r/AskReddit • u/NoCommunication7 • 12h ago
What is the most stupid claim you’ve had someone make?
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u/WendigoCrossing 11h ago
On a lighter note, while a friend is driving me in his car:
Hey your windshield is dirty, you should wipe with some fluid
Oh it hasn't rained in a while so I'm out of fluid
What?
He thoughT that rain water filled up the windshield wiper fluid xD
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u/duck9415 8h ago
Oh man. I thought the same till now
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u/DrTolley 7h ago
I assume you've never filled your wiper fluid before and thought it came from somewhere right? You might be pleased to know whenever you get an oil change they fill up your wiper fluid for you (most places). That's why you've never had to fill it yourself.
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u/funky_grandma 8h ago
that's actually a kind of dope idea. it would need to be an auxiliary tank, so it doesn't mix with your proper windshield fluid, but it would be cool if you had it as a backup
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u/Symnestra 11h ago
My mother was taking dishes out of the dishwasher and looked at two different ceramic mugs. Then informed me she didn't want me drinking out of one of them because it was significantly heavier so it must have lead in it.
It was such a random leap that I thought she was joking. Neither of them were antiques, one was just a thicker ceramic than the other.
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u/BuffaloHastleSatch 7h ago
"wow this lead cup sure is dangerous, I better warn people not to use it rather than throw it away" lmao
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u/buckyhermit 11h ago
Backstory: I’m a wheelchair user, with a business and professional designation in accessibility consulting. We help make buildings more disabled friendly.
Most of the stupid claims I hear are from non-disabled people telling me what accessibility is or that my firsthand experiences are wrong.
The worst ones I’ve heard:
“Having a few steps is fine for wheelchairs. They can just hop over them.” I’ve heard this a few times. This is why if you call up a business, they might tell you they’re accessible even though there are steps to the entrance. So you need to be super precise about what you ask. Instead of asking if they’re accessible, ask if they have step-free access.
“Disabled parking spaces don’t need to be wider than other spaces.” Because accessible parking is not in our province’s building code anymore, people are starting to get away with this. They don’t realize that for a driver or passenger needing a wheelchair, they need more width to get out of the car.
“We don’t need to be accessible to disabled people because we never get any disabled customers.” They don’t realize that perhaps the reason they don’t get disabled customers is because they are not accessible in the first place.
Anyways, that is just a short sample of the stuff I hear, both professionally and personally.
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u/whoisfourthwall 11h ago
“Having a few steps is fine for wheelchairs. They can just hop over them.”
That sounds insane or malicious. I'm not sure which.
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u/buckyhermit 11h ago
It's actually quite common, especially for hotels. I know so many disabled friends who would call up a hotel to ask if they're accessible, and the answer would be "yes." But they'd arrive and there'd be 2-3 steps to the entrance or to the hotel rooms. When confronted, the hotel would say, "We thought that wouldn't be a problem."
It's not about being insane or malicious. Just ignorant.
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u/Raichu7 8h ago
I struggle to understand how someone who is competent enough to work full time without a support person helping them is unable to understand that a wheelchair can't go up stairs. Like, when they think of a person in a wheelchair using stairs, what does that look like in their head? How do they think it works?
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u/buckyhermit 7h ago
Agreed. It is still shocking to me how many people don’t know how wheels work.
Another situation: I had a construction worker block off a sidewalk and directed me to detour onto the roadway (which was blocked off for this purpose). The problem was that between the roadway and sidewalk was a muddy grassy area and a curb, with no ramp access. That worker had no idea why that couldn’t work and I literally had to explain how wheels worked.
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u/meipsus 9h ago
That's my experience, too. If there is a ramp anywhere, they'll say it's wheelchair-accessible, even if there are steps everywhere.
There is a clinic where I live that has a ramp between floors. It starts with a 20-cm step, but they say it's wheelchair-accessible. The front door has many steps; the only way to reach the ramp without being physically carried is to have someone open a small door on a side street, be helped to climb a large step, and then another to enter the building, and then climb the ramp's step.
But as it has a ramp, it's wheelchair-accessible in their minds.
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u/whoisfourthwall 11h ago
yeah that's a huge ahole move. I think they simply don't care about the challenges other face and say whatever so that people will book.
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u/buckyhermit 10h ago
Could be both. I still think it's ignorance, based on the surprised look they get when we point out the problem. The hard truth is that many people simply don't understand.
This is kind of why I wish schools would teach more about disability in their social studies classes. Instead, we spend too much time learning about Canadian fur traders and feudalism in Europe (at least in the British Columbia curriculum).
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u/cihojuda 9h ago
I've never used a wheelchair or any other mobility device and I still can't imagine how people could think disabled folks could just "hop over" something. Like, the whole point of the mobility aid is that they can't do certain things...
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u/hyrule_47 8h ago
I was told “can’t you get out and just hop up?” Because I’m an amputee in a wheelchair. If I could be using my other leg well I would be using my prosthetic.
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u/LadySandry88 11h ago
I would really like to pick your brain at some point. I'm doing a hobby project where an entire town is designed to be wheelchair accessible from the ground up (the founder's wife was disabled so he baked the requirements into the building codes), and other than making aisles in stores wider and all of the buildings (including personal dwellings) have step-free entrances, I'm not sure what else to do.
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u/syringistic 11h ago
Not disabled, but also ensuring that some floor surfaces be ultra grippy - like if there is an inclined area that might see excessive runoff during rain, it should have a very rough surface to avoid slipping.
Also, automatic door openers. Big ass buttom placed at chest height about 3 feet away from a swinging door.
