I cannot think of a better argument against Return-To-Office mandates than this positively gruesome article.
The cleaned-up TL;DR version is that a worker died in her cubicle and none of her co-workers noticed for a couple of work days. Which kind of gives the lie to the whole, "Workers are more productive in the office because they can easily collaborate," thing.
EDIT: Plus, if I don't have to go to the office, I don't have to wear clothes!
I saw an article (or was that a YT video) title regarding this but haven't read yet.
Of course in my case, working from home means my body might not be found for a few weeks until my bosses notice that I haven't done my things for some time, and really try to contact me.
EDIT: Plus, if I don't have to go to the office, I don't have to wear clothes!
And it will make mortuary workers' job easier!
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Cubicals are just factory farms for people.
I cannot think of a better argument against Return-To-Office mandates than this positively gruesome article.
Now I imagine a worker asking to work remotely from home, having been denied and the suing the company claiming it is a work-related emotional harassment to make them work in place where a person died.
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Speaking of something that is neither doomy nor gloomy, anyone who happens to be on Instagram should check out officialstickreviews. Top-tier content.
It strikes me that my mother didn't say anything about the drunk driver who killed my uncle, even whether they're alive. And I think maybe I want it to stay like that? Like, yea I think drunk drivers and drivers who kill need to face serious consequences, but I also think all our justice system does is inflict pain for pain's sake without ever solving the underlying problem, and this happened in Texas, where the justice is particularly harsh if you do get convicted, but where this sort of crime is taken less seriously. So either the culprit gets off without meaningful punishment, or the punishment is meaningless cruelty that accomplishes nothing. Assuming they even survived the crash.
Do I really want to know which of the three options it ends up being? What good does that do me? And there's that inborn "I want revenge" instinct, and maybe the best way to manage that is to say I don't want to know who did this, or what gets done to them, because it's pretty hard to maintain that rage at a hypothetical person I know nothing about?
Oh my god. I am so sorry. That is truly horrific.
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spoilers and disclaimers have often served to soften or deflect displeasure. they also help with "wall-o'-text" reduction.
a less sanitized venue might be a good venture for several of us. the forums are "hall monitored", and PMs are too limited.
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spoilers and disclaimers have often served to soften or deflect displeasure. they also help with "wall-o'-text" reduction.
** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **spoilers and disclaimers have often served to soften or deflect displeasure. they also help with "wall-o'-text" reduction.
** spoiler omitted **
"As iron sharpens iron, . . . ."
and as for Fakebook -- i haven't signed in since Sept of '16. i don't miss it, and don't want it. i much prefer Discord.
that's a good line, TOZ. pretty funny.
certainly reads as a "not interested" vote. coulda just said that, rather than decrying the metaphorical language.
another good line.
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No one wants their iron sharpened when it's not meant to cut anything.
You turn ONE snowsled into flying guillotine and you never hear the end of it...
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it was the dulled mower blade that got me the most grief. lol
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@Limeylongears and NobodysHome: if you guys like, we can discuss more about Fighting Fantasy. :-)LOL. I know absolutely nothing whatsoever about it. But considering I'm doing my best to collect Final Fantasy I-XIV so I can play them in full in order once I retire, I totally understand wanting to see full rereleases of classic games.
I’m really terrible at explaining, so I will provide a link here.
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Good news - Knuckles' groin surgery was entirely successful.
I got the job of repairing my stepson's plush toy. Since it was lying in a crumpled heap on the living room floor shortly afterwards, I expect I'll have to do so again shortly.
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This afternoon, we had the first meeting of this year's middle school debate club. I'm the faculty sponsor again. This year's very broad topic is intellectual property rights, so the school dad who serves as the club instructor (he's also a Federal appellate court public defender) and I decided to kick things off with a survey of famous sampling cases in hip-hop, from De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising to Jay-Z's Ghetto Anthem/Hard Knock Life.
Which, coming from 1989 and 1998, was ancient history to these kids (they recognized exactly none of the samples in the De La Soul video we played them, and they weren't exactly obscure).
But it was so much fun and it got the kids engaged.
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"Is that classical music?"
This afternoon, we had the first meeting of this year's middle school debate club. I'm the faculty sponsor again. This year's very broad topic is intellectual property rights, so the school dad who serves as the club instructor (he's also a Federal appellate court public defender) and I decided to kick things off with a survey of famous sampling cases in hip-hop, from De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising to Jay-Z's Ghetto Anthem/Hard Knock Life.
