Well let me share with you the wisdom of age: often you can just ask someone what’s up.

This also works on dates: you can just ask someone out. You don’t have to go all in your head about it. If only someone had told me when I was a teen, alas.

How old are you?

Have you considered asking what’s up?

Things that aren’t Nazis might be a good stopping point

I (a guy) think I still have a small plastic off-brand Lego in my desk. I spent a weekend with my high school crush and we found a bunch of them and had goofy fun with them.

Last I heard she’d moved away, married a woman, and had a successful career in science. I doubt she thinks of me, but I’m glad she did well.

It comes up in software development sometimes, which is my day to day. It also is useful for any “fast but inaccurate approach” scenario, which comes up sometimes.

I wouldn’t say I’m proud of using it. It was already in my lexicon. (So was “lexicon”)

Here’s an article about them https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-heuristic-2795235

Why do you ask?

What about a dead billionaire?

If someone shot musk or zuckerberg dead I’d be like “That’s good. That’s an improvement.”

Do people still think the courts matter? I feel like the supreme court is a farce and the lesser courts have a lot of far-right judges ready to rule from their feelings.

I guess it’s important to still try, but I think real solutions lie elsewhere.

Fucking Hell NY Times can you please just not be a myopic piece of shit and actually call a nazi a nazi. All of this enabling hang-wringing pearl-clutching nonsense is part of how we got in this problem.

The other day I had a galaxy brain thought: Imagine if people cared. Just cared a little more. Things could be so much better.

Like, litter. Imagine if people just cared a little more and didn’t litter. Whole problem just goes away.

If people cared a little more and just canceled their netflix when the price went up (or they did other nonsense), maybe things would change.

But I’m told I have impossible standards and people cannot meet my expectations.

Did anyone want this? MMOs are kind of passé. There’s a couple big ones still kicking around (WoW, Guild Wars 2, final fantasy) but there’s a huge graveyard and hospice for all the others.

We could do a lot for climate change, world hunger, homelessness, disease prevention and eradication, and so on with that much money.

All of these people are doing mass murder via opportunity cost, and I hope they pay for it.

If americans were on average smarter and better informed, then we wouldn’t be in this situation. I don’t think the majority of people will understand what’s happening. They’ll blame the jewish space lasers or gay frogs or whatever instead.

I’ve been buying stuff from Bandcamp. They sold recently so their future is uncertain, but as it stands right now it seems like a pretty good deal. Artists get a good cut, and you get streaming + drm free copies of the music to download.

I don’t really like subscriptions for music. It’s like renting. I’d rather pay $10/mo buying an album and have a big library after ten years than have nothing.

Emotions aren’t good (or bad). They’re often like a heuristic. Fast but inaccurate. This is great when it’s like “a bear wandered into the house” and emotions say “RUN” and cold logic would be like “what? Why? How?” until you get mauled. It’s not good when it’s like “climate change makes me feel bad so I don’t believe in it”

I mean if you want to keep running bleed against a boss immune to bleed go ahead, but I’ll probably switch to an occult infusion.

And yet when someone’s like “the GOP is an existential threat and we should treat them accordingly” it’s all “you’re being alarmist” and “murder is a crime”

I hope every member of the GOP chokes to death alone and removed from everything they ever loved.

I’m thinking trump and the Republican party are really bad, like cruel and stupid bad, and maybe we shouldn’t let them give orders anymore.

Some of this behavior seems self destructive.

I knew a woman who would be like “I have too many matches it’s overwhelming”. I’d be like “ok well stop swiping and clear out what you have.” She’d be like “no, swiping is fun.” Well, ok, but you’re not making progress towards your stated goal, and you’re wasting the other people’s time.

I just don’t think spending 2 weeks texting without meeting is going to give useful, accurate, information. The chemistry you’re measuring there isn’t what you’ll have in real life.

A couple dinners before you find out they’re not what you thought? The same is achieved with just talking for a couple weeks

Strong disagreement here. The same is not achieved by texting and fundamentally cannot be achieved. There is too much stuff in body language, voice, and such that you’re just not going to reveal over text. Plus other stuff like seeing how they interact with other people. Are they rude to the bartender? Do they road rage? There are whole worlds of information you can’t get without spending time with someone in person.

We have different takes about “pen pals”. I don’t want to message someone for weeks before meeting up. I do like

• initial tailored message (eg: “Your profile says you love Kelly Link! Did you read her new novel? I really enjoyed it”)
• if they respond badly, exit (eg: “no”)
• one or two responses (eg: if they say “No! I’ve only read her short stories! Was it good?” then we can have a brief conversation about it)
• clear any dealbreakers (eg: if i had a kid, i’d ask something like “Just wanted to make sure you saw the thing on my blurb about my kid. Are you cool with dating a single parent?”)
• If that all goes well, ask something like “Do you want to have a date and see if we get along in person?”

That’s it. All done. Meeting up for a drink is low cost and low risk, but very information dense. I can get a better feel for if I want to invest in them after an hour in person than I can with a week of texting.

This is written from the perspective of a man who doesn’t date men. I can’t speak authoritatively about other experiences, but second hand none of my women friends have enjoyed prolonged texting without meeting.