Adobe’s '90s pricing made the definition of “usury” insufficient. Things did not improve.

I still run CS6. I’ve little reason to use it these days, but I don’t have to pay monthly to open an old file. What they did by switching to a subscription model in my case was lose a customer for life.

With all the ATS bullshit, I ended up having to go back to Word because neither LinkedIn nor Indeed could parse my InDesign resume. Both would tie incorrect roles with dates and job descriptions because “PDFs are hard” essentially.

A few thoughts here as someone with multiple suicide attempts under his belt:

• I’d never use an “AI therapist” not running locally. Crisis is not the time to start uploading your most personal thoughts to an unknown server with possible indefinite retention.

• When ideation hits, we’re not of sound enough mind to consider that, so it is, in effect, taking advantage of people in a dark place for data gathering.

• Having seen the gamut of mental-health services from what’s available to the indigent to what the rich have access to (my dad was the director of a private mental hospital), it’s pretty much all shit. This is a U.S. perspective, but I find it hard to believe we’re unique.

• As such, there may be room for “AI” to provide similar outcomes to crisis lines, telehealth or in-person therapy. But again, this would need to be local and likely isn’t ready for primetime, as I can really only see this becoming more helpful once it can take over more of an agent role where it has context for what you’re going through.

In this economy, they’re only hiring junior Heat Transfers.

All the lefties fled to Bluesky following Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. But CEO Jay Graber says the app is for everyone—and could revolutionize how people communicate online.

… but probably not.

If finding out his identity weren’t that hard, it would be in the story. It would otherwise be extreme journalistic malfeasance. There’s an old newsroom saw: “Get the name of the dog.” That’s never relevant. The name of a defendant, though? That’s sort of what news does so long as they aren’t a minor, which doesn’t seem to apply here.

But yes, the whole thing is irritatingly light on details.

I have a strange idiolect. “Dealt” seems correct, but “learnt” and “spelt” do not. Neither would lead me to raise an eyebrow; I’d assume I’m interacting with a user of British English.

I never Felt that way.

This is the correct assessment. Name the agent and lay out the grooming, and now you have a story.

It’s weird to me that at some point since elementary school, “sneak” became a weak verb. We used “snuck” in such a case. “Snook” was also an option in other cases, but now it’s “all sneaked, all the time.”

But hourslong calls with a Scottish lass? Would you turn down the opportunity to have that in your ear?

I mean, tell that to my ex-fiancee where it took us a year to get engaged after meeting on Reddit. Then Covid hit and we couldn’t meet. We still talk, years later, but now we’re in “old friends” mode.

Everyone knows you can only yell “fire” in an empty theatre. You generally get trespassed immediately thereafter.

TIL Trump somehow knows the word “ought.” Immediately stumbles with “into” though …

OK, that’s quality.

The quality of questions fell off a cliff well before Match Group came in and really enshittified the whole affair. I soured on continuing to answer questions once the new ones were almost exclusively false dichotomies.

Meet people online via shared interests. I’m not one to tout Reddit, but really engaging in niche communities there gives you wide exposure specifically targeted. Don’t expect immediate results, but it is a valid method.

“If I had a million dollars? Two chicks at the same time.”

I agree reasonable people just move forward to the next thing, but we aren’t all still of clubbing age, and internet dating is shit.

This is a “good in theory, bad in execution” example. Absent any context whatsoever for where things went wrong, it’s platitudes masquerading as an AI version of whoever wronged you.

I have a giant corpus of increasingly testy emails with my ex (it got to the point that actual conversation was impractical without the situation immediately escalating, so despite sharing a bed, we resorted to email), but I’m not feeding that to an LLM, and without that, there’s no way to know to be able to say things like “I’m sorry I threw physical objects at you” – which would be out of character for her in the first place. She has the ability of Trump to admit error, which is to say none.

I get the demand for such “solutions” but worry about the actual psychological effects. Turning abusive partners (or friends) into sympathetic characters who regret their actions has no basis in reality and could actually make matters worse.

Surely, you can paint with a broader sexist brush.

I’ve been through multiple rounds of therapy. The issue is the quality of care available to anyone who doesn’t have upwards of $100 a week (insurance only covers MSWs, and sometimes, you need a Ph.D. to really help).