May not be your speed, but something I’ve thought about re: the business card thing: Keep an eye out for interesting or odd business cards, and keep a couple with you to write your info on the back for this kind of situation. Depending on what they’re for, it’s a conversation starter when you meet again, and it doesn’t feel as contrived as making your own cards.

Small independent businesses are a good source for these, particularly if it’s a decent place for a date/friend outing. Or just something odd you like or find funny.

NeRD, OR RMT?

I don’t know - it doesn’t rub me the right way…

Tolkformers - more than meets the

Mom had a plan for her son. Her son didn’t like that plan, and now he’s a DJ.

I like the way you think!

¿ǝᴉʇǝǝʍs 'ʇᴉ sᴉ ʇɐɥM

383

You might be sad, but surely you’re not as disappointed as Missus Tron, mother of the man who couldn’t take a fucking hint.

Damn - I’d be so down for that discussion, for no other reason than I’d be fascinated at their definition of Christian that’s inclusive of not believing there is one existant God, who created the world, and whose representative/earthly form died to absolve us of our sins.

Like, you can follow every other rule in the book Ned Flanders style if you want, but these are the basic requirements to be a Christian (regardless if you’re a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ one). Decent chance it ends with a hard, interesting look at the basis for their personal faith, if you have the patience and energy to pull at that for a while.

But unless you find that part interesting and just wanna be an atheist living your life, yeah, that sounds exhausting and irritating, and it sucks they’re acting this way with you.

Am middle-aged(ish) nerd, can confirm this would work.

I am equally, if not more embarrassed to say this is an excellent idea and I need to steal it.

Eh, the hype around it maybe, but it can be a useful/unique experience for some - at least if you’re not the type where it’d be acutely painful, in which case do whatever gets you through the flight/whatever.

Think about modern life - how often do you find yourself in a position where there are no acute demands, no expectations for how you need to spend your time, and you can just sit with your thoughts for a few hours? Unless you consciously carve out some time for that, IMO it’s pretty rare. Multihour travel as a flight/train/bus passenger affords that time with no special effort.

I like at least attempting it for a chunk of the trip, if not the whole time - imagination starts running wild in cool ways, which otherwise doesn’t happen as often as I’d like it to. Though in fairness, if it’s a plane the cabin noise usually puts me to sleep during the attempt.

I’ll put it this way - if you’re the kind of person that finds the idea of isolation tanks appealing, depending on why you may enjoy raw-dogging flights or other passenger travel. 100% not for everyone though, and that’s fine - different strokes and all that.

ChatGPT reaches the same conclusion thousands of teenagers who’ve ingested a psychedelic compound have reached at some point. Now here’s Tom with the weather.

Got dang*

As someone who rescued Micah by immediately shooting the Sherriff of Strawberry and his buddies in the face, much to my sibling’s utter shock when they were letting me try RDR2 the first time, I’d say the reverse is also true.

YYYY/MM/DD hhmm, 24 hour clock gang unite!

(We also support our YYYY.MM.DD and YYYYMMDD compatriots)

This is a Once in a Lifetime romance.

Do it! Heck, take a friend and some garbage bags and make it nicer for everyone (if you are up to it).

I feel a lot of us would benefit from more time in the bush.

Vaguely related: As a flappy-headed Canadian child, there was some web 1.5 proto-social media site for kids that advertised on tv. I distinctly remember one of the characters saying the phrase “Do you like Limp Cookie?” in it.

I hope this comment keeps the memory of a company obscuring a band’s name referring to a cookie a bunch of dudes jacked off onto, while retaining the exact same connotation, on children’s television alive. That is all.

[Bonus points if anyone remembers wtf that website was]

I feel like there was a very short window where PCs were just easy enough to use that most people had one, but the OS experience was just complex enough, with things breaking frequently enough, that you had to learn some basics out of necessity.

Like , I’m a 100% not an IT guy - but I know all sorts of shit that seems like it should be common knowledge, but isn’t. Any time I manage to get something in our IT and software environment functioning at work, or explain the chain of events to some catastrophe based on evidence in our software logs, and I get talked about like some kind of wunderkind, it is frustrating more than anything else.

I’m not some IT genius, I’m your average asshole who knows some basics about the tools we use in 99.9% of the work we do. Chances are if there were more of said assholes we wouldn’t run into the problems I address in the first place. But admittedly, perhaps some of that knowledge/ability to think that way comes from having to figure out shit like why my DOS game wouldn’t work in 1995, or what the fuck that purple monkey Mom downloaded a few years later was actually doing.

Ugh - sorry, this turned into a rant, this kind of shit has been top of mind recently…