The main difference is that they’re there specifically for the social experience. These folks are not going there to date you, no, but they are going there to socialize, so the barriers to socializing with strangers are greatly lowered. Maybe don’t just go there with dating front and center in your mind; instead focus on just meeting and getting to know people.
So, this is one of the unfortunate traps of our time, especially if you live in a place with car dependent sprawl. Women don’t want to be solicited while at work or on personal business (groceries, gym, etc), and, really, nobody does. You want to work at work, and you want to do your business and go home otherwise. This goes doubly or triply so for complete strangers. There’s really no third places (as they’re called) left, where people go for the express purpose of being social and together. That’s what’s missing here. As someone else said, you are, unfortunately, both a little right.
It’s particularly bad in places like the US that have car dependent sprawl because
cities often have had their zoning ordinances weaponized by NIMBYs, and it’s probably outright illegal to have a small cafe or shop in your neighborhood, or they’re required to have some outrageous parking minimum or something like that.
driving sucks more than you may be aware of while you’re doing it. If you have to get into your car to go to the grocery, you don’t want to make five stops at smaller grocers throughout the week; you’d rather just make one big stop at the big box mart and just go tf home. If you want to stop at a cafe, well, just swing through the starbucks drive through so you don’t have to be bothered with getting out.
Well, chances are that most of your interactions at chain businesses and stores are anonymous, so you’re not meeting other people in your community there, you’re not creating any bonds or relationships there, you’re doing your business and getting out, which, frankly, is what they want. You’re especially not making any friends in the drive thru line. For nearly seventy years now, we’ve built our cities to be homes to cars, not people, and it’s bearing fruit in the form of the loneliness epidemic.
My advice to you would be to go out of your way to find situations where people are getting together for the purpose of being social or having fun. Look for classes put on by your local city parks, go check your local library’s bulletin board for events, check social media communities for your nearby city or town for groups that meet regularly. If you’re religious, seek out some religious institutions that you find palatable.
Tbh, that was part of the appeal. You accidentally download the wrong thing and your computer throws an error message that you never get to read because it shuts down too quick and you know you fucked up. I can’t explain it, but the danger was part of the fun.
I’m a millennial who’s old enough to remember those days. It’s an absolutely huge difference, though at least if you’re expecting a phone call, you don’t have to scuttle your whole day sitting by the landline.
The US has been exporting a lot of terrible, insane policy around the world predicated on “golly, you wouldn’t want to upset your dear uncle Sam and his wallet, would you?” Good to see it go.
I’d be one of those old school naturalists and just, like, go live in a swamp for three years with one pair of clothes, a cot, a journal, and a pencil.
Mostly because when I switched my personal machine, there were a few small, weird issues with everything from not being able to do multiplayer on indie games to the grass, and only the grass as opposed to everything green, being blue in Baldur’s Gate 3. Working through those problems didn’t bother me, I’ve got the gumption and patience for it, the rest of my family does not. I’m giving the game industry a bit more time to smooth things out before I move the family gaming machine over.
I’m just saying, it’s the most basic program there is for a user-friendly OS, how do you launch to market with a fucked up file explorer? And nah, we’re going to Linux once they start pushing windows 12.
My windows 11 gaming machine has done all manner of fucky stuff, including permanently losing desktop icons seemingly at random and just whole ass refusing to open the file explorer for six months.
There’s a thousand better ways to handle both tariffs and free trade. We fucked up the latter with NAFTA (and CAFTA), where the EU got it right. Bringing jobs home with tariffs isn’t something you just snap your fingers and do, shit takes a long time to re-align, it would’ve made a lot more sense to have it go through the legislature and say “hey, we’re starting out at a 10% tariff on this stuff we want to bring home, and we’re going to ratchet it up +2% every year until Congress doesn’t pass the law again.” Instead, we’ve got the most volatile president in history implementing tariffs by fiat: 10% 20% actually none actually 10% actually 125% for real this time. Yeah, in this situation, the best play is to just try and wait dumbass out, because there’s a non-zero chance he wakes up tomorrow and declares tariffs woke.
