Been a student. Been a clerk. Been a salesperson. Been a manager. Been a teacher. Been an expatriate. Am a husband, father, and chronicle.

  • 0 Posts
  • 29 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 4th, 2023
  • eightpix@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•How does a guy become his most confident around women?
    132·
    2 months ago

    47m here. This was my journey:

    Remember that scene in Heat, where Robert DeNiro introduces himself to Edie at the café? Do that. Stay interested. This goes for everyone. Get to know people. Take genuine interest in people, uncover what excites them, and get them talking about their excitement. If you find you’re excited by the same things, great. If not, there are many more people to practice on.

    Also helpful:

    Read books written by women. Fiction, non-fiction, articles, TV shows, films… everything. Take on concerns as experienced by women (SA, undoing redpill /mensrights /manosphere, unequal pay, caring professions) as your own responsibility. You’ll do everyone around you a favour.

    Care for other people — less insofar as what they can do to/for you and more about the ends they are in themselves. Keep up good relationships.

    If she’s still around, and you have the emotional capacity to do so, call your mom or sister. Women like to know that their men can have a good relationship with a woman who is not a sexual object.

    Finally, give a shit about yourself. Get better at what you want to be good at. Keep a clean living space. Eat healthy, get outside, and find enjoyable activities. If you plan on dating anyone, you’re better off knowing what you like so that you can share it. Then, when she shares what she likes, you can approach it openly.

    I’m not a guru. I’m still working on this from within a long-term committed relationship. It’s hard. There will be closeness, rupture, repair, and growth in any relationship. The willingness to wash, rinse, and repeat is key.

  • eightpix@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•If life is an experiment, and there is a measuring tool. How do you think we are doing?
    1·
    3 months ago

    If I said yes, I’d caveat that by saying, “we’re not special.” There’s no interaction, quid pro quo or otherwise, with whatever presence, energy, or overmind that I would conceptualize as a deity.

    Not an architect. Not a creator. Omnipotence and omniscience defy temporality. There are, similarly, no subdivisions of the deity; there are no places that it is present, and others that it is absent. No underboss gods, angels, demons, heavens, hells, or purgatories.

    The deity, in my understanding, is simply a unity: An answer to paradoxes, a solution to the incomprehensible, a layer beneath and above all other measurements, concepts, and capacities. A holographic whole that encompasses and inhabits every possibility. It is older than the universe and beyond our feeble attempts to comprehend it, let alone write its character and tell its story.

    A bearded white dude who impregnated a virgin, hates masturbation, holds vendettas, destroys cities, sends plagues, and permits humans to hide from “HIM” in the garden of good and evil… it is all just silly by comparison. At that’s just from the tradition I was raised in.

    I mean, a burning bush? Or tests of faith?

    We, people and all other organisms that are aware of one another, need to get on with finding ways to coexist. Biodiversity is the scorecard.

    /rant

  • eightpix@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•If life is an experiment, and there is a measuring tool. How do you think we are doing?
    51·
    3 months ago

    The metric is biodiversity.

    How many kinds of life are there, and are they thriving? What are the bottlenecks and boundaries for species that slow or stop their progress?

    Well, as a living, all-consuming, extinction-level event, I’d say we are making the experiment more impossible. We are a confounding factor, a bias most foul, and the primary flaw in the experimental design.

    If only there was guidance in terms of balancing our biological impact and capacity for sustainable development. If only there were some models that have and had worked for millennia. If only there were living groups who could share their wisdom.

    If only.

    So, for now, plunderous expropriation rules: violent, resource-heavy, rational modern warfare; apathetic, resource-heavy, throwaway consumer culture; and ignorant, resource-heavy, industrial machinations.

    What could go wrong?

  • eightpix@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What is cheese called in your language?
    3·
    3 months ago

    IIRC, the food, therefore the word, was introduced to Korea. It is a transliteration. Like “tae-kwon-do” is a transliteration from the Korean 태권도 (taegwondo).

    Note: Korean is not my first language. It is first non-English script I’ve managed to learn to read and write and makes me happy every time I interact with it.

    My read/spoken Korean is atrocious and barely functions.

  • eightpix@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What technology are you excited about?
    2·
    4 months ago

    3D printed buildings and neighbourhoods.

    The design implications are endless and including modular rough-ins for water, power, and HVAC, which would make design accessible to all. Get an AI engineer to test the design and a human engineer to double-check the results, and you can get printing.

    Hopefully, the type of concrete is getting less specialized and more sustainable. If we can jazz up the exteriors, that would also help.

  • eightpix@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What's a good trade to learn?
    7·
    4 months ago

    I’ve seen a bunch of those. Enough to know of his April 1st gags and to be able to shill for his website.

    Which I won’t do here.

    I’m more wondering about doing it as a career. What’s the annoyance/danger factor? How much work do you need to stay afloat? What do start-up costs look like? What would cause a locksmith to walk away and get into something else?

    And so on.

  • eightpix@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What is the smallest hill you would die on?
    1·
    5 months ago

    I mean, Com Truise defo had more than luck. He had pull even then. And, yes, he is just a person. He is dedicated to his art, which, I think, is running hard and making memorable movies.

    • Top Gun (1986, Dir. Tony Scott, Budget $15M),

    • Rain Man (1988, Dir. Barry Levinson, Budget $25M),

    • Days of Thunder (1990, Dir. Tony Scott, Wri. Robert Towne, Budget $60M),

    • A Few Good Men (1992, Dir. Rob Reiner, wri. Aaron Sorkin, Budget $40M),

    • the Firm (1993, Dir. Syndey Pollack, Budget $42M),

    • Interview with the Vampire (Dir. Neil Jordan, Wri. Anne Rice, Budget $60M),

    Big directors, writers, and big hit films. Then, he became Ethan Hunt.

    • Mission: Impossible 1 (Dir. Brian DePalma, Wri. Robert Towne, Budget $80M)

    M:I-2 (Dir. John Woo, Wri. Robert Towne) was thoroughly forgettable. That said, I just discovered that the writers of Star Trek: DS-9 and Voyager — Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga — wrote the story. Wild. Still, no quarter given. Until, maybe, I watch it again.

    The next 4 are great.

    • M:I-3 (Wri./Dir. J.J. Abrams with Alex Kurtzman (latter-day Star Trek writers and executive producers))

    • M:I-4, Ghost Protocol (Dir. Brad Bird (the Iron Giant and the Incredibles))

    • M:I-5, Rogue Nation (Wri./Dir. Christopher MacQuarrie (the Usual Suspects and the Way of the Gun))

    • M:I-6, Fallout (Wri./Dir. Christopher MacQuarrie)

    Jury is still out on M:I-7, Dead Reckoning Part 1, and Final Reckoning. Full disclosure, I did not really feel Part 1.

    Tron Cubes does attract/demand talent. And, his collaboration with Christopher MacQuarrie is long-standing.

  • eightpix@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Do babies and infants get trolling?
    3·
    6 months ago

    This develops into the toddler who —after you’ve given advice, demand, direction, instruction, or other adult support — looks you dead in the eye, does the exact opposite, and acts like it’s your fucking fault.

    They perfect trolling.

    Hopefully, by the time they’re four, they come to understand that trolling your family is not a great survival strategy. Some people grow out of it. Some are just trolls to ‘others’, outside their established ingroup.

    There are some people who’d sell their own mothers on a lark. Or, reneg on a friend just to see them squirm. Or, impose tariffs on allies and inflame every enemy but one. Those people, they’re behaving like toddlers.