No, because humanity has always had the same issues, and things are easily arguably better today than at any other time.

Things like starvation around the world have been driven down 30% in a 10-year period. The difference between my parents generation and mine are staggering, and then from mine to the next even more so.

You have to look past the talking heads, past the headlines - those are designed to sound awful to gather attention and to frankly, piss people off.

To quote Men In Black, “there’s always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague”.

I’ll blame the drivers (and some of that blame lands on MS).

I’ve never seen an ad on Windows. Not sure what people do to get ads.

1. Just installed Debian, no wifi

2. Lots more stuff just like #1, such as my 10 year old and 3 month old Logitech wireless mice weren’t detected, and support for them is (fortunately) only available from a third party, which I found by searching the web for an answer.

I could give you pages of why Linux doesn’t compare to Windows for the desktop, which I’d follow with where it really shines - as a server for all kinds of things. It’s so good for specific tasks that even VMware replaced their own Workstation virtualization with Linux KVM.

Unhinged or older?

Which one? 😁

Are you looking for selective sync, and just over the LAN or over the internet too?

If just LAN, there’s many Windows sync tools for this with varying levels of complexity and capability. Even just a simple batch file with a copy command.

I’ll often just setup a Robocopy job for something that’s a regular sync.

If you open files over a network connection, they stay remote and remain remote when you save. Though this isn’t best practice (Windows and apps are known for having hiccups with remotely opened files).

Two other approaches:

1. ResilioSync enables selective sync. If you change a file you’ve synchronized locally, the changed file will sync back to the source.

2. Mesh network such as Wireguard, Tailscale, Hamachi. Each enables you to maintain an encrypted connection between your devices that the system sees as a LAN (with encryption). If you’re only using Windows, I’d recommend starting with Hamachi, it’s easier to get started. If mobile device support is needed, use Wireguard or Tailscale (Tailscale uses Wireguard, but easier to setup).

You forget your meds today?

It really depends on the restaurant.

I used to go to one for lunch, it was like a salad bar - you setup what you wanted on your plate and gave it to the cook who would cook it for you on a giant round griddle.

And if you can’t be bothered to proof read your own work, deliberately ignore the software telling you something is wrong, then why should I bother trying to parse it?

Hahahahaha, omg, awesome. Wish I had more than one upvote to give.

Damn you, I’m having to stifle a laugh here.

If you don’t like socializing, you won’t have friends. Those things go hand-in-hand.

Maybe examining why you feel this way about socializing would help. Do you really not enjoy all socializing, or just certain things?

Socializing is a major part of life, you could almost say it’s “The Thing”. I’m not saying you need to go throw on a lampshade every day, just that we’re all engaging with each other every day. You may talk to a sibling for a while, then a friend, have lunch with a coworker, take a walk with someone from a class to discuss what you’re not getting.

Without socializing, we may as well go live in a cave, and that’s not good (nor realistic).

Spot on.

Only thing I’d change is when turning down an invite, act like you wanted to but can’t (even if the reason is you’re tired).

“Oh, man, I’d love to go, but I’m wiped. Need to get some sack time”. This may seem disingenuous, but it really isn’t - you’re not going because you need that recharge time, just phrasing it in a way others can understand, and making it clear you’d like to do such things in the future.

What counts is how the other person perceives it.

Talking amicably is just being polite. Knowing how to say things “with a wink and a nudge” would be more flirting.

Flirting occurs when you demonstrate attraction to someone indirectly or obliquely. Such indirectness creates tension, because we both know what I’m saying, but since I haven’t actually said it, there’s ambiguity.

It can also be direct statements, but that doesn’t demonstrate that you understand the dance. And I really do mean dance. Dancing is all about connection, being able to stay connected to a dance partner when you’re moving apart, and sensing just when, and how firmly, to pull them back toward you. It’s like you have a rubber band between you. Feeling that tension in it when you’re far apart is exciting, releasing that tension by coming closer resolves it. Back and forth you go. Flirting is the same.

Flirting should be a fun thing for you. Don’t view it as something you “just” have to do - it’s how we assess each other, it’s part of the process (it is a process, not a check box). It also never ends, just changes within a relationship.

We do the same with non-romantic relationships, there it’s called small talk (or you could say we don’t move from small talk to flirting).

Really good points.

Own yourself, your goals, your intentions. People can sense/read when your behaviour doesn’t seem to align with what we think is concealed intentions.

Nearly all people enjoy when someone has the sense of self to be forward.

No.

Yes.

Depends on context, and the non-verbal signals you give.

Flirting is part of the process, the dance. It’s also a pretty broad term.

I imagine people are confused and don’t know the rules, because of things like the attempt to make English match Latin grammar, plus the rules from French and Middle/Old English (which is where some of these things come from).

English is very inconsistent in the rules, you almost have to know a word’s etymology to apply the right rules.

“Could” is a very strong word with lots of assumptions.

Have you never read anything from antiquity? Even the Bible is a good start, you see the stories of how humanity has always been, and will be for a long time to come still.

Though it’s easily arguable humanity has already come a long way, and continues to improve (though non-linearly, naturally). Just your post here demonstrates this. You, me, and a bunch of other people, from anywhere in the world, are discussing these ideas, practically in real time. This was impossible as recently as 35 years ago.

Worldwide privation (notably starvation) has dropped 30%+ in the last 10 years.

The difference from my parent’s generation, to me, in the west is staggering. Infant and mother mortality dropped a staggering 90% from their birth to mine. They grew up always hungry, I did not. They saved everything: pieces of wire, string, old worn out parts, etc, because even if you had money, that stuff wasn’t necessarily even in the store. While I can order just about anything, from anywhere in the world, and have it in two days. They couldn’t get air mail across the Atlantic that fast. As an example, during WWII, they couldn’t move all the soldier’s homeward-bound mail, so they microfilmed it all in Britain, shipped the film back, and re-printed it there to be mailed. Today we can ship almost anything by plane to much of the world.