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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1358 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 18, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Has anyone seen the recent miniseries M: Son of the Century streamed on Sky? As far as I can tell, it generated little attention outside Italy even though the director is an Englishman and there not being many other subjects that could conceivably generate more controversy than the conception and ascendance of fascism.

Imagine you have a number of tasks to do. Some of them are relatively quick - maybe up to 15-20 minutes, some will probably take hours. You will eventually need to do all the tasks but you can do them in pretty much any order. Which ones do you start with? Is it the small ones to get a quick win and keep yourself motivated, or the largest one, so that once you do them you'd feel you made a lot of progress and what is left is easy work now compared to what you've already done? What would you do and why?

Quickest job first. Same as @CertainlyWorse. Just keeping track of everything that needs doing is worse than actually doing it. Provided that you properly subdivided your big tasks into small ones, there are no big tasks in the first place!

I'd like to do some of the small ones to cut down on the mental overhead of remembering my To Do list.

A most ill order them by location and dependency but mostly I try to not think about it at all because then I'll start procrastinating. The important part for me is to get going since that's the hard part for me. Once I'm actually working I don't need motivation to keep working.

Its like exercising, the hard part isn't finishing your workout when you're at the gym, it's going to the gym.

Obviously I'd look to optimize anywhere before sorting by size. Location, time procrastinated, value. After that I'd tend to do an opener small then move to big. There's a higher chance of something going wrong, and the remedy being combinable with a small task. Classic example is a repair that needs a part: hardware store is adjacent to grocery.

In a vacuum with zero bearing in reality, big first always. Suffering is easier to start with.

I’d start with a quick one, then alternate between quick and long. Ideally do a few quick ones in between each long one in order to help keep myself engaged. This method would give me a quick initial win, but also prevent me from bogging down at the end when I have multiple back-to-back long projects to do.

That’s in the perfect world, at least. In practice, I’d do a couple of quick ones, a couple of long ones, get distracted, then unexpectedly gain a burst of energy and tear through a number of longer projects at high speed, then procrastinate and possibly give up on the rest entirely.

Has the social technology of voting and elections ever been completely lost?

It seems to me that while we equate modern Democracy with Elections, strictly speaking there was never a time in recorded European history where elections were unknown, there were periods where its use was limited to certain niches, or where the franchise was limited. From Athens through the Roman Republic to the Papal Conclave and the election of the Holy Roman Emperor or Anglo Saxon elective kingship we have a pretty unbroken line through to when we see the first stirrings of modern parliamentary democracy.

I'm not sure what I think this means, but it feels like some kind of reorientation of my view of history. So I'm curious, is there any place and time where the idea of elections is totally foreign in all cases?

I’m not sure voting was ever really common in the East. At minimum, I can’t think of any instances of it in Japanese history at all. Even now, the vote is more of a bellwether than an actual mechanism for decision-making. When the Meiji architects of modern Japan were selecting their political system, once they had decided on a democracy (because it was the best-recognized on the global stage at the time), and specifically a constitutional monarchy for obvious reasons, they spent the rest of the time searching for a system that would nevertheless keep power in the hands of the elite (themselves) and settled on the Diet of the Prussian Junkers.

If I had to offer a guess - Japanese culture hates open confrontation, and has done since essentially forever. The early Chinese-inflected system of ministers from Heian and earlier was somewhat ornamental, and the real decisions got made behind closed doors in private tea ceremonies and the like. One of my favorite little scenes from Japanese cinema is in Kurosawa’s Kagemusha, in a council of war. Everyone of importance is sitting on their dedicated cushion in highly regulated order of importance from the lord, who heads the affair from a raised platform. They speak in turn, paying superlative respect to their master in precisely flowery language, offering alternatives and arguments with all the structure and stiffness of a five-paragraph essay. Finally, the lord speaks, and with a few laconic phrases dictates his will and the plan of action. Of course, the real planning happened the previous evening after dinner, with the generals talking it over in casual language while simply standing in a circle, at which point they assigned roles for the next day’s performance.

Communal decisions, certainly. People need to be pointed in one direction to make progress, and they need to agree to align. But voting is notably visible and combative. Two sides need to make their case in public, and it really is win or lose. People who worry about losing the election start doing dangerous and erratic things. There’s no polite and mutually congenial resolution available, except through the ritual mercy of the victors. Of course non-voting has its faults too, but voting is far from a human universal - why is it then so popular in Europe?

why is it then so popular in Europe?

It has to do with the way European societies were structured in the deep past. Free men who could serve in the army under their own volition(including providing their own weapons and armor) received social privileges for doing so, including the ability to vote(either directly or for elders who would represent their interests in front of the aristocracy). Of course a vote counted for more if you could provide better armor, a warhorse, etc.