Which, coming from 1989 and 1998, was ancient history to these kids (they recognized exactly none of the samples in the De La Soul video we played them, and they weren't exactly obscure).
But it was so much fun and it got the kids engaged.
I still wonder if the right decision was made there.
Bad music is universal.
It seems that I played all the best parts of Far Cry 6 during the free play time last year. What I am getting now is mostly repetitive mopping up with some occasional nice, but rather short story quest.
I just got asked to be the best man at my friend's wedding. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Anyone have any experience with this?
I just got asked to be the best man at my friend's wedding. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Anyone have any experience with this?
You probably will need to make a speech/toast to the married couple. It’s good to put some humor in there.
You're very likely also in charge of planning the bachelor party. And making sure the groom shows up looking his best and photo-ready for the big day, in case he overindulges the night before.
The best man has it easy. The maid of honor is the pharmacist and is usually in charge of the valium.
If the bride does not cancel the wedding the bachelor party was insufficiently wild.
...or just throw one like mine.
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If the bride does not cancel the wedding the bachelor party was insufficiently wild.
... said the party's druid.
What is he supposed to do? Cast mass polymorph at the guys?
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Do you know the bride? Does she has a sense of humor? This might decide if you should listen to our advice or do the exact opposite...
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I just got asked to be the best man at my friend's wedding. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Anyone have any experience with this?
I have been a Best Man at a wedding, and the fundamentals are: you hold on to the rings until the appropriate time, give a speech at the reception and just keep the groom calm (granted, I was the one that needed calming down).
If the bride does not cancel the wedding the bachelor party was insufficiently wild.... said the party's druid.
What is he supposed to do? Cast mass polymorph at the guys?
They didn't like the idea at first but once I pointed out how little alchohol it took a raccoon to get drunk.....
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Fantasy Monster: Bonsai treant
A little tree familiar.
You're very likely also in charge of planning the bachelor party. And making sure the groom shows up looking his best and photo-ready for the big day, in case he overindulges the night before.
keep the Batchelor party a week before the wedding. Do not do it the night before.
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You always love, "Humans are the only animal who <insert horrible behavior here>," statements. Clearly people who have never interacted with wildlife.
Last night GothBard heard some plaintive noises and growling from outside, and was worried that our resident skunk was in danger, so I went to check it out.
There at the food bowl was the biggest raccoon I've ever seen; its shoulders came above my knee even when it was on all fours. Circling around it, trying to get at the food, was a smaller raccoon, whining and pleading and huffing. But big raccoon was having none of it, hogged all the food, and left smaller raccoon hungry, completely contrary to all our other yard visitors' behavior.
Yep. There are selfish jerk animals, too.
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From one of the wolf centers.
"We're not supposed to have favorites or anthropomorphize them. But that one is, in technical terms, a bit of a twit"
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Captain Yesterday's brothers (usually at family gatherings, separately): We hated that rooster we had, Mister Macho, he always attacked us!
Captain Yesterday (who began to wake up early to put corn in his brother's jeans before they woke up): I loved that rooster!
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Sorry for taking a bit to respond to these, I'm still just kind of confused, but I do appreciate the advice:
I just got asked to be the best man at my friend's wedding. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Anyone have any experience with this?
Addendum: I've got a lot of time to plan for this-- the wedding is tentatively planned for August 2025.
I asked my dad for some advice, and he said, and I quote, "I got asked to be a best man once, but I really didn't do a good job." He did not elaborate.
You probably will need to make a speech/toast to the married couple. It’s good to put some humor in there.
You're very likely also in charge of planning the bachelor party. And making sure the groom shows up looking his best and photo-ready for the big day, in case he overindulges the night before.
These first two were what I was afraid of-- first off, while I don't have a problem talking in front of people, I'm not really all that funny. When I try to be funny on purpose, I get dead air.
Second, I've never planned a party in my life. I don't even go to parties. What happens?
Not super worried about my friend overindulging or not being ready to go. Between the two of us, he's always been the gregarious, well-groomed one, and I've always been the train wreck.
Do you know the bride? Does she has a sense of humor? This might decide if you should listen to our advice or do the exact opposite...
