Mate I’ve had some cracker first dates that didn’t work out in the long run but were absolutely part of the tapestry which got me to here.
The number of good first dates far outweighs the weird and shitty ones.
Some of my most treasured experiences are those quiet intimate moments just between two of you. An experience that just the two of you share. It is profound.
We are our experiences.
Asked a girl out on a date. She invited me over to watch a movie with her at her parents house (we were in our late teens). I arrived; her recently deceased family dog and incredibly distressed mother were both in the kitchen. Dog was a really big golden retriever that had been euthanized, and the mom had bought him home? Not sure why? Maybe to bury in the back yard or something? Idk
Anyway I offered to leave but she was insistent that we watch the movie together, which we did, on the couch, with her mom crying in the next room. Halfway through the movie the mom screams he’s still alive, he’s still alive. Go into the kitchen, she’d gone to move the body and it had expelled air and made some noise. I had to explain, with my best year 12 biology, what had happened. Five minutes of this woman losing her shit with grief out of her beloved companion dying.
Girl insisted we watch the last 10 minutes of the movie, it finishes with us watching in silence, I get up to leave and said something stupid like hey I’d love to do this again sometime and she says “I have a boyfriend”
I’m like alright well that’s that then and didn’t put in any more effort. Stupid me, she was hot and I really liked her. Being a dipshit I wrote a song about it, using the three guitar chords I knew, which takes me to act ii…
…five years later, I’m at a party, exchanging worst first date stories with friends and fellow partygoers including a cute blonde. I wait my turn, tell the story, she laughs her arse off and then goads me into singing the song, accompanying myself poorly on the guitar. I absolutely fucking nail it, everyone is in stitches, sit down next to her and the night goes from there. We end up leaving the party for a walk down to the local beach, made out on the beach, things get frisky, jump in a cab back to my house, in bed together, have drunken sex…which results in a broken condom. She lives literally the other side of town so we have to wait till (a) I’m sober enough to drive and (b) pharmacy is open to get a plan b, then have the most awkward drive back to her house. Get there, offer to walk her to the door, she says no, kisses me goodbye in the car, then texts me…to say she has a boyfriend.
Tricky, theirs is a cover version, so the original would still exist.
There’s a movie about that scenario with the Beatles. Called yesterday.
Anything that you can think of has already been thought of, modelled, and done by international actors who have more resources, technical capability and time than you, and have far fewer morals.
You want a specific outcome to this election? So do Russia and China. They’re a lot better at this than you are and are orders of magnitude more invested in it.
Farm feedstock.contain all the nutrients an adult cow needs, including a wide range of vitamins (including A, B, D, E, K), essential fatty acids and taurine, without the need for grass. Although obligate herbivores in the wild, domestic cows still need nutrients they would normally source from vegetation. Thankfully farm feedstock contains all those nutrients in a bioavailable grain.
grain is a professional cow food, created by grain manufacturers in 50,000BC, formulated and checked by independent animal nutritionists to meet the AAFCO(USA) and FEDIAF(Europe) guidelines for animal nutrition.
We’ve had safe and healthy variants of cow food for 52,000 years. Trying to elevate the question to animal abuse speaks entirely to personal ignorance.
Eta - modifying the diet of a domesticated animal for your convenience seems to run contrary to the premise of minimising animal cruelty.
Don’t threaten me with a good time, baby
Hey - very much feel this one.
It will likely come from your kids in the future, the validation doesn’t come from society. They get to a point where they recognise what you did and say thanks.
You’re doing well, keep it up mate.
Gratitude makes you live longer, feel better, and it’s free.
Yeah no. Performance, reliability, uptime are huge.
Diffuse can be used as a verb meaning “to spread out” or an adjective meaning “not concentrated.” It is often confused with defuse, which can only be a verb. The original meaning of defuse was “to take the fuse off a bomb,” but the word now usually means “to make less dangerous or tense.”
Younger than 45
Oh OK that actually makes sense.
45 year olds and above are digital immigrants. In short, they had an off-line childhood and an online adulthood. They have different speech and writing patterns to you because they learnt and communicated in a different way to you.
Assuming you’re under 45, this won’t make sense, because you’ve never experienced a world which doesn’t have this sort of interaction. You’re a digital native, digital tech has always been there.
In twenty years time, children born or educated after the advent of chat gpt will have the same problem understanding you. The way you write, post and interact will seem clunky and old fashioned. It’s already happening - we’re having to adapt the way we interact, in order to be able to ‘be understood’ by AI.
The wonderful thing about humanity, tho, is that we do adapt and adopt! Consider this - everyone over the age of 50 had to learn something completely new to them in order to be able to communicate with you via email, sms or messaging app. They used to just talk, or write letters. Sharing media was a physical act. Yet here they are using the same texh as you. Awesome.
It’s missing a comma
Tldr “In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence”
Yeah seconded… That worked for me.
I spent a bit of time going through your post history to get an understanding of your background
In short I think your life experiences mean you’ve lost all trust in men. Not just your direct experiences but what you’ve observed in others.
As a result you enter each interaction assuming the worst. Every male social worker you engage with will confirm this pattern because that’s what you’re looking for. The - ah fuck here we go again - feeling.
For them, and I don’t expect you to have empathy for them, this is what they live - the outcomes of other mens behaviours. But - they were there and they tried. That is something.
You have changed quite a lot of your original post.
Very small is 3 people. It’s a small company.
My experience working in a dev company exactly that size -
Pros
Less dead wood (people not carrying their own weight).
Everyone knows everyone well, it’s a tight team
Think it, do it - quick to develop and respond
Less pressure
Feels a bit like a family
More chilled than corporate esp. working from home
More support of networking and linking up with industry peers
Higher degree of trust and support
Way more latitude to do what you want to do
Easy to influence senior leadership
Can offer things like equity etc
If you’re a high performer you will be noticed
Way less red tape
A lot more trust
Company can prosper if everyone works hard
Cons
Company favourites
Can be quite political, although far less so than some large organisations I’ve worked for
Less cover if you’re on leave or similar
Harder to get some things done if money is needed (lower budgets and thinner reserves)
Lower remuneration, fewer levers to pull to get a salary increase
More drama with paychecks etc
Fewer higher skilled people to learn from
Culture can go sideways quickly
Nowhere near the same level of support and benefits provided by the big companies
Tend not to attract the best and brightest talent
Comoany more impacted by economic conditions
It also greatly depends on you and your preferred style. Some people just outright don’t like working for big businesses and prefer smaller gigs.
Maybe you didn’t experience the bullying that was happening, or you weren’t on the outer of the cliques that existed?
Call a spade a spade, society doesn’t give a rats arse about vulnerable men of any age or in any demographic.
I was young and naive, even a couple years later I would’ve done a bit of digging. You know, questions like what’s his name, how long you guys been going out for, shouldn’t he be here with you in your moment of need given your fucking dog is dead.