Your nearest, biggest city’s library is a good place to look. Libraries almost always have something going on in a spare public room or have public event flyers hung up. If you’re interested in politics, going and yelling at city council is a great way to meet local activists.
Yeah, in a lot of ways, it feels like the great recession never truly ended in the sense that people had recovered from it; it feels more like people just got used to it. In the oughts, a lot of the pretenses of cold war capitalism got dropped in favor of a whole hearted embrace of the shallowest (ostensibly; I’m going against my nature and giving Friedman the benefit of the doubt here) possible reading of the Friedman doctrine. Everything turned to “how much cash can we scrape out of this for the investors?” Play places? Cool aesthetics? Fuck you, we need to maximize the resale value of our real estate, shut up, you’ll eat our bullshit anyway. Minimum wage hikes? No way! Your burgers will cost $20! Oh, well, I mean, that’s going to happen anyway, but at least you guys didn’t get raises lmao. You want a truck that just works? Eat shit, idiot, pay us $100,000 for a lifted mini-van in a masculinity-protecting trenchcoat. Need somewhere to stay? Great news, we’re going to do nothing to improve the apartment and increase your rent $200/year. Or you could just choose to afford a half million dollar home; the free market is all about choice, after all. Want health insurance? Cool, that’ll be half of your income, your boss gets to the carrier for you because it’s a free market system all about the freedom of choice, and we’re going to personally throw sand in your eyes if you ever actually try to use it. At least you can go swim in the public pool or go enjoy your city’s fine taxpayer funded services nope those all got cut permanently in the recession, and now that money’s going to paying out for cops fucking up instead.
It depends; if it’s a game only I like, well, I bumblefuck my way through Baldur’s Gate an hour at a time after the kids go to bed, when I’m not shit posting or attacking a side project or stargazing. If the rest of the family likes it, my job for the rest of the day is to sit the fuck down and play the game or else.
Hell yeah. When the right asks you which group’s rights you want to sacrifice to save your own rights, you tell them to eat shit. They’re going to come for your rights too, especially if they succeed in taking away those other people’s rights. There is no sufficiently small in group for conservatism.
Yes, actually. I probably could have stepped up to be an admin, but tbh, my plate is already overfull.
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Now I know she was an even bigger piece of shit than I thought.
I think the thing I haven’t quite sussed out is… Well, let’s take Wal-Mart and Dollar General. Wal-mart and DG both have this weird niche of being both major employers for rural areas, as well as depending on nearly their employee base as customers. If they automate all their jobs away, who do they think they’re going to be selling to? My guess so far is that all these MBAs think that certainly their customer base won’t run out of cash by having their jobs automated away.
At first, I came here to talk shit, but it turns out that the music companies are one of the few sectors more evil than telecoms. I’m pulling for Cox.
About the only thing keeping me off Sony is that they’ve got a really bad star eater problem in their DSLRs, and even still somewhat in their mirrorless.
Well, shit. I was planning on getting a Canon for my first camera because it’s hard to beat them for astrophotography, but I’m less sure now.
A friend and I just had a conversation today about how using contractors instead of CalTrans crews to build CAHSR has probably meaningfully contributed to the cost overruns. There’s one instance I’m aware of where a contractor submitted a cost overruns to the authority for reimbursement on THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS of long distance calls. In 2017. Motherfucker, use Skype, email somebody, God damn. But we both know that was a scam, and thankfully, so did the inspector general.
There’s a secret reason why this works for Nazis and not commies:
It’s billionaire dollars
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!
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’ve never met a public-facing tabletop group that wasn’t enthusiastic to introduce new people to it. I think honestly my worst experience was when some dude brought his insanely broken D&D 3.5 character to play in a level one 5E game. The DM handled it very well; much better than I would have, I think.