Jumping off the post above post above, something that mildly annoys me is when claim something is a “poor value” without taking quality into consideration at all. I don’t just mean handmade “artisanal” items; I’ve seem Yelp reviews for national chains like Shake Shack claiming their burgers are a poor value simply because they cost twice as much as what you’d pay for the same quantity of food at McDonald’s. On a purely price per unit basis that might be true, but Shake Shack’s food is higher quality that McDonald’s, too, and that’s worth paying for IMO.
The usage of “Resolved” to begin the titles of debates; sometimes seen in debates threads here. Looking it up it’s actually short for “Be it resolved”, but on the face of it it always looked to me like somebody arrogantly declaring the result ahead of time by fiat.
Always gave me the urge to yell “No, it isn’t resolved”.
Ha! Yes! I was working in San Francisco, and after a nap on the train, I needed some serious caffeine. So I tried the various coffee places around or on the way to work. looking for the best Mocha.
The best was a local small chain of IIRC three shops, followed closely by Peets (in fact the coffee was about the same, but no lines at the small local “italian style” chain) . Then the bakery, then Starbux. The very worst was a family owned place that styled itself the “anti-starbux”, the coffee was not better than Starbux , the prices were higher, and the service was damn rude.
Yep.
I’ve known since my school days that it’s a term of art in the formal debate game. But it always struck me as assuming the affirmative conclusion and asking the other team to fight uphill for the rest of the game.
They ought to use “Is it true/false that: …” instead. Or some other pithier phrasing that is still clearly neutral on the truth of the proposition.
A local coffee shop opened a second location in the downtown area of the next city over. The owner stated (in a newspaper article) that he is not trying to put other local coffee shops out of business - he wants to “put Starbucks out of business”. I think if your business is good enough, you won’t feel a need to attack Starbucks.
You’re right, of course.
Also: Not knowing the coffee shop owner at all, I don’t imagine he’d be terribly upset if he put a couple of other “local coffee shops” out of business…
Here’s one:
When I have to give someone a phone number and it’s like I’m trying to tell them who’s on first base.
Me: “OK, the number is 239-555-9999.”
Them: “2…”
Me: “2… 3… 9… 5… 5… 5…”
Them: “3…”
Me: “9… 5… 5… 5…”
Them: “Wait. Let me get a pencil so I can write it down…”
Me: “OK.”
Them (eventually): “2…”
I’m with you all the way!
Or how about when you say the first number, and they say “uh-huh” at the same moment you say the next number, so they miss it? 
Arthur on The King of Queens, dictating a phone number as Doug dials it:
“Four [beep]…six [beep]…teen…”
I call those Exxon lights. You’re going to burn gas speeding through it or idling while waiting for it to change – it doesn’t care which.
When my wife and I first married, we moved to this small-ish town. Every year, they had a “founders day” in the local park; a nice little affair — local bands, funnel cake, the usual stuff. And a fortune teller; someone’s grandma would dress up in skirts and babushka and tell little kids things like You’ll meet a handsome man some day and get married and have a dozen kids (Gross! No way!). Well, the local Catholic church got wind of this and would have none of it; they browbeat the organizers and the local newspaper about witchcraft being practiced at the event and eventually the fortune teller grandma was given the boot. The next year, there was a religious fortune teller at the event. And they charged for the service. And kept the money! Going on thirty years later and I still fume.
Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.
I’m trying to figure out which type of religion would endorse fortune-telling. I’ve never been a devotee of a religion so can’t give an example. Asking AI only seems to give vague answers.
That sounds awesome. It prompted in me what I think is a great idea. Why not have a negative/insulting fortune teller?
Link to thread game.
mmm
This actually happened to my sister years ago. She lives in south Florida, and I was paying a visit. We had taken a trip down to Key West, and walking along Duval Street, she saw a fortune teller sitting at a little booth along the side of the street. She said, I think it’ll be fun to get my fortune told! I said go ahead, waste your money if you want, I’ll wait.
So, yeah, you assume a fortune teller, especially one operating in a fun, touristy area like Key West, is going to tell you only positive, uplifting fortunes. But 10-15 minutes later she comes back looking shaken, like she’d seen a ghost. She said the teller told her:
- She would have a miscarriage (she and my BIL I think had been trying to get pregnant for awhile at the time, so far unsuccessfully).
- Her husband would eventually cheat on her.
- A third equally awful thing I forget.
It was like a Stephen King short story. “Hey, I’m going to get my fortune told— it’ll be fun!” And then…
Here’s one closer to home for all of us here.
When two Dopers get into a tit for tat about misunderstanding each other’s criticism of each other’s position. With every shorter quotes and rebuttals until they’d throwing individual words at each other. But with ever more of them in each post. Soo each post is a page long and almost content free except for the self-righteous vitriol.
If there was a button to mute the participants for that thread I’d sure push it. Better yet, one to summon a Mod in real time to give them both thread timeouts for 48 hours.
Yikes, that is not at all what I had in mind.
More along the lines of:
“You will drop your next ice cream cone onto the pavement.”
mmm
(I did not read through this thread before posting here. So if my post duplicates someone else’s…Tough Bananas, King Kong.)
I’m not a guy who enjoys talking on the phone a great deal, and one of the boons of the Information Age is that email has largely supplanted phone conversations as the main method of communication in my line of work. Occasionally, though, I have to speak to a client in Real Time, so I call them. They might not be in or otherwise available to speak to me, and I accept that.
But two scenarios occur with annoying regularity:
- The voice mailbox on their mobile phone has not been set up and cannot take a message.
- The voice mailbox on their mobile phone is full and cannot take a message.
The first one…it takes five minutes, if that, to set up your voice mail. These days, they don’t even require you to come up with a clever greeting – just speak your name and the phone will do the rest. But you can’t even take the time to do that??
As for the second…how many people are calling you and leaving messages that you cannot keep up with listening and then deleting messages? Or are you just the same sort of lazy slob behind Door #1? I have no idea of the maximum capacity in (I assume) megabytes, but I would think it would take a least a dozen messages of an average length of one minute to fill up a voice mailbox. Why would you save all of those?
I have received 149 voicemails on my phone since 2019. 134 of those are spam. 5 are from my doctor reminding me of appointments. The rest were from our town’s emergency notification system. All of which (doctor and EMS) were followed up by texts.
Voicemail is simply not a form of communication humans use in my experience. My mother, who is in her eighties does not leave messages.
Psychic Irene Hughes once gave me an extremely negative reading at a psychic fair at my college. I happened to be sitting at the table where she then came and set up, so when she offered a reading, I said yes. I assumed she gave me a terrible fortune because I was annoying, but everything she said came to pass that year. I blame her.
You could try reporting it as a form of hijack; or possibly for the vitriol.
Well, she’s probably never going to get ahold of me (not that I think she’s trying to.) I get way too many scam calls to run and pick up the phone, and the phone number most people not close to me get doesn’t take texts. Leave a damn voice mail, it’ll take you less than a minute.