In the Roman Republic this was quite well codified, with the people voting in blocks based on what kind of soldier they would serve as on campaign- each block had the same weight, voting as a collective, but naturally there were far more people in the poorest block(who would serve as rowers in the navy or skirmishers on land) than in the wealthiest block(who would serve as cavalrymen), but the middle blocks who served as heavy infantry were probably the most influential. In Athens the system is not written down as well, but seems similar- there's commentaries about how the rabble's political representation being limited was a good thing, because they were forever voting to go to war for no particular reason- the navy paid rowers better than the civilian economy paid unskilled labor(it's unclear if this is due to steadier work or higher sticker price wages). And of course the norse sagas are just replete with discussions of the thing.

Lots of western society differences are rooted in this original structure- steak being the prestige food is arguably due to carrying a knife everywhere being the mark of a well to do man, as a remnant of the actual legal requirement for armigerousness as a condition of being wealthy and free(in non-western cuisines big pieces of meat are fairly rare, even for classes that can afford it- they're smaller pieces served over rice or in pastries or whatever). The second amendment is also arguably descended from this idea. It's probably something that goes all the way back to the yamnaya and was lost/developed differently in Iran and India- after all, Germanic and Italic and Greek peoples are not from the same branch of the Indo-European family tree.

So the conclave works by the election of the metropolitan archbishop of Rome by certain clergy who serve directly below him, except those clergy are actually bishops which have been incardinated(shares a root with 'Cardinal') into Rome in some titular manner. A mass suffrage version would have resulted in Cardinal Pizzaballa as pope. Likewise, the Holy Roman Empire and Germanic elective monarchies used very limited pools of voters(literal single digits in the former case).

Mass enfranchisement is the distinguishing factor. Obviously 'citizens who can be expected to bear arms' is a smaller pool than modern democracies tend to be comfortable with but it's more than any elective monarchies I'm aware of.

Yeah that's what I'm saying.

My point is that there was probably never a point in Europe when an "election" was a foreign concept you'd have to explain to an otherwise educated person. It was always a tool in the toolbox, just not used by those people for that purpose.

In the West, broadly interpreted, you’re probably looking at the gap between pre-civilizational primitive democracies and the Assyrian Empire, more or less. That would seem to be the peak period of God-Emperor creation worldwide, and thus the least likely to retain the concept of elections for power positions.

But voting is just “My warrior band all gets a say, because that keeps us all pointed in the same direction” writ large, so I suspect voting played a role, even if a small one, in the God-Emperor states as well. There’s no point in having a council if you can’t get a sense of the room.

Today the local volunteer fire department had this on their sign:

Odd hours

No pay

Cool hat

Join us

Which sort of begs the question: how in the world do volunteer fire departments exist, especially when there are non-volunteer departments in the same area? Don't they get tired of showing up to calls where someone had a heart attack and so in addition to an ambulance the fire department has to show up too for whatever reason? And how do they even find the time? They all have to work full time, and firefighters presumable skew young and without passive income.

Which sort of begs the question: how in the world do volunteer fire departments exist, especially when there are non-volunteer departments in the same area?

I live in area with volunteer and government supported fire departments. I have been told it is almost impossible to join the government supported fire department without experience. So a lot of young folks join the volunteer fire department as a way to get that experience. Same reason a lot of young folks become EMTs because they plan to apply to med school. Of course, many people change life course so people who intended to move on from being EMTs or volunteer fire fighters end up sticking with it rather than moving on.

I can't speak for every one, but my local volunteer fire department also has a small dormitory for the on call firefighters, and they heavily advertise it as free room and board for students attending local colleges. I think you only need to be on call something like 3/4 nights a week to be allowed to live there for the semester. I actually kind of wish I knew about it when I was in college.

Here in rural Germany, being a volunteer firefighter is very high-status, and provides excellent networking. And that is on top of, well, getting to play firefighter.

Not a volunteer firefighter but served a decade in an army reserve unit in a European country.

First off the quality of these types of organizations vary massively depending on the volunteers they get. Volunteering and being active can make a major difference, and that does motivate a lot of people.

Excitement is a motivator. Regular life is boring and many strive for something a bit beyond it. You get interesting experiences, great training, action and some great stories.

It is a way of finding a group of guys on a mission. Usually the quality of men is reasonably high, and the team spirit is good.

Compared to other hobbies it is still financially lucrative. Boating, motorcycles or mountaineering are far worse financial decisions than serving in a volunteer organization yet you still get cool toys. Arguably cooler toys than most hobbyists.

