I would always suggest never force yourself to interact with people. I'm just saying be adjacent. You don't have to force yourself to interact with people. Just at least be around them.

Forcing yourself to interact with a person for no other reason than interaction is ALWAYS awkward. It takes skill to plow through the awkwardness. Speed dating, speed friending, date auctions, are always awkward for this reason. Small talk can be difficult but if you treat someone more like google asking a question you actually care about. It's a lot less awkward. People like to be experts, and treated as such.

It's why I say just, wander. It's alright not speaking to anybody for hours at an event. Walk through it like you would a forest. Take in the sights and sounds. Try to find something truly interesting.

The biggest mistake I see is that people don't ever mix with people anymore.

Honestly the biggest single question I would ask if I wanted to bet how likely someone gets a partner would be "how often do you leave your house outside of work and grocery shopping" Do stuff. Dating apps try to bring single folk to you but you'll have far more fun just... doing stuff. Doesn't matter if you go alone or with a group, it's usually more fun than just browsing the internet.

Go to a car show, go to an anime/scifi/star trek/furry convention, go to a craft fair, go to a bar and sit at the counter, find some way to have fun in public. Don't even bother trying to hunt down a partner, just have fun in a public setting. If you find ways to have fun in public, you start going out in public more. You do that, you start meeting potential partners by accident. Not only that:

1. You start learning social skills

Being surrounded by strangers means you can do a faux pas and nobody will remember it was you a week from now. They're strangers, they remember the story but not the person. A group of strangers can be oddly freeing, you can say no to them and never see them again. If they judge you you'll probably never see them again.

2. You start learning about your area

I learned Minneapolis has a fire breathing co-op so you can learn to juggle flames, a 501st legion of starwars cosplayers that can bring the empire to any event, a working ecto 1 that sometimes prowls the streets and has a youtube series.

3. You start becoming more interesting.

Did you click the links? You see what I mean? Now this is an interesting post. You now have things to talk about, about the land around you to whoever you're talking to. It also provides two really great topics to talk about. "what have you found around here?" "what have I found around here?" Is there another event? A club or bar that is just bizarre? A sport or game you've never heard of. Apparently Minnesota's roller derby team is amazing, still haven't found the time to watch a game, but if you can find one, why not try there?

Seriously just... do something. Find an event. If you think it's stupid then try to verify if it's stupid. (never was interested in cars, but it was free. Turns out the car show had the ecto 1, and the adam west batmobile. My hypothesis was proven wrong) Instead of scrolling through lemmy or facebook, wander around an event and watch and listen. If you see a booth, ask about it.

I found that I could keep things interesting to me by basically playing a scavenger hunt with events. Go to an event and find your next event at the event you're at. An event can be anything from a party, a convention, to a place that's just plain interesting. It also really got people interested. Whenever I brought up my quest "find an event at this event", people loved the idea and would often try to help. Heck, sometimes they'd even tag along at the next one.

it's a fun one at conventions, I always pack it and it ends up being worn almost every night. The drunker the night gets the more people love it. Even won a lip sync contest in it once. Still haven't run into a copycat though. Which is a shame because two of us bickering at each other just sounds like fun. Had it for a decade and people still think you need eyetracking and fancy brain scanners.

Nah man, just do puppetry and practice. Not nearly as hard as dark souls.

ah, that makes far more sense.

The problem is that flat earthers aren't saying "alright apparently the earth is a sphere but whatever I couldn't care less" treating a spherical earth like I treat relativity. yeah it's a thing but it's always negligible so I don't care I don't go to a conference that says "time is sacred, they just want you to think it's relative"

They're saying "alright this guy says the earth is round, so I know he's a dumbass, and a shill, and they can't be trusted because they're clearly part of the system" Most of them are treating any spherical earth people like kamala voters are treating trump voters.

I was half expecting a ton of upvotes and no comments.

... Is that an AI generated thing or an actual physical item?

I love the gag, but if someone actually made it I assume it has an actual use and the things that come to mind that would fit in that hole frighten me.

I mean, that was my first thought... but would there be a measurable difference?

I mean lets be clear, with a fan you're adding like 8 mph to something going 299,792,458 meters per second. You won't notice anything.

But like, vacuum vs glass vs glass moving half the speed of light, could be an interesting what if. Relativity is always where my mind glosses over in physics.

I was gonna call bullshit but you're totally right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwbeq_3GILk&ab_channel=AccessHollywood

That's totally Eric Adams walking in the back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9HpL1okm0g&ab_channel=Brad-DuctTape-Hale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CWqfv0mblk&ab_channel=Paladin356

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9V43iSXRQA&ab_channel=FoxDenMedia

https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/05/21/this-final-fantasy-black-mage-cosplay-has-all-the-feels/

like I legit won best performance in Daishocon back in 2017. You would THINK "oh that's totally when cosplayers and propmakers would see it and go nuts" but no. The tweet that went viral was just some rando (with a very racy/bdsm following as well if I remember right) who just did a drive by recording of me (without even asking). Didn't even know the guys name.

I mean... easiest way to tackle this is to name the novel and let us judge.

In all seriousness though. Going viral has precious little to do with quality. It all boils down to luck. I do cosplay, I have a set of LED eyes that I have full control over, I can emote so well I put a vtuber to shame, and this is real life before your eyes. I'll run around as the black mage from ff1

Took 5 years to go viral on Twitter and get an article written on adafruit. Go to any con and you'll see comics and books trying to sell out of booths. Have you ever purchased one on a whim? Or do you just walk by?

Probably low. Hatred of health insurance is bipartisan. He probably thinks that Trump is more populist than democrats (which is wrong) and that he's more likely to rein them in (also wrong. They're tied with democrats and a snowballs chance in hell)

Even Ben Shapiro is getting raked over the coals for sympathizing.

I mean, yeah, but we aren't doing much to prepare. With covid we had mask shortages, ventilator shortages, with a for profit Healthcare system the incentives to have more than you need are low. Even now a hurricane has given us an IV fluid shortage because it's all built in one place.

I know we're paying attention to emerging viruses but when it finally happens are we just gonna watch a train wreck in slow motion? You think this doge committee is going to maintain that?

How come nobody wanted to talk about that during the election? What did we learn from covid and how should we react next time?

I was literally just thinking that.

If we get ANOTHER pandemic after putting absolutely no effort in improving world healthcare... God that'd be so depressing.