I think this is it, tbh. I have to constantly remind my kids that math isn’t memorizing the answer, it’s knowing how to look at a problem, follow the rules, and figure it out. And it always seems so very arbitrary to them, as it used to for me as well.
Yes, 100%, I don’t at all want to give the idea that no history was ever remembered, and I don’t want to sound like I’m shitting on oral history either. I just… really wish someone had written some stuff down. There’s so much that’s lost to time because of the pandemics that swept the post contact world and all of colonization that followed.
Well, staying in the same location? I’m in the US, so… I’d probably try to get writing invented. To my knowledge, besides some of the Central American empires, there’s no evidence or even claim of there having been any kind of writing or system for making information durable. I know there’s a lot of clay here, I’m pretty sure we could bake clay tablets to store down information. There’s also tule reeds here that were already being extensively used, and those could probably be made into a kind of paper as well. As to whether the people would accept that, I have no fucking idea at all; what we know of the California tribes suggests they were always semi-nomadic, but that’s all very well into the post-contact period and much of what we know was written down by the Spanish while being the biggest bastards they possibly could to the locals. I dunno how useful record-keeping would be to a nomadic people. It’s also entirely possible the people would be like “uh, yeah, we know how to write, dummy”, and it was just lost in the multiple waves of pandemics.
I think probably something that -might- be achievable is figuring out glass. I’m mostly sure that if the native Americans had glass, we would have seen some sign of it in the archeological record by now. I’m sure some smarty pants is going to come along and tell me “you can’t just throw sand in a kiln and make glass, you need a special kind of sand blah blah blah and here’s 99 reasons why that won’t work”. Yeah, you’re probably right, but I don’t know any better, so I’d still definitely try. I also remember reading that clear glass was a thing figured out near Venice when they started adding grass ash or some shit to the sand, so I’d definitely experiment with that, too. Glass is just dead useful -and- pretty, so I’m fairly confident I’d get some acceptance that way.
I would say metal smithing, but the only metal deposits nearby that I know of are mercury and gold. You can’t make nails and tools out of mercury and gold.
Also, maybe water wheels? To my knowledge, we have no record of native Americans using water wheels for work (I.e. grinding corn or acorns into flour). I think if I managed to put a basic water wheel together, I’d be pretty popular.
Part two turning things into cool physics made me giggle IRL, good job
I asked ChatGPT to explain why JD Vance would kill the pope and it cited articles at me to tell me that JD Vance did not, in fact, kill the pope. I even tried to get it to doubt itself and it doubled down. If I have to live in slop world, I should at least be able to have fun with it :(
Got it. Yep, I agree, no notes.
I mean, Trump isn’t helping working class Americans.
That sounds pretty normal to me. Though, in total fairness, I’m ADHD myself, so I feel a lot of what you’ve been saying here. Especially being hyper aware of the social meta. I’ve also learned a lot of advanced masking over the years. Yeah, definitely, if you’re at a social event and someone catches your interest, just start with going and meeting them. Introduce yourself, and a small heartfelt compliment doesn’t hurt, “hey, that was a good question, I wish I’d thought of that”, for example. Also, asking low-risk questions about other people is a good way to endear them to you, “is this your first time going to this class/club? Oh? What got you interested in it?” Etc. These are all pretty good ways to start getting a conversation going so you can get a feel for that person. If it turns out you like that person, you can always offer to trade contact info so you can keep talking, or ask if you could meet somewhere (specific like “the library” or “that coffee shop”) public at a specific time to chat; people tend to be more receptive if you have something specific you want to chat about, even if it’s “getting to know you”. It’s also usually better to put that off until after a second encounter in public, I think. Last, If they ask if it’s a date, be up front, only say “no” or “it doesn’t have to be” if you really mean it. Ofc, YMMV. Best of luck!