For some there is social prestige, for some they want to show that they are tough and manly and not just weak office workers. Some want to escape their regular lives, others want to break the monotony of 9-5 office work.

Not a volunteer firefighter but served a decade in an army reserve unit in a European country.

Don't army reserves get paid for training time? (Admittedly at pro-rata to regular army, which works out well below-market) They do in the UK.

Sweden and Finland barely pay at all. Mass conscript militaries don't really pay troops.

I have a friend that volunteers as a firefighter. One of the disappointing stories he told me was that they were recently told they needed to comply with newly invented needless bureaucratic safetyist paperwork that the regular firefighters have to deal with. Except those guys are paid for it. He said it was really taking the shine off their volunteer work.

I don't blame him for reconsidering. People volunteer because they enjoy what they are doing. Knowing bureaucrats in the public service that have mandated this extra paperwork, they would not know or care about the downstream impacts on manpower that their decision will make.

At least until there's a volunteer manpower shortage and they either pay someone to comply with the onerous amount of boring administration or they wind the requirements back.

So frustrating. High trust, community focused volunteering that contributes to social cohesion and the govt is taking it for granted. Mindless.

At least until there's a volunteer manpower shortage and they either pay someone to comply with the onerous amount of boring administration or they wind the requirements back.

As discussed in the thread, in the specific case of volunteer fire departments this is a long way off. Most volunteer departments use their market power to insist that the volunteer firefighters spend a lot of time fundraising when they signed up to fight fires - given the bullshit nature of most fundraising activity, I suspect filling in safety paperwork may be more socially valuable.

The place where safetyist paperwork requirements have driven out the volunteers is youth activities. Lots of adults want to coach youth sports/lead Scout troops. Not that many want to fill out forms to prove they are not a paedophile.

Interesting. Most of the volunteer fire departments I’m familiar with get some funding from the local city, town, or township, which is supplemented by one or two major fundraisers per year.

The place where safetyist paperwork requirements have driven out the volunteers is youth activities.

I don’t think the paperwork has much to do with it. I used to spend a lot of time volunteering to help lead youth activities when I was younger. I’d still love to do it now, but if I were to do so as a childless man, I know some parents would assume I had suspect motives. In today’s environment, no amount of paperwork is going to eliminate those concerns, so I abstain.

At least until there's a volunteer manpower shortage and they either pay someone to comply with the onerous amount of boring administration or they wind the requirements back.

The bureaucrats and politicians won't be sad about that either. People that aren't on the payroll don't have the same levers to pull and thus lack the same sort of patron/client relationships that political types thrive on. Oh, sure, there might be budgetary problems, but that usually just resolves as a referendum on property taxes that everyone dutifully agrees need to be raised.

My volunteer fire department is currently not accepting more people to their wait list!

There's many small reasons for that, among them: people think it's cool, it's fun training/working with heavy machinery, they party extremely hard, among the best local networks/old boys clubs available, looks good on CV.

There's also more material incentives, like they pay for your trucking licence (so you can operate the heavy fire trucks), power boat licence and things like first-responder medical licences - but in the end, nobody quits after getting those perks.

they party extremely hard

Aren't they on call?

No, not all of them, not all the time.

Each local fire department has a big, public summer party here, for fundraising and to say thank you to the volunteers. Those parties are never at the same weekend, and all firefighters visit each other's parties.

Also, after big exercises, sometimes a wild keg appears...

Still, everybody jokes that you could burn all the fire departments down to the ground as long as there's a summer party somewhere in a 50 mile radius. It's probably true.

Years ago, a fire broke out in the next town over during their annual festival. Their own volunteer firefighters didn’t even leave the bar, even though it was directly across the street from the station. Instead, the fire departments from two neighboring towns showed up to douse the blaze.

They work well in rural, tight-knit, high-trust environments where plenty of young to middle-aged men work on farms or in small factories or shops close to the station (that is, they don’t commute to the nearest city for a desk job). Which is to say, the system worked extremely well for over a century but is starting to fail now in many locations. In some cases, this is because the close-knit and high-trust part is less true than it once was, while in others, the population density has fallen to the point that there aren’t enough people to keep things going. On that note, though, it usually doesn’t take a huge number of volunteer firefighters per station, as multiple neighboring stations will be called out to fight larger blazes.

It’s also possibly worth noting that volunteer firefighters in some areas receive health benefits to compensate them for their work. That makes the position much more attractive for self-employed individuals, including farmers. It’s the same reason a lot of rural self-employed people also work as part-time school bus drivers. The pay and hours kind of suck, but the health insurance makes it worthwhile.

