TheActualDevil

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."?

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.

You might know this already, but the original series in that universe, The Riftwar Saga, Feist wrote about a DnD campaign he played with his friends. I picked up the first one, Magician, and it felt just like a DnD campaign, so I looked it up and sure enough it was exactly that.

I'm making my way through all of the books and haven't gotten to the Krondor books, so I don't know how different they are as I could clearly see his growth as a writer in just the first series. I'm currently reading through the Daughter of the Empire series that he co-wrote with another author and I'm really enjoying it.

Yes! I completely forgot this one, thank you!

In fact, OP, I'm going to suggest a Youtube channel, but with some stipulations. Jackson Galaxy. He's an interesting guy who had (has?) a show on animal planet, but he has a really good grasp on Cat behavior. He get's a little weird with some of his homeopathic products that he has for sale that I'm a little skeptical of. But his cat behavior stuff all seems pretty spot on and his advice for cat care (As long as it's not about a product he sells on his site) is really good. It's worth a look I think.

So I know this is a thread about toys, but it looks like you got a lot of good advice, and since you're new to cats, one thing that most people either don't realize or ignore is the number of litterboxes. 1 is not enough, even for a single cat. General rule of thumb for litterboxes is Number of cats + 1. You want them to view the entire place as their territory and a big part of that is scent markers. And the biggest of them is the litterbox. Many cats will, as soon as you change the litter, use it. That's because they want it to smell like their territory (To their sensitive noses). Spreading that around for them makes for a happy cat and reduces the chances of "accidents" or just marking territory later on in times of stress.

I'll also say you should probably have a scratching post on every room that they hang out in regularly. They're not going to go to another room to find it if they want a good stretch or scratch. I suggest angled or flat ones at first because they will often use them to really stretch out their spine so they need to get a lot of distance between stretched out back and front feet. That's a lot easier (and cheaper) in flat or angled ones. If they end up preferring upright ones they got to be real tall to give them what they want. And those are expensive.

One more tip. Even if you decide to feed them dry food, use designated feeding times. Read the package and figure out how much they should eat a day and split that in 2-3 parts and measure that out giving them meal times. It's better for their physical health and it's more in line with their body's natural rhythm.

In general though, it's best to establish routines for behaviors you want to promote (Cats love routine) early on and keep it up. If you try to introduce new routines later it's a lot harder to establish. The change of moving into a new home is the perfect time to create a new routine since everything is kinda chaos for them anyway and it helps them establish order in their lives.

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.