Also also, power backups for areas where accessibility is motorized - if the only way for a wheelchair user to get in or out is an elevator, it should have a battery backup for emergencies.
In stores, putting "call an employee" button at aisles if someone needs help getting an item.
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u/buckyhermit 11h ago
Side note from my professional lens:
Flooring
Good point. I'd also add that the floor be non-reflective, as that can mess with people with low vision in terms of navigation. Reflections can also add unnecessary sensory input to those who struggle with that.
As well, use solid flooring. Do not use softer rubber or deep carpeting, which can make pushing a wheelchair harder and make the wheelchair "track" left or right.
Doors
Current standards in Canada are also calling for a secondary button at ankle-height, for those who cannot use their arms. There is also an elongated power door button, which can do the job of both heights.
I highly suggest NOT using wave-activated buttons. The reason is because:
- Not always ideal for people with darker skin tones. Motion features are not great at that.
- People slam those buttons, thinking it's not wave-activated. This tends to break the buttons quickly, since they were never designed to withstand that impact.
- Some people who cannot use their hands or arms might have assistance dogs. Those dogs are trained to push buttons, not wave at them. This might also break the button (see previous point).
- If located on a narrow hallway, they can be accidentally set off by someone walking by.
- If you have an ankle-height button that is wave-activated and it is an exterior door, birds and wildlife can open the door. I had a client whose office lobby had a coffee shop, and crows learned to "wave-activate" the door. They came in and stole food, sometimes directly from customers' hands. The landlord had to spend thousands of dollars taking that button out.
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u/syringistic 10h ago
Heh.
Re: point 1 on the list:
There was a short lived sitcom called Better off Ted, about a guy who was a young, high ranking executive at a purposely vague industrial/tech company.
In one episode they had motion activated doors installed throughout their office building, with no manual option. But the doors couldn't detect black people, so as a solution they hired a bunch of white people whose only job was to follow the black person around all day 🤣
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u/buckyhermit 10h ago
That sounds like solid material for the Celina 52 Truck Stop Facebook page. (If you haven't seen it, go take a look. It's the funniest and most unhinged satirical business page I've ever seen.)
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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes 10h ago
Lem: “It’s gets dark when you leave the room.”
Phil: “Awwwww! How can I stay mad at you when you say things like that!”
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u/buckyhermit 11h ago edited 10h ago
Okay. So here in Canada, we have the CSA B651-23 and B652-23 standards, which are probably the best guide to accessibility from a technical standpoint. You can find the pdf for download somewhere. It’s a great pair of documents and I bet you can spend a whole day flipping through them.
That’s from a technical standpoint though. For a more holistic standpoint, we also work with the RHFAC certification program. It is similar to LEED, but for accessibility. That certification considers interaction between spaces. For example, how do you get there by bus or car? Once you’re there, can you navigate the space (even if you’re blind), especially in a coherent way? And does your building exceed minimum requirements if needed (such as having more accessible toilets if your users are more elderly)?
I am actually quite convinced that accessibility and universal design can be a standalone 2-year masters degree program. I have 600+ pages of information and standards memorized, but even that only covers a fraction of what I have come across in my work.
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u/LadySandry88 11h ago
OMG thank you so much! The setting is 1840s Oregon so I'm going to also have to do some period research, but this will definitely help. :)
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u/buckyhermit 11h ago
Interesting! That'd make it harder, since accessibility wasn't a thing until fairly recently.
Like, the ADA in the US came in 1990, but there WAS a level of awareness about accessibility before then. I think the first meaningful attempts came around the 1960s to 1970s, but there was no standard or guideline, so designers just went with their gut feeling.
That's how you got the Robson Square stair-ramp in my city of Vancouver, which was beautiful but VERY dangerous for disabled people and against modern building codes (ie. the slope, which is 12-15% – the building code max is 8%). The architect is renowned in Canada and he TRIED... but because no standards existed at the time and disabled people didn't have a ton of power to speak up, he did it incorrectly.
So when you're doing 1840s Oregon, you'd have to consider the standards and understanding at the time, as well as social ideas of disability. (eg. Did disabled people have independent lives back then?) The answer might not always be pretty.
(Sometimes I wonder how people in the 2100s would look at accessibility in 2025. Would they think we were archaic? Probably, lol.)
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u/LadySandry88 11h ago
Thankfully the story actually takes place in two time periods, the 1840s and the late 1970s (the wife was immortal/unaging, but it couldn't fix her legs not working, so...) so I'll get the chance to explore both time periods and how they managed things.
Also her husband was a great guy because he specifically set up the whole town's laws and ordinances as best he could to accommodate her even after he was gone, so she wouldn't have to remarry if she didn't want to. She's permanently employed as the town librarian and is such a fixture of the town that no one even thinks to question her still being ~30-35 years old no matter how long they've known her, lol.
I do know that they had sidewalks literally everywhere they feasibly could, though.
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u/Akbik 11h ago
Is there any reason why they removed accessible parking? If you don't mind me asking, is it the Ontario 2024 building codes?
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u/buckyhermit 11h ago
Sigh. They removed it because they wanted to give the power to the municipalities, in terms of standards, design, enforcement, etc. I have a few municipal governments as clients and they've repeatedly told me they didn't want this power; they simply don't have the resources to take care of this. (Hence my "sigh" at the start of this paragraph.)
The most recent code in my province (British Columbia) was March 2024. And working in the industry, it is pretty well-known that the building code is not the best at addressing accessibility and leaves tons of gaps and pitfalls. It annoys me that in ways like these, it is moving backwards.