This raises an interesting question of just how distortionary an effect the US healthcare system(with employer paid insurance) actually is, and what the biggest effect is- my guess would be a drag on productivity by suppressing entrepreneurship, but it could easily be employment limitations to get around having to pay health insurance under the definition of full-time.

I live in a community like this in the rural midwest. The volunteer FD is pretty popular and they have no trouble getting people to sign up. That being said, there is a...certain type of person very attracted to the VFD that make up a good % of the volunteers. They are people that are really, really into first-responders and the military but couldn't actually make it in the professional PD/FD/Military for various reasons, either washed out of the academy/training/boot camp, can't meet the physical requirements, or have medical issues. The VFD gives these, often very patriotic and civic minded, people an outlet for their desire to serve the community. They get really into it with a CB radio in their personal vehicle and often a little red hazard light too. They wear their VFD clothing/uniform all the time too.

For those of you who have asked recent LLMs questions in your area of expertise, how accurate are the responses? What is your field and what models are you using?

I'm in the biomedical engineering field. I last used ChatGPT-4o months ago and found the answers to be quite terrible, like what I might expect from someone who only watched a youtube video on the topic. Reading it felt uncanny valley in a way that reminded me vaguely of watching a movie scene with cheap green-screen effects — I could feel the lack of substance viscerally. It left a bad impression and, with my slightly Luddite disposition, I largely ignored LLMs for anything but coding since.

I recently needed a good layman explanation for a project and asked Grok 3. I came away genuinely impressed. I asked it to expand on certain points more rigorously and even formulated a few questions that would be appropriate for a graduate level course, and it did all of this so well it even improved my own understanding of some aspects. When I get time, I’ll try to poke and prod to see if I can find gaps or limits, but it has genuinely changed my view of LLMs. Previously, I felt like they were only really good for coding and expected they would hit diminishing returns, but I’m less sure now.

I felt like they were only really good for coding

They aren't that good for coding. I mean, they are ok for coding simple things that doesn't involve any complicated concepts or deep understanding, something like just reading the manual and applying it directly, many times just copypasting from the right example. But if it gets a bit more advanced it can't help you much. It also loves hallucinating new APIs and settings which don't actually exist, which is hugely annoying - I've been in this scenario many times: "Describe the ways to do X with system S?" - "The best way is to use api A with setting do_X=true, see the following code" - "This code does not work, because api A does not have setting do_X" - "Thanks for correcting me, actually it's api A.do_X which has configuration value enable_doing_X=1" - "That configuration doesn't exist either" - "Thanks for correcting me, actually there's no way to do X with api A" - "Are thee other ways to do X with system S" - "Yes, the best way is to use apis B and C with options do_X=true"... you can guess the rest. They are good for easy tasks, but as soon as the tasks require any actual understanding and not just regurgitating pre-chewed information, its usability drops dramatically. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of tasks which are literally just applying the right copypastes in the right sequence, but it can only get you so far.

Answered questions about TXV's reasonably, but mostly generically. Repeated official government positions nobody in the field believes about freon.

Repeated official government positions nobody in the field believes about freon.

What's the red pill on Freon?

The ozone layer and global warming is not real/not threatened by Freon, but the US government acts on behalf of large chemical companies to ensure that there will never be a generic version of most refrigerants available by inventing excuses to ban them before the patent lapses. There’s some other stuff about the government intentionally underpaying informants tied in there based on evidence standards for environmental regulations(venting Freon requires video evidence from a licensed technician and not any other kind) and sometimes this ties into eccentric metaphysical/spiritual beliefs.

HVAC techs are probably the most conspiratorial/far right demographic in the country because of the recruiting population, so stuff like that is par for course.

I'm a litigator, and Westlaw's built-in AI has essentially replaced interns and is in serious danger of replacing 1st year attorneys for me. I find the AI requires roughly the same amount of prompting to produce roughly the same quality of work, only instead of getting a memo of middling usefulness in 5 days, I get it in 45 seconds. And I'm not expected to provide edits or mentorship to an AI. The AI is generally pretty good at getting me in the general ballpark of what I'm looking for, before doing the rest of my research manually. I have not been willing to try using AI in the drafting process yet, as that seems like a bridge too far in having something else doing my thinking for me.

It's tough, because we still need to make the long term investment in keeping the pipeline full of young attorneys who will eventually be able to provide value that can't be replicated by an AI, but it's at the point where I give the interns assignments for the job training, without actually using any of their work. They'd be crushed if they knew.

I last used ChatGPT-4o months ago and found the answers to be quite terrible, like what I might expect from someone who only watched a youtube video on the topic.

That is literally their training data.

