I’m still waiting for my pheromone-overlord 😞

Some species of termite can effectively molt backwards, meaning they can physically return their bodies to a juvenile stage, AND THEN re-mature from that juvenile stage into a different adult body plan!

So adult worker (medium sized head and mandibles, etc.) -> juvenile morphology -> adult soldier (huge head and mandibles). And other forms I don’t remember, think they can go back and then become something with wings, etc. - big bug changes!

And what’s crazier is this is done in response to pheromones secreted by the mound’s queen. Termite Queen up in the mound playing Sid Meier’s Civ lol, controlling her city through different stinks! Too few soldiers after the latest bird incursion? Got a buncha workers with nothing to do? No problem, stink-compel em to go back to goo and come back as what the mound needs!

I got all this from a fairly goofy podcast a buncha years ago - be kind, anonymous grumpy expert, if this is way wrong lol

Oh I was offering that as supporting evidence for your point lol. There’s roughly nothing (besides reason and compassion) these folks can shit out of their mouths that will surprise me anymore.

RFK Jr., noted brainworm host and multi talented repeater and innovator of quackery, said that shit within the last 24 hours lol

Speciation of fungi in the first place makes a mockery of our futile, hubristic attempts at taxonomy. Fungus spits on the petty distinctions made by man.

Great perspectives, thank you! Very informative and much more plausible than what I was saying.

Well thanks for the interesting perspective and I’m very glad to hear it wasn’t so one-sided everywhere, and that you’ve seen a lot more positives! Everything you said about causes of strife makes perfect sense to me and I would imagine those feature heavily for folks who try it out due to simple curiosity or pressure from a partner.

I would imagine, too, that sexual trends exhibit regionality and that they diffuse across regions over time and at uneven rates, much like any other cultural trend. Though of course a lot of cultural diffusion has gotten effectively instant thanks to tech - I remember “back in the day” you could travel from a (US) coast to the Midwest and find everyone basically 10-20 years behind cultural trends, from slang to hairstyles, to dress.

I wonder if relationships and dating and such, being a much slower process in general than changing styles of dress or speech, still have some of that interesting old-school slower diffusion, or more regional pockets anyway.

Anyway, enough baseless speculation from me - cheers and have a good one!

(Edit: I hope it didn’t sound like I’m calling your chosen romantic style itself a trend - I would never, when I call polyamory a “trend” I am referring exclusively to folks who did behave exactly as if it were any other fad that came and went, just with way heavier consequences)

Since you seem knowledgeable, maybe I’ll bug you about something I’ve wondered about?

Did you notice a significant (huge by my measure) increase in attempts at polyamory for a period of time? As in, that trend seemed to have almost a start and an end, and a real big swell in the middle. And if so, any comments on how that fits into your timeline overview above? Some of your thoughts sound like they may point to this but I certainly don’t want to put words in your mouth.

Anecdotally, it seems to me like I watched a huge chunk of my (significantly) younger sister’s generation get themselves into plural relationships, then realize after a year or two of various attempts (often including some serious abuse) that actually they didn’t like that idea at all.

And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely encourage people to try what they are curious about, it’s a tragedy to spend a life never exploring what one might like. But that phenomena with polyamory / plural relationships in particular stuck out to me, largely because many of the people I saw try it had never previously indicated even remote interest in similar, some behaved fairly jealously toward their partners actually. It felt like a strange societal motivation, some kind of soft cultural pressure among peers, to go for it. And I personally never witnessed a positive outcome, either (which is not me saying that no one should live that way if they enjoy it, or that no one can find it genuinely fulfilling, healthy, and preferable). And for those with clear gender lines in the plural relationships, it was always polygynous - never polyandrous (please let me know if those terms are offensive). Felt like weaponized sexual liberation, frankly, by horny dudes, but that’s me making some possibly unfair leaps and introducing my own bias into the interpretation.

I guess more than anything else I was just struck by what felt like a wave in popularity, followed by an accompanying wave of “oh, nah fuck that actually, forever”. Was interesting to watch. Any thoughts?

