I've always tested as INTJ as well, but this test says ISTP. I did score a 99% on introversion so at least that's about right. All of these tests ask the same basic questions multiple times per test and just word them differently. I assume it's to balance scores, but it's annoying to answer "you would rather read a book than go to a party" and then turn around and answer "you don't enjoy parties as much as reading" or what have you. Interesting, but I don't feel it describes my personality particularly well. Still, it's a fun 5 minute break from work.

As for your sales series, I have to admit that I don't have a very positive view of sales, probably due to movies/shows/my dad, but I'm going to try to word this in a non-hostile way. If you think I'm being a dick, sorry! I promise I'm not trying to be one. I really do enjoy reading about your work and am very curious to know how it all works. I know nothing about the sales world so be prepared for some stupid questions if you decide to read on.

I can't help but feel that everything in sales is contrived and designed to purposefully sell things that maybe the customer doesn't really need. This isn't due to what you're saying, but my own uninformed view. Do you as a salesperson have a genuine concern for the issues that your customer faces and have a desire for them to succeed or is the goal just to sell more things? I'm certain that you want their business to grow so that you can continue selling more things to them, but do you have to balance their growth with your own sales goals? Speaking of, what kind of goals do you (salespeople in general) have? Sale quotas, dollar quotas, or something else? How do things like having Billy Bob as a customer for 20 years who only buys $10,000 in goods/services a year compare to Joe Dirt who pays $100k this year and you never see him again? I guess my question there is who is the more valuable customer? Is that question even relevant?

Hypothetical - your customer says he needs a bigger refrigerator, but you convince him that he needs a bigger freezer as well. He doesn't necessarily need a bigger freezer, but you've convinced him that he does. Is it due to you projecting a future need for more frozen storage for him or a present want for more money for you? Is there an established ethical guideline or is it more of a personal one that you set for yourself? How do you know that you're acting in the customer's best interests and not just your own (I'm assume you try and have a healthy balance), or is that a consideration? Is this even a realistic scenario?

The things you've posted such as mirroring and paraphrasing also seem very odd to me. For example, you said

Prospect: We are down about 12% year to date in the southeastern US market. This means we are likely not going to be able to open our new southeast facility until fourth quarter 2016.

Salesperson: Okay, so what you are saying is that you would like to be able to open up your new southeast facility sooner, but because of sluggish sales in that region, you will have to wait until late 2016.

Prospect: Yes, unfortunately, that's where we find ourselves.

Do people not get annoyed when someone does that? "Yes, I just said that (and now I'm annoyed)" is what I think when I read the salesperson's response. As for mirroring, I just think "are you copying me?" suspicious squint. I do realize that you put disclaimers at the bottom for newbies about being genuine, but I'm curious as to how this actually works. Maybe I shouldn't own a business.

Anyway, sorry again if this comes off as rude. I'm curious as to how this works with more normal people.

vi ride our pet bears!

I refuse to believe that this is a false statement. Don't shatter my dreams.

Russia is more than people in the US are lead to believe through idiotic stereotypes in the modern artistic media.

I imagine other countries portraying America as either filled with beer-guzzling hillbillies or brutal Wall Street types. I'm sure you've answered this somewhere, but are there any stereotypes that Russians think about Americans (or other countries)?

It's called a wardrobe malfunction. Sheesh!

When I worked at the construction site, my first six weeks of work were unofficial, and so the payment to me wasn't declared anywhere (probably ascribed to buying a bit more materials); as such, I received what's called "black payment" (which is analogous in meaning to black market, with "white payment" being taxed over and "grey payment" being a combination of two - so you might make 80k in total, but the organization only pays taxes on the officially declared 30k).

We would call black payment "paying under the table" here in the US. I don't think we have a name for the other two, but many places with cash tips are the same as your grey payment. Credit card tips are recorded, but sometimes it's up to the person being tipped to declare cash tips to be taxed.

This is one thing I love about English: you can address any man by using the respectful but not poetic "sir", and any(?) woman - by using "ma'am".

Yep! Tacking on a "sir" or "ma'am" is usually smiled upon. You can call an older man "sir" and be seen as respectful, while calling a younger man "sir" helps them feel respected and included. I've seen some younger women turn their nose up at being called ma'am because it makes them feel old, but everyone gets a healthy dose of "sir" and "ma'am" from me anyway. Take my respect, dammit!

I'm surprised they gave you books at all.

e - Seems someone hasn't noticed their typo.

