Liffguard

@Buckwheat All I can really say is that I comiserate. I'm not specifically looking to have kids, but yeah I'm spending a lot of time thinking about the future and who I might spend it with, and how hard it is to find that person. I don't have much dating experience, I'm feeling lonely and adrift, and I'm nursing regrets about ending past relationships even though I know they were the right decisions for me at the time. It's not exactly your situation, but this article might help you. Essentially, finding a compatible long-term partner really comes down to luck. We can nudge the odds a bit; by presenting ourselves well, cultivating interests, practicing social skills, putting ourselves in situations where we're more likely to meet people etc. But whether or nor we ever happen to cross paths with someone who is compatible with us and available to date is a pure roll of the dice. That's terrifying, but also kind of empowering, because there's no way of ever knowing when our luck might change. As for online dating specifically. Eh, even though I'm giving it another try at the moment, I've made no secret that overall I'm not a huge fan. If you genuinely don't want to, then delete that fucker with no regrets. That said, I think you might possibly be overthinking some aspects of it. For example, if someone you know IRL sees your profile, would that actually be so terrible? Online dating is mainstream. People knowing that you're open to dating and are using a dating app would be an entirely normal thing to know about someone. In certain social settings in the past, I've been the weird one for not having Tinder. So maybe give it a go, with zero expectations or preconceptions, and the knowledge that if you're not happy or comfortable with it you can delete the app in seconds. And that won't be failure, just an experiment that didn't pan out this time. Or, like I said, if you really don't want to then don't, it's very much not required. But yeah, I really hear you about that fear of never finding someone to plan a future and share a bed with. It's insidious isn't it? It's kind of trite to say, but you're not alone in that feeling, and none of us know when our luck might change, so hang in there.

Totally agreed. I spent half a day in the sun yesterday, and felt almost physically lighter at the end.

The weather here today was absolutely glorious so I managed to get a solid three hours on the paddleboard. Just up and down the local canal, nothing adventurous, but it was a surprisingly strenuous workout after not being on the water for a few months. I made the mistake of dressing for February; with the sunshine and total lack of breeze it felt more like late May. And whilst this unseasonable mildness may presage the imminent collapse of our biosphere, I'll admit it was pleasant to get some natural light and warmth for a change.

Ugh, I finally caved and downloaded a dating app. Haven't used one of these things in like three years. I'm not even sure how this going to work on a basic logisitcal level, since meeting up in person is still a no-no for the immediate future. Fuck it, zero expectations, let's see what happens.

I strongly second this. I took up a new instrument to give me something to focus on during lockdown (and to get through a break-up) and it's been a god-send. I've started doing some basic recordings and putting them online, and considering joining a band when restrictions start easing. If you're stuck indoors and need something to take your mind away from stress, anxiety and boredom, then learning music is ideal.

Going way off topic here, but honestly dogs are much more interesting to talk about than politics. I'm not sure what's so un-canine about poodles. They look perfectly canine to me when they don't have that dumb dog show haircut.

Not to mention the extremely unsubtle parallels to the confederacy. Or rather, to the various myths that too many people still believe about the confederacy e.g. The Lost Cause, war of Northern aggression etc.

I suppose I'd rather see as many people as possible who need help get it, even if that means a lot of people who don't need help get it too. Especially considering that the truly rich don't have student loans anyway. They just paid cash.

Where was this disdain for incrementalism when discussing M4A?

I mean... that's a pretty good reason, no? Isn't that the primary impetus for student loan forgiveness specifically, that Biden can wipe it out (or at least take a major chunk out of it) with the stroke of a pen? No horse trading with conservative democrats or bad faith republicans. No obscure procedural rules that hold things up until the original proposal is watered-down to near pointlessness. There's a clear problem, millions of people with debt they can't possibly afford to repay, that can be wiped away in a single order. Does it solve all problems with higher education funding in the US? God no, not even close. But it can be done now. Today, if Biden wants to. And look, I'm not unsympathetic to people who would feel put out if they miss out on this. If you spent years scraping by to pay off your own loans then of course it's an understandable human reaction to have extremely mixed feelings about millions of others getting a substantial benefit that you may never see yourself. But I would request - or implore - that you look at the bigger picture here. One, the simple human element; millions of people can have a major burden erased overnight, at no loss to yourself. Be angry about the burdens you had to endure with no alleviation, but don't direct that anger at people who do have theirs alleviated. Their gain is not your loss. Two, the broader downstream effects. How many people stay trapped in shitty underpaid jobs they can't afford to quit because of their debt? Think of the downward pressure on wages this represents, and the subsequent upward pressure if this debt disappears. How many potential new businesses never see the light of day because people can't afford the risk? In general, how much potential economic activity never happens because of all the income getting sucked away into an unfillable debt black hole? Even if you yourself receive no direct debt forgiveness, there are broader societal benefits that you will experience. Finally, if a huge chunk of student debt does get wiped out, then the conversation around student fee reinbursement, and free university more generally, suddenly stops being theoretical and becomes much more real. Right now the conversation is "it's not fair to cancel student debt without reinbursing people who already paid it off." All this means is that student debt will be neither forgiven nor reinbursed. What if the conversation was "student debt has been forgiven, to be fair we must now push reinbursement too." If you stop debt cancellation you'll never get reibursement, push it and you might.

Yes, there should be some kind of reinbursement program as well. But in the meantime, as many Democrat supporters so frequently remind us, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

That's a fair point, and I agree about Johnson and Trump tapping into a similar appeal, despite their substantive differences (between them as individuals and between the Tory and Republican parties).

And yet Labour still did much better in 2017 than 2019, despite having the same leader and a very similar platform.

Going off-topic a little, but I'd be wary of drawing the immediate and obvious conclusion from this. A very similar platform in 2017 saw much greater success, so there had to be other factors at play in the 2019 result than just how left-leaning either the leader or the manifesto was. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Brexit warps everything around it.

My Mum's Canadian, so I had Canadian citizenship from birth. I just never had any of the paperwork. Technically I have three citizenships, but I don't like to talk about the third one.