(Disclaimer: this can be a thorny topic, anyone should feel free to correct anything I’ve misrepresented, misunderstood, or just been unkind about, I’m not a jerk on purpose usually).

I’ve never met anyone in the broadly tech fields (and I’ve been through quite a span of them) who regrets completing an even somewhat relevant degree. I’ve met, many, many people who lament not starting or finishing one (and many of these were very competent, capable people, good at their jobs).

It’s expensive and difficult, sure was for me, but it is very useful (and the learning is fantastic too if you do it right).

Either spell the word properly, or use something else, what the fuck are you doing? Don’t just glibly strait-jacket language, you’re part of the ongoing decline of the internet with this bullshit.

I should definitely have not been left unsupervised as a teenager either lol. And yet, my mom wasn’t even in the same state some of the time lmao

Yep I’m this way and have recently come to realize that at my core I just don’t actually believe any other human has the right to tell me what to do. Full stop. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I should be allowed to do whatever I want, I understand my responsibilities, to my loved ones and society, better than most honestly. I just really can’t tolerate being told what to do.

And oddly it makes me a productive employee, a thoughtful partner, a good friend…largely to avoid scenarios where someone feels like they need to tell me what’s up.

But yeah, all the time society feels more and more like a constricting, stifling set of agreements…which I never actually agreed to.

Completely agree that learning about some of that made me kinder. Don’t agree about your reasoning for it not being scary, though.

It’s not “new” in the same way that using a computer wasn’t new when home PCs were introduced. However - home PCs massively increased the accessibility of computing and resulted in a huge boom in use, including by lots of people who never previously considered it. That’s what this is, that increase in accessibility, but for parasocial relationships with inanimate objects.

I’m not dooming so hard that I think society is in trouble via AI faux-mance in particular. But I do think it’s sad and troubling that many more people will now accept a (sometimes high) degree of self-imposed isolation, due to misplaced belief in a piece of technology, a false belief which the technology deliberately tries to engender.

And let’s remember, human social life is the original “network effect”. By that fact, it seems clear that taking more people out of IRL socialization (and replacing it strictly with simulation), is bad even for people who never touch the stuff.

Feels like a big increase in the ongoing general loneliness and atomization of society is headed our way.

Interesting. Good to have a less rent-seeking option, not sure I love the idea of the Fed just (assumedly) having access to all my transactions, though.

These are arguments to refuse censorship much harder, not to comply.

Really wish we would all shun this voluntary self-censoring of very mild words. Fuck the platforms and their algorithms and fuck the people who censor basic language.

Ah, but yet…

I can’t confess to being quite as wholesome as you (well, at least your food decision-making lol) but you’re on top of it, ya love to see it. I have, though, been making much more thoughtful choices about how much factory farmed meat I consume. Getting it down pretty low these days, but it helps that I have an Indian spot nearby with vegetarian food at least as satisfying as any meat-based dish. Malai kofta, unnnnfff.

Side note - since parts of this thread run the risk of shaming poor folks for “bad” financial decisions - I’m not going there (and I don’t think you were either, you sound compassionate to me). It’s a problem to a degree of course, but also being super (often hopelessly?) poor really screws up the brain. Speaking from experience. Scarcity, even self-imposed, can sometimes take me to some dark places, most notably back to personality traits that I developed in those days that I have done tremendous work to repair. Our systems are deranged and nonsensical, not our poor.

Yet another “wtf, y’all?”, good point. I can’t personally say that grosses me out, but I tend to be in the minority on that sort of topic myself, so I totally see what you’re saying. Aint no health inspector checking these vehicles (true of traditional delivery too I suppose).

And I mean…sometimes the drivers straight up eat some food, which is awful from the standpoint of your POV, but also just… truly hilarious to me.

That is a good point (re: COVID) that I had lost along the way, thanks. Those services did do good during that time, you’re right. I’m not so sure about the GPS thing, but hey, I never thought we’d see half the ugly shit we’re seeing these days, so why not?