this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 120 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Most things you see a real professional doing.

Just look at the ease a window washer cleans a window stripless and fast, or a bricklayer just gets stones on the same height with 2 small taps on the brick consistently. Many more examples like that..

Years of experience and muscle memory make it look easy.. but it isnt.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (5 children)

And humans want to replace some of this shit with robots.

Window washer working on sky scrappers? Sure, I guess it is a job that can be done by robots.

Bricklayer? Why the fuck???

[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't see why a robot can't lay bricks just as effectively or more than a human.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (6 children)

For one thing it is a tough, dirty, physically taxing job. If you can reduce the strain on humans and not wear them out as fast I'd call it a win..

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, stuff like underwater welding should be done by robots. Stuff like that is so unbelievably dangerous. I could see a lot of dangerous jobs getting swapped over to robots (bomb defusal, hotwork, chemical processing or oil rig repairs when the plant is shut down, etc).

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[–] [email protected] 117 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (6 children)

Having an interesting conversation with someone you just met. I see people do this shit all the time and they make it look like it comes naturally but every time I'm in that situation it is so difficult. Its like a series of quick time events that im severely underprepared for

[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I learned to combat this with 3 simple questions:

  1. What kind of job do you do? (Or study)
  2. Where do you live?
  3. Do you have any kids, dog,...

Be interrested in their answers and add some simple follow-up questions that show you are listening. Add some content of your own as a follow-up.

Posing that first question can be a bit weird, but the rest is as simple as it sounds.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Be interested in their answers

Yeah, so, that's where I usually drop the ball. What if I'm just... not?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (12 children)

That's where I rely on "fake it till you make it".

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It really depends on the person, you have to have some sort of jumping off point. Whether that is sharing something in common with someone or having cool hobbies.

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[–] [email protected] 110 points 7 months ago

*stressed depressed lemon zest

[–] [email protected] 95 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Parenting. Before I had kids I was often judgmental of parents, but now I've realized all the things I didn't take into account and all the things you just don't have control over. In my case, I was not expecting to be a single parent, there was the pandemic, and I did not factor in how impactful the lack of sleep and autonomy would be.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 months ago (2 children)

My mom told me she used to judge the parents in the shops with screaming kids, we didn't do that and she thought it was her excellent parenting. She said "Then God gave me Janet" to cure her judgemental hubris, lol.

Nobody is a good parent all the time, we aren't robots and exhaustion is such a drain on intelligence and compassion. But most of us are good parents enough of the time, thankfully.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I've got one thing to say and that's

Dammit Janet

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

I was one of those rare, quiet kids, so until my brother was born my parents were just reinforced in their belief that other parents were just shitty parents.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

Even without suddenly becoming single, or a pandemic, or anything, being a parent isn't something that can be explained to someone who hasn't experienced it, IMO. You can use words to explain, that you think are accurate. But it just has to be experienced to fully understand. The fatigue, the change in stress levels, the amount of time you lose. Conceptually not hard to grasp. But the way it feels, different story. "Wow, this is worse/more than I thought."

But given all that, it's also hard to explain that it's all worth it. One of the best things about being a parent right now for me personally, is watching my kids learn everything for the first time, and the wonders of learning, beaming from their eyes. It's such a privilege being the one to have a chance to teach them a bunch of things. Being a role model, being someone with whom they build trust.

Also walking into their room after they've fallen asleep and watching two absolute gigawatt units expend their energy non-stop all day, now completely still (and silent, JFC), and just so peaceful. Their eyes just two lines, rather than two open balls all day. Adorable.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

100% accurate.

Once they become teens, the joy is in seeing them realize how much they don't yet know. It happens rarely, so make sure to document it.

Nothing is more entertaining than being a parent.

