Everybody is brand new (as are we) so there are a lot of possibilities in how many are trying to act like they fit in, versus are just honestly expressing every warm and happy and totally content thought. The declarations that everything is just so wonderful they couldn't possibly complain (like the couple in the…

Peer pressure and cultural expectations will do a lot to shape behavior. So if the selection is random but you TELL all these newcomers that only the most good of the good get in, I could see everyone who knows their case is wobbly warping themselves to try to fit in to what they believe Looks Normal. Lest they be…

I suspect this is behind a lot of the polarization over the past decade: so much social interaction is online. We can find a group where we convince ourselves that WE are the silent majority*. At the same time, there's less 'managing to have a civil conversation with all the regular humans I must repeatedly interact…

My nephew has lived in the deep south, Pacific northwest, and midwest. His observation is that assholes congregate in whichever group holds the political majority. People willing to be in the minority have at least thought about their beliefs in some depth, and have reasons to hold them beyond "because obviously I'm…

It perplexes me because some years back I would have said the SL rule was "Open your marriage when things are good, not when they suck. The latter just gives you the same problems, now with more people in them." And I still think that advice is pretty sound, based on the letters he gets of different experimental…

Anecdotally, a commenter at Dan's in an open marriage found that some women interested in an affair with her married husband lost interest the instant he explained that his wife was in the loop and fine with it and they had rules and nothing was being put over on the wife via this lady sexing him. If she wasn't…

"My spouse doesn't understand me."

I've noticed that thirty-ish people who write to Dan about their problems with their barely-legal lovers tend to embody the principle "I can't get people my own age to put up with my bullshit."

That made me wonder if "dating app" was a euphemism for "hook-up app." His motivation did seem to more "because I desperately need to get laid as soon as possible."

I would advise TENSE to view every profile he writes through the lens "What if my second period algebra class finds this profile and recognizes me?" He probably wants to lean hard into sane and normal.

"Harder Better Stronger Faster."

It very often seems a video game analogy is at work: If you push A up up left B B right A down, she is supposed to do something, and it's unfair when she doesn't.

My favorite depiction of Christians in popular entertainment was June Carter Cash's parents in Walk the Line. Johnny Cash needed help, and that was enough for them to believe that they should help him.

Some of my favorite NPR segments have been those with two people of opposing views, who do not feel obligated to disagree on everything. All too rare, but really a boon to public discourse. If everyone did it, such discussions on campus would be illuminating, but I think it's all too rare as a baseline, and getting…

Husband to daughter: Your mother and I rode dinosaurs to school, uphill in the snow both ways, and the internet was dial-up.
Daughter: I don't even know what dial-up is.

One of my formative political experiences took place second-hand (I did a problem set instead of attend the guest lecture of someone with whom I politically disagreed), when the protesters who kept interrupting him explained that it was essential that they Raise Their Voices In Objection, i.e. yell over him, lest…

I'm reading Sapiens at the moment, and just got to the part where freedom and equality, the heart of much western philosophy about a just society, are contradictory.

Aha, you gave me one: Pickup artistry. Stripped to a minimum level, you have:
• Confidence is attractive, despair is not.
• If you want to meet someone, do not stare at them from a distance while meticulously constructing the wonderful mythical life you two will someday share. Wait until they're in a place/activity…

IOKWRDI.

Besides not head-shotting The Man, I was really perplexed that Roberta failed to free all the prisoners. Like, I was sure the unhooding would reveal some horror that had befallen them. But if they were just scientists sitting in a crate (in the sun, for days on end) I don't know why you leave them there.