• 1 Post
  • 209 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

help-circle
  • Much of this slots into time outside work rather than the workday itself.

    • walk a different route to a destination
    • pick an algorithm and walk with no destination (eg: straight until you hit a light not in your favor, then turn. Works in urban envs)
    • go somewhere you don’t normally go. Eg: library, different coffee shop, that little art store you always see
    • go to the library. Walk along the shelf with eyes closed and pick a book at random.
    • pick a genre of music you never listen to. Listen to it.
    • cook or prepare a meal unlike your normal fare
    • go to a thrift store. Buy a cheap article of clothing you wouldn’t normally wear. Wear it. See how it feels
    • find free or cheap art (music, theater, whatever) in your area. Go.
    • journal. Spend a few minutes writing down your day’s details
    • hit wikipedia’s random article button. Read it.




  • Adding websearch to the start bar’s search was solving a problem that didn’t exist.

    Maybe the average user is so ignorant and bad at computers they don’t understand this. They don’t know what a browser is. They don’t know what a website is. They don’t know what a program is. It’s all just stuff.

    Personally, I’d rather spend billions on education than AI slop and other patches on “people are kind of dull”



  • Mostly specific to online dating, but: People who dead end a conversation. Like, their profile says they love the author NK Jemisen. I write, “oh, I love her books! Did you read The City We Became? It’s a total love letter to the city”.

    They response with, “no”.

    Friend, that’s not an effective way to play this game.

    If you are not interested in dating, just unmatch. Maybe you swiped by accident or when drunk. I don’t care. I’m not going to remember.

    If you are interested in dating, you should put some effort in. If you don’t throw the ball back, you look like you’re either uninterested or incapable. I don’t want to date someone who’s not interested, nor someone who can’t carry a conversation.

    You might be thinking, “Well they asked a yes/no question and I answered as such”. Technically true, but not productive. What do you expect them to do? Ask another first-message-tier question? This isn’t supposed to be a one sided interview like you’re applying for a job. You’re supposed to be a full participant. Ask a question (preferably related to the topic). Or, if you’re not interested anymore, unmatch.

    You might also be thinking, “well I don’t have time for a whole conversation right now”. Ok. Do you ever have time? If not, delete the app because you don’t have time to date. If you do, answer when you have time. These things are asynchronous. If you’re afraid you’re going to forget, I don’t know man write yourself a note. That’s a life management problem outside the scope of dating advice.

    This whole thing peeves me because it feels like people want “banter” and witty conversation, but they don’t want to do their half of it. They want to be passively entertained, but this isn’t some podcast you can listen to when dozing. These are (hopefully) real people looking for connection.

    My therapist told me that people have different styles of communication and that’s okay. Maybe some people would be happy where their conversations are no deeper than “Did you hear the new slothrust album?” “No”. Doesn’t seem like an effective way to get to know someone to me.



  • This is very heteronormative and gender binaried. Queer people exist and date.

    That said, anecdotally, from the handful of women I’ve talked about this with: many don’t like making first moves on these apps.

    Using dating apps is a skill, and if you haven’t been practicing sending messages you’re going to be bad at it. The vast majority of first messages I got from women were “hey”. Trash tier. Probably because they just haven’t done it very often.











  • Other people have good answers already. Chiefly to ask questions and talk through your reasoning.

    But also I’ve noticed the difficulty of interview questions varies wildly. Some places would give dynamic programming problems I’m terrible at. Others would give trivial "find the largest number in this array of integers, in python. Don’t worry about efficiency. " problems.


  • I think there’s a certain kind of user who doesn’t really learn concepts, but rote actions. They click the start menu and then excel to open excel, but they don’t really understand that the start menu is an application launcher and Excel is an application that can be opened in other ways. It’s very one dimensional.

    Then when something changes, like the application launcher is moved, they freak out. They don’t have a mental model.

    That’s how my mother is, anyway. It’s all magic with no underlying coherent anything. Not sure how to fix that, because it usually comes up when they’re mad or scared, and that’s not a time anyone will learn.