But they improve fast - when it comes to lets say give diagnosis based on symptoms - they really hit the mark. I had a doctor friend of mine test it with real cases they had

who have asked recent LLMs questions in your area of expertise, how accurate are the responses? What is your field and what models are you using?

For "frontier tasks" in physics/electrical engineering, it's bad. It just doesn't work, even as a search engine.

My most recent request was "Find me patents about the application of concept X at high magnetic field". Should be easy, patents are public by definition. Searching google patents has worked for decades. There's proprietary patent databases with curated keywords. Perfect training data, easy to search.

But all the current reasoning models with web search just give me results at extremely low magnetic field (which is the standard application, there's many patents like that. That's the reason I'm asking an LLM, I don't want to sift through those by hand). So I specify: "Keep in mind that milli tesla and micro tesla are low magnetic fields. Please exclude patents that use those units from your search". I'm already disillusioned, I shouldn't need to do this. A nerdy highschooler would know better. But it doesn't work. It just ignores the request, appologizes, and keeps spitting out patents with those units in the abstract.

Also, I still need to paste every single patent it spits out into my patent database tool, because literally 50% of the results are hallucinated. The patent number is a completely different patent, and the title it prints doesn't exist.

One core weakness of the current models seems to be things that don't exist (as might be the case for the patent I'm looking for). Another example for that is requests like. "I'm using Oscilloscope Y, and I want to change the color of one of the traces on the display. How do I do that?" For my oscilloscope, the answer is "you can't, those traces have their colors hard-coded, fuck color blind people." But the LLM will automatically read the correct manual (good!), link it, and then proceed to hallucinate itself into psychosis. Just flat out invents entire menus and setting dialogs every time I press it harder.

Maybe they would be better if you gave them the complete patent database of your domain. Sometimes this sort of thing works. You would have to use the paid models though.

At least with gemini, it should just use patents.google.com

Also, that would be many, many millions of tokens.

I've only ever used the free tiers, but ChatGPT loves to hallucinate new Apache Spark configurations. Gemini, surprisingly, knows even less.

I have paid ChatGPT and it hallucinates profusely too, see my other comment above. Had this issue many times, not with Apache Spark specifically but with many other libraries and APIs - it just decides "it'd be nice to have this setting" and just invents it out of thin air, and I spent half an hour trying to hunt it down and going to the source to finally find out it never existed.

GPT 4o has improved dramatically quite recently.

So, what are you reading?

Still on the Iliad and Dialectic of Enlightenment. Picking up McLuhan's The Classical Trivium.

Just finished Murderbot series. Very fun reading. I hope the author writes a dozen more, if she doesn't get tired of it.

Started Unsong. It's a lot more fun than I was expecting.

Are you reading the web serial edition?

No, it's an epub.

Is it this one? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unsong-Scott-Alexander-ebook/dp/B0D84DLKZW/

Can't say for certain but it looks like a match, yeah. Why do you ask?

He originally published it as a web serial novel. I was keen to read it, but I don't like reading on screens; however, someone helpfully compiled it into a print-on-demand version, which I bought and read a few years ago. Scott later made it available via Amazon himself, and I think this edition (the edition you're reading) has been edited per the description he outlined here (don't click this link if you want to avoid spoilers). I've bought a paperback copy of this edition and it's on my to-read list for this year. I'm curious to see how it differs from the print-on-demand edition I read years ago.

Can't offer any input on my end, I was unaware there were different versions and I'd rather avoid seeing any spoilers by reading up on the changes.

If your copy of chapter 4 begins with "Even before Erica finished formally adjourning the meeting", you are reading the original web serial. If instead it reads "Even before Valerie finished formally adjourning the meeting", you are reading the edited book version.

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I finished The Man in the High Castle last week. Pretty good, although I still preferred A Scanner Darkly. It made me want to play Wolfenstein The New Order again.

A few months ago I was asking for recommendations for books about Catharism. A few weeks ago it came up in conversation with my aunt, who recommended The Perfect Heresy, which I'm now about 30 pages into. It's a fascinating reminder that there's nothing new under the sun. If I told you I was reading a book about a faction of elites who:

  • believe that there's no distinction between men and women, and the thing that defines us is an ineffable immaterial essence
  • don't have children, a decision they justify on utilitarian grounds
  • practise a plant-based diet

am I talking about French heretics in the 12th century, or woke Western PMCs today?

The topic of this past Sunday’s homily at my parish touched on how Gnosticism is the great heresy from which many smaller heresies sprang.

Is that the one where it started out as some kind of heresy and then it kind of solidified into almost an ethnic group long after no one could even remember what the original heresy was? Or am I thinking of something else?

