Imagine a girl you like putting a hand on your shoulder, looking into your eyes, saying some gentle word I don’t quite remember due to being mesmerized by those eyes, and you know what I did? I just looked back uneasily for a few seconds, then nervously took her hand off my shoulder, shook it a bit, released it and awkwardly smiled. (That even wasn’t her last attempt to make me happy against my best efforts ; ended bad anyway.)

There are many things further down the road to go wrong with attractive popular girls. 2 most catastrophic cases in my life are with those such as them.

Admittedly I’m the one who mainly failed them due to misunderstandings and passiveness, but when a girl (being all that popular) is used to boys being rather active and competitive and social, and then you are here just cause she happened to like your looks, this may end painfully, for you more than for her.

There are also cases from the post, only I may have noticed, just wouldn’t risk losing an existing good friendship for possible romance.

Exactly.

Yes, the thing is - it’s a choice.

I’d be using Gentoo if not for installing software being something you have to plan for.

In some sense this would even seem an advantage of Windows. (I know it’s the fundamental reason for many hangs and freezes, but the idea that a file is a lockable resource doesn’t seem that bad.)

Some even Paradox ones. One can waste many-many hours in CK:DV with Mappa Regnorum mod, for example. Though CK2 is more complex, it lacks the relative simplicity and clarity.

She actually lived long. Say, Alexander Lebed’ died in a helicopter crash in 2002, and Galina Starovoytova was killed in 1998, and similarly bad things (or just their marginalization and presentation as nutjobs by mass media, like with Novodvorskaya and Stomakhin) happened to most of people with actual political potential and spine from the Russian 90s.

I’ve seen rats in rather expensive parts of Moscow.

Also bag clips break. A rubber band or a knot (one you sure you can untie).

I usually use “just tucking”, though.

As an Other Place fan whose experience with trying to befriend Star Trek fans IRL has hit the tragic third - thank you for being reasonable. I’ve met some people pretending that the Other Place is “space wizards for children”, while Star Trek is “real science fiction”. While in fact they’re the same - for most part space magic and for the select few areas, yes, real science fiction.

In the end faulty security always gives edge to the stronger and more malicious side.

So if you want to protect the weak and allow people to defend themselves, you’d want such mechanisms to not be rigged for any abstract noble goal, because otherwise you are going to get fucked very practically.

Back then pick-up artists were still a major thing, so I learned and then had to unlearn all that bullshit.

Oh. Thank dear god I never tried.

However, things won’t get better if we’re treating young men as poor, helpless victims of society

They are usually victims of their own parents, who may have too differing behavior from what is common average (say, example 1) both asexual and thus treating nonverbal communication as something not very hard or important, and thinking that you’ll just learn it, or, example 2) too sexual, like, sorry, one of the parents being an ex-escort and thus their child incorrectly measuring the signals sent, or, example 3) both parents having grown with their mother only or with little attention from their father, thus again not learning the skills of communication for men, one can imagine other examples).

instead of treating them like, you know, men, and telling them to take responsibility for their lives and online habits

Responsibility is fine for most, not knowing what to do is a different matter.

You’re not a victim, because you still have the power to change yourself.

That’s a philosophical question. You may have noticed that what you eat and how you exercise physically and what news you hear and what people tell you all affect very much what you think and how. So whether you can consciously change yourself to some intended end is, again, a question.

Thank you for being reasonable.

Usually if something is as easy for another person as it is for you, then they’ve been as successful in it as you have. That’s all I have to say about your readiness to judge others with that implication that you are better.

Ah, actually visited that link of yours, clicked through one article and it does look good. The only catch is that I’m confident most people with such problems haven’t ever heard about this guy and his website.

There are conversations where the actuality matters, and there are conversations where the criteria matter, and there are also conversations where the dynamic matters. You mixed up this one.

I mean, everybody talking about someone else’s rosy worldview or otherwise playing a cynic is usually clueless.

This has always been the risk.

Now, I’m a Linux user and really don’t like Unity the game engine. Unity the desktop was cool, on a side note, even though I’ve never used it for long periods of time.

Many murderers murder openly and don’t get any jail time at all. Cause they are elected politicians.

Other than that - the purpose of the penitentiary system is not to punish people, it’s to redeem them. At least in theory. You don’t have any right to punish other people (well, an eye for an eye may do, if there’s no other way, but that’s the worst that’s acceptable), especially with such intentional destruction as a life sentence.

So your very approach is criminal intent.

I mean, it’s not a huge problem to read Marx or Gramsci before arguing about Marx or Gramsci. You don’t have to read all they wrote, of course. To form an opinion on Gadamer I don’t have to read everything he wrote.

7 out of 11 countries believe the end of the USSR harmed their countries rather than benefited them

That’s because USSR was designed intentionally so that its end would be a catastrophe. To prevent that end. However, since it was simply unable to exist further even on life support, what happened happened still.

End of USSR being bad doesn’t mean USSR being good. It’s just a choice between horrible end and horror without end.

I live in Russia and you do not.