I've read two books in North Korea's prison system.

in

I encourage you to read up on North Korea's political prisons. Here's a few links that you may find interesting.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/19/north-korea-prison-camp-14-documentary

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/a-land-of-unspeakable-atrocities-un-commission-warns-leader-kim-jongun-he-could-face-trial-for-human-rights-abuses-in-north-korea-9134405.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121003855.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_North_Korea

There's also a documentary on the subject.

I stand by my statement that Manning is facing nothing close to this. Humiliating, inhumane, and illegal, yes. Nothing close to North Korea.

I do agree that we need protection for whistleblowers. What that should be, I don't have the expertise to accurately say, but we can't continue to torture people and call ourselves a civilized nation.

It's contraband because they say it's contraband. It doesn't have to make sense to someone outside the system. The article uses the terms "including" and "among" thereby implying there to be more than just these items. Buzzfeed has only highlighted these specific items because that's what brings controversy to the story. It's easily spun as an attack on transgender folks and that's what they want because that's what brings views which turns into money.

I don't doubt that Manning is probably being treated more unfairly than other prisoners because of her decision to (not sure of the correct phraseology here) be transgender and the nature of the crimes committed. That's not a fact that I can verify and it doesn't mean I'm right, but it's not hard to imagine that it's happening.

It's not even close to North Korea. We're not taking generations and enslaving them in essentially concentration camps.

The article and the title here both inspire the reader to have a certain mindset and that is to think that this is an affront to transgender folks, when it's not verified that this is true. Buzzfeed has cherry picked the information they want to use and spun it into an article of half-truths, which is in no way surprising, but it does need to be noted.

Oops. Sorry. Just click the title of this post. It should take you to...

http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2014/oct/21/martin-gardner-mathematical-puzzles-birthday

Here be ze answer.

I support Proposition 1.

Never played, but I'm always down for a game of just about anything.

I tried. I really did. He took too long to get to the point and kept interrupting Spoony! I'm just starting the Pathfinder videos now. I've got the itch! I'm about to go on roll20 and beg for a game.

Yeah I'm trying to watch in order, but I may skip forward to those videos since they aren't in the same sequence as Counter Monkey. Only one I skipped was when he brought some other dude in. My girlfriend said D&D was too nerdy for her tear. She can't imagine the awesome battles!

Sort of echoing or at least inspired by tehstone's comment, people in America have this weird masochistic enjoyment from being offended. Words really only have the power that you give them. Saying pretty much anything is bound to offend someone. It doesn't usually make any difference what you mean. It usually comes down to what the actual words are and who says them. Americans are terrible at incorporating context into their judgement.

To answer your specific questions - usually people don't call each other nigger if they're trying to be friendly. They'd go closer to nigga for a friend. See Denzel Washington in Training Day for an example.

People like to whine about retarded because they can. Now we're supposed to say "intellectual disability." Means the exact same thing, so to me it doesn't make a difference. Retarded replaced "feebleminded" or "idiotic" as a medical definition for people with developmental disorders. Now we've replaced that with intellectual disability. Calling someone retarded isn't considered on the same "level" of offensiveness as nigger, IMO. That's pretty subjective, though.

Context and your audience determines your word usage. Losing a game of Mario Kart and calling someone an asshole is different than calling someone an asshole after they key your car.

If you're offended by "you guys," fuck yourself so hard (not you, but... you know. Those folks that are.) Asking "hey, why do you guys tip" and getting that response is ridiculous. If you can't answer a simple question, then it's time to go meditate or some shit because you are way too high-strung.

For some reason, Americans as a whole don't know how to give people the benefit of the doubt. People go immediately from hear word to react, skipping any kind of thought about context, meaning, or speaker's background (e.g. foreigner).

I didn't think you were angry or frustrated at all. I understand that you're genuinely asking these questions and providing your own experiences and thoughts as context.

Edit - If you're comfortable saying, where are you from? Just curious!

I meant the Spoony dude. I couldn't remember his name (terrible with names). One of his videos was about people being pretty open to new players. It may be a smart idea to sit and watch a campaign or at least a single game to see how people interact with each other and whatnot. He also mentioned the newbie guide, so I may download that or find one at the store.

I wish there was a D&D scrubs meetup!

I'd be totally down to blunder through some campaigns. Only problem is that nobody I know is even remotely interested in that kind of thing and I really don't want to ruin any seasoned players' games at the shops, even though dude says that they're really welcoming to newbies. May try my hand at a few online runs to get a feel of things.

Alright dude. This guy is making me want to go out and play D&D. What have you done to my life?

Hamilton is so disappointed that he wasted his shot. Look at him, he can't believe it.

Oreo needs to relax! The stupid bell jingling detracted from the story in the first video and made me want to dunk Oreo in a huge glass of milk.