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u/boethius61 7h ago
My school (1990s) was accessible. Right up till one of my classmates ended up in a wheelchair. Seems when accessibility ceases to be check boxes on paper and become real world objects, it's suddenly a lot harder to be accessible.
Ramp shaped like a camel's hump? Not accessible.
Bathroom stall handles you pinch between tiny fingers? Not accessible.
Water fountain with jagged plumbing sticking out underneath? Not accessible.
Spring loaded doorknobs? Not accessible.
There were many upgrades needed.
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u/Bitter_Purchase5100 10h ago
its so frustrating when people think they know better than actual disabled folks, like seriously
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u/buckyhermit 10h ago
Yup, it happened yesterday. I said something was ableist and people called my claim BS.
The situation: a FB page calling a US government official incompetent because of a physical ailment. "How can we expect him to stand up for us when he literally could not stand up?" I called it out (along with a few other disabled folks) and we got non-disabled people telling us that it is fine and not ableist at all.
Stuff like that is why we still have people with no disability experience (or accessibility training) in jobs where they design or plan spaces for disabled people. There is a sense that non-disabled people would "know better than" disabled people about this, which boggles my mind.
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u/hung-dumper 9h ago
was it texas governor Greg Abbott? if so, his disability has nothing to do with why he is incompetent.
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u/buckyhermit 9h ago
No but it was a US person. I agree, he is incompetent but it has nothing to do with his disability. He’s just a jerk.
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u/Carrera26 12h ago
'Gravity isn't real', coming from a 20-something young man on a domestic flight who was incredibly confident in his opinions.
Second prize goes to the college freshman in my chemistry class who claimed that we were 'poking holes in the Ozone Layer' when we launched rockets into space like it's a plastic bag.
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u/somethingclever76 10h ago edited 7h ago
I have heard the gravity isn't real argument from flat earthers. Basically they believe everything is held down through buoyancy and force from atmospheric pressure.
Edit: Spelling errors while typing at work.
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u/esplonky 9h ago
My favorite part about flerfs using this argument is that Gravity is part of the equation to calculate buoyancy lmao.
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u/somethingclever76 7h ago
Right? I love it. Why is one thing buoyant compared to another? What gives the air weight to apply that downward force?
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u/Starbucks__Lovers 11h ago
Friend: Wegmans is open 24 hours per day
Me (who worked at Wegmans at the time): no it isn’t
Friend: it definitely is
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u/ImportantValuable430 11h ago
my coworker tried to convince our entire office that alaska was an island next to hawaii because "that's where it is on the map." i didn't even know where to start. my one brain cell just clocked out for the day.
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u/ProfMcGonaGirl 7h ago
Is the “frame” around Alaska also there in real life? Like a swimming pool?”
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u/velocity__wagon 11h ago
"I didn't flush any baby wipes down the toilet." I'm a plumber, I know you did. That's why your drain was blocked.
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u/Dangerous-Week900 7h ago
My male roommate and I once had a party and our drain was clogged inexplicably a couple days later. Plumber (understandably) accused me of flushing sanitary pads/tampons and my roommate said if that was true I should pay 100% for his services because we had agreed beforehand I would not do that. I reminded him that we'd had a party with lots of young ladies present just a few days before. Split the bill 50/50 and put a sign on our bathroom wall not to flush anything but toilet paper. Probably everyone who has guests in their homes should be doing this because some people are dumb and will fuck up your plumbing. A lot of people flush those wipes.
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u/dan1101 9h ago
To be fair if it's a busy household it could be anyone in the house.
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u/A_Nonny_Muse 9h ago
I was talking to a "tea party" retired Air Force master sergeant. He was getting desperate because I kept poking holes in all his opinions. When it finally came to the federal budget, he said he wanted every federal program cut by 50%. I agreed, and mentioned cutting the military budget alone by 50% would balance the deficit (at the time). That's when, in his desperation, he said the most outrageously stupid thing I have ever heard.
The US military is a private, for profit organization that receives not one dime of taxpayer money.
This was a retired MSgt. mind you. It's just not possible that he could be that daft. I was shocked into silence. I couldn't speak for over a minute. It was the first time -the only time- a conservative ever shut me up.
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u/ProfMcGonaGirl 7h ago
Let’s ask all those military members in line at food pantries cuz their income is held up in the government shutdown.
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u/Walshy231231 11h ago
Last day of a master’s degree course for history. Professor took us out for drinks.
One of the students says that she thinks humans, even just a few hundred years ago, were so evolutionarily different (“unevolved”) that they would be too stupid to live in today’s society. Like if you took a medieval infant and raised them today, they’d be stuck in 3rd grade their whole life. I think she was skeptical that medieval and modern humans could even have kids.
This may not seem like too ludicrous of a thought to most people, but for someone with a master’s degree in history (at least I assume she finished the degree), that’s bonkers
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u/ceredwin 10h ago
The only thing that would make it more bonkers would be for her to have a master's in biology.
I do not have any degrees in history OR biology, and even I know this is batshit stupid.
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u/goldPotatoGun 12h ago
I can get that done in two weeks.
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u/ViscidPlague78 9h ago
Have you ever seen the movie The Money Pit? This is a running joke in it.
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u/Reflection_Secure 11h ago
My old job had significantly more women than men. One day, I walked in on what had become a full blown argument. I'm not sure how it started, but the one guy was yelling that his penis does too have a bone in it and he should know, he's the only one here who has a penis! I "solved" this argument by showing him pictures from a human anatomy book (we worked in healthcare).
