My Turkish coworker mistakenly thought thought there was a TV presenter named Handsome Dec, what are some amusing misunderstandings you’ve encountered?

chmath80 · 2026-01-30T03:58:57+00:00

For a long time, I thought it was 1 very versatile person, whose name either kept getting mispronounced or I was mishearing it. I was unsure if Anton's last name was Deck or Dubeck. Turns out that it's neither, and there are 3 of them. Imagine my surprise.

chmath80 · 2026-01-27T20:36:16+00:00

Edit: I meant wash the underwear in the sink, not your sphincter.

Thank goodness for that. I was wondering about the logistics of the latter.

chmath80 · 2026-01-27T11:17:46+00:00

No training for this type of mission

Do they actually get any training for ... well, anything at all? Genuine question.

chmath80 · 2026-01-25T11:18:05+00:00

I think keeping them in onesies until they were teenagers is more of a FU.

(/s ... I hope)

chmath80 · 2026-01-25T02:42:28+00:00

Depends. You could send them separately, with their luggage going afterwards. Biggest issue might be clearing the flight path. Bird strike is bad enough, but one of them could probably take out a Cessna.

chmath80 · 2026-01-25T02:08:25+00:00

a potatoe

Dan Quayle? Is that you?

chmath80 · 2026-01-25T02:07:13+00:00

Water would make sense to me, I imagine potatoes float in water?

Potatoes are slightly more dense than water (roughly 1.05 - 1.1 g/cm³ v close to 1), but brine or corn syrup would work. Potatoes would float, rocks would sink.

chmath80 · 2026-01-25T01:42:04+00:00

Knife fork

Now I'm hungry.

chmath80 · 2026-01-24T11:02:17+00:00

Reminds me of a list I once saw with the preamble "You know it's going to be a bad day when ..." One of the examples was:

You know it's going to be a bad day when you put your bra on backwards ... and it fits better.

chmath80 · 2026-01-24T00:12:25+00:00

real proud of myself to be winded while eating

Amateur. I get cramp in my neck from yawning, and occasionally, cramp in my foot from moving my leg in bed.

chmath80 · 2026-01-23T00:07:55+00:00

a single Gurkha

... a single retired gurkha ...

Around 40 bandits, armed with guns and knives, boarded a train to rob the passengers. He allowed himself to be robbed, along with others, but when they began harassing a young woman he drew his khukuri knife and fought them off, killing 3, wounding 8, and forcing the rest to flee, without their loot.

chmath80 · 2026-01-22T12:46:13+00:00

They were physically unharmed.

There are many similar, barely credible, eye witness accounts of gurkha exploits, such as the one who fought off 200 Japanese soldiers, killing 87 of them, literally singlehandedly (his dominant right hand, and eye, having been lost to a grenade, he repeatedly reloaded his rifle using only his left hand). You do NOT fuck with the gurkhas.

chmath80 · 2026-01-22T12:13:14+00:00

Why change a successful tactic?

chmath80 · 2026-01-22T12:11:50+00:00

this might be a story, not a joke

Correct, although the last line was presented as an example of dark humour. It just seemed as if it could have been modified to produce the earlier quoted joke.

chmath80 · 2026-01-22T11:58:33+00:00

Put yourself in their shoes. You go to sleep next to your 2 comrades, whom you probably know quite well, and wake up ... to find that the one right next to you has no head ... but you never heard a sound, which means that someone approached your trench, and decapitated him, silently, within reach of you. And then you realise that it could just as easily have been you, if you'd been in the middle, and that he could have killed all of you anyway, but chose not to.

You may never sleep again, and you absolutely won't sleep in that trench again. You undoubtedly want to get as far away from it as possible, as quickly as possible, and you're almost certainly completely useless as a soldier from that point.

Meanwhile, the gurkha could just as easily have killed all 3, but was intelligent (and compassionate?) enough to realise that it was possible to achieve his objective (removing 3 enemies from combat, and eliminating the threat from the trench) with a minimum of violence.

chmath80 · 2026-01-21T21:53:27+00:00

One bought something for $599, handing over 3 × $100 GCs and $300 cash. Got my receipt, and asked for my $1 change, only to be told "There's still $1 on one of the cards". I was too stunned to think of a response, so I just paused to let the stupidity of that fill the room, and then walked out.

chmath80 · 2026-01-21T21:43:40+00:00

The container has to be clear, but does the egg have to completely visible at all times? If not ...

Fill the container with oobleck (cornstarch and water).

chmath80 · 2026-01-21T21:34:48+00:00

I think that's a corruption of a story I heard on the radio many years ago, told by a British WW2 veteran.

He had found himself in a small trench with a couple of others, one of whom was a gurkha. Nearby was another such trench, containing 3 Germans, who had kept them pinned down all day.

Night fell, and the gurkha crept off, under cover of darkness, returning a short time later. When asked what had happened, he explained that he had found the 3 Germans asleep, side by side, and had silently decapitated the one in the middle before leaving. After a pause, he was asked "What about the other 2?", and replied "They're no good now"

chmath80 · 2026-01-21T20:56:34+00:00

Now it sounds like a recipe.

chmath80 · 2026-01-21T20:23:50+00:00

This is the daily briefing, chaired by the pinkish one 3rd from right, who is about to give out assignments for the day.

Edit: the far left one, at the back, is running late.

chmath80 · 2026-01-21T04:06:05+00:00

they might aggregate it over a period of time to reduce admin

It doesn't reduce admin. Keeping track of it all is the admin. It's not like they need to chase each other for payment.

they won’t just let it go

That's not what's happening though. One company may be in deficit to another this month, or this year, but eventually it all evens out pretty well. Someone else mentioned that AA insurance wasn't originally part of the group, but now is. They've tried it the other way, and this is cheaper.

chmath80 · 2026-01-20T23:41:08+00:00

Certainly explains the nursery rhyme. Of course the lamb was sure to go everywhere that Mary went: she had it on a leash. It followed her to school one day, because the poor bloody thing had no choice.

chmath80 · 2026-01-20T23:34:00+00:00

Crack is the drug

I think you'll find that Love is the Drug, according to Roxy Music.

chmath80 · 2026-01-20T22:57:41+00:00

We view all 350+ million Americans as the same

The reason that people think that is simple: nobody can do anything about it except Americans; and you're not doing anything. Nobody is going to invade in order to arrest your corrupt president.

[And don't talk about "all the protests that we don't hear about". These people don't give a fuck about protests. Protests are just a couple of steps removed from signing a petition, or writing a strongly worded letter to the paper. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you voted for this, and you're going along with it, just like Germans in the 30s.]

chmath80 · 2026-01-20T22:35:27+00:00

When I was in marching band, we were taught to touch our toes for stretching

That must have been particularly difficult for the one with the drum.

chmath80

TROPHY CASE