You’re thinking of the Cagots, who were treated like pariahs for hundreds of years. No one really knows why, as they seemed similar in every way to the surrounding population, except for pariah status, which besides the strict social segregation restricted their trade to carpentry.

This has led one writer to speculate they were the descendants of a fallen medieval guild of carpenters (?). There’s the national myth theory that makes them the descendents of the muslim warriors who lost to Charles Martel when he stopped the islamic expansion in 732. There’s one etymological-based theory where they were the slaves of the ancient visigoths (“cani gothi”, dogs of the goths). There’s the reverse uno card theory that says they were the first to convert to christianity and the surrounding pagans kept resenting them for their virtue signaling long after they themselves converted.

But one of the top theories is that they were descendents of cathars. And the imo most likely, is that they were descendents of lepers, because a lot of the prohibitions involve touching.

I'm not sure, you may be thinking of something else.

Just finished Surface Detail from the Culture series. Kind of stunned by Iain Banks' forecasting. Of course the invention of consciousness upload means we would create everlasting Hell for some people to go to. Probably it'll happen 5 minutes after the guy who invents consciousness upload wins his Nobel Prize.

How do you convince people to leave a cult. My failed startup life which lasted for a year had two ex co founders, ones 30, the others 20. The older ones a total scammer and his behavior and influence are terrible. I introduced my younger friend to him and now can't tell him this guy's a jackass as he'd snitch and create drama.

I say this because that scamming mothefucker is convincing my friend into dropping out from his okayish Midwestern uni. The same guy who never cleared 12th grade is now advising people to not go beyond him qualification wise, hilarious.

I'm contacting his friends back home so that they can talk to his parents. I introduced him back when I too was enchanted by my now hated co founder.

So, what's it like to leave a cult, what info is sufficient to make you accept reality? I'm not providing more context because the scammy person in question is a kiwfarms tier lolcow and despite the hilarious anecdotes, I don't want want to sully the board, though I'd happily write a few out here or in another thread if people wish to hear some because I have a lot of them.

Advice, but not what you asked for: If you have essentially cut ties, don't worry about drama. You have just written that you hate the guy, and have called him a "scamming motherfucker."

Tell your 20-year-old friend exactly what you think and what he should (or shouldn't) do.

If you don't want to do this, just let fate take its course; it's none of your business at this point.

Several times now, I've had text conversations with women where they seem to scare themselves off.

One kept pushing me to ask her sexual compatibility questions, which I answered as delicately and dryly as I could. She'd rave excessively about how attractive I was and how she's looking forward to seeing me again (we met once, briefly, and she tracked me down on social). Since I know it's a bad idea to build up a date this much and set sexual implications, I complemented her back but kept it light and fun.

Then the day of the date, suddenly a co-worker got fired and she has to work a double. Also "You're not expecting sex for this meeting, are you?" Well no, I was not, despite everything you've said being suggestive of that, because I was going to take it slow. I reply "Light canoodling at most." There's mutual availability tuesday, and thursday, but she suggests thursday, mentioning "she'd like more planning, usually." Now I haven't heard anything from her since.

Before this, the shape of the exact same thing happened. She started talking as though she was already assuming we'd be in a relationship with her "adding spice to my life and shaking things up." This is way, WAY more than I'd typically send when I haven't even met someone in person, it assumes too much. Then suddenly she was astronomically ill from "allergies," which continued for several days, her apparently being home from work, yet replying less than when she was at work, until I stopped texting.

I want people to turn up for an in-person date. I very carefully don't say things that create too much pressure or assume things about compatibility, because it comes off as pressuring and dishonest ("OMG I'm so into you" ...we haven't actually met yet, miss, maybe save that for after the first date). But then they themselves do that exact thing, bail the day before.

Fucking everything I do is tiptoeing around not triggering anyone's anxiety so as not to be treated as a threat, then they trigger their OWN anxieties, treat me like a threat, and presumably pat themselves on the back for having spotted a manipulative predator who was Only After One Thing.

What the fuck is going on here?

When I interact with someone in real life, I get really confused and anxious whenever they start praising me. Then they get confused as to why. This is why. Because whenever someone gives me unprompted compliments or raves about me, they swiftly ditch me, which is why I don't believe what anyone says anymore.

It looks like your dryness and hesitance is what turned her off from you. She was trying to push boundaries and get more personal with you and you didn't match her energy, so she either assumed you're not interested in her or she did too much and got embarrassed. She found you, reached out and made the conversation more intimate and what she got in return is some tiptoeing and dry responses.

Since I know it's a bad idea to build up a date this much and set sexual implications

It's bad when your first message to a woman is "omg you're so hot I can't wait to fuck you". Yeah don't do that. It's not bad when she's the one initiating it, it's essentially a green light for you to take it there.