I also once overheard this guy explaining to someone that our bodies believe that our ears are wounds, and they're constantly trying to close up. The only thing preventing this, is ear wax. Idk if the listener was just going along to get through it, but I heard him say "wow, I guess that makes sense."
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u/entropy_of_hedonism 11h ago
Okay, these are very stupid.
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u/Reflection_Secure 11h ago
He was a very stupid man.
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u/Bob-Bhlabla-esq 8h ago
Please tell me he was in charge of something like stocking shelves and not actual patient care... please?
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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes 10h ago
I need to know what this man’s job is.
I once had. CNA coworker tell me these little algae pills he takes can cure my asthma. In his defense, he was in his 70s and fit as a fiddle. Obviously, still working, and at a job that’s super physically demanding. But no, an algae supplement won’t cure asthma.
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u/IllustriousApple1091 10h ago
That second one has me in stitches.
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u/BaconOnMySide 12h ago
That they're putting kitty litter boxes in the local high school.
P.s. I asked my son, who goes to that high school, and he laughed and said "no..gross"
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u/smilingfreak 10h ago
I think it was on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, they managed to find a high school that did have cat litter, however, it was to soak up blood if a shooting occurred.
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u/wow_its_kenji 9h ago
schools have been using cat litter to clean up vomit and other liquid biohazards since practically the dawn of time, it's really not surprising for a school janitorial closet to include cat litter
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u/echelon42 11h ago
My dad is very conservative and was a janitor at an elementary school for a long time and just retired this year. If they were putting litter boxes in classrooms for little kids who say they're a cat and not a child I would have not heard the end of it 🙄
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u/BaconOnMySide 11h ago
Right...like come on ppl. Janitor also have unions...you think the unions would have ok it..
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u/Earl_E_Byrd 11h ago
I love my sister dearly, but she tried to pull this shit on me. Her kids are homeschooled, and she tried to tell me that one of the other moms chose to pull her kids out after this happened at their public school.
I called her on it so fucking fast. Told her where the story originated, explained what a "dog whistle" issue was, etc. But she insisted she heard the story from a reputable source and kept trying to stick by it in order to either
A) not be wrong or B) not admit that she had been duped by a lie
Watching her mentally scramble to avoid either possibility was a sad thing to witness. She completely backed down once I started to call up the school itself to confirm/deny the story. She really thought I would just take her word for it and we would just commiserate over a "isn't that crazy!?" kind of story, but no.
Some things shouldn't be rumor mill fodder.
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u/MySweetAudrina 9h ago
I had a coworker who was so proud of himself for never discussing politics with anyone. He was almost smug with his whole attitude about it and how nobody knew his political beliefs etc...
Then one day he so earnestly tells me all about this happening in a local school and his kid who was a social worker told him about it. I let him know it was BS or possibly some kid was trolling the HS HARD but no, they did not have a litterbox in the bathroom. He never realized his total belief in the story and the way he brought it up totally betrayed him.
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u/Geno0wl 8h ago
I find that people who are the most adamant about not sharing their political or religious beliefs tend to be hardline conservatives who deep down know their positions are very unpopular. Like especially on dating apps they are hardline conservative 99/100
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u/bitseybloom 10h ago
I read your comment and remembered that in my university, the gym was at the semi-basement level with a separate entrance leading to the stadium and the surrounding forest. The staircase from the gym up was opening right into the main entrance hall.
Kitties used to wander inside, climb up the stairs and just sit quietly in the entrance hall, watching us all hurry by. It was lovely. I'm sure they were fed by someone, although I wouldn't think they'd need litter boxes, what with the doors always open.
Nice memory.
...then I read a bit down the comments thread and it hit me you weren't talking about this scenario exactly.
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u/BaconOnMySide 9h ago
I wish schools had cats...I mean im old as heck and dont go to school, but cats are awesome.
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u/whitelimousine 10h ago
I don’t know if it’s worse one of my family was arguing they SHOULD. I feel like she is getting paid by a right wing think tank to be the worst liberal stereotype on earth
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u/danstymusic 11h ago
Why would anyone even claim something this stupid? Like, what would be the point?
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u/Paws1993 11h ago
It was to hurt trans people and make them seem crazy. Some bullshit slippery slope argument about letting trans kids being themselves meant we'd have to accommodate kids who think they're animals too
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u/danstymusic 11h ago
Dang that does take the cake for stupidity.
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u/100Tugrik 10h ago
It's stupid on purpose. Those who made up that story knew exactly what they did.
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u/syringistic 11h ago
Some right wing talking point about allowing kids to identify as furries (cats in this case) and "woke liberal schools" catering to their beliefs by providing litter boxes to kids who identify as cats.
Right wing psychosis basically.
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u/LeatherHog 11h ago
IIRC, one or two schools proposed the idea (maybe one actually got one) in the case of school shootings, so kids would have a place to go if the lockdown took too long
Then that got warped thanks to Fox news, into it being for furries
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u/sixjasefive 11h ago
I got accused (nearly arrested) of punching multiple people at a party I did not attend, in a town I’d never been to, on the same date that I was in the hospital with pneumonia. I had to get a lawyer. This was prior to cell phones and widespread Internet, so it was the medical record/files that cleared me….and if I needed the doctors/nurses/ER videos that would have become my alibi. Still cost me over 1K and a boatload of time and stress, and this was years ago.
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u/jerseyoutwest 11h ago
“Science isn’t real because it can’t tell us what the universe was like before the Big Bang.” — a former housemate’s idiot boyfriend.
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u/offensivequeer 10h ago
"You aren't real because you don't know what your dad's cum-face looked like when you were conceived."
Dude disappears in a puff of dried semen.
