derek

Yes. :)

When I'm socially nervous or unsure I find it's helpful to reframe how I've defined "conversation". If my goal is to initiate a discourse instead of a dialogue then I can more clearly define my success criteria. To start a discourse: either ask for information or offer to deliver information.

Asking for info can be simplified like so:

1. Have a question in mind and know why you want to ask it. It's ok to ask for information about damn near anything (including info you already have). This example will ask for help with directions to the nearest park. The reason for asking is to find a convenient place to get some fresh air.
2. Open with a question that seeks consent and whose response naturally includes an unambiguous pass/fail. Example: "Hey! Would you help me understand something?" This is a yes or no question whose only goal is establishing if the other party is willing to converse.
3. If no then gracefully bow out of the interaction: "No problem! Thanks for letting me bother you. Have a nice day." or something similar. That counts as successfully practicing conservation. Goal achieved.
4. If yes then thank them and ask the intended question: "Thanks. I appreciate the help. Could you show me where to find the nearest public park?"
5. If no: see step 3.
6. If yes: let them answer the question.
7. Take a moment after they finish and consider two things. 1st consideration: Do you have any follow up questions? Examples: "Does that park have a nature path?" - "Is that park pet friendly?". 2nd consideration: Do you want to ask any of those questions?
8. If no for either: acknowledge the value of their answer, thank them for it, and then excuse yourself from the conversation. "That's exactly the info I was looking for. Thank you for your help. Have a great day!"
9. If yes for both: ask two or three more questions.
10. Close the interaction by either ending the entire conversation (see step 8) or, if you feel good about it, pivot to a new interaction like a dialogue or friendly debate. An exchange of introductions/names can signal this transition and give the other party another opportunity to opt in or out of a deeper dive.

The point of this specific set of steps is that you get to choose when you're done and it comes with a built-in excuse: you're leaving to make use of the info they gave you!

Delivering information has fuzzier boundaries and can more easily lead to dialogue. This has benefits and drawbacks. It can still begin similarly and follow the same format as outlined above. Step 2 becomes "Do you like public parks?" and Step 4 becomes "Yes! A fellow park enthusiast. Do you know about the Elroy-Sparta State Trail?" with the rest adjusting similarly.

If someone is interested in what you're telling them then they will either ask questions, pivot to a dialogue where they also have info to share, or ask you to share more. If you've delivered three or four items, given them space to respond, and they do none of those things, then you can use the same technique seen in Step 3: "Thanks for letting me chat with you for a few minutes. You listening really brightened my day. Have a good one!" and you're out. Goal achieved.

Framing their participation as a small favor shifts what could feel like an awkward escape into a successful interaction. They've done something nice for someone just by existing. That's a rare kind of validation. This is useful because delivering information misses out on one of the innate benefits of asking for information: most people are inclined to accommodate trivial favors. Asking for help immediately makes the helper important, useful, and valuable. That's a huge ego boost for very little effort. Your genuine appreciation for someone's help validates this feeling and will likely make their whole day. Framing an exit from any social experience in this way can be a very useful tool.

Your topic, fact, or opinion of choice should be something you find interesting. Encyclopedic knowledge is not required. In fact: being able to admit ignorance is a social green flag and an opportunity to co-learn with a new acquaintance.

If someone calls you out ("wait... Why are you talking to me?") then keep it simple. Be direct, honest, and reconfirm consent. "I want to get better at talking with people so I'm practicing conversations. Is that ok?" - Most people are going to light up after this revelation (they're now a helper). Openly acknowledging a weak point and actively working to improve it is endearing (another green flag). If they aren't OK with helping you practice then use that graceful exit and go talk to someone else.

If you're quite shy, anxious, or nervous then know that you can open with this revelation. If this makes it easier then I encourage you to do so! There are no Conservation Police waiting to haul you away for breaking social norms. You'll be surprised how many people happily take time for this sort of thing. If nothing else it offers a short and wholesome break from daily monotony. That's usually why people initiate small talk in the first place.

Conversation is a skill. We can't improve a skill unless we practice it. Changing behavior to improve a skill is not "being fake" and, personally, I think "fake it til you make it" is an unhelpful paradigm anyway. We're not misrepresenting ourselves. We're choosing to improve how we participate in reality. Anyone who thinks that's cringe isn't emotionally mature enough to earn our attention.

I completely agree. Michael-as-clown aside his story maps to the Peter principal well enough. Other character's arcs often have "finding themselves" or "pulling the veil" curves that similarly rise and fall. The context those developments are presented in invites the mind to examine a character's worth, competence, purpose, self-perception, etc, without forcing one perspective.