I'm really enjoying this guy's stories. They're hilarious and well told, plus I'm a sucker for tabletop shenanigans. Great find! I hate his dog so much, though. For anyone that's put off by the cracked out dog in Squirt Gun Wars, it goes away for the subsequent videos as far as I've seen.

Pretty sad, since the ACLU, HRC, and NAACP love Sanders. I don't think these folks did their research.

Source

Natasha married Adolf Tolkachev in 1957, the year after her father died. She managed to stay out of trouble, but those who worked with her knew of her feelings. She read the banned writer Boris Pasternak and the poet Osip Mandelstam. When Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in 1962, she was the first in the family to devour it. Later, when possession of Solzhenitsyn’s unpublished works was more dangerous, she was unafraid to pass around copies in samizdat, the underground distribution network for banned literature. In 1968, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, there was a rush in Soviet workplaces to pass resolutions supporting the action. She was the only person in her group to vote no. She was, in the words of a supervisor, “unable to be insincere.” Her long ordeal and her deep antipathy to the Soviet party-state became Tolkachev’s, too.

BAMF.

She was, in the words of a supervisor, “unable to be insincere.”

You word things much gentler than what I'm capable of. I wish I could write a program that takes my thoughts and puts them through a(an?) rd95 filter in order to make them more palatable.

Why should I? Honest question.

I assume that you mean "why should I ignore the trolls?" Generally, they're just there to piss you off and get you riled up. I'm trying to point out the flaws in your argument in order to allow you to take a step back and reconsider your approach. I'm not calling you racist, but I am pointing out the double standard of allowing one color of person to say a certain thing (i.e. "... one of these days I'll make a glossary of the WWPR - Whiney White People Responses.") while vilifying another color person for saying the same style sentence (e.g. a white person talking about the glossary of Whiney Black People Responses). That doesn't have anything to do with you other than the fact that you brought it up. My response isn't meant to be indicative of you as person.

Being a racist asshat is not a fucking opinion and I shouldn't have to constantly tell people why they're wrong

I agree, but you didn't tell anyone why they were wrong. You simply said "literally everything you said is wrong" and didn't provide any additional information as to why your statement was true. Simply the fact that you said aidrocsid is wrong was good enough. I understand that it's tiring to fight for a position that you believe in, but if you do decide to call someone out, you have to be prepared to back up your position. Simply saying "you're wrong" doesn't mean anything. Fortifying your statement with facts or opinions of experts is necessary to have a strong argument.

For example, you could link this article and talk about this example of how Black Lives Matter is trying to engage in thoughtful discourse. They have a set time and place to meet, they've engaged with local police and community, and Rev. Donald L. Perryman, the man leading this group, has a PhD and is working on his second.

He received a doctor of ministry degree, with emphasis in social justice ministry and political activism, and he is completing a Ph.D. from Antioch College, writing a thesis on ethical leadership in the post-drug war era.

You could throw out this quote from Judith Butler who holds a doctorate in Philosophy.

"When some people rejoin with 'All Lives Matter' they misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue. It is true that all lives matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood to matter, which is precisely why it is most important to name the lives that have not mattered, and are struggling to matter in the way they deserve," Butler said in an interview with The New York Times. "If we jump too quickly to the universal formulation, 'all lives matter,' then we miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of 'all lives.'"

I found these things with two minutes of Google work and wove them into this response in about five. I would contend that it supports your argument much better than simply telling someone that they're wrong and then calling them names.

You don't get it, you're never going to get it, nobody's ever going to get it.

If you truly believe that, then you're in a darker place than I thought. There's no point in arguing if you believe you've already lost and there's no hope for anything positive from your interactions. Don't engage if you don't think you can win the battle. There are plenty of people that would love to understand, but the actions of those two at the Sanders speech are only pushing people away from Black Lives Matter. The only people that would be convinced that their actions had merit are those that already believe in the cause. Those people are already on the same team and there's not a point in trying to reach them in such a desperate and disruptive manner. They'll listen to you anyway.

You're just going to sit there and try and tell me how wrong I am about shit you are never going to fucking understand. Why should I? Whyyyyyy should I?

That's a question that only you can answer for yourself. I think you'll find that a lot of people are open-minded, but that doesn't mean that they haven't formed an opinion already. It's your job, if you choose to try and convince them of your point of view, to be an accurate representation of that which you support.

I was just being "emotional", not exhausted as fuck having to defend the LITERAL SIMPLE FACT THAT BLACK LIVES MATTER HOLY FUCK.

