I had fun with my warlock familiar, Vincenzo. He had the “Vincenzo Special” where he’d invisibly fly up to someone in combat and rip one straight from the depths of hell to flavor his Hell action. I’m still a little bit a teenage boy I guess.

This is partly because the apps suck (because of capitalism/profit motive) and partly because we all suck.

Many people of all genders won’t do better than “hey”. And then complain that they’re not having good experiences. Sometimes it’s garbage in, garbage out, my dudes.

I also get a lot of weird dead ends. Their profile will be like “I love elden ring”. You’ll be like “elden ring is a masterpiece! Did you play the new expansion yet?” They’ll be like “no”. End of messages. My dude. That’s not how this works. In real life, fine, maybe you can give a short answer and see what they do, read some body language. But in an asynchronous text only communication? That’s not pulling your weight. And if you’re not actually interested, just unmatch. If you don’t have time , don’t reply at all. It’s async. Come back later.

Maybe some of these people match with each other and are very happy with “what’s up?” “nm u?” “Im good” forever.

This is a solid example of Poe’s Law.

Accessibility like controller input options is not the same as “you have more health and can dodge more”.

Language is what is spoken/written.

I don’t think any serious linguists are prescriptivists.

There are agreed upon standards for some contexts (eg: academic papers, newspaper articles, legal texts) but for casual conversation that doesn’t really apply.

I imagine if you had a lot of competition, prices might stay lower. But the reality is that monopolies or cartels or whatever will form

Copyright should be 14 years.

Healthy parenting would go a long way. See some of the other comments in this thread.

You can also have settings on your local network. If you’re afraid of your kid casually finding something inappropriate, you can set that up stuff locally without involving the government. A determined kid will still find a way to get stuff, so this is more a safeguard against accidental discovery.

Investing in quality education would also benefit everyone.

Adams sucks and it’s embarrassing that people here elected him.

I don’t think this is a safe assumption. The victim may not have free access to hardware. The police/etc may not believe them. They may be afraid of being murdered if they try to record something. Just off the top of my head.

You can read “why does he do that?” by Lundy Bancroft for fascinating and depressing information about abuse. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/224552.Why_Does_He_Do_That_Inside_the_Minds_of_Angry_and_Controlling_Men

This has come up a few times and I agree: I vastly prefer text in most cases.

However! I learned that something like half of US adults cannot read at a 6th grade level.

Everyone here, on a heavy text based forum, is probably able to read English. But for a lot of people who probably aren’t going to post here, reading can be stressful, frustrating, and embarrassing.

So that sucks. We should probably be investing in education instead of whatever idiocy venture capital is setting on fire this week.

the only way to protect kinds (like little me) is to block the porn.

This is false.

Parents have a number of options available to them that do no need to involve the state.

I was just talking about this yesterday with a friend. They’re a writer with a few small published things, but they can’t do it full time because they’re barely scraping by with work.

Suburbs are expensive, inefficient, and bad for the environment

This is what I’m always saying! Car-centric spaces are also bad socially. They’re dehumanizing. You want people walking around if you want a community, and having a strong community is good in many ways.

Well, in your example, one is being proud of who they are and the other is making thinly veiled threats of violence.

Per my metaphor, it’s a polygon. That is, Christianity. But the “don’t feed the poor” subset are like a triangle versus the “we should feed the poor” are an octogon. Both polygons. Very different.

I don’t know what “triangle” maps back to in the context of Christianity. “Heterodox” or “heretical” aren’t precise enough.

I see the point you are trying to make and it has some merit. However, I think there is also merit in distinguishing between like people who say they are Christian but don’t follow anything from the Bible and people who say they are Christian and do.

Like, you can point to most shapes and say “that’s a polygon” but sometimes it’s more helpful to say “that’s a triangle”, “that’s a square”, and "that’s juat a line, not a polygon actually "

My grandfather had one of these! I really enjoyed mowing my grandparents’ lawn with it as a child.

Using AI seems extremely excessive compared to a regular interface or human.

I mean this is kind of true of all people everywhere. The marshmallow test has flaws but I think it’s still revealing. A lot of people are really bad at self control and delayed gratification.