I’ve been on Linux Mint for the past several months and I think I’ve needed the terminal twice?

Once I couldn’t find a GUI option to adjust the brightness/gamma, but searching found me the terminal command so I just used that.

More recently I needed newer Nvidia drivers than were available by default, so I had to add a new PPA thing. We’ll find out later today if I’m going to regret that.

Probably that many people are like exclusively emotion driven. I don’t think we should all be like purely logical Vulcans. Emotions are very fast and can be a good survival tool. Like if you’re waiting for the train and a bear wanders onto the platform, you don’t need to wait to logically evaluate if it’s a threat. Just run.

But people rely on emotions for everything. We all do this. So you have like someone telling you something factual and uncomfortable, and you just reject it.

“Eating meat is bad for the environment and is cruel to animals. We should all eat a lot less meat” makes a lot of people’s emotions flare up. The facts don’t matter. They feel like they’re being insulted, that the other person is a blowhard, blah blah blah.

The oatmeal did a comic about this, actually: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

I think this is why we can’t have nice things.

What is the discomfort? Are you afraid something will happen?

You should probably talk to a professional about this. I am not a professional, alas.

I once has a girl follow up 2 weeks later asking why we didn’t go on a date? I told her that was the first question she asked me and I felt she wasn’t into the conversation.

I do wonder sometimes what they’re thinking. Like, do they think the conversation is going well when I have to keep resuscitating it?

I’m told people have “different communication styles”, which is fine, but “not asking questions and giving really short answers” doesn’t seem like an effective style here. Like, if someone’s chatting you up at the bar and you’re not interested, then giving short answers can make a kind of sense. But in a dating app where you both showed interest? If you’re no longer interested just unmatch.

No class consciousness. Too many tech workers think they’re rugged individuals that can negotiate their own contracts into wealth.

Working for free on nights and weekends to “hit that deadline” is not good. You’re just making the owners rich, and devaluing labor. Even if you own a lot of equity, it’s not as much as the owners.

And then there’s bullshit like return to office mandates and people are like “oh no none of us want to do this but there’s no organized mechanism to resist”

• Profiles with no hooks. They’ll have like 3 unremarkable pictures and a bio that says like “I like hanging out”. What is your match supposed to do with this? It’s extra bad if their bio says like “I hate small talk”.

Side note: small talk plays important roles in socializing and is an important skill. Use it to steer the conversation to interesting topics.

• Getting too in their head and bailing for flimsy reasons. Like, if the guy threatened you definitely do not continue. But I had a friend that was like “he was really sweet and lived nearby, but his hair was browner than his photos and I just wanted blonde”. Like what. That is not a good reason to bail.

No one’s going to be perfect. People are going to be nervous on a first date. Give them a chance.

• Conversely, sticking with a relationship too long. Contrary to the above, sometimes you really should call it. If the guy isn’t treating you with respect, you don’t have to keep going. If you realize you never look forward to seeing them, you should probably end it.

• Chatting too long before meeting. You’re not a real person to them when you’re just over text. You’re missing body language and tone. You want to meet in person quickly.

The general flow for me is like

• Initial message. Hopefully ask something about their profile
• if they respond well, maybe another couple follow up questions.
• clear any deal breakers. Eg: if you have a kid, ask “hey I just wanted to check you saw on my profile I have a toddler. Are you okay with that?”
• ask if they want to have a date in person to see if you get along
• schedule the date
• go on the date

If the online chat ends and you haven’t scheduled a date, but you want to, that’s bad. You don’t want to be having a second “hey what’s up?” tinder chat.

• related to the above: dead ending the chat. Don’t do that. Like, let’s pretend your profile says you love dragon age. They message you with “I’ve been a dragon age fan since origins! Did you play Veilguard yet? I’m thinking of starting it this weekend”. You respond with "I haven’t played it yet ". What the fuck kind of garbage reply is that? What is the other person supposed to do with that? They essentially have to send you another first message. Good first messages are hard! Give them something to work with. “I haven’t played it yet, but I loved origins! Always played mage. What was your favorite origin?” You almost always want to ask a question.

If this doesn’t come naturally to you , that’s fine. Just remember with your brain “always ask a question”. You need to give them something to work with.

• Don’t non sequitur into sexual details. Sorry, but them’s the norms. Like, a friend was chatting with a match about Star Trek and the guy out of the blue was like “so do you like anal?”. Unmatched.

And a last tonight that ended up stranded at the bottom of this post, and I’m writing on my phone so editing is hard:

“But what about people who want to take it slow?” Do you want to date someone who doesn’t want to date? I don’t.

This does not sound like a very common experience.

What is it that makes you uncomfortable? Is it all scenarios? Coffee date? Bar date?

