I went for a focus group discussion before, and the question the facilitator used was how do you like your coffee?

Led to a passionate discussion on the merits of various styles of coffee. Plus, coffee snobs will argue for their case against people who abstain from it

Hey, do you have a lightning-enabled Bitcoin wallet on your phone?

The modern classic seems to be, "Is pineapple on pizza okay?" To be followed up by, "New York style or Chicago pizza?"

And for foodies, "Best style of BBQ: Western Carolina, Eastern Carolina, Alabama, Kansas City, or Texas style?"

Have you heard about Stacker News?

"what's the last thing you learned about, or taught somebody about?"

I leave here these two options:

"If you could live a day as a fictional character, who would it be and what would you do?" → Leaves room for creativity without being too deep.

"What’s the song you hate to love but always sing along to?" → Personal, light, and great for jokes and connections.

Do you have an useless talent or skill?

My useless skill is to make a fart sound with my hands.

You get useless crypto from coinbase, too? I wonder if we have to pay taxes on that stuff when we convert it, I never looked into it carefully.

So...do you think we'll ever switch to metric?

Do you think people can feel when they're being watched? If so, how?

LOL - realize I am late to the game here....but this one just popped into my head reading through your question....

While it could certainly snowball into something way deeper and "difficult" I think it has some real possibilities.... (and to give credit where it is due - Jeff Booth recently said something about this topic on a podcast)

How do you define the difference between hot and cold?

or something like that....for some reason when Jeff said it, it struck me as an impossible task when you really dig into it?

If people are more productive and have better technology over time, shouldn’t goods and services become cheaper over time?

I would like to share my real story I already shared this story in SN comment and I had earned about 500 sats hope this will work again So start once couple of year ago I was broke at that time na had no money so created a website like fake website where they can stake there btc and in return they will get certain percentage in 1 week I told every friends of mine they inveated in my site in first week I gave them their money with interest. After that they became greedy and they invested more so I took all the money and shutdown the website they still don't know about it This hasn't followed all the condition but yeah

First make a complement, then say: Sooooo.....Have you heard about the difficulty adjustment?

I think the context varies, it depends on the situation where you are with another person to start a conversation... whether in person or in a discussion group. I think a good trick is to talk about the weather... that's what I usually do sometimes when I have to talk to strangers or people I know that I meet on the street.

Something like this, ehem

I have a fail-safe conversation starter and it's exactly everything you're looking for. It works EVERY time.

You get within proximity of a stranger, make eye contact and they say, "How's it going?" I don't know why we say this as a culture, but it's 75% of conversation starters whether we like it or not.

My answer to that is" Best day EVER!" and it usually gets a laugh or smile, and they want to talk about whether that's a good philosophy or they want to ask me what's so great. I then say something super quick and turn it back on them.

i once went to a speed dating event and brought a deck of cards with fun conversation topics. i had fun and many girls did too, but something must have been off about my attitude because i got zero matches that day. i also spilled beer on some guy's crotch at the start of the event, haha (i was drinking non-alcoholic hot tea).

instead of cards, u cud pick a random stacker.news post, and discuss that with the new acquaintance. that way they cud help u construct a response and u will have a story to tell on here.

Good conversation starter is “why the hell in 2024 do you still use Coinbase” haha

“Howdy, what brings you around these parts” would be a good icebreaker if he want to bring the SN vibe to the real world.

Woah man, what's up with the penguin's knees?

Do you prefer spicy or non-spicy food, and why?