PTO or asking for hour flexibility. Taking off an hour or two early/coming in late because of a dr appointment for example.

For Sauron, yes exactly that. He was a Maiar of the Valar of craftsmanship who was swayed by Morgoth. He almost certainly would very much like just leading in a world that rejects the natural wildness to be replaced with a mechanical and industrial order. In the same way that Radagast would like nothing more than going camping forever.

Honestly the listacle is a bit cringe if you’re at an age where most people can be expected to have been on a few dates. There’s a huge difference between searching for coffee shops/museums/whatever else in your area or even “things to do in x area” and searching for first date ideas. The former says you have a structure in mind, but you don’t necessarily know the specific locations, the latter says you have no idea and didn’t think the first source to ask is the person you’re going on a date with.

And as for llms vs general internet use goes? Yeah using llms is a turn off. I find the ability to write for oneself and process and analyze text for themselves important traits in a partner. What I’ve seen from llm users is that they often cede those skills.

A huge portion of the apps is just that. And I get it it’s awkward and it can be boring having the same conversation over and over. I sometimes am guilty of it too.

But I suspect a lot of people don’t really actively engage with stuff enough to be able to be interesting. I’ve seen people blame consumptive hobbies (as opposed to productive ones), but hell tell me about the TV show you’ve been watching or the video game you’ve been playing. If you’re consuming it in a critical manner you can say “well I really like what they did with the villain here, it really touches on the theme of [x], though I think sometimes the messaging is inconsistent”. Or “Oh yeah I really love these mechanics, it’s been fun watching the series evolve”. Fucking hell tell me what you think about a YouTube video you recently watched. I think some people basically disassociate into entertainment.

But yeah chatting without a prompt can be difficult, especially when not face to face. Getting to face to face relatively quickly is something I generally recommend people do while on the apps to minimize it. But also like, actually interact with life and the other person.

It says they’re adventurous and it says what sort of things (at least food wise) interest them. It also potentially indicates a vibe. “Hey, I’ve been hearing that an izakaya style place opened up, and I don’t think you can go wrong with beer and fried food, you want to try it out?” Compared to “I’ve heard really good things about Ethiopian food, but I’ve never had it. Want to be adventurous?” Or “Let’s grab a coffee. Here I’ll look up small coffee shops a reasonable distance from both of us.” Or even “Do you like Mexican food? I’ll see what options are nearby.”

All of them say different things about the person and all of them are great ways to propose a plan for a date

We need to start putting Adderall in the water

The option is salad, and so often all/most of the salads have meat in them…

I generally agree with you, but I think if you’re going into the first date with notes you need to really be interested. The pre first date stage is about seeing if you’re interested enough to spend the time/money on it. Too high standards can absolutely be a problem leading to loneliness, but “I’m not sure if I’m interested, but yeah sure I’ll give it a shot” is a common place to be before a first date because both sides are awkwardly trying to put their best foot forward, but don’t have much to go on and they don’t necessarily know if they have much chemistry. If you go in no longer interested you’re wasting your time because you’re probably not going to change your mind.

So yeah if she had been super excited, it’s silly to cancel over this. Likewise if her dating pool is small or filled with particularly bad options. But if she was just giving it a shot and lost her interest then I don’t blame her.

I’ll go a different direction here: what you suggest for a first date is an opportunity to show how cool you are.

I went on an amazing coffee date with a woman where she took me to a tiny coffee and chocolate shop that was amazing. Sure, most of why the date went great was that we clicked instantly and chatted for hours until we really had to go and that we both found each other very attractive, but the setting set the stage, I just don’t think it would’ve gone as well in a Starbucks.

My first date with my wife she took me to the only lesbian bar in town then the next morning brunch at a popular cool taqueria. I remember thinking how she seemed so cool and in touch with the cool and fun parts of a city I’d been interested in since visiting occasionally in college.

I’ve had multiple great first dates to just local Mexican restaurants, followed by a walk in a park. They tended to be with women who had families and thus limited time and money, that too is personality. It involved the collaboration of “hey do you like mexican?” And when we enjoyed the meal, “there’s a park nearby and I still have time, want to go for a walk”?

All of these served as ways to show some personality and to establish a baseline for what you think a fun night out with your partner could be. The first girl and I didn’t enter a relationship because life got in the way shortly afterwards, so I can’t say how it would have gone. But for the moms, yeah dates were typically a cheap meal, a cheap or free experience, often involving walking, and constrained by the fact that their kids and husbands (polyamory not cheating) were their top priorities. With my wife, just as that first date, our nights out together often involve a bit too much at a queer bar followed by hours upon hours of talking and maybe a meal at a cool but cheap restaurant before or after.

If you use chatgpt to decide on a first date plans I’m going to assume that 5 years ago you were the type to have a first date at fridays or applebees. And not because you really liked it, or thought it was a good value, but because it was a sit down restaurant nearby that you know is good enough and most people are fine with. It says a night out will be bland if anything, and probably the bare minimum. Fucking hell, asking “so what do you like to do for a first date?” is more interesting and charming than that, it at least implies that you’re either very considerate or looking for a partner to take the lead or make decisions.

In general hicks that are hard to get to with strong beliefs are really hard to stop. This is true in Rojava and Chiapas where I see them as models of a better world and in Afghanistan where I see them as harbingers of a worse one.

Revolution relies on stopping you either being impossible or not worthwhile. Extremists in difficult terrain that they call home are going to take a long fight where they win most of the battles to actually stop. Meanwhile a slight shift towards something most people want and most of the remainder can live with works because the cost of concession for the soldiers and lower officials is small and the cost of fighting is pissing everyone else off and damaging your population and international reputation while increasing the risk to all government involved people if the revolution succeeds.

The worst case scenario for the average soldier and revolutionary is a civil war type situation where neither side can concede, compromise, or decisively control the majority or where they miscalculate those factors

Go greens!

Yeah they’re pro neurodivergence right up until the eugenicists decide they don’t have to play nice anymore and take control of the mass surveillance technology

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Could be, or it could be reappropriated for a better world.

Though tbh my money is on it just making the world weirder and having mixed results in quality

I feel like that should be taken as a compliment regardless of how it’s meant

10 years ago Google was trusted and liked. The cracks were starting to show, but we’re talking about the Google that was still open sourcing a lot of their products and loudly opposing government censorship of the internet.

https://www.bodybuildingmealplan.com/supination-vs-pronation/

As an American, we must embrace the superiority of the metric system, but yeah I’ll pass on bagged milk

In our defense, some of us have to park aways away from our front doors

I feel like since the book was written they’ve slowly slipped into willful evil. Even in the book, as time went on they got more and more comfortable doing evil rather than just not avoiding doing evil.