Fucking everything I do is tiptoeing around not triggering anyone's anxiety so as not to be treated as a threat

Stop doing this. You're so worried to not come off as a creep, it probably makes you even more of a creep. I'm not saying you should be DMing women "I need a footjob" 10 messages in, but it's ok to show interest and be flirty. If you're dry, all it tells them is that you're not interested at best or a boring loser at worst. If it's on the apps, they've got 10 other men they can talk to right at this moment, they won't waste time to discover the real you.

If you're actually into these women and want to meet them, stop being dry and show some interest ffs

light canoodling at most

Right so I think she wants to be slutty but then got anxious that she was coming off as too slutty and needed you to let her know she wasn't a slut so she can go back to feeling free to act like a slut.

I think you were supposed to tell her she's not slutty but in a fun and flirty way. How do you do that? I dunno!

I probably would've said something like "my policy is to not kiss until at least the fifth date" which sounds not true but wait could he be serious but also changes the subject from her not sluttyness to my not sluttyness.

Extreme emotional lability, or rather, all over the place. Consider the extreme positive affect and the sudden cold feet as expressions of the same flaw. Best to stay away if she can’t even keep herself together.

You did the right thing by staying firm and stable. Don’t let that kind of woman suck you into her aberrant emotionality. And, like many things, dating sucks until it doesn’t.

Which app are you on where this keeps happening? I've used the apps before and, as I said below, I haven't had any problems remotely similar to what you describe. I've had women cancel dates at the last minute before, but they've always rescheduled and gone off eventually. And what are the rest of the conversations about? If you're keeping it to normal topics like sports, hobbies, politics, movies, music, etc. and she suddenly shifts it to how good looking you are and how she wants to fuck you, I can understand why you'd want to stick with it, but if the entire conversation is nothing but flirty banter then you should seriously question whether the woman is worth pursuing.

I'd recommend sticking to educated women with good professional jobs who are looking for long-term relationships and whose profiles are reasonably filled out and suggest that they already have rich, fulfilling lives without you around. These women tend to be much more stable than the hairdressers and retail clerks of the world who lead crappy, uninteresting lives, have no discernable hobbies or interests, and are looking for a guy for sex, or validation, or because they don't otherwise have a social life. I wouldn't even mention sex in a conversation until it's reached a certain stage, i.e. home plate.

Sounds like you dodged a couple of bullets there. Congrats, it could have been worse: having a brief online discussion with a neurotic is much less trouble than having a relationship with a neurotic.

If something like this happens almost every time, then maybe it's you. But if it's just an occasional thing, then maybe it's them.

Just read her mind, bro, to know how to thread the needle in continuing the sexual banter such that you're not too dry (or she might get the ick from you being too boring or too pussy for some bantz) nor too forward (or she might get the ick from you being too creepy, eager, or perverted over some text flirting).

Some people are just crazy, or, to be a bit more charitable, have vastly different preferences and styles from you in life and relationships.

When meeting people IRL, there's a lot of screening that happens before the conversation, like being at whatever place you met at all, seeing the other person's appearance and behavior before you actually talk, etc. Online dating exposes you to a lot of people who wouldn't have passed those filters at all. So you've got to learn to do that filtering yourself.

In other words, keep firmly in mind what kind of woman you actually want and what kind of relationship you want with her, and reject women who don't seem to match that. Nobody is going to give you a pile of gold stars for going on the most dates. If you're already feeling like you're tiptoeing around and weirded out over text conversation, reject and move on, as an in-person date is likely to be a waste of your time. I'd definitely put being excessively complimentary and sexual before you've met at all in that category.

This was an actual in-person connection, otherwise I'd consider anything sexual a massive-er red flag.

Everything I've heard of dating apps lately sounds awful, I'm hoping my kids will be able to find someone in some sort of organization like I did and my parents did and their parents also did -- college, church, volunteer work, whatever.

Not sure what's going on with the woman in question, though, or the in person compliments.

They aren't awful at all if you think of them as a way to meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet. They come with a whole different set of incentives in that the sheer amount of availability leads to an expectation of instant chemistry, but I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing. You can go on a date with someone and think it went well, only to find that the person isn't interested in going out again. A lot of people complain about that, but the complaint is entirely one-sided in that these people almost never talk about how they didn't feel anything special about someone but decided to give a second or third chance in hopes their opinion would change. People are more likely to stick it out for a few dates in a market where potential partners are scarce, but that comes at the expense of a greater emotional toll. Imagine a situation where two people go out a few times. A is genuinely excited and views B's willingness to go on additional dates as evidence that the feeling is mutual, while B isn't that excited and is only going on additional dates because they think they should give things some time. When the truth inevitably comes out, it's going to be much harder on A than if B never let things get past date number one. And it's much harder if A doesn't have scores of potential matches just waiting in an app on their phone.

