The true tragedy is when you get all the social signals and you have the thought “man I wish I could just date multiple people at the same time” and it doesn’t occur to you to try that because… ???

Now I’m old and have to work 1 1/2 full time jobs to pay my bills, so. That won’t be happening.

Lady with social anxiety here to confirm. Flirting is useless. Every time I’ve just given up and asked the dude to date after being extremely forward for a while and they’re always shocked 🤷🏼‍♀️ Once we get past that, it’s great.

We had a wood stove hooked up to our chimney. 😬

Yes, absolutely. It affirms that I’m not alone in my frustration and sadness. I like songs that have an upbeat or energetic feel alongside the dark lyrics though, it helps get me boppin’.

The part I’m really blown away by is that I just saw this final project in the intro to design class I teach from a group of international students earlier this spring. The project was to create a logo design and brand guidelines as a small team. The students can pick the business and whether it’s new or a rebrand, and this group went with social media all-in-one apps and made the justification that they are hugely popular in China, but nothing like that exists in the US. My favorite part is that the letter X was a HUGE part of the logo/branding, but they did not name it just “X” specifically for the reasons you listed - it’s not discoverable or unique in searches, the App Store, etc.

I feel like I’m being punk’d

Nope, and I used to do a lot of Reddit - like several times a day, and usually entire evenings just browsing. I used PowerDeleteSuite and deleted my account, and I use an RSS reader with an adblocker for the 2-3 local subs I truly can’t find the same info for elsewhere. One is a university I teach at, and the only exception I’ve made to this was to create a throwaway to answer a question about salaries and point the person who was hoping to teach to our union contract. Worker solidarity > Reddit drama.

Corporations: get your booty back into the office so it’s not empty
Also corporations: we’ve laid off your team in favor of AI, it was a tough but necessary choice due to costs
The empty office building: ???