Nobody is arguing against the fact that black lives matter. Aidrocsid, from my point of view, is arguing against the people that are rallying under the Black Lives Matter flag in order to push an anti-white agenda instead of a pro-black agenda.

BUT YOU'RE RIGHT. FUCKING AIDROCSID IS THE ONE THAT'S GOT IT HARD.

Nobody said aidrocsid has it hard, but you did attack aidrocsid's person instead of his argument. That's what I'm arguing against and trying to point out to you. I'm not calling you a racist. I'm not even saying that aidrocsid is completely correct. I'm not saying that I'm correct. I'm not even saying that you're completely wrong, but that your method of getting your point across leaves something to be desired. I'm giving you my point of view from someone who just stumbled along and read the exchange. I understand that this is a topic that is near and dear to your heart and that you feel very strongly about. I'm doing my best to write this in a neutral, informative tone, rather than a condescending one. I mean only to point out where things went wrong and where they could be improved. If you like, you're welcome to PM me if you wish to have a more private conversation. I won't give any details of said PMs out to anyone and if you want I can even delete them after our discussion is through.

I'm just going to tell you that literally everything you said is wrong - eightbitsamurai

Okay, let's break his comment down.

You know what? Fuck #blacklivesmatter. Fuck this racist, rage-fueled, divisive, violent, aggressive horse shit. - aidrocsid

Opinion. He's stating his frustration with what he perceives as a counterproductive set of actions by what should be a productive movement.

Yes, yes, these are only two people and this is only a small minority of the people waving this banner, but that's pretty much always the case. - aidrocsid

Fact, though lacking a concrete number. He's stating that in any group of people, there are going to be extremists and detractors that barrel over everyone else to scream their point across, because they don't know how to convey their ideas in an intelligent and logical manner. You can look at just about any group of people in the world and find these kinds of folks.

This sense that it's fine to just do whatever you want because you feel like nobody's listening to you is completely unjustified and associating with it is bullshit. - aidrocsid

Opinion. It's hard to argue against this statement. Disrupting a presidential candidate's speech to scream in his face isn't the best way to get your point across (unless that is your point) or to gain supporters.

Something's wrong? Use our fucking democracy like everybody else. - aidrocsid

Opinion. One could argue the underrepresentation of black interests, but these two aren't even coming close to utilizing our democracy. They're actively blocking another person's free speech in order to shout their own message.

You do not get to derail other people's lives just because you feel like the world hasn't been fair to you. Silencing other people who're working hard to be heard themselves is not fucking acceptable. - aidrocsid

Opinion, though one could argue that interrupting someone who is saying his piece in a peaceful manner is at the least violating a social constraint and at worst violating their 1st amendment rights.

Now, on to what you said in response.

lol

on a scale from "gluten-free is my necessity" to "I left my ray-band wayfarers in my prius", how white are you my friend - eightbitsamurai

Name-calling. Has literally nothing to do with the substance of aidrocsid's argument. You just assume that aidrocsid is white and then proceed to casually throw out two stereotypes in order to demonize aidrocsid.

And just to tell you ahead of time -- you're going to be outraged and appalled by my snark, and then bitch and moan. I know that. You won't be the first and you won't be the last, and there really won't be a point to you doing that. - eightbitsamurai

Prediction of aidrocsid's response. You're attempting to tell aidrocsid how he's going to react to something you're going to say, thereby stating that you know explicitly that you're going to argue in a snarky and unfactual manner and instead will be resorting to personal attacks or sarcasm.

I'm just going to tell you that literally everything you said is wrong, and if you REALLY wanna find out why, go through my badged comments and get a picture painted. - eightbitsamurai

I think we went over this pretty well.

I promise, one of these days I'll make a glossary of the WWPR - Whiney White People Responses. - eightbitsamurai

If a white person said the same thing about any other color of person, it'd be labelled as racist and hateful vitriol.

Then I can just link it when chuckle-fucks like you show up and bore me. Then I can focus on other shit, like Inazuma Eleven. Can you imagine? RPGs and Soccer, cats and dogs living together. - eightbitsamurai

Name-calling. Clearly you're not bored, or you wouldn't have typed out such an emotional response. You're making an attempt to seem unfazed when your words betray you otherwise. Inazuma Eleven looks interesting. Probably a pretty relaxing game.

I do realize it probably won't be popular to disagree with you, but that's alright. As long as you've read and given this a thought, that's good enough for me.

Edit for formatting

Oh man. That nurse and the last panel were so creepy. Very well done! Oh, and the sun in the first panel. That smile though.

Who's The Worse Public Figure is an irritating feature of celebrity culture.

Trump is showing these filthy casuals how it's done.