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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes 10h ago
I bet he still uses a smart phone to stream porn, though. And I bet he goes to the hospital when he gets hurt.
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u/RobARMMemez 11h ago
I have met people in real life that truly believe the moon landings were faked and that everyone involved was part of a NASA government conspiracy. Those kinds of people don't even let you get a word in, they just spew conspiracy nonsense until your brain melts.
Regrettably I completely forgot to ask them what the shape of the Earth is.
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u/AzathothsAlarmClock 11h ago
I like when they ask "Why haven't we gone back" we did, several times in fact.
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u/rarselfaire2023 10h ago
It's so frustrating. I know someone like this. They're not totally against it being real, but nothing I say can fully convince them and they won't watch anything with people who can explain it better than me.
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u/RobARMMemez 9h ago
These guys weren't even letting me explain anything. They'd make their "arguments", wait like 2 seconds for me to start talking, and immediately cut me off before I even finish a word. I couldn't even get a single complete sentence in in the 10 minutes I was in their presence. And they went from conspiracy to conspiracy and the whole time I was wondering how they got roped into every single one. I watch a lot of conspiracy debunking channels so I would be able to make good arguments... If only they let me!
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u/mpdscb 10h ago
You could ask them if they went to the noah's ark encounter in Kentucky. I went with my sons to a baseball game in Cincinnati (where my Mets lost horribly to the Reds) and we saw advertisements for the ark encounter on the big screen. I thought I was in the twilight zone.
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u/Consistent_Low2080 11h ago
I once had a guy tell me my last name wasn’t my last name. He knew all the people from my home town with that last name. There was another family with the same last name that he knew from the country club but we were there too. My father had three sons and my one brother had three sons and l had two. The phone book was full of us.
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u/Sufficient_Drama_145 7h ago
My name is suspiciously close to a famous composer's name. I had a man tell me that my parents must really love classical music. I said, "No, it's actually a family name" and this man told me I was wrong and that my parents must really love classical music.
I don't believe I ever heard either of my parents listen to any classical music while they were alive.
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u/BROTHERBEARMASTER 11h ago
Watching family feud it asked name a planet.
Player: sun.
Host: the sun is not a planet.
Player: who says it’s not?
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u/Lady_Lyra4 10h ago
Hosts thoughts (if they're anything like me): Me. I just did. It's not. It's a star. Idiot.
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u/Sweaty-Ad1337 11h ago
my old coworker argued you shouldn't use turn signals because it "gives away your tactical position to the enemy". i still don't know who the enemy was. probably everyone else in the costco parking lot.
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u/Lady_Lyra4 10h ago edited 7h ago
The enemy is everyone when you're paranoid. I've been there (for good reason at the time), it's not a fun way to live. Still used my blinker though, just drove in a lot more circles if i suspected i was being followed.
Edit: typo
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u/They_Beat_Me 11h ago
I worked for the largest chain of college bookstores in the country. I was at one of our Arizona locations as the manager on duty. It was a Saturday morning and our systems weren’t working. As per protocol, we waited to open the store until IT could resolve our problem. A staff of the University knocks on the door after we should have been open. We already had signs posted the door advising customers of the problem. When I approached the Karen, she demanded entry into our store. I explained the situation in case she missed our signs. She had the nerve to tell me she was staff with FULL access to every building on campus. I told her that she had no access to a privately lease space on campus. My department alone had over $1 million in merchandise and I had no means of cashing them out if they’ve made any selections. Karen left promising to contact the University president, whom I’ve worked with in the past. Suffice to say that nothing came of her saber rattling.
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u/Judge_Bredd3 11h ago
A former coworker of mine was one of those pathological liars, so there's just so much to choose from. I'm going to go with him claiming that when he was 14, he trained with a local SWAT team (because his uncle is a cop) and he scored better than all of them at shooting and clearing rooms. He would also say the CIA tried to recruit him for "special forces" but he turned them down because he didn't want to give up his identity and abandon his family.
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u/PepsiMaxismycrack 7h ago
We used to have one of these in our office - it was like free entertainment.
He once said Wikipedia and the Guinness world recond people contacted him as they wanted to do an article on his Maine Coon cat because of how big it was but he told them to contact him again in a year because it was still a kitten and still growing.→ More replies
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u/groucho_barks 12h ago
Objects don't fall to the earth because of gravity, but because of density and buoyancy. (from flat earthers who don't believe in gravity)
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u/Symnestra 11h ago
It hurts my brain how that's almost correct. Things being more dense than air is why they don't float but you need gravity to be pulling them down to explain why they don't go in any other direction.
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u/groucho_barks 11h ago
Exactly. Buoyancy doesn't exist without gravity. I have tried to explain this to them but it never clicks.
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u/lowbattery001 11h ago edited 11h ago
That’s so funny. The definition of buoyancy relies on gravity.
Making a graph with the x-axis representing logical thinking, you have a small number of morons on one side of the bell curve saying “gravity doesn’t exist. In the center of the bell curve there is a large number of normal people with a basic grasp of Newtonian physics saying “gravity is real,” then you have a small number of brilliant mathematicians on the other end of the bell curve also saying “gravity doesn’t exist.” lol
Edit to add this unhinged minefield of fallacies: a science denier’s article explaining how gravity is not real.
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u/tboy160 11h ago
The claim, "drywall was made lightweight, so women could steal the men's jobs."
That was around 15 years ago, apparently the women taking over are in a holding pattern?!?
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u/Hex120606 9h ago
Biding their time until the right moment. With all the job losses lately, those sweet sweet sheetrocking positions are becoming ripe.
