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Friday Fun Thread for January 9, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Great comment, and yeah reframes the way I see politics in my big organization. I agree though. I work in a Fortune 500 company and we got $1,000 for our holiday party this year, on a team of ~50 people in the U.S. That's pretty much the only event budget we got this year, outside of celebrating a 20 year work anniversary for someone on the team.

Apparently we used to have much more funding for these sorts of events, but they've been slowly cutting back. IMO it's crazy because I doubt it's even strictly efficient, given how important it is to keep talent. But I don't make those decisions.

I think the type of efficiency we have is efficiency at maximising what can be measured. The causality between e.g. a fun sociable office and employee retention is hard to measure. It's somewhat obvious that there is such a connection, so it gets a little funding. But there's not enough numerical evidence to put it where it should probably be to actually optimise for success.