I appreciate that pacing and subtlety. It acknowledges the problem without trying to solve it. That makes sense. The characters can't solve modern work or its systemic failures. The resulting tension creates space to explore both the scope and fallout of that shared cultural tragedy. The writers do so, in a comedic framework, without neglecting the initial point of intrigue: people dealing with their second families eight hours a day. Coping is subtext.

Seeing Michael in his element is poignant because of its stark contrast against how we usually see him: a lonely man, lacking common social and emotional tooling, struggling to meaningfully understand and communicate his needs.

Salesmanship leverages Michael's competencies on the same fulcrum. He gives what he's desperate to be given. The gift of being seen, understood, and accommodated. In a word: friendship.

That's damn good art.

Near as I understand it: years ago some dumb engineering decisions were made, acknowledged, and corrected. Is there some recent scandal I'm out of the loop on?

Sure! That's an SMTP Relay. A lot of folks jumped on the poopoo wagon. It's common wisdom in IT that you don't do your own email. There are good reasons for that, and you should know why that sentiment exists, however; if you're interested in running your own email: try it! Just don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Keep your third party service until you're quite sure you want to move it all in-house (after due diligence is satisfied and you've successfully completed at least a few months of testing and smtp reputation warming).

Email isn't complex. It's tough to get right at scale, a pain in the ass if it breaks, and not running afoul of spam filtering can be a challenge. It rarely makes sense for even a small business to roll their own email solution. For an individual approaching this investigatively it can make sense so long as you're (a.) interested in learning about it, (b.) find the benefits outweigh the risks, and (c.) that the result is worth the ongoing investment (time and labor to set up, secure, update, maintain, etc).

What'll get you in trouble regardless is being dependent on that in-house email but not making your solution robust enough to always fill its role. Say you host at home and your house burns down. How inconvenient is it that your self-hosted services burned with it? Can you recover quickly enough, while dealing with tragedy, that the loss of common utility doesn't make navigating your new reality much more difficult?

That's why it rarely makes sense for businesses. Email has become an essential gateway to other tooling and processes. It facilitates an incredible amount of our professional interactions. How many of your bills and bank statements and other important communication are delivered primarily by email? An unreliable email service is intolerable.

If you're going to do it make sure you're doing it right, respecting your future self's reliance on what present-you builds, and taking it slow while you learn (and document!) how all the pieces fit together. If you can check all of those boxes with a smile then good luck and godspeed says I.

Here's an archive link (web.archive.org) for others who refuse to willingly participate in surveillance capitalism or marketing to be granted access to publicly published material.

Stolen shamelessly from someone else who posted it further up the thread.

You've fundamentally misunderstood this. Upholding Constitutional law cannot undermine the democratic process which it establishes.

If I win a game by breaking its rules I am de-facto disqualified from that victory. Yes, all law is written by people, can be unmade by people, and is only in effect so long as we collectively agree to enforce it, however; if the law is not unmade and if we collectively sigh in apathy at its violation then we are no longer playing the game the rules have defined.

This is the immense danger of the current Constitutional crisis. If there is no enforcement of the rules set forth in a government's founding document then it can no longer be recognized as the body which that document defines.

I do. Thanks. You're still focused on the wrong thing here.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not require any specific test which defines "insurrection". The impeachment is a useful anchor for establishing an agreement that an insurrection did occur and that Trump was, at the very least, an active participant in that insurrection.

The Insurrection Bar to Office: Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment (crsreports.congress.gov) provides an well crafted and neutral review of this. Its closing sentence is particularly relevant to our back and forth:

Congress has previously viewed Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment as establishing an enumerated constitutional qualification for holding office and, consequently, a grounds for possible exclusion.

Republican strategy has long revolved around the targeted devolution of norms. They hide in the cracks between definitions which assume good faith participation in the labor of mutually consensual governance and shield themselves in perpetual faux-victimhood. If Congress does not pursue the execution of Section 3 it is nothing less than an abdication of their duty to their Oath of Office.

Your last paragraph is a result of misunderstandings and assumptions on your part.

I take issue with your assertion that the document on which all other US law depends and from which all US public offices are granted their authority does not matter. It must. We ought to insist it does. Especially while it is being violated.

Neither of those facts preclude the application of the 14th. The barrier is whether or not someone holding public office, having taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, breaks that oath via insurrection against the same. It does not matter that Trump was not punished. The acquittal does not erase the reality of the past: it is a dismissal of immediate consequences. Nothing more.

The fact that Congress acknowledged the reality of January 6th is more than enough for the 14th to apply.

Nope. I read it. The language of the 14th doesn't require an impeachment or other formal conviction to apply. The fact that Trump was successfully impeached for inciting an insurrection is enough. The Senate's failure to execute its duty does not erase reality.

At this time, on this topic, I am not concerned with what makes for interesting conservation. I am interested in bringing attention to the ongoing Constitutional crisis of Trump's tentative second term.