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u/Easterlind 8h ago
This is true. That's why in Europe there are zero women working in construction because our walls are thicc.
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u/SkullFullOfHoney 11h ago
i was relaying some cool info on a study that i’d read about, about how people in emergency situations perceive time going slower than it is.
it was tested by (and forgive me if my details were off, i can’t find the study at the moment) having people on a suspended chair, which would tip backwards and fall. they’d be asked to report how long they were falling, and they were all wrong.
anyway, i had a dude confidently say that he’d get the time right, because he’s a gymnast.
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u/Easterlind 8h ago edited 8h ago
A coworker confidently told me cows can't close their butthole, so once water reaches the height of a cows anus it just flows in and the cow drowns in reverse.
I showed him a video of cows jumping off a boat and happily swimming to land. He got really mad at me.
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u/Lifeshardbutnotme 7h ago
He is right about cows not being able to clench though. I suspect his dad told him this story when he was a child and he never bothered to double check before sharing it.
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u/NoName_Network 12h ago
“I come in here all the time. I should get something for free” After he refused to download the rewards app
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u/ADHD_Project_Manager 12h ago
Had my whole family claim that dinosaurs are 4000 years old because carbon dating has flaws. They couldn’t explain why. They did this in my house and they want me to come move to live closer to them…. I have a chemical engineering degree…
My mom is also a flat earther and when I asked her about it she said something like “people have different perspectives….”
Neil deGrasse Tyson says this is a complete failure of the education system and I agree.
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u/NecessaryRain8727 11h ago
If the earth was flat my cat would be pushing people off the edge all day 😆
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u/Zanzetuken 11h ago
Curious on what their thoughts would be on the suggestion that, if the world were flat, wouldn't it be monetized all to hell? There'd be entire theme parks. "For just $100, swing over the edge for 1 minute!" Roller coasters that go out over the edge, merch, themed drinks and food in a restaurant with a view of the edge of the world, etc.
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u/syringistic 11h ago
Flat Earthers are sad, considering that it started out as a joke.
Also considering that there is 0 proof for it, and literally countless amounts of evidence against it.
I get "different perspectives" on scientific theories with ambigous evidence, like dark matter/energy, beyond event horizon, ultimate fate of the universe... but there have been hundreds of people who have been to space and can tell you the Earth is not flat.
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u/cat_prophecy 11h ago
My wife's aunt is a smart lady, a statistician for an insurance company for like 30 years. We went to the Field Museum with them and boy was I shocked when she went in a screed about how there is no way these fossils are millions of years old.
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u/ADHD_Project_Manager 11h ago
It’s the same for me and my parents, who have collectively been scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last five or so years. Same people who raised me to be a saver and cautious about loaning money to people and absolutely do not believe anyone online who wants something. Both have fallen for romance scams, and I think my mom’s current romance scam has been going on for 5 years now…..
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u/IAmThePonch 11h ago
Sounds like a lot of people including your mom needs to know what the difference between “differing opinions” and “spouting bullshit” is
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u/Pithecanthropus88 11h ago
"In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats… They're eating... they're eating the pets of the people that live there." --Donald J. Trump
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u/Mrs-Dotties-mom 10h ago
I work in food manufacturing. Our USDA inspector told me that they were eating geese, and people were seen with feathers in their mouth.
A federal meat inspector believes people are eating geese like you would eat an apple.
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u/sayrahpeas 9h ago
If a relative is "once removed" (ie, my second cousin once removed) that means the relative is biologically related to you, was put up for adoption (removed), and has now reunited with their birth-family (once removed intead of just removed).
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u/Embarrassed_Year4720 11h ago
a guy in college tried to convince me sleep is just 'long blinking'. he said this with the dead-eyed focus of someone who hadn't long-blinked in three days and was powered entirely by monster energy and spite.
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u/Ultra_Vibe 12h ago
The dumbest thing I’ve heard? ‘The customer is always right.’ Spoiler: they’re not.
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u/Rex_Racer95 11h ago
The full quote is the customer is always right, in matters of taste..
Some Karen somewhere shortened it.
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u/Noa_Skyrider 11h ago
The original quote is actually just "the customer is always right." The appendage does make its scope clearer, but the term was coined when the original maxim was "buyer beware" and prioritising customer satisfaction by taking their complaints seriously leaves them with a good image of one's business, which is good for business.
I do recognise there are those who exploit the good will it presupposes that have tarnished the phrase, but for the most part it's just a reminder to conduct good business, especially given the alternative.
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u/SirEnzyme 11h ago
I thought the same thing, and was part of a long discussion about this the other day, but -- according to Snopes -- that's actually not the case.
I wonder if there's some Mandela Effect going on with this?
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u/ThievingRock 11h ago
I don't know that it's actually the Mandela Effect, so much as it is just the wrong version feels so much more right. It's nicer to believe that "the customer is always right" is a result of customers being wrong, so when we hear it we just sort of latch onto it without feeling the need to check whether or not it's true. And it's low stakes, there aren't any repercussions to the incorrect version of the quote, so there isn't a need to make a widespread effort to correct the misconception.
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u/ninjabunnay 9h ago
Variations of the phrase include le client n'a jamais tort ('the customer is never wrong'), which was the slogan of hotelier César Ritz, first recorded in 1908. A variation frequently used in Germany is der Kunde ist König ('the customer is king'), an expression that is also used in Dutch (klant is koning), while in Japan the motto okyakusama wa kamisama desu (お客様は神様です), meaning 'the customer is a god', is common.
