Sex is too important to me to leave to chance. I can wait for the second or third date before sex but if someone is that precious about it that we aren’t banging by then, I know we’re not compatible.

That being said, I think it’s perfectly fine to feel differently about it. Be honest and true to yourself because if someone is precious about it but gives it up because they feel pressured because I know what I’m about, that’s just a lie and a relationship can’t be built on a lie.

Sex is just sex. It’s not magical or spiritual, it feels good and makes you feel connected. Do it. Enjoy it in whatever way your wish.

They are useful. My teams are seeing modest productivity gains by self reporting, but I’m going to give it another six months to see if it shows up in actual metrics.

I’m enthusiastic about AI but I remain skeptical. I don’t mean to always be contrarian but I’m dead in the middle and everyone who says they are great or terrible I tend to offer my experiences in the other direction.

They are not to be trusted to handle customers directly, but they can assist experts when they have to step out of their expertise. For example I can’t write Python, but I’ve been coding for 30 years. I can certainly write some good directions on what needs to be done and I can review code and correct it. So AI has let me write a bunch of complex Python scripts to automate minor parts of my job to let me focus on the hard parts.

For example I can execute GDPR delete requests in a few moments where doing it by hand with Hoppscotch or Postman probably takes me 5-10 minutes. We have a multiple systems and sometimes I have to delete multiple profiles for a given request.

It’s great at rubber ducking as long as you think critically about its proposed solutions. It’s fine at code review before sending it to an actual person for review. It flags non-issues but it also flags a few actionable fixes.

The important thing though is to never trust it when it comes to anything you don’t know about. It’s right a fair amount of the time, depending on what you ask, but it’s wrong enough that you should never, ever rely on it being right about something. The moment you put your life in its hands, it’ll kill you with nothing to say to the survivors but, “Your right about that. Sorry, that was my mistake.” And it isn’t even sincere. Because it can’t be. Because it doesn’t think or feel anything.

When I was contracted by the military we weren’t allowed to use hosted foss fonts because they were considered a vector for attack if the font server were compromised. A font you host yourself is safe in that respect. One might suppose a commercial entity would be safer, but I wouldn’t say that is necessarily so.

I probably get 6-7 on average. Up to 10 or so on weekends. Rarely as little as 3-4.

I’m tech lead for two off-shore teams who work 3-11AM my time, plus lots of daytime meetings and planning. So when I wake up in the middle of the night as I often do, I check to see if there are any issues that need my attention. And then I go back to sleep or sometimes I can’t. Today I probably fell asleep around 10. Woke up at 4 and had to send a message and await a response. Got on here while I wait. Got the issue resolved. But now I’m up because in a few hours I fly to vacation.

Exactly.

Claude:

The friends we made was also Claude, though.

I used to have a lot of exposure to different lifestyles due to being into BDSM and heavily involved in a trans-friendly group. One of my best friends fully transitioned with I think gave me a lot of insight.

I want to say first that I fully support the rights of all people to live their truth as they see it. I respect and value people regardless of what they have in their pants or who they choose to share that with.

I’m attracted to femme features and were I to date someone they would have to pass pretty well. I’m not viscerally disgusted by a penis, and I guess I’d be willing to experiment, but in the abstract I’m not attracted to them, I don’t get pleasure from anal play, and I don’t really like putting my dick in butts. Not totally opposed but it’s rare I’m in the mood for that — I have to be feeling very “top-y.”

So just don’t know that there is a lot of dating potential there. However I could use more friends and if someone wanted to hang out and talk nerdy shit over drinks in a romantic setting and call it a date, I’m in.

I will add that I’m married and while we are essentially monogamous, we aren’t strictly so and hypothetically if the right person came along that fit as a play partner or throuple, I wouldn’t care about gender or gender expression at all. As long as there is someone involved in an encounter who makes my junk tingle, it’s all good.

I’m genX and have owned a home almost continuously since I was 23 or 24. In most cases I don’t know whether friends own or rent their homes but afaik they almost all own. My sister doesn’t, but she is disabled.

My oldest (~30) kids both own homes. One with her husband and she was a restaurant general manager when she bought and switched to bank manager to have a kid for better hours and benefits. My son is just a single guy who has been a nurse for a handful of years, and he just bought about a year or so ago.

This is in Midwest USA. When I lived near D.C. I think renting was more common.

That is, unfortunately incorrect. They write it up and their pet legislators introduce it. Yes it has to get voted on and there is more to it, but the actual verbiage? That is all too often written by lobbyists.

Last thing I saw was either Wicked or Hamilton. I’m not sure which. But if you want to count it, I saw Harry Potter Prisoner of Azkaban with a live orchestra instead of the soundtrack. It was… magical.

It looks slow, but certainly not dead. A handful of posts a week isn’t bad.

I would be afraid posts would be met with jeers of, “you just figured that out? How are you even alive, bro?”

Maybe I underestimate the Lemmy audience, though.

We will simply pass laws requiring them to be adults! Easy!

This is the only reasonable response to this post.

I couldn’t call either a favorite, but there are two that have stuck with me my whole life. Edit to fix formatting.

The Second Coming — W. B. Yeats (1919)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

It feels as relevant to our time as it was for WW1.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night — Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

People have inherent worth. What do you think t need to do, or be, or accomplish to be worthy of love? Because I will tell you almost none of it is necessary beyond being a good partner. My wife, in some ways is a better person than I could ever be — and in some ways not.

If you communicate, compromise and are attentive, industrious, and honest I would hazard a guess that you will find someone eventually because just those qualities make someone a good partner — if you can do that, someone out there is looking for someone like you right now, because they’ve been burned by people without those traits.

Then the real trick is to find someone who is worthy of you in return. They should be the kind of person who wants to be part of your dreams and goals, and you should want to be part of theirs. And they should have the qualities of a good partner as well.

I agree AI is useful, but an unprovoked personal attack in defense of AI — in a thread about AI exacerbating mental health issues — doesn’t make for a convincing counterpoint.

I’m on iOS. Uncommonly, the area ordinarily occupied by the keyboard when in edit mode is reserved but just blank space because you aren’t editing/writing anything. If I start a reply to something at random, I get the keyboard and then I can cancel and everything returns to normal.

Yes, but it’s also the natural conclusion to “so technically the rules say…”

I’ve lived my entire life with imposter syndrome. Any time I get remotely comfortable in a position I either get laid off or promoted. Being laid off confirms my fears. Being promoted makes me feel like I have to work even harder to hide my fundamental inability to execute my role. I have recently taken a higher position at a startup which is a whole new level of stress and responsibility.

I can step back objectively and see the respect others grant me. I can see how my humble talents contribute. But I never stop questioning if it’s even possible I am contributing enough value to justify my wage, and it doesn’t stop me from feeling like I’m one tiny mistake away from being fired.

This isn’t a battle thrust upon me or with dire consequences. But it’s the battle I am comfortable sharing.