I was showing my date’s parents where my beard stops and my peach fuzz starts, which was around my mouth (that made sense in context, a bunch of people were there and we were talking about high schoolers growing beards).

To demonstrate this I put my fingers in a v-shape around my mouth and accidentally made the universal sign of eating pussy.

Seconding Miniflux! It’s my main RSS reader. I pay for the hosted version, it’s super cheap and works great. And since it’s simple HTML I can write Greasemonkey scripts to customize it a bit.

In fairness, he’s always looked like a national spokesperson for gas station boner pills. He just looks like it even more now.

actually did find partners who loved them for their authentic selves, and most people have figured this out and I desperately need to touch grass.

This was my experience. I don’t think I’ve ever dated a woman who wanted extremely traditional gender roles. As far as I could tell they mostly wanted equal partnerships like you are describing. And after 12 years of marriage I can tell you my wife and I definitely don’t fall into stereotypical roles.

I did date one woman for a year and a half who had some traditional tendencies, but only some. She did not want a breadwinner to support her and did not mind men showing emotion. On the other hand, she definitely subscribed it to the idea that men are dumb pigs who need to be managed by their wives, and she seemed to think it was normal for a marriage to be a constant low-grade “battle of the sexes” — she kept telling me these stories about her parents’ conflicts that she thought were cute but I thought were kind of horrifying. I broke up with her for a few reasons but that was definitely one of them. But my point is everyone is an individual and she had some traditional tendencies and some not traditional tendencies. Also I got to know her and had fun dating and then eventually broke up because I didn’t think we were a good match. It was fine, and I learned a lot about myself along the way.

Now, if you’re on your guard all the time worrying that a woman wants traditional gender roles I bet you can find reasons to support that hypothesis. So don’t go looking for it. Instead, go on some dates and just get to know the other person as a person.

Those people who tell you all women want a certain thing are wrong. They might be coming from a particular subculture where it’s true, and if you are constantly meeting women who only want traditional gender roles then maybe you need to look at who you’re asking out and how you are meeting them. Some of the people who are telling you these stories are knowingly lying because saying “everything sucks and you can pay me for a solution” is a very profitable venture. Other people wish traditional gender roles were the norm and so they’re sort of LARPing it online.

Also, remember that going on a couple of dates is not a lifelong commitment. You’re getting to know each other. Have fun with it. If you don’t like her once you get to know her better, move on. The more you go on dates the easier it gets. Go touch some grass and go touch some ass (consensually).

https://www.metafilter.com/ hasn’t changed much.

Fun fact: there are plenty of ways in Jiu-Jitsu to break your own neck. Possibly more ways than there are for other people to break your neck.

At 41 I switched to Jiu-Jitsu which isn’t any safer but is even more fun. Unsure why so many of us old guys do BJJ but it’s a thing.

Absolutely, I just said two types of pizza as a dumb joke.

New York style pizza and Chicago style pizza. I can’t see this going poorly for me, ever.

Good! That would be really embarrassing if we both quoted Metallica songs in our HS yearbooks. Which we definitely did not.

Oops, I messed up my capitalization. I just meant nearly every song by them.

Nearly Everything by Reel Big Fish. It’s all fun ska and mostly about social anxiety, broken hearts, and substance abuse. I love them.

I was wondering recently if the idea of opportunity cost is the same for governments that can print their own money versus all other entities. I’m not entirely clear on how the that automaker bailouts were financed but would that money even have existed if they hadn’t used it for the bailout? It’s not like the government was going to create that amount of money and put it in a savings account.

A more appropriate way to look at it might be whether the money earned more than it cost the government to service the debt. IIRC servicing government debt is not inflation-adjusted, so it’s probably more informative to compare it to the cost of the debt not inflation adjusted-growth.

But this gets pretty weird since it’s not how finance works for entities that cannot print their own money.

Over 1 billion people use Microsoft products, but let’s all listen to @[email protected] 's anecdote about his IT dept. I genuinely believe your anecdote, but it’s irrelevant. And until OSS evangelists (of which I am one!) realize that other people exist and have different preferences and experiences, MS will keep winning.

Oh no, some crank who can’t understand that other people have preferences won’t take me seriously. This is a major loss. I am so owned. This definitely isn’t emblematic of the problem with the OSS community.

I started the name calling by saying “tech brained” so I apologize and I’ll ease off on that.

With that said, I have to strongly disagree with you. I use MS Office, LibreOffice, and Google Docs regularly, and IMO the ribbon was a huge improvement for word processors and spreadsheets over traditional drop-down menus. Drop-Down menus have their place but for document editing they are not ideal.

This an incredibly tech-brained answer. “Sure, lots of OSS is difficult to install, breaks frequently, and lacks key features, but did you know Microsoft sometimes moves a menu item?”

I love OSS and I want it to succeed but “an item moved” isn’t in the same ballpark as the barriers to OSS adoption.

The problem: our desire for convenience

Bring on the downvotes, but: When it comes to tools like computers, convenience is synonymous with productivity. People aren’t unreasonably demanding to have their hands held, they want to get stuff done. We need to stop acting like convenience productivity is just one of many concerns. It is the primary concern.

Freedom is nice but to most people it’s only important if it helps us do the things we want to do.

That’s with cause.