To share the stupidest thing I have ever heard

[Sparklfairy]

My friend is away in a country that a few days into her holiday brought in quarantine restrictions upon returning to the UK. No big deal to her, she can wfh and organise deliveries etc.

She just told me she was chatting around the pool and people are confused about when quarantine actually 'starts'. Most have convinced themselves it's the day after you land 'to give them time to go shopping and get food and everything ready and stuff'.

So you're quarantined, but you have a magical window of time where you can get supplies and merrily skip round the supermarket infecting everyone saying 'Oh, I'm not in quarantine until tomorrow'.

I'm not sure if they're spectacularly thick or just so entitled they've twisted the rules to suit themselves. I don't normally get annoyed about CV or what other people do but really!?

They're thick. The rules specifically say travel straight from the airport to your residence with no stops

@sodabreadjam

Apparently Trump said yesterday that California will soon be on water rationing because they pump millions of gallons into the Pacific ocean to help certain tiny fish. No doubt some of his followers will believe it.

I wonder if his mania will reduce when the steroids wear off.

Wasn't it worse than that? I think he was blaming the Californians for carelessly letting their rivers flow into the sea.

@SharonasCorona

But to be fair, loads of people have posted things that no-one has commented on, on this thread. For what it's worth, I have defended both you and Popsicle (and others) on several threads in the past (under a previous name). This is a fairly light-hearted thread and just because someone hasn't come on to specifically denounce the things that were said, doesn't mean that they don't agree that they are clearly wrong and phobic things to say.

Saying what you did is a hurtful and quite frankly unnecessary and irrelevant generalisation on this particular thread.

I used to work in the Middle East and to be honest, I think the world would be a better place if the world was like our office. Irrespective of personal circumstances, we celebrated EVERY-BODIES holidays. We did cards (sometimes) and food, Christmas, Easter, Eid's, Diwali, Holi and many others I can't remember... Aaah, fond memories.

I treasure the memory of the Oxford work experience student who couldn't understand that when we dictated letters to customers we intended the typed letters to be posted, not put into the files.

That humans are made up of 99% water. We're not fucking jellyfish mate

when he asked me of the author of the book I was reading at the time, Evelyn Waugh, what other books she had written. We were clearly incompatible. Call me an intellectual snob if you like.

FFS, no, you're worse than an intellectual snob.

A long time ago on an audit job the junior in our team was given some xeroxes of floppy discs by the finance director's PA. on being asked why she had given us pictures she said she'd been asked to make us copies of the discs. I

An ex-colleague was convinced that the rind on the Brie I was eating was a coating of flour.
I live in a town where they filmed a version of A Christmas Carol some years ago, and you can still see the name 'Ebeneezer Scrooge' carved into one of the gravestones in a local churchyard - I believe they used an existing stone which had worn blank over time for the purpose. The same ex-colleague excitedly told me that Ebeneezer Scrooge used to live here "and you can still see his gravestone". Nobody could convince her he was a fictional character.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough @Cadent the implication was that they would land and have a "grace period" to go round the supermarket but act as normal. Not get "essentials" asap. This was a group of separate families landing in different places too.

When my sister rang me on the landline at home and asked "are you at home?"

Au contraire, the point of calling it 'general knowledge' is that it is knowledge which is generally known, not 'knowledge that is only known in certain circles'

Well, that’s a load of bullshit, isn’t it.

It is defined as knowledge of a broad range of facts about various subjects. There aren’t things that are general knowledge and things that aren’t. It varies depending on so many different things.

“I can’t understand why George Clooney is seen as a sex symbol... the big ears and everything. I mean, he seems like a nice man, but....”

Turned out DM was confusing George Clooney with Martin Clunes.

When my sister rang me on the landline at home and asked "are you at home?"

Could she have forgotten/not realised she was calling not onto your mobile phone?

My best mate's husband had a few gems. He thought it was the Sixteenth Chapel, not the Sistine Chapel. That you couldn't burn wood, that Florida was in California and that some other county was in Somerset. Thank god she divorced the idiot.

[quote FrizzyHairMalarkey]@SharonasCorona

But to be fair, loads of people have posted things that no-one has commented on, on this thread. For what it's worth, I have defended both you and Popsicle (and others) on several threads in the past (under a previous name). This is a fairly light-hearted thread and just because someone hasn't come on to specifically denounce the things that were said, doesn't mean that they don't agree that they are clearly wrong and phobic things to say.

Saying what you did is a hurtful and quite frankly unnecessary and irrelevant generalisation on this particular thread.

I used to work in the Middle East and to be honest, I think the world would be a better place if the world was like our office. Irrespective of personal circumstances, we celebrated EVERY-BODIES holidays. We did cards (sometimes) and food, Christmas, Easter, Eid's, Diwali, Holi and many others I can't remember... Aaah, fond memories.[/quote]
So you're more offended by me saying MNers are silent on the treatment of Muslims than the thing people have said to Popsicle?

So you dont eat pork, because I have heard you love a good sausage in you
All Muslims are terrorists

Not one person has told Popsicle those comments were wrong.