I don't know her well, or at all, really-- the extent of our interactions so far has been her saying "hi" to me while my friend had me on speakerphone. I should be meeting her in person when I head back east for hunting season, though.
keep the Bachelor party a week before the wedding. Do not do it the night before.
This I'll keep in mind, definitely a sound plan.
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A day or two ago a billionaire was whining about several European countries passing "right to ignore" laws, where employees cannot be punished for ignoring work calls outside of working hours. He screamed, "What about emergencies?"
Um... have you ever heard of "on-call" employees? Do you know what that means? Did you know you had to pay them to be on-call? And yes, forcing employees to work for you without paying them is called "slavery", and has been illegal in most countries for over 150 years.
This mini-tirade brought to you by an example from GothBard's (typically excellent) company: They scheduled her for a 7:00 am meeting this morning, outside of her normal work hours. She didn't sleep well, knowing she had to wake up an hour early. She got up jittery and unhappy; it was an important meeting and due to lack of sleep she was in no shape for it. And then she went out, signed in... and they'd rescheduled it to the middle of the day next week... an hour before it started.
So she lost a night's sleep, underwent an inordinate amount of stress, and started working outside of work hours, all for a meeting that got canceled.
Such foolery is why I'm fully in support of, "You don't have to show up outside of working hours without full compensation," laws.
A day or two ago a billionaire was whining about several European countries passing "right to ignore" laws, where employees cannot be punished for ignoring work calls outside of working hours. He screamed, "What about emergencies?"
Um... have you ever heard of "on-call" employees? Do you know what that means? Did you know you had to pay them to be on-call? And yes, forcing employees to work for you without paying them is called "slavery", and has been illegal in most countries for over 150 years.
This mini-tirade brought to you by an example from GothBard's (typically excellent) company: They scheduled her for a 7:00 am meeting this morning, outside of her normal work hours. She didn't sleep well, knowing she had to wake up an hour early. She got up jittery and unhappy; it was an important meeting and due to lack of sleep she was in no shape for it. And then she went out, signed in... and they'd rescheduled it to the middle of the day next week... an hour before it started.
So she lost a night's sleep, underwent an inordinate amount of stress, and started working outside of work hours, all for a meeting that got canceled.
Such foolery is why I'm fully in support of, "You don't have to show up outside of working hours without full compensation," laws.
Charge them for it.
Charge them for it.A day or two ago a billionaire was whining about several European countries passing "right to ignore" laws, where employees cannot be punished for ignoring work calls outside of working hours. He screamed, "What about emergencies?"
Um... have you ever heard of "on-call" employees? Do you know what that means? Did you know you had to pay them to be on-call? And yes, forcing employees to work for you without paying them is called "slavery", and has been illegal in most countries for over 150 years.
This mini-tirade brought to you by an example from GothBard's (typically excellent) company: They scheduled her for a 7:00 am meeting this morning, outside of her normal work hours. She didn't sleep well, knowing she had to wake up an hour early. She got up jittery and unhappy; it was an important meeting and due to lack of sleep she was in no shape for it. And then she went out, signed in... and they'd rescheduled it to the middle of the day next week... an hour before it started.
So she lost a night's sleep, underwent an inordinate amount of stress, and started working outside of work hours, all for a meeting that got canceled.
Such foolery is why I'm fully in support of, "You don't have to show up outside of working hours without full compensation," laws.
Exactly. I understand that multinational corporations will have meetings at stupid times; GothBard's team spans 3 continents. But if you're on the continent where you need to show up for an hour outside of normal work hours, you need ample notice (at least a week) and you should be paid for that hour, because taking an hour of your normal work time off doesn't make up for it.
And because I have to tirade about this one:
As I think I've mentioned, we're in a campaign where you can't proceed without archaeology and trapfinding skills, and Player A agreed to take ALL of those skills, then when his PC got killed brought in an intentionally unskilled INT and CHA dumped barbarian. Shiro describes his personality perfectly: "No matter what he's doing, he's a solo player who just happens to have other players in the same game with him." So he didn't like being an intellectual and cost us our knowledge character.
Which led to an incident a few weeks ago that I didn't write up, but because of his behavior and our lack of knowledge we ended up one CON save away from a party wipe. (My fairy spent days stealing the other PCs' remains and getting them restored, all while hoping her Stealth rolls held out long enough for her to get all of them.)