It’s some sort of irony that I don’t think things will change for the better without violence. The ultra wealthy that drive a lot of culture war bullshit, that enshittify everything for more profits and “growth”, who pollute the air we breathe and water we drink, aren’t going to just give up power.

I’m just so tired of everything being so needlessly bad. Stop shooting kids and teachers. They aren’t the problem.

I think sometimes people just throw out the accusation of “echo chamber” because their ideas are bad and the community rejects them.

Someone will be like “I don’t think we should have child labor laws but the eChO cHaMbER won’t even consider it”

Sometimes this gets said even when the alleged echo chamber responds with facts and history about why their take is a bad one.

Ultimately, here and in like all other human endeavors, emotions are primary. People feel a thing, and then reach for words to justify it.

Someone’s ideas being rejected by the group? Feels bad. Is it me? Am I wrong? No, that feels worse and the ego won’t accept this. It must be them. But why? Must be an echo chamber. Cool. Now I don’t have to feel bad about myself. I don’t have to change my beliefs. I can just blame them and move on.

So someone saying it’s an echo chamber has only very tenuous relationship to reality.

To your actual point, there’s also the “jaq’ing off” and “for me it’s Tuesday” problems of community management and health. The first being someone asking questions in bad faith. The latter is similar - someone in good faith is asking really basic questions that the community has seen a thousand times before, and people respond with exasperation. From the new person’s perspective the community is unwelcoming. From the community’s view, this is the third guy today that’s stumbled upon the idea that “maybe capitalism is bad” and walking them through that journey is tiresome.

Community is hard.

The little old lady next to me says hello and sometimes let’s me know if there’s a package waiting for me.

The people on the other side I don’t know. They don’t seem especially friendly or unfriendly, but I’m happy to live and let live.

I see no need to install an app for what is essentially a web site.

I guess what I took away from my upbringing is the rewards are intrinsic. You don’t get a cookie for cleaning your room, but now your room is clean. You don’t get $20 for passing your math test, but now you (hopefully) learned some math and don’t have to worry about it anymore.

The owner in your example is the same. His rewards are inherent to the action.

Covering someone with praise and rewards when they do stuff they’re supposed to do anyway I guess works, but seems unsustainable. If they’re only doing it for external validation, how are they going to feel when that’s absent?

Saying “thank you” for doing chores isn’t what I had in mind. It was an overly effusive “omg you did so good I’m so happy here’s a pony you didn’t throw your cigarettes on the ground! You’re such a good boy and very handsome!”

I know intellectually that’s true but in my cursed heart I really don’t want to be nice to people who are, like, barely approaching a reasonable standard of behavior. Not just with smoking. Like, littering, taking up too much space on the subway, whatever.

It’s just frustrating how everyone (including me some of the time, I’m sure) is just like an emotionally fragile toddler. Except if you’re not nice to them, they might shoot you.

edit: Thinking about it, my parents were always like “You don’t get rewarded for doing what’s expected of you”, so that’s probably why rewarding someone for doing the basics feels insane to me.

Remember that jury nullification exists. If you’re being asked to convict on something that’s bullshit, you can just say not guilty and the court can’t tell you that you gave the wrong answer.

This is a double edged property. It can be used as easily to shield some guy smoking pot from jail as a hate crime.

Just don’t tell them you’re nullifying because they’ll remove you.

No. I never really used it much. Facebook is bad and everyone should delete it. Staying in touch with friends can be done with email, chat, or federated services.

Big, centrally owned platforms aren’t a good idea.

Reddit did some API nonsense, and that was when I left there. I was already off twitter, and never used facebook stuff.

I need somewhere for my meme and internet highlights supply, and lemmy has been ok so far.

On the one hand, I don’t want another pandemic.

On the other, I want all the anti-vax and right wing idiots to go away forever. So maybe another pandemic would be a pyrrhic victory.

Basic ass Linux mint (xfce desktop) for my desktop. I mostly use it for video games and watching media.

Android for the phone. Gotta have those emulators (though I think you can get them on iPhone now, android is still cheaper).

I should probably do some de-googling though.

Work has us on Macs. They’re… fine. I wouldn’t buy one because they’re expensive and not great for games.

Not my kid, but someone I was dating had a toddler. She was not religious, but her parents were Catholic. She tried to intercept any religious stuff before it took hold in the kid. Firm words were exchanged when the grandmother was telling the kid that her great-grandmother was in “heaven”.

We broke up so I’m not sure how it’s going.

They also told the kid that Santa is basically a fun game people play. It’s not literally true but don’t spoil it for other kids.

Maybe it’s just the circles I travel in, but I haven’t heard anyone say it’s a shame that CEO was murdered.