it so you don’t even go to anger, but to something else every time. As every therapist I’ve ever been to says, you also can’t feel shame or upset with yourself for the anger. It’s a thing that you want to work on and the bet way to fix it is to dispassionately view it and work on it. Beating yourself up will only make it worse.

It also certainly doesn’t help me remembering which is which when in Outer WILDS you explore different worlds and in Outer WORLDS the tutorial area is kind of an overgrown wilds in which you explore very few worlds. When I have to talk about either one of them I just say “You know, the one with the crazy gravity physics and planets” or “You know, the one that’s basically just Firefly the video game.”

For me it’s definitely an RP choice. I don’t always choose one or the other, but in games that give character creation options I tend to go for a quick “non-canon” play test to get a feel for the game and setting and get an idea of how I want to play it. Then I start a new file and create a character to fit that. Sometimes I go for a lithe rogue or a buff fighter, and the gender usually depends on either how I’m feeling or possible story/world stuff that makes it fit better, or sometimes just something interesting. Like in early Cyberpunk there was a glitch where you could start with a male character, then switch some settings and you’d get the female options but it would keep the original genitalia, so I played through as a trans woman because it wasn’t something I’d done before and it was interesting and fit well into the setting. It didn’t change anything in the game and I kept my character clothed so you never saw her hanging dong. But then I hit the story with the trans woman NPC and my V found a friend who they could connect with a little better. It was a fun role-play opportunity and I felt like it helped my connect to the game and the world even better when my avatar wasn’t just a puppet I used to interact with the game. Even in games like the Witcher where you’re given a named character, my Geralt always developed his own personality. I once accidentally sold all my boots and didn’t realize for a few days that he was running around without shoes. When I noticed it immediately became part of his personality that he doesn’t wear shoes. He like feeling the grass when he fights and he’s more connected with nature. It kinda fit with the default personality but I leaned heavy into the more nature-focused choices where possible and it changed how I played.

Though I’m probably not an average case-study. I tend to eschew gender norms while identifying as a straight cis guy. I wear what I want, paint my nails or wear makeup if I’m feeling it. And I do lean heavy into the single player RPG games and avoid MOBAs or shooters. I think I’ve mostly just been playing DnD in all my video games, lol.

Speaking of DnD, my BG3 playthrough started with a female Drow monk because I haven’t played any of that in DnD before, but as I played I knew I wanted a rogue so I restarted and as I built it I started with a human male but ended up with a Gith male rogue because I liked the look a bit more for it and knowing what little I did about the Gith in the opening it would be fun RP. But in my head, he’s not from a creche but was lost as a small Gith and raised in some small village by human parents. So he doesn’t fit in with the Gith he meets but also faces the fear that most people in the world experience when they see him. It just adds so much more depth to the game when they have their own personality.

Some doctors can be real shitty like that sometimes. The medical community’s understanding of ADHD has really evolved a lot over the past couple decades, but a lot of people are still stuck in the mindset that it’s mostly in kids or that if you’re managing your life then it’s not worth worrying about. The good news is you can bypass them! Typically a good doctor will send you to a therapist for an eval, so you can just find your own to do the test. It usually takes longer to get an appointment, but if you can get with a psychiatrist and not a psychologist you don’t even need to go back to a doc for meds. Psychology today’s website is a pretty good starting point to find someone in your area that focuses on ADHA, and possibly even adults with ADHD. The diagnosis takes some time and often finding the right meds can be a long journey sometimes, but when you find what works it can be life changing.