I was 18 at the time and received a PM on a online forum from her because my username indicated we were born the same year.

The second one I found from a platform similar to Omegle.

Third I PM’d on Instagram.

That’s almost two decades of my life. Now I’m single again. If there is to be a fourth one, I expect them to be discovered from an equally odd place - likely somewhere online.

Difficult to describe. Remotely similar to Red Bull but less bitter, maybe more bubbly. A sweet sparkling wine/cider-like. Sophisticated. Something a kid would drink if served but would likely never pick themselves.

That is always the case when comparing one’s complex internal life to the perceived external lives of others. It’s never an apples to apples comparison. However social media was just one example. This applies to other forms of signaling as well: designer clothes, latest tech, following trends… Basically almost anything people do that they wouldn’t do if there were no one to see it.

Sure, but the starting point is that I already don’t know something and need to look it up one way or another. Yes, the AI answer might be wrong but the guy on the YouTube video or online forum could equally be wrong. That is not something unique to AI.

I’m also obviously not just blindly trusting what it says. When it recommends me a product for example I don’t just go buy it without a question. The AI is just pointing me to the hopefully right direction for me to figure it out but the ultimate decision still remains mine.

A good recent example:
“I need to paint plywood that gets wet regularly, should I use paint A or paint B?”
“Neither, you should use paint C”
*Looks up paint C*
“Yes, I definitely should use paint C”

7. You lost by a whisker.

It’s a very quick number game called “By a Whisker”

Happy to show how it’s played to anyone whose interested. Just pick any number.

I’ve taken the slow route and have been doing mindfulness meditation for a decade which probably plays a role in all this.

I can somewhat relate with that. Eating meat is one of the few behaviours that I still do despite being unable to morally defend it. It’s not even that I’m trying not to think about it or have to somehow deceive myself believing that it’s good. I know exactly what I’m doing. The convenience of it simply outweighs the moral guilt.

What I think would possibly make me feel different about it is someone handing me a gun and telling me to shoot a cow. If it turns out that I can’t do it, then that really puts into question the outsourcing of the messy part of it in the first place.

Pommac comes pretty close as well but it’s not exactly cheap and it’s probably hard to find outside of the nordic countries. It’s like “adult soda” - in graduation parties, weddings and such it’s often served as the non-alcohol substitute for sparkling wine.

What’s so atrocious about it?

I’m not sure if this answers the question but I feel like the older I get the more I see through “the game of life” and once that illusion gets shattered it’s impossible to unsee. Much of the status seeking, tribal behaviour becomes nearly impossible to partake in once you start seeing what it’s all for.

Go ask a person why their Instagram is filled to the brim with pictures of their face, for example, and you can watch in real time as their world view starts wobbling and they start making up rationalizations and excuses for behaviour that is utterly narcissistic. Try doing that while being fully conscious about the true motivations behind it. You can’t - something has to give.

However, I’m not sure if this is a good thing. Sure you can pat yourself on the back for being above it all but it makes it really difficult for anyone to try and integrate in normal everyday social situations when all of it just feels like a performance.

I wish I could just have the taste without the poison. I don’t drink them for the “energy” content.

As a heavy AI user I wonder if there’s a difference in how it affects people who can literally have the AI do some amount of their actual work compared to a tradesperson like myself who can only rely on it (to a certain degree) for instructions but it won’t hang drywall for me or replace a faucet. I still have to do the actual work myself. The AI is just a tool.

Here’s a pretty typical question I ask it. I can’t really see how that is cognitively detrimental to me nor how I would even google that, and why.

The online outrage culture seems extremely exhausing from the outside. It’s like some people just want to look for reasons to get mad about.

AI is a technical term with roots in computer science. That’s not an appeal to authority - it’s a factual statement.

When a layperson hears “AI” they often think of AGI - something like HAL 9000. Then they look at ChatGPT, conclude the LLM isn’t (generally) intelligent, and decide it therefore isn’t AI. My point is that the term has a specific meaning and it’s not what most people think. I assumed you were one of those people. It doesn’t imply general intelligence. A very simple system can still be artificially intelligent in the classical definition of the term. A sudoku solver, a chess engine, and a navigator would all count.

Nowadays the meaning has shifted a little and usually refers to a model that has learned from a bunch of data. By that definition none of the earlier examples qualify anymore except for LLMs.

With extra insulation even that one would work better.

First of all, your over-simplification of why the economy is so terrible is almost certainly inaccurate but I’m not even going to get into that as neither of us has the faintest clue of how the economy even works.

Secondly, I don’t think that’s what people mean by “being stupid” with their money. It’s more about buying things because you want rather than need them which is something we all do to some degree. Only buying what you need would basically mean living in a tent by a campfire eating canned beans. When people tell that to you it’s not to win an argument but to end it. They don’t want to hear it. It’s not like they don’t know what they’re doing.

How am I supposed to know what field you have a degree in? Was I being rude towards you? I’m unsure what warrants this sarcastic courtesy.

Not really. It’s just fuel.

Two rye bread sandwiches wrapped in paper towel and put inside a minigrip bag.
Coffee in a thermos with a wool sock around it and a plastic bag around that for insulation.
A small jug of milk.
Water.

I’ve been eating the same thing every single day for well over 5 years.