Then came last night. As a grave cleric, once per short rest I can make the next hit on a creature do double damage. I don't get a choice; it's always "the next hit". So we were in a particularly nasty fight, but we were just wrapping it up and there was a seriously-wounded bad guy next to Player A's barbarian and also in a damage field, so it was pretty obvious that with the combined damage it was going to go down. On the other side, flanking the barbarian, was an unwounded bad guy outside of the damage field. So I cursed the fully-healthy one to wind up for my 7d6 blasting spell.
And of course Player A turned around and said, "I attack the unwounded one." He's a terrible build and does the second-worst damage in the party. At 5th level, he turned around and did... 10 whole points of damage to the unwounded one. Sure, it doubled to 20, but that wasn't enough to drop it. So Player A's character took a ton of damage from being flanked and nothing dropped that round. We had angry words about poor tactical choices, and I got the classic, "It's what my character would have done!"
Yes, your character somehow forgot the laws of physics in this universe, somehow recognized an ability that I'd never used before and that I didn't tell you what it did, and decided to do something tactically stupid just so YOUR damage numbers would be higher.
So I was still seething two fights later when we were fighting a boss and her minions. I cursed the boss with the double-damage curse. And Player B popped up and shot her with a 1d8+1 arrow. The 5 points got doubled to 10.
At that point Shiro said, "Well, I'm sorry, NobodysHome, that's a great ability but it's totally useless if the people around you are stupid."
In front of the group.
And Player B didn't figure out that Shiro meant HIM.
So we have one player who's so selfish he's willing to destroy the campaign just so he can play what he wants to. We have another player who pays so little attention that even after an argument about not taking pointless hits on cursed opponents he did it anyway, then when he saw the damage get doubled said, "Oops. I didn't know."
In a campaign very intentionally designed to kill you if you aren't extremely careful and clever, I don't see us getting much farther.
This is when I start hoping the party wipe does happen.
Yeah, it's sad. When I game, I want to be in a group where everyone's working cooperatively to achieve the same thing. Apparently that makes me a rare minority. In the kids' game one of the players chose to be a psychotic gnome who committed murders in town and framed the other players so they had to clear their names and then capture him and have him executed. In the campaign Shiro's playing in one of the players played a goblin who poisoned the wells of a paladin outpost in the wilderness and killed them all, leading to the party being wanted for murdering paladins -- not a great place to be if you want to be able to shop in town.
I don't understand the appeal of being a murder/mayhem psychopath who screws over the other players and derails the campaign all in the name of "fun", nor the players who don't simply kill said troublemaker. I'm in a different boat because even though the player's being an idiot, he hasn't done anything "evil" so I can't justify murdering him... yet.
Wow... and I didn't think it could get worse.
Apparently, according to Shiro, Player A doesn't like playing low-level casters so he intentionally got his wizard killed so he could bring in a barbarian, and as soon as we get to the portion of the campaign that needs a wizard he's going to intentionally get his barbarian killed so he can bring in a wizard.
And who cares how hard that makes things on the rest of us in the meantime?
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I'm going to suggest that character and party comp isn't your problem here.
Agreed. But I'm the "new kid" in this group and if I walk the campaign dies, so it's basically "ignore him". No buffing. No healing. No flanking. No assisting. He wants to play a solo game? I'll let him play a solo game. And I think we'll all be the happier for it.
EDIT: Other than him, I'm really enjoying the campaign. It's well-written, well-balanced, and requires a lot of thought and ingenuity.
I have a question regarding business English, because I notice a dissonance between what chatGPT is suggesting to me and what I can find via google search. Maybe someone here happens to know something about... Or not.
ChatGPT claims such contract is called an "executive contract", but when I google that term, the only results I find are references to "executive employment contract", aka, contract between a company and individual regulating the individual's role as an executive officer...
When I asked ChatGPT it stated that it is an second meaning of "executive contract", depending on the context, but ChatGPT is known to hallucinate things.
On the other hand, Google search function is growing s$!+tier with each passing year, and I know it can lie a lot by omission.
Earlier today, it used a literal translation of Polish term when referring to radio relays and only when asked about that corrected the translation to radio relays.
Notably, the "executive contract" would sort-of-fit linguistically, because Polish term for that contract does refer to executing (steps) of the framework agreement: "kontrakt wykonawczy", but so would execution contract, and possibly implementation contract?
I'm afraid I don't deal with legal, so I'd just be Googling too.