All that being said, if a woman was being as aggressive to me as in the OP's example, I probably wouldn't let it get that far. I've used the apps and everyone I've met has been normal, or at least seemed normal.

You never know what's going on in this woman's life. Just as women can smell desperation, so can you and I. And desperation makes people neurotic. And neurotic people can act very unpredictably. The "You're not expecting sex" line was enough of a warning signal to set my alarm off. (Which isn't to say it's unreasonable of her to not want intercourse on a first or any date, but it's weird to ask like that over text.) I'm guessing she is very attractive to you, otherwise you'd be able to shrug this off. My advice is shrug it off anyway.

It's not a weird expectation, I'm just annoyed that sexual anxieties are coming up, when she's the one who's making things sexual in the first place. It seems like a self-own on her part.

I'm just sick of women laying it on way thicker than they need to, and it turning out to not have meant anything all along. Whereas I have to constantly hide or downplay my genuine interest in people.

I'm also way over-exposed to prog/leftist/SJW sexual mores, where all women apparently live in such overwhelming fear of sexual assault, I'm surprised they ever leave the house, much less try to bilk men for attention.

Rule #3: before you've had sex with someone, don't use the word "canoodling" in conversation.

...does canoodling mean something other than what I think it means?

This chick is talking about sexual preferences and how handsome I am and the sorts of shit she gets up to, yet I'm scary for talking about sitting next to eachother with our heads together chatting?

talking about sitting next to eachother with our heads together chatting?

Is that what canoodling is between a grown man and woman? I imagined more contact than that, but probably less than sex. But I also can't recall anyone ever actually using that word. Maybe in a book somewhere?

I picked it up from Anansi Boys, as it happens.

The only context in which I've encountered it.

She likes the attention of a man being sexually interested in her, but not the risk of actually having sex with him.

Fucking everything I do is tiptoeing around not triggering anyone's anxiety so as not to be treated as a threat,

This unfortunately sounds exactly like something one type predator would do...

What is your favorite candy / little snack?

It's summer so cucumber with salt can be really tasty and refreshing.

Popcorn, homemade bread with yogurt, grapes. Not that I snack very often.

My preferred desert would probably be ice cream, something minty. I don’t usually keep it in the house except for bluebell peppermint ice cream that I get during advent and then enjoy from Christmas until it runs out.

Someone mentioned TJs PB cups and they're insanely good.

Assuming some mass produced shit (not a homemade cookie) the runner up right now is Skittles Sour Gummies. Whatever Frankenstein concoction of psychotic food science flavoring is in the traditional candies made it intact into this spinoff. Instead of sandpaper citric acid crystals shaving your tongue to a pulp like the OGs, they're perfectly chewy, and so easy to eat on long bike rides when the rest of you is exhausted. The worst part is trying not to eat them when you haven't earned the calories.

Sour skittles are beautiful. The sour Mike & Ikes are my current tart craze.

Dark chocolate truffles for something sweet and Korean BBQ pork jerky for something savory.

Candy: Dark chocolate peanut butter cups from Trader Joes. Like Reeces, but better. Snack: Chips and salsa

Ooooh yes these are great. Simple and hopefully not full of evil chemicals.

With beer, something called Cratz. These are pretzel pieces with almonds and salty seasoning.

Otherwise something involving chocolate. I typically avoid these, though, love them as I may.

I like these. Also bigger pretzels dipped in beer cheese. Mmmm.

I love those old fashioned lemon drops! (Hard candy that's lemon flavored) They're my favorite treat when going to a movie. I always confuse them with lemonheads in the theater concessions (a lemon flavored jelly bean with a thick shell) and am disappointed in the latter once the shell dissolves.

Turkey jerky. I try to avoid candy / little snacks.

Actually, my kryptonite is a mixture of nuts in salty caramel. That's why I don't let my wife buy it.

I wish you didn't ask. I'm fasting.

Why??? This is the time to feast my friend. The fasting just ended. ;D

No one sent that memo to me. :/

I'm ... experimenting. For several reasons.

It's an interesting experience.

Hah I'm going off the Christian calendar. Even if you aren't a Christian, there are deep resonances in religious calendars with the seasons as to why the Lenten fast is when it is, etc etc

Yeah there should probably be a rule to avoid asking about food if anyone on the board is fasting.

I mean I stick to a public calendar ahaha.

Yup. Get the database going.

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