mostly, sweet potato is the odd one out

And the onion rings.

it’s now frowned upon to be hit on?

It’s frowned upon to hit on someone who doesn’t have an exit from the situation: a customer talking to a retail/hospitality worker whose job includes not pissing off customers, colleagues who need to continue working with each other (or worse, a superior-subordinate relationship), etc.

I don’t know what 20-somethings are doing these days, but navigating that transition from school to young independent adulthood was something difficult every generation had to do. It’s just that this generation may have had their social skills development stilted during COVID or the smartphone era so that they’re less equipped to make that jump, and that gap is leaving a greater proportion of that population behind.

The latest xkcd has one of my favorite hover texts of all time:

It’s important for devices to have internet connectivity so the manufacturer can patch remote exploits.

I suspect this is actually what’s changed - labor is so expensive compared to the cost of the machine that people replace their appliance with a new one because it’s only a little more than fixing their old one.

The guy on an assembly line who places a particular assembly in place and connects the tubes/bolts can perform that task on hundreds of machines in a day. The guy who has to drive to each person’s house to replace the exact same part can do maybe 2 a day, assuming he has the right part on hand, and assuming that it’s easy to diagnose which part has failed.

I suspect that ordinary avenues for meeting friends in one’s 30’s is also available for meeting partners, only you have to acknowledge that most of the people you meet aren’t going to be single/interested.

I’m an extrovert. I talk to strangers in certain settings, especially where waiting around is normal. One of my best friends, I met in line waiting to get into a standup comedy show. I’ve met other friends in line for concerts and sporting events, too. I’ve also met friends sitting at the bar or some kind of communal table of a restaurant, and connected over the food itself. It just takes the boldness of asking for contact information and then texting “it was nice to meet you today, great talking to you” and then sometimes that becomes a friendship.

But pure strangers are hard to connect with in one interaction. Most of the friends I made after 30 were from repeated interactions over time: neighbors you see regularly, other regulars at the dog park/coffee shop, etc.

And once you’re in a mode where you can make friends, if some of them happen to be single and compatible, maybe you try going out on a date.

And yes, this means that sometimes you’ll meet people at the gym, or at their place of work, or other circumstances where it’s frowned upon to hit on strangers. But making the friendship bridge first can give you that read on the situation of whether they’re actually open to dating.

muscle gym divorced military dads

I know a bunch of these dudes, and most of them are into books and video games.

Something about the RPG grind mechanic in certain video games and a typical strength/barbell progression program scratch the same itch, so people who tend to be into one are also into the other.

The Icarus myth is still a useful analogy, even if you don’t believe it actually happened.

And what’s their takeaway? Is it about learning from their mistake and trying again? No, it’s “God is punishing your hubris!”

Just substitute any force or phenomenon bigger than human ability for “God” in that sentence and it’ll still apply to a lot of situations.

Yup, small lenses and thin wire frames were the defining trend of the 90’s. And there was a bit of a frameless trend where the earpieces and nose bridge screwed directly into the lens itself. See this picture of Jennifer Aniston as an example.

Two things.

First, dating and commitment is about matching and compatibility, not about some kind of objective ranking system of quality or merit. It’s about how a partner or potential partner rates on your own personal scale, not some sort of societal scale built by social consensus. So while it is ok for you to find a particular trait to be a negative, or even a deal breaker, your point is completely irrelevant to the advice being given, which is not to hide important traits of one’s identity.

Second, your own preference here is stated in unnecessarily condescending terms, as if your preferences are right and the opposite preference is wrong or the sign of some kind of disorder. Whatever your definition of “toys and dolls” are, it probably isn’t a very tightly defined term, and I’d venture to guess that you are OK with some kinds of “toys” but not others. People collect stuff. People develop emotional attachment to physical things all the time. And for you to gatekeep and say which things are acceptable or unacceptable is kinda an asshole move.

My single, “My single is dropping,” is dropping.

My favorite of his are:

This commentary on Batman

The best things in life are free

The true meaning of Christmas

404 is great, too, for coverage of those topics.

Defector is worth a special mention in large part because it’s one of the few places on the internet that still makes me laugh out loud. It’s ostensibly a sports site, but when they stray off topic it’s some of the best stupid shit on the internet.

Defector is fucking great. It’s the team that made Deadspin magical, who all revolted when Deadspin got bought by private equity and run into the ground, and banded together to form an employee-owned outlet whose authors are just all great writers.

The editor in chief of Deadspin, who fought the dumb decisions when private equity took over, ended up resigning in a blaze of glory by posting this article on the site as she left.

She also has a great new book out on how private equity breaks things.

It’s a California Kong, which is two California kings tied together with gorilla leather.

A lot of young people don’t realize just how difficult post-school dating was before online dating. Once we exhausted the pool of 5-10 single people who were friends of friends, that was basically it. We’d have to go find strangers at the bar.

That conditioned everyone to be slightly more willing to settle for less perfect matches, knowing that there wasn’t necessarily a replacement available. That could be a good thing (people more likely to have the patience to let a spark develop) or a bad thing (a higher percentage of couples who just resented each other).

I can see an argument that things were better before online dating for some subset of people. But having lived that period, I can say from experience that it wasn’t easy then, either. And for someone like me, who is a better writer than I am a speaker, especially over the phone, the rise of text-based communication was helpful for navigating the early stages of relationships when that became the norm.

This is a Wendy’s.

Obvious Plant puts fake products on shelves.

True Wagner puts absurd flyers on telephone poles and bulletin boards.

This is more of a True Wagner situation.

Oh my God we’re having a fire…sale

I didn’t even know he was sick!

It’s because we’re also very used to seeing photographs of a subject in shade while the background is in full sunlight. If you take a picture of a white and gold dress in the shadow of a patio, with the background all fully lit by bright sunlight, the actual pixels representing white objects in the shade would be that bluish gray tint.

The problem here is that the dress isn’t in the shade but those of us who see white and gold simply assume that it is in shade, while black/blue viewers (correctly) assume that it is under the same lighting conditions of the overexposed background.