Saying what you did is a hurtful and quite frankly unnecessary and irrelevant generalisation on this particular thread.

It's not irrelevant, people have been recounting the dumb things people have been saying to them. Popsicle recounted some things and instead of 'that's wrong' she was told by one poster she was 'desperate' to alter herself' and 'condemning' herself by not celebrating Christmas. We have had a respectful debate about that with that poster.

Why is my coming out in support of Popsicle irrelevant when there has been deafening silence from others?

The rules specifically say travel straight from the airport to your residence with no stops

TBF the rules also say you can stop off to do some shopping if you have to.

I used to share a Formal Logic class (IF/OR/NOT/AND statements etc) with a small bunch of PPE students. They were rubbish at it, but they also whinged constantly about having to study it at all. “It’s useless, it’s got nothing to do with the real world, we’d never have to use it in real life, we should be studying something that’s easier more practical.”

I do wonder if any of them ever got a job where they had to use Excel, and if so how long they lasted.

(In the interests of balance I did know another PPE student not in that class who was both lovely and highly intelligent, so I’m team NAPPEALT).

A colleague once asked me why there are so few incidences of identical different sex twins, when it's quite common in same sex twins.

Oh and yes some averages do work with half the population falling below the average and half above. The posters claiming “that’s not how averages work” have shown themselves up something rotten.

My favourite example of that effect was in Private Eye’s “Dumb Britain” column where egregiously ignorant answers from quiz shows were given so that their readers could point and laugh at the stupid proles.
The question was
“Complete the name of this Church: All Hallows by the BLANK.”
The respondent said “Wardrobe”, which I grant you does sound a bit odd.
Someone went to the trouble of writing it down and sending it into Private Eye as an example of public idiocy, some smug hack chose it for print and a subeditor proof read it without anyone of them knowing that St Andrews By The Wardrobe is a famous church about half a mile west of All Hallows by the Tower, and it was a perfectly intelligent though incorrect guess.

[quote GoldfishParade]@PopsicleHustler
I know loads of Muslims who properly go in for Christmas.

The fact that you are from a traditionally Christian background and have converted to Islam but now dont celebrate Christmas is really sad and leads me to question what led to your conversion. Christmas is now a national knees up with practically zero religious overtones unless you go actively looking for them. The fact that you live in a place where christmas is a joyous pinnacle of the year, were born into that culture, have kids yet still dont celebrate it sounds really grim and soulless.

I can understand converting to Islam, I cant understand being so desperate to alter who you are that you then condemn yourself and your kids to spending every december without a feast, presents, mince pies, singing, coming together with friends and family.[/quote]
I also know lots of Muslim families, who, if not exactly celebrate Christmas, enjoy it as a cultural festival, much like many non-Christians in this country. However the Muslims I know come mainly from the Indian sub-continent rather than West Africa, so I don't know if that has any bearing on how they practice their religion and their attitudes to other religions?

Without wanting to be rude or offensive, it does often appear that those that convert are more fervent about sticking to the rules of their new religion.

@SharonasCorona

So you're more offended by me saying MNers are silent on the treatment of Muslims than the thing people have said to Popsicle?
I didn't say that now did I? I did not once say that the things that were said to Popsicle were not stupid, I was commenting on what YOU had said that basically said MN was full of racists. That was what I was disagreeing with. The two are mutually exclusive.

Not one person has told Popsicle those comments were wrong.
That doesn't mean they don't think it. There are lots of things on lots of threads that people haven't commented on.

she was told by one poster she was 'desperate' to alter herself' and 'condemning' herself by not celebrating Christmas.
Just because one poster has that opinion (as you can see, I also questioned that) doesn't mean everyone does. This thread was not about anti-muslim sentiment, it was about stupid things people have said. And yes, the things said to Popsicle were stupid, just because people haven't commented that they were indeed stupid, doesn't mean that pretty much everyone on MN is racist. Yes, there are clearly some racists on here, just as there are out in the real world, but I would say that the vast majority are not.

So - just for clarity:
I think the things that were said to @PopsicleHustler are racist and abhorrent and I think it is disgraceful that people ask such stupid, ignorant questions.
And on a totally separate note:
I think that you calling pretty much everyone on MN a racist for NOT commenting on Popsicle's post was unnecessary and a rather nasty generalisation.

@YesThisIsMe

I'm pretty sure in the context of IQ, that's not how averages work

@WhatifIfeellikeacat

When my sister rang me on the landline at home and asked "are you at home?"

Could she have forgotten/not realised she was calling not onto your mobile phone?

It's quite common for an unanswered landline to be set to divert to the mobile.

@Pelleas - this was 30 years ago before anyone of us a mobile phone

When I first met my DH, I told a friend that he was from Norwich, to which she replied "ooh, you're so lucky to be able to move abroad". She refused to believe that the country was Norway and that Norwich was in fact a city in England. Same friend a few years later when another friend of ours moved to Texas: "you'd better learn to speak Texican". Could not make it up.