1d4-1 is 0 to 3. Sorry, not the point.

One factor might be location. I’m in a major city.

What do you mean exactly? If you think some people are just innately attractive and that’s immutable and unattainable, that’s nonsense.

Easily changed stuff like a better haircut, better fitting clothes, a better photo, all go a long way.

I’m a very average guy with a wardrobe of thrift store finds and band tshirts. I’m not even 6’ tall. But I did try to whole-ass engage with every potential match instead of doing bullshit like chatgpt or copy-pasted ice breakers.

Also a real fast way to be unattractive is having an ugly worldview. Most people aren’t going to like someone who treats them like shit. Someone who has a genuine conversation and shares interests will go farther.

I started buying music in 2015 (mostly Bandcamp) and I have no regrets. I have a big library now of drm free music. Some months I spend nothing and still enjoy music, without ads.

Discord was never secure and a private for profit org was never going to stay good.

to meet the man she’d spent the last three weeks opening up to.

First off, don’t chat for three weeks before a date. That’s a terrible idea. You’re going to build up a faulty model of who they are and then be jolted when you meet them in real life. Which is exactly what happened here.

Second, to all the people using chat gpt, I don’t know how to say this nicely but fucking git gud. What a bunch of sad sacks that can’t have a conversation, can’t read a wikipedia article, can’t even try their honest best.

a workaround for what he sees as the coded jargon of modern dating. “Like, what do you mean ‘What’s my attachment style?’” he balks. “Every girl on the apps has this thing about ‘love languages’ – it’s just gibberish

Is it though? Take five minutes to read about it if it’s so ubiquitous. What a sack of shit.

I’m a pretty average guy and I was getting 1d4-1 dates per week just by matching with people and asking them out. You really don’t need to do more than be genuine, present, and interested in them.

Reminds me of a thing from work that I think about pretty often.

I worked someplace that prided itself on being “data driven”. They put stuff on the company tshirts like “Data > Feelings”. Real pretentious shit, but they seemed to pride themselves on making reasonable decisions based on facts and evidence. They’d made fun of other companies for doing stuff based on the whims of CEOs.

One of the many articles came out about 4 day workweeks being beneficial for everyone involved. At one of the company meetings, someone brought it up and asked the CEO if we could look into it. He just said, “We’re not doing that.” Didn’t ask to read the article. Didn’t look at data. No discussion. Just a snap decision: no.

People are emotional creatures and many of them are stupid, too. Stupid and spiteful.

If right wing people were smart they wouldn’t be right wing. Of course they’re going to believe and share AI slop video. They’re emotional driven fools.

Executive function.

I don’t know but it seems like a lot of people around me are just in a haze. Probably some of it is ADHD.

I went back to windows for a few months on the newer desktop. I installed mint and discovered it had a lot of problems with the hardware. HDMI, Ethernet, WiFi, and various downstream things didn’t work. I fixed some of it with help from forums and such, but eventually I went back to windows.

But a couple months later, I tried Pop!_OS and that has worked perfectly out of the box. No regrets.

I decided I was done with reddit. I never used apps so I just signed out of my account and never went back.

Booleans work in any order. A and B is the same value as B and A

Unless you’re interpreting the phrase as “have your cake and then eat it too”? Which I never did before, but that would make your objections make more sense to me.

They do not. They are stupid.

I really do not like video as a medium for things that could be written. I don’t really care for “wow look at this wacky thing that happened”. I really dislike videos that are just someone talking at the camera. (Standup comedy gets a pass, but that’s also not something I watch much)

So I’m probably not watching most videos.

I only buy drm free music and then back it up somewhere myself. Bandcamp at least is drm free, but who knows if they’ll turn to shit after being bought and sold.

What’s the saying? Some people are more concerned with order than justice?

I’d see that a lot with my old coworkers. They’d rather just not talk about something than be mildly uncomfortable.

Buying music on Bandcamp and similar has been good for me. When I got laid off I kept all the music I owned and didn’t have to pay anymore. All these subscription services suck.

There’s some spots in the big nyc parks where you’re surrounded by trees and can pretend you’re not in a big city. That’s all I’ve got.

Outside the city it gets surprisingly conservative sometimes. I knew someone who had family north of Albany, and their neighbor flew a confederate flag. Probably a maga flag now.

I can’t imagine what I’d even want the “Ai” to do in the browser.

There are less obvious costs to living outside a city, especially if the city has transit. All the car costs, for one relevant example. The health loss from walking less. The isolation takes a toll. The shallower social pool. Fewer cultural options.

Also it’s not like apartments are dirt cheap in the suburbs outside NYC. I could pay $2000/mo for a nice apartment in Plainsfield, NJ… or I could pay a similar amount, not have a car, and live someplace where stuff happens.

If only separated bike lanes were more common. I’m really not comfortable riding with all those cars just right there.