Spyke

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Do you think this guy likes me, or is he just being nice?

Yes, he's attracted to you. However, his behavior could be a warning sign depending on how old he is. Is he your age? If so I think he's excited and enthusiastic about getting your attention, but if he's older, I agree with other posters this sounds like he's trying to buy your affection. It's a warning sign if he's in his 20s, and a huge blaring red alert if he's over 30.

If he's one of your peers, I would be cautiously optimistic but NOT go fishing and definitely do not let him drive you again. This is women's safety 101: do not ever rely on a date for transportation, do not meet in isolated areas, and let someone know where you will be and when you should be home. If you are in a place that is car dependent, you are at the total mercy of whoever is driving, and giving them too much control over your freedom. Even with ride shares available that is a risk you should try to avoid.

Unless he has already told you where he's going fishing and it's somewhere visible and well populated, or you're going with friends as a group, then you should suggest an alternate activity that puts you around people. Other people are safety, and accountability. If his intentions are good, he should be happy to accommodate you and won't mind.

I remember when I was 19, I was not the beauty standard, so I didn't have my guard up as much as my peers. It was flattering and exciting to have someone overtly interested in me. I was frankly naive and oblivious to the fact that I could be preyed on and manipulated. I thought I was smart and confident but I had no idea what was going on around me and a lot of people I thought were "just being nice" were wolves circling. You should know that there are a lot of men who see someone young and inexperienced in dating who might be kind of insecure and see them as a juicy target for control, abuse, and manipulation. Just take precautions. Things might be totally fine, but the consequences for them being a predator can be severe.

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Me too, man

I was an incredibly angsty teenager, mad at the world and hostile to just about everyone by default. Apathetic, grumpy, and uninterested in physical activity or the things I liked as a preteen.

After having a baby and getting very little sleep for 6 months I recognized some of my old patterns. Turns out, it wasn't just part of being a teen, I was chronically sleep deprived. I was up at 6am most days back then, when I would sleep until 1pm on weekends. I think a lot of teens are unfairly characterized as angry and defiant when they're operating on half or a quarter of the sleep they need.

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Anime Recommendations

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Delicious in Dungeon, Frieren, Hands off my Eizouken, and Bocchi the Rock probably

Edited to add Spy x Family, and I suppose Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood depending on if one feels Winry is sexualized.

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Is Star Trek Discovery that bad?

I have an intense distaste for Discovery, and wouldn't recommend it.

I could rant about it a la Angela Collier for 4 hours but here's my main issues boiled down to a bulleted list:

Some things I like about Star Trek:

• Optimistic future, humans can create greatness and beauty if they continue to check and overcome their faults
• No black and white villains. All antagonists are given nuance and development and many become favored allies
• Themes of teamwork, a functional ensemble, core crew are all valid and valued, no one star of the show.
• No such thing as magic or gods, everything is in the realm of human understanding if we have sufficient knowledge

Guess what Disovery has?

• Nihilistic, apocalyptic future
• Bad guys that are just bad, they're evil, don't ask questions
• One principal star of the show that is the focus of nearly every episode
• No attempt to explain things with any veneer of science

Then add on some blatant examples of total ignorance for the universe it's set in, attempts at ham handed fan service by shoe horning in clumsy references to characters from other series, you have a show that is farther from Star Trek than a 14 year old's submission on IO9. When it actually let the supporting cast do things, they were charming and likable, but Stamets, Saru and Tilly weren't enough to keep me from getting mad at just about every episode.

If you don't really care about or know anything about Star Trek it can be entertaining I guess, but why watch it when there's Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks and The Orville?

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*Permanently Deleted*

If people are generally nice to you by default, and willing to break little rules for you, you are probably attractive. Attractive people are treated better on average, and strangers you interact with who have no obligations to you will have a positive bias towards you. They might let you into the shop to grab something real quick as they close, or a person on break might help you when they were off the clock, or invite you to take something normally reserved for a specific group you're not a part of. Those are perks and special treatment, and not the norm for people who are unattractive.

If you find yourself thinking "well people do that for me sometimes but it's just because I'm polite and friendly" or something, now you're getting it.

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Huh...

I don't want Chrome on my Linux system but I almost installed it last night. Why? Because apparently half the internet says that that is what is necessary if you want to screen share or mirror your monitor to a smart TV on the same network because "the linux implementation of Miracast is fucked". Oh, don't worry, you can try Brave or Chromium too, except they don't work because while the TV shows up as an option you can cast to, you can't actually cast because the option is grayed out due to some "specific media sites" error. Don't worry, this option can be changed in the //flags and if that doesn't work then try changing this other flag, except that other flag doesn't exist on Brave and Chromium and it must be assumed it only exists on Chrome.

But wait, there's a utility called MKchromecast, it mimics the ability without needing to install chrome, but doesn't recognize the TV. Oh it has all of these dependencies that need to be downloaded. It still doesn't work. There's always Gnome Displays, which has the exact same pattern of missing a bunch dependencies that must be hunted down and then not seeing the TV. While searching for dependencies on my software manager I find Jubii, a nice little media caster with a tidy, intuitive UI that happily connects to my TV immediately and cheerfully shows me all of media libraries but as soon as I ask it to play a mirror of my screen it loads for 2 minutes and times out with an error.

Then I realized it was 4:30am and I had to go to bed.

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*Permanently Deleted*

If I was DMing that game I wouldn't argue, but every other NPC they encountered would say "Wow tall guy! You must be good at picking apples!" until they decided they needed to do a reincarnation to get away from it.

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What's a piece of technology you LOVE the progress of?

I'm excited to see the progress of 3d printers becoming more user friendly, reliable and inexpensive. I've been keeping an eye on the development of consumer printing and there are so many types of materials to print with at higher and higher details with less troubleshooting needed. I'm thinking I'll finally jump in this year but I've had very little time for hobbies lately.

funny

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*Permanently Deleted*

As a night owl, this is some daywalker shit. Night shift means an easy commute, cooler temps, no need for sunscreen, quieter working environment, usually higher pay, fewer distractions, sleeping in, the list goes on. Night shift and second shift have their perks.

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How do you think early humans survived without water bottles? Did they just live next to water sources all the time?

Yes, humans used to live much closer to water sources. On a town level, if you didn't have a creek or river or water somewhere nearby you just didn't settle there. Available water was absolutely necessary for agriculture, domestic animals, cooking, washing, and of course drinking. On a personal level, you would go in the morning to a central well or water source and gather your water you would need for the day. Depending on the household needs it might be multiple trips with heavy, full vessels. You would put the water in to household water vessels, like a basin for cleaning or a ewer for washing or your cook pot. If you were thirsty at home, you would take a dipper (basically a ladle) and take some water from the household supply.

Where did you get the impression we didn't used to have water bottles? They weren't made of plastic or metal but humans have carried water with them for probably as long as we've used tools. You can carry water in drinking horns, in clay pots, wooden buckets, in dried out animal bladders or leather skeins, and there's literally a type of gourd called a "bottle gourd" which has been dried out and used as a personal water bottle for milennia across any region that can grow them. Don't underestimate human ingenuity, we didn't always have access to the same technology and materials but we have always been able to problem solve.

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What Film Are You Surprised Didn't Get A Sequel?

Still waiting for the Zootopia sequel. Genuinely good and creative movie that used the format to talk about tricky topics with some cushion and then became a cult favorite. They added some extra stuff under Zootopia+, they tee'd up the buddy cop format, did all this world building and then... what, Disney, this is the one IP you're not going to squeeze for all its worth? Where's the next one?