Great perspectives, thank you! Very informative and much more plausible than what I was saying.

Well thanks for the interesting perspective and I’m very glad to hear it wasn’t so one-sided everywhere, and that you’ve seen a lot more positives! Everything you said about causes of strife makes perfect sense to me and I would imagine those feature heavily for folks who try it out due to simple curiosity or pressure from a partner.

I would imagine, too, that sexual trends exhibit regionality and that they diffuse across regions over time and at uneven rates, much like any other cultural trend. Though of course a lot of cultural diffusion has gotten effectively instant thanks to tech - I remember “back in the day” you could travel from a (US) coast to the Midwest and find everyone basically 10-20 years behind cultural trends, from slang to hairstyles, to dress.

I wonder if relationships and dating and such, being a much slower process in general than changing styles of dress or speech, still have some of that interesting old-school slower diffusion, or more regional pockets anyway.

Anyway, enough baseless speculation from me - cheers and have a good one!

(Edit: I hope it didn’t sound like I’m calling your chosen romantic style itself a trend - I would never, when I call polyamory a “trend” I am referring exclusively to folks who did behave exactly as if it were any other fad that came and went, just with way heavier consequences)

Since you seem knowledgeable, maybe I’ll bug you about something I’ve wondered about?

Did you notice a significant (huge by my measure) increase in attempts at polyamory for a period of time? As in, that trend seemed to have almost a start and an end, and a real big swell in the middle. And if so, any comments on how that fits into your timeline overview above? Some of your thoughts sound like they may point to this but I certainly don’t want to put words in your mouth.

Anecdotally, it seems to me like I watched a huge chunk of my (significantly) younger sister’s generation get themselves into plural relationships, then realize after a year or two of various attempts (often including some serious abuse) that actually they didn’t like that idea at all.

And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely encourage people to try what they are curious about, it’s a tragedy to spend a life never exploring what one might like. But that phenomena with polyamory / plural relationships in particular stuck out to me, largely because many of the people I saw try it had never previously indicated even remote interest in similar, some behaved fairly jealously toward their partners actually. It felt like a strange societal motivation, some kind of soft cultural pressure among peers, to go for it. And I personally never witnessed a positive outcome, either (which is not me saying that no one should live that way if they enjoy it, or that no one can find it genuinely fulfilling, healthy, and preferable). And for those with clear gender lines in the plural relationships, it was always polygynous - never polyandrous (please let me know if those terms are offensive). Felt like weaponized sexual liberation, frankly, by horny dudes, but that’s me making some possibly unfair leaps and introducing my own bias into the interpretation.

I guess more than anything else I was just struck by what felt like a wave in popularity, followed by an accompanying wave of “oh, nah fuck that actually, forever”. Was interesting to watch. Any thoughts?

(Disclaimer: this can be a thorny topic, anyone should feel free to correct anything I’ve misrepresented, misunderstood, or just been unkind about, I’m not a jerk on purpose usually).

Retired corporate laptops ftw! I replaced some machines at my house with a pair of still-capable, well-built business-class Dell laptops for ~$80 each (via local classified ad). Running Bazzite on em.

Feel like saying more about what ya like?

Just in the name of completeness, I wouldn’t say that’s the only downside. I definitely have some stability issues with Bazzite, only when gaming though. But game crashes, occasional OS crashes, that hasn’t been exactly rare for me. But I will say, gaming is about the one thing in my life I’m almost unwilling to troubleshoot these days. Could be something specific to my setup that is uncommon for others, making my data point unhelpful.

And by and large, I’d absolutely recommend it for any Windows user who wants an easily transferable user experience and broadly fantastic gaming support with minimal fuss.

Would you be willing to say more about what you know / experienced about the removal of Discover? Preferences included? I only noticed it recently, been away from things for a bit, and you sound like your brief info would probably be at least as fruitful as the reading I was gonna look for :)

I’ve never met anyone in the broadly tech fields (and I’ve been through quite a span of them) who regrets completing an even somewhat relevant degree. I’ve met, many, many people who lament not starting or finishing one (and many of these were very competent, capable people, good at their jobs).