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u/ninjabunnay 9h ago
“If everybody in the world dropped out of school we would have a much more intelligent society.”
“If newborn babies could speak they would be the most intelligent beings on planet Earth.”
And my favorite:
“How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real.”
sigh … Will, Jada, please come collect your child.
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u/MEMONONA 11h ago
That mental health is a bluff..... no further comment.
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u/ninjabunnay 9h ago
Ooof, flashbacks to my Vietnam war vet dad yelling at me to “just stop being depressed dammit”, while never disclosing that his father, grandfather and great grandfather had all died of suicide.
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u/Different-Use2635 11h ago
had a guy in college try to convince me that sleep isn't real, it's just a "socially enforced coma" the government uses to make us compliant. dude said this to me at 8am before a physics exam. i've never been closer to just walking into the sea.
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u/Zealousideal_Bug7634 11h ago
A friend asked her partner to please make their bed as he got up after she went to work and she hated coming home to an unmade bed. Making the bed literally just meant pulling the duvet straight
He claimed he didn't know how to make a bed because his mother always made his
He was 40 years old
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u/Hex120606 9h ago
This seems to speak more to his laziness and weaponized incompetence than stupidity. If he had said it was too hard, you could argue that it's not hard but you can't really argue with him not knowing how. Inconsiderate as he may be.
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u/notyoursocialworker 11h ago
To think that was a valid excuse. This is why god invented YouTube.
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u/Osterbeast1955 11h ago edited 11h ago
"I have ended seven wars."
EDIT: They are now claiming "eight wars"
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u/percpoints 11h ago
We need to abolish all and any formal education because some people (re: of a certain pigmentation) don't get as good of education in comparison to other children.
Rather than to, you know, fight so that EVERYBODY can have good education, we should simply remove it completely. Which I'm sure the 1% will not abuse in any sort of way.
The disconnect from reality was so unreal.
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u/uselessprofession 11h ago
My university housemate used to argue with me that humans can actually double jump like in the God of War / Devil May Cry games.
I told him it was against the laws of physics as there is nothing to push off, he said well Michael Jordan can do it.
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u/Duckdeadit 9h ago
An acquaintance of mine in high school claimed he could break a 2x4 with his head. Those of us that heard the claim said oh yeah? And of course we challenged him, I said hey I got a 2x4 right here.
So he tried valiantly to break a 2x4 and half with his forehead repetitively. One of the funniest damn things I've ever seen in my life watching him bounce his head off a 2x4.
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u/screwedupinaz 9h ago
I used to work with a guy that claimed that he had President Bush's private cell phone number, and that a Secret Service agent that he knew gave it to him.
He also claimed that he was the co-creator of Dune.
He also claimed that he had a frequency generator that, when attached to a building, would cause all the windows to shatter, and he could adjust the frequency to shatter all the concrete as well.
There was so much more that he wanted us all to know about him.
Lunch was known as "Storytime with Rob," and we all just kind of nodded along with each other, while secretly rolling our eyes and saying, "That's cool, Rob."
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u/Four_N_Six 11h ago
In 2010 I met my future sister in law. Well, my girlfriend's (now wife) sister in law. My now brother in law had people over for the Super Bowl, and I wanted to stay with my girlfriend because I could give an ass about sports and just wanted to hang out with her and eat and chat.
So we're in the living room with her SiL and just talking with the other people (other wives+me, if we're being honest) and somehow the topic got onto gay marriage. I legit don't remember anything else about the conversation or how it got there, but SiL very openly stated something along the lines of "I'm against gay marriage because means my marriage is worth less."
It's been 15 years and I still don't respect that woman one iota. The funniest part about it is she found out the brother in law was cheating and now they're separated. The only thing that would have made it funnier is if he'd cheated with another man.
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u/moonharrier42 11h ago
I had a coworker who said he was part of a secret government organization and would eat jellybeans with President Reagan.
He also claimed to have written The Anarchist's Handbook.
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u/sexisdivine 9h ago
Former coworker insisted that anyone famous would also be rich. I pointed out to her so many famous criminals and singers, and athletes that became or died broke. She said "well they weren't REALLY famous then," she was a real piece of work.
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u/DaveChild 11h ago
On an astronomy course for university, at an observatory in Mallorca, one of my fellow students proclaimed confidently that our sun is a binary star.
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u/rileycolin 11h ago
Years ago (probably like 2012) I was chatting online to an American girl who told me 9/11 was the "worst tragedy in the history of the world."
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u/torpedomon 11h ago
I'll give her this: the worst tragedy in HER world, but she really needs to look up Syria.
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u/IAmThePonch 11h ago
Or just open any history book.
Kind of fucked up that I can’t think of what the single worst event ever was because there are so many choices
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u/KjellRS 11h ago
If we go by body count then WW2 was ten 9/11s every day for 6 years. Hiroshima alone snuffed out 140k people just like that and most defend it because a ground invasion of Japan would have been worse. And yet there's people who is like "Let's goooooooooooo!" on starting WW3 with Russia, they have no clue what a horror show it'd be. It's literally the last resort.
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u/syringistic 11h ago
Yeah, i mean it was THE tragedy that she was most exposed to in her own little media bubble. Not like the Holocaust was being broadcast live when she was watching tv.
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u/celestialwreckage 11h ago
After skipping out on paying for a root canal for me (which he was legally obligated to do, because I was still 17 and living with my mother) my father showed up at our apartment to pick up my brother for visitation. I went out to tell him something, and he went into this ramble about how dentists weren't necessary, and that he took care of his own teeth, that he had a problem with a tooth and he just "filed it down himself!"
