Millennials were peak generation for self-taught tech literacy. We were raised in an environment where the technology was simple and open enough to actually be configurable, all while the prize on the other side of figuring out the technology was rewarding.

The older generations didn’t have as strong of a reward for figuring out the tech. And the younger generations have too steep a learning curve to get around things, so they never even learned to try, like the “baby elephant syndrome” phenomenon.

And then they can enhance that business by turning around getting pedophiles to subscribe and pay for in game credits so that they can interact with a bunch of undersupervised children.

With fees capped at 14% and interest capped at 35% APR, a doubling could still be legal if they have 2 years to repay, especially with frequent compounding.

Not that children have the patience to wait 2 years for a return on their investment, though.

once you’ve made friends for life, they stick

People drift apart. Actually making the effort to communicate and meet up occasionally is important for maintaining those relationships. If you’re not in the place where you’re can stay aware of major life changes (marriage, divorce, kids, major career changes, moves between cities, major illness or injury, deaths in family, etc.), were you really “friends for life”?

Even making brunch plans in my 40s requires consulting a calendar. That naturally shrinks the number of close friends in the mix. I’m closer with my friends who live close than the ones who live far, simply out of inertia, that maintaining those relationships takes less effort.

Low maintenance friendships are the best ships 🛳️

I’m no psychoanalyst but it sounds like someone is insecure in their ability to love and be loved and would prefer to guarantee a balanced reciprocity of low effort on both sides.

Paul Morphy, chess genius and sometimes described as best in the world in the mid-1800s:

“The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.”

Well it’s not like Japanese or Chinese (or Italian or British or French or Danish or Mexican) chefs stopped inventing new dishes. Tonkotsu ramen was invented in the 1930’s. The original Kung Pao Chicken was invented sometime in the mid 19th century, in China. And General Tso’s was probably invented in Taiwan and brought to the United States shortly afterward.

Whether a dish is invented in its ostensibly “home” country or by emigrants from that country doesn’t actually change the legitimacy of the dish. There’s no rule against chefs inventing new dishes, whether they are immigrants or not.

You don’t need a normal distribution or statistical independence. It just requires that any given key combination remain possible.

No matter how unlikely, anything that is possible will eventually happen in an infinite time.

Some infinities are bigger than others, though.

Even if you have countably infinite monkeys typing countably infinite strings for an infinite period of time, there will be an infinite number of strings that the monkeys haven’t typed, that will never be in the set of completed typed strings.

Cantor’s diagonalization proves it.

Two new monkeys show up, and even though the infinite rooms and infinite typewriters are already occupied, you can make room for them by making all of the monkeys move over one room, and putting the new monkeys in that newly vacant room with the newly available typewriters.

It’s not just purely aesthetic, although that is a big part of it.

Some of it is actual quality not related to safety: if fruit is being processed after insects have already gone to town on it, that’s not the same quality of fruit that should’ve been used, and might actually affect the flavor.

Some of it is still safety. Freezing foods generally don’t kill bacteria, and sometimes don’t even kill molds or other fungi. Neither do packaging for shelf stable dry foods like flour, rice, cornmeal, etc. That’s why the danger in raw cookie dough comes from the flour, not the eggs.

And it’s an indirect issue, but insect contamination may also be an indicator of other dangers that aren’t solved by processing. Metal shavings or bits of rock can get into food, and having a tightly controlled process should prevent those dangers, too.

If you don’t have the time for homemade, store bought is fine.

Reminds me of the coincidence in Mexico City’s earthquake warning system. Mexico City runs an earthquake drill every year on September 19, the anniversary of the deadly 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

Well in 2017 there actually was another deadly earthquake on that same day, 2 hours after the official drill, the sirens went off for the second time that day, as the ground started shaking. There wasn’t enough advance warning to actually have people disregard it as a false alarm, though, because by the time the sirens went off the earthquake could already be felt.

Wow, what an alarm, huh.

Lemon, it’s Tuesday.

Slang term for ejaculating, usually with some projectile distance implied. Very popular term in the mid-2000’s, see Get Low by Lil Jon.

Plus they live very short lives, giving less opportunity for the accumulation of a lot of knowledge.

Their reproduction strategy and life cycles also basically don’t allow for generational interaction: most octopuses reproduce only once, produce tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of offspring, and die shortly after reproduction. Then the young paralarvae drift as plankton until they grow large enough to settle wherever on the sea floor they happen to be.

Taco Bell was a cynical invention by Alexander Graham Bell to sell more Bell peppers.

Code switching is a thing.

I have my professional voice for work emails and meetings and stuff like that. I still joke, but usually it’s the kind of mild humor that can be broadcast on TV no problem. I also avoid self deprecating humor on anything actually related to the job (I can still joke about being a bad dancer or singer or athlete or whatever).

I have my parent voice when dealing with my kids’ schools, doctors, friends’ parents, etc. Most of my jokes here are relatable parent humor.

I have my casual voice when dealing with strangers outside of work: friends of friends, neighbors, etc. I joke but don’t really do anything with politics, religion, sex, profanity, etc.

And as I get to know friends, I have several distinct voices that I use, depending on our connection and their own style. I know whether they’re on my wavelength for political humor, crass/sexual humor, etc. And perhaps most importantly, the style of humor: I’ll make references to specific TV shows I know the other person loved (Simpsons, The Office, Tim Robinson, etc.), other specific interests (sports, programming, food), which style of online meme is popular with the other person, etc.

My wife has seen all of these parts of me. We still exchange funny stuff we find on the internet on our shared interests and style of humor, even if it’s only a subset of all the things we find funny.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do these sound like the actions of a man who had all he could eat?

I wonder how much of it is horny old dudes and how much is actually lonely old dudes. These types of arrangements, somewhere in the gray area between transactional paid sex work and companionship between equal partners might not satisfy the loneliness part of the equation.