It’s expensive and difficult, sure was for me, but it is very useful (and the learning is fantastic too if you do it right).

Either spell the word properly, or use something else, what the fuck are you doing? Don’t just glibly strait-jacket language, you’re part of the ongoing decline of the internet with this bullshit.

I should definitely have not been left unsupervised as a teenager either lol. And yet, my mom wasn’t even in the same state some of the time lmao

Yep I’m this way and have recently come to realize that at my core I just don’t actually believe any other human has the right to tell me what to do. Full stop. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I should be allowed to do whatever I want, I understand my responsibilities, to my loved ones and society, better than most honestly. I just really can’t tolerate being told what to do.

And oddly it makes me a productive employee, a thoughtful partner, a good friend…largely to avoid scenarios where someone feels like they need to tell me what’s up.

But yeah, all the time society feels more and more like a constricting, stifling set of agreements…which I never actually agreed to.

Interesting. Good to have a less rent-seeking option, not sure I love the idea of the Fed just (assumedly) having access to all my transactions, though.

Eh? C’mon you gotta elaborate on that!

Ah, but yet…

I can’t confess to being quite as wholesome as you (well, at least your food decision-making lol) but you’re on top of it, ya love to see it. I have, though, been making much more thoughtful choices about how much factory farmed meat I consume. Getting it down pretty low these days, but it helps that I have an Indian spot nearby with vegetarian food at least as satisfying as any meat-based dish. Malai kofta, unnnnfff.

Side note - since parts of this thread run the risk of shaming poor folks for “bad” financial decisions - I’m not going there (and I don’t think you were either, you sound compassionate to me). It’s a problem to a degree of course, but also being super (often hopelessly?) poor really screws up the brain. Speaking from experience. Scarcity, even self-imposed, can sometimes take me to some dark places, most notably back to personality traits that I developed in those days that I have done tremendous work to repair. Our systems are deranged and nonsensical, not our poor.

Yet another “wtf, y’all?”, good point. I can’t personally say that grosses me out, but I tend to be in the minority on that sort of topic myself, so I totally see what you’re saying. Aint no health inspector checking these vehicles (true of traditional delivery too I suppose).

And I mean…sometimes the drivers straight up eat some food, which is awful from the standpoint of your POV, but also just… truly hilarious to me.

That is a good point (re: COVID) that I had lost along the way, thanks. Those services did do good during that time, you’re right. I’m not so sure about the GPS thing, but hey, I never thought we’d see half the ugly shit we’re seeing these days, so why not?

Of all the modern capitalistic irritations (to put it mildly), this one I really detest. And not least because of how ridiculously popular it is, wtf people? I watch folks I know, who can barely afford the food itself in the first place, then inflate the price by like 40%, just to eat the already (very!) mediocre food…cold. Solely so that they don’t have to leave the house. Just completely unhinged from my POV, and honestly produces almost a sense of alienation in me, I find it so bizarre.

Disclaimer though - I will acknowledge both that I happily enjoy various different foolish things myself, so the point about glass houses is worth my keeping in mind, and also there are some great reasons to use it (limited mobility for one, as another user pointed out).

But sheesh folks. Restaurants largely hate it from my understanding, the drivers doing it hate it (cuz the job - oh excuse me, the preferred exploitation-hiding euphemism is “gig” - is utter shit, a literal minor improvement over straight up homelessness), the environment hates it, the wear-and-tear on a likely broke person’s vehicle and the wear-and-tear on already struggling infrastructure…I mean what the fuckity fuck, seriously. How is this so popular, we’re all insane and just conveniencing our way to oblivion. SMgoddamnH.

Aside from the aforementioned reasonable uses (largely edge cases, let’s be honest), there is precisely one group of people who truly benefit in any serious way from this amazingly destructive nonsense - and wouldn’t you know it, it’s the exact same group fucking us in every other way! Weird!

Sorry. This one really gets me.