There is also nothing to explain the disassociative feeling of having them kidsplain to you things that you taught them, or were actually there for. It's like, dude, you didn't know how to wipe your own bum until I taught you. I think I have a handle on 9/11, liberal vs. conservative politics, the Cold War, collapse of the Soviet Union, or how to drive/ shop for groceries/ pay taxes/ vote/feed my dog/apply a bandaid, or whatever thing you think just came into existence because you learned it.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Making friends as an adult

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I'm really struggling with this right now. I've joined to some new interest groups, but everyone including myself, seems so guarded, every time I leave feeling like I've failed a barrage of social aptitude tests. I feel like so many adults have baggage that by 40 they're spring loaded to overreact and overthink, they come across as unapproachable. Or maybe I'm awful, which is what keeps kicking around in my head.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Socializing. Things to say in a conversation don't come to me naturally like they seem to do with other people. Often people remark it's like talking to a wall because I don't know how to come up with an answer to their open questions on the fly. And without that, they see no foundation to build friendship on.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Damn, I really relate to this. When I get nervous because I don't know what to say, I come back with one of my dreaded default responses.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I realized today that people on movies are weird in cute, quirky ways. Most of us are just weird in weird ways.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

people on movies are weird in cute, quirky ways

Also scripted and practiced ways.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Hey, can you add a button on that webpage to do [something]?

Like, yeah, adding a button is usually easy, but making it do [the thing] can be quite difficult.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Achieving significant political change, even as an individual with significant political power

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Significant political change…for the better.

As we’ve seen all over the world or only takes a relative few to make negative change.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Applying caulking or silicone.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

A tip one contractor passed on to me when caulking: use pieces of toilet paper to smooth it out after applying. You won't get your fingers gunked up, and toilet paper's cheap enough that you can use a bit to smooth off a few inches of caulk and throw the paper away.

Think I got through half a roll when sealing up a window frame a couple years back, looks great.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

With silicone the proper way is to first wipe the surfaces clean with acetone. Then apply a thick bead of silicone making sure it sticks to both surfaces with no gaps (very important), doesn't need to look pretty. After that you spray it with soapy water which prevents it from sticking where you don't want it to and then use a wet/soapy popsicle stick (or a dedicated tool) to scrape off the excess. After that you can spray it again and super gently pull your finger over it to smooth it out. Should come out looking something like this.

I've gotten good results doing caulking like this aswell but some people say that acrylic caulk may react with the water/soap and you should instead use a dedicated tooling agent.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Knitting. Always see people do it on the subway or watching tv without paying attention or trying. Spent a few hours trying to learn once and couldn't do it.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

Just find someone who needs to launder a lot of money

[–] [email protected] 32 points 7 months ago (14 children)

Converting a class traitor to socialism

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Picture frames.

Looks like an incredibly simple project for a beginner woodworker, doesn't it? Get some nice wood, rout in a rabbet for the glass/art/backing, rout on a nice decorative profile, then set your miter saw to 45 degrees and make 8 miter cuts, apply some carpenter's glue then wrap it in a band clamp. What's so tough?

I'll tell you what's tough: the precision with which those miter cuts must be made is exceptionally fussy. Say each cut is a quarter degree off. Well, after eight cuts that's two degrees of error. Three of the joints will look fine, the last one will look like an axe wound.

The issue isn't making the cuts at 45°, it's making them at 45.0000°. Or, more realistically, making them truly complementary.

This same issue applies to moldings around cabinetry, with the added bonus that the carcass of the cabinet won't let any of the joints close tightly, so they all look like trash.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Working in a kitchen. Iykyk

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Removing the tamper seal on a bottle of ketchup

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Making an otherwise simple change in a game made by a big company.

There are tons of things that could be done relatively "easy peasy" when it comes to correcting an error in the code or making a change to a number or even adding a thing. What makes it difficult is red tape. You've got assigned tasks to do that probably don't include making that simple fix or adding that thing or changing that number. If it's just 1 dude in his garage working at a hobby project, it could get done in 10 minutes if he wanted to do it.

Of course this assumes things aren't done in a way that make doing something that might be easy even harder simply because you don't have many options to do the things you want within the system you've made without dismantling part of it and getting into a whole mess of other shit to make the "simple" change. Sometimes it be like that, too.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

Perfect example is changing text in a game (maybe 10 mins) vs adding emoji to text in a game ( weeks?) does the text engine support emoji. Do we need to add support for all arbitrary images? How big can the emoji be? So many issues come out of "simple" requests.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Based on my recent failings: apparently hitting a little white ball into a hole.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Playing baseball with any level of skill.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's funny but even catching a well hit fly ball, if you haven't done it before it's going over your head.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

"Reading the room" some people are really good in certain circumstances but when things are just off it goes off the rails.

As a person with no natural aptitude for it its actually tiring for me and I have to be on my A game to do it right

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Manual on a bike

Ollie on a skateboard

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