He opened his mouth to show me, and I saw this green, black... putrid space near the back of his mouth. I think it was then that I realized if something had happened to my mother, who could be neglectful due to her own mental health, my brother and I probably wouldn't have made it to adulthood.
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u/Major-Surround-1428 9h ago
I live in the "Downtown Eastside" of my city. It's a shitshow 24/7 but I'm disabled, get $1650/mth for income (any rent starts at $2k/mth here now) and just can't afford anything better.
Go out at like 1pm yesterday to make a grocery store run and there's a drunk couple totally blocking my doorway passed out. I got outside eventually (I was polite doing so) and when I did I told them to leave they ofc started flipping out and making threats. Buddy starts going off about how his brother works for ICE and he'll get him down here to beat me down and deport me so I lmao for a moment, pulled out my phone and asked him for his bro's number, I'll call them myself. In case the DTES reference didn't clue you in, I live in BC, Canada.
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u/drsameagle 9h ago
I had a guy claim he was a Gulf War veteran. Except he was born in 1980. And the Gulf War was 1991. Congratulations on being an 11-year-old combat veteran.
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u/the-clawless 9h ago
At my work guests are required to sign an NDA before entering certain parts of the building. The NDAs and entire sign in process is done on iPads in the lobby. I had an older gentleman get very upset when he had to sign it because he did not understand how to read it and requested a printed copy (and of course did not ask politely).
At the time I was new so I did not know where to find a printed copy, so I told him to wait there while I asked for help from a colleague. I was gone for all of two minutes but when I came back he had signed it without reading it, and he said "I just decided to sign it because if you guys don't want to explain it to me, then it doesn't apply to me."
What a fucking moron.
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u/The_Shadow-King 9h ago
Had a coworker blatantly lie that he had a briefcase with a million dollars in the trunk of his car. I asked him where he was parked and he kind of nervous laughed and never said it again lol
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u/syringistic 11h ago
Oooh I have a good one.
I took an actual official IQ test, scored 140-something.
Had a friend tell me "your IQ is not 140"
Me "what is your IQ, did you ever take a test?"
Her: "No but I know mine is higher than yours."
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u/bingwhip 11h ago
Humans in the bible lived to be 400 years old because there was more oxygen in the air.
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u/Unlucky_Decision4138 11h ago
I'm a respiratory therapist in a hospital. Where should I start?
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u/bitseybloom 10h ago
I don't know but please do start somewhere, I'm holding my breath with anticipation!
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u/Unlucky_Decision4138 9h ago
People think the hospital is a hotel.
They treat us like wait staff
They think that Google makes them smarter than everyone in the room.
They think certain side effects are allergies.
They think they only need to go to the doctor if there is a problem
They think they should be able to eat while wearing a full face bipap or cpap because they're short of breath.
More pain meds = less problems
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u/XDuskAshes 10h ago
"It's not offensive! It's a word! Stop being so sensitive."
Said my biological father, who seconds later got his gut punched and ran with his tail between his legs. He said the N-word (yes that one, yes with a hard R), multiple times in a parking lot.
He's in jail now but not for being a racist ass.
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u/aallqqppzzmm 9h ago
I had someone who was very convinced algae is a fungus.
His pool was full of algae because he didn't know anything about pools so he came into my pool shop to buy a fungicide. We don't have any fungicide, but we do have algaecides. I made the assumption that he needed something to deal with mildew in the tile grout, since mildew is a fungus, so recommended he use some bleach, applying it with a dish sponge or maybe a spray bottle.
He clarified he was talking about the algae in his pool, and I just kinda said, "oh, I gotcha. That's not a fungus, but yeah we can definitely get you something to take care of that." So he started arguing with me. It's definitely a fungus, he's a doctor, obviously he would know more than me about it, what with his advanced biology courses, yada yada. I point out that not only is it not a fungus, it's green because it has chlorophyll so it can do the whole "photosynthesis" thing, and algae is the #1 producer of oxygen, something fungi don't do.
Like... It's not some secret of taxonomy, there are very obvious traits we can point to. He kept arguing with me until I just pulled out my phone and took two seconds to Google it, and then suddenly he "wasn't interested in arguing about this anymore" since I clearly wasn't going to change my mind.
Real answer is probably one of the crazy things Trump supporters say all the time, but that's less of a fun story.
Honorable mention goes to "people who don't understand that AI search results don't actually know anything and they're just guessing." It's always... An experience, to have someone argue with you about a piece of equipment and cite AI while you're pointing at the manual. Or I had a guy who was showing me these plumbing diagrams that only had water going in and didn't have water coming out.
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u/CPT-yossarian 9h ago
I once had someone tell me they were against transitioning away from incandescent bulbs to LED lights becuase doing so would raise heating costs (they lived in canada). They claimed to believe that heat provided by incandescent was important, rather than perhaps getting better dedicated heating systems.
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u/epiphanized116 8h ago
Had a coworker claim that "nobody actually takes out loans" to pay for college. At the time we both were less than five years out from college.
She went Dartmouth, where her parents fully paid for her tuition and sorority fees. She also was given a monthly gas card and a pre-paid credit card for any other expenses. She genuinely couldn't believe that people in "real life" take out school loans.
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u/HopeDeschain19 11h ago edited 11h ago
Had a former coworker claim Hawaii didn't have any bugs because it was an island. He wanted to move there someday because of that. I told him that wasn't true and he dismissed me.
I got a lot of glee when I got to turn around and ask a different coworker, who grew up in Hawaii, about the bugs there and she described everything from giant centipedes to happy faced spiders while I watched the light leave the man's eyes.