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.

Carbonation adds bubbles. The bubbles in water dissipate very quickly, whereas bubbles in other drinks with sugars or other compounds tend to have a bit more stability in the bubbles (think about how long the foam takes to settle from a beer being poured).

So when you force carbonate in a bottle, the bubbles tend to rise to the top, and when the pressure is released, will spray out it every direction, causing a huge mess.

It can be managed by being very slow and methodical at adding pressure, and, more importantly, by being slow and methodical and slowly releasing the pressure. But you have to be ready for it to make a mess.

Where does scrub daddy factor into this?

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.

Any pizza can be a personal pizza if you believe in yourself.

It’s already a modification to the word to describe something smaller (a cake baked in a cup), so going back the other way seems like a redundancy.

Like a giant pygmy hippo.

With your knife/sword example, maybe the best analogy is describing the shortest longsword.

Tim Whatley

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

One day blinding stew

Conductor threw up on my kid

It’s True Wagner. He does flyers like this and they are pretty funny.

Obvious Plant puts products on shelves, and True Wagner puts flyers up.

He’s the same guy who did “one day blinding stew” and “conductor of this train threw up on my kid,” both instant classics.

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.

The developers of the Lemmy software are the admins of the lemmy.ml instance and are problematic. The complaint is that the software itself can’t be separated from the priorities of the .ml instance.

Piefed doesn’t have the same issue, even if the flagship instance federates with .ml

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

I think the parent comment is talking about piefed the software, compared to Lemmy the software, not the specific piefed.social instance they’re posting from.