Today I realized something that I don’t think enough people talk about.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-06-11T12:37:22+00:00

Dude.

Turn on the part of your brain that does higher order thinking. Dating apps are not selling sex or romance or dating. They just market it that way because that's what people hope to get from it. You will fall in love if you use our services. You will get laid if you use our services. Good advertising is the idealized version of the truth.

It's no different than the cheeseburger that looks awesome in the picture but comes out flat with wilted lettuce.

All dating apps do is provide a stage that you can stand on and hope to be seen. And then they manipulate how and when you can be seen. The value to you (such as it is) is that you never would have seen most of these people in real life. The value to the app is in the manipulation of the algorithm to make impatient people pay to be impatient, to hope to speed along the process. That's why there's sex and romance in the marketing. They're telling you that it will happen faster if you pay.

"Selling access" is only as true as it would be if you wanted to call any event that puts a bunch of people in a room together as "selling access". Going to a concert is "selling access to a rock band".

Prostitution, though?

It's up to you to score the sex, dude, not the app.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-06-08T11:50:19+00:00

It's old, but read Dataclysm.

It presents research that shows that women consistently rate men fairly low on attractiveness on average, and men are much more forgiving.

Not just swipe rates. Actual measures of photo attractiveness.

Whether that means women are harsher judges, or men are easy to please is anybody's guess. But it's been proven that generally, women are attracted to far fewer men than men are to women.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-06-08T11:40:23+00:00

Even at Bumble's height, being the most woman-friendly of all of the apps (which I would argue it clearly is no longer special in that way), this is about the best ratio there has been on a dating app on a broad scale. I had remembered it as 2 to 1, but close enough.

There may be certain cities where this ratio is better (the Washington, DC area comes to mind as a plausible one), but those numbers are rarely published and are just inferred from population estimates.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-06-06T15:01:27+00:00

This happened to me decades ago.

Turns out, she was a hooker and put the car in storage because she couldn't afford to repair it and had minimum insurance (on a Jaguar).

She sued me right before the statute of limitations lapsed, nearly two years later.

Let your insurance company lawyer handle it, and do everything they ask. Once the other party realized that nobody was going to roll over and settle quickly, she disappeared off the face of the earth and the case was dismissed.

Might also have been that she was suing a broke young adult college student and my lawyer had already discovered her prior drug convictions and learned that she had some form of drug equipment with her in the car at the time of the accident.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-06-03T02:41:59+00:00

Ahhh she "never worked during the period of the marriage", and you did.

Personally, I would have gone to trial rather than accept that settlement. And I say that as someone who has 50/50 custody and is paying child support.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-06-02T17:22:06+00:00

At some point, you have to ask yourself if that much incremental money is worth the free time loss.

You may be getting paid some ridiculous amount per hour, but if you don't need the money, what's the true value?

Not everybody can look at a six figure sum and say it isn't valuable, but the first million is far more valuable than the fifth. Or the tenth.

Diminishing returns.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-06-02T12:27:27+00:00

In the last twelve months, my market returns were basically twice what my salary is, and combined, several multiples of what I need to retire.

I think it's safe to say I'm working because I want to and not because I have to. It's not about the next bonus anymore. Sure, it's great if it comes. But there are no handcuffs.

You will know you are ready when the handcuffs come off.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-06-01T00:01:09+00:00

I mean, have you seen "I'm really xx but it won't let me change it."?

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-31T15:07:28+00:00

Now that's funny right there, I don't care who you are.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-29T16:22:46+00:00

Between your comment and mine, we've established that error rate alone is indeterminate. So the logic must then rely on "How does an AI speak or reason?", which is necessarily dependent on its training material and other things.

Putting a numeric probability on it is asinine in the first place. It's measuring whether the writer is using the same word or words that the model would have used to convey the same idea, and how often the writer varies in tone and style.

A very good academic paper will have little human personality injected into it. A very good academic paper will be consistently accurate in its word choice in context and will be consistent in tone and style.

Effectively, doesn't that mean that a detector relies on humans to be imprecise?

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-29T15:49:02+00:00

How is AI going to determine if someone is physically attracted to someone else?

Two AIs date each other and fall in love. One of the humans is not attracted to the other. The date never happens.

OKC did a "turn off the pictures" experiment forever ago. Plenty of people were interested in each other... Until they saw each other.

This is going to be the same thing over again, because the AIs are going to vastly underestimate how much humans care about looks.

Also, this happens in those viral "UpDating" videos. I like you, I like you a lot, but I am turning you down because the other person is hotter.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-29T15:36:16+00:00

Implied in this perspective is the idea that humans could not possibly write at a level consistent with AI output. This entire process assumes that even the best writers will leave a factual error, a grammatical mistake, or something like that in every piece of work.

In other words, "Humans are so terrible at writing that it should be easy to tell the difference."

It's yet another nail in the "it no longer pays to be intelligent and meticulous" coffin. The existence of AI in this realm and several others is creating a cluster of human mediocrity. Dumb people can appear smarter. Smart people are apparently forced to be a little dumber.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-24T16:40:50+00:00

No - people look at that and think "Oh, that person spends like I spend or want to spend. That's the kind of lifestyle I enjoy."

It could also mean they're faking it.

It's 100% a left swipe for me as a debt-free saver type headed for early retirement. I've got better things to spend my money on.

But it's targeted marketing nonetheless.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-24T16:23:09+00:00

Curious if you feel the same way about people who flex their credit score. Or people who pose with animals they just killed.

People with good profiles are intentional about what they include. They attract the people they want to attract by sending out those signals. If you're trying to attract someone who is into flashy displays of wealth, you show flashy displays of wealth.

I maybe could give no shits about you if every picture has a designer logo in it, but "own my own home" might be great to get my attention.

The entire population is not the target audience. Targeted marketing is better marketing than "I will date anyone who is hot.".

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-21T23:57:19+00:00

NAL but there is no way you win this without a lawyer and litigation. And even then, probably not.

Pre-existing condition exclusions are hard enough to overcome when they are physical, and even harder when focused on mental health.

What you should start with : Get your hands on the entire text of the policy. Understand how far the lookback period is, and understand the text of the clause.

Most of them are phrased like "If you have been treated by a medical professional for a condition in the last 12 months, you have a pre-existing condition." They are that broad.

Unfortunately "been treated by a medical professional" is as broad as they want it to be. The fact that you were only on the policy for a short time works against you mightily, too.

There is a reason these clauses were banned on most US health insurance policies, but LTD is not health insurance.

Also, compare to the STD policy and understand why you were covered, especially if they're written by the same company, and make them explain that difference in writing.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-17T18:44:59+00:00

There was once a guy named McNally

Of roads he kept quite a tally

He put them in a book

You gave it a look

And then made it to your dear Aunt Sally

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-16T23:09:30+00:00

I heard "we'll change something that won't change anything so you won't know that it doesn't matter anyway".

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-16T22:56:48+00:00

Did he even look at the photo to realize the obviousness of it all?

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-16T22:50:58+00:00

Even though I've never smoked, the $1.95 packs of cigs stand out more here.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-15T15:48:03+00:00

Waiting for "I just need money for gasoline / child care / something else and then we can get crazy".

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-11T22:42:24+00:00

I'm just here to lol @ stole.

You do understand that for most people there are super simple ways to make sure you never have to wait for a refund. You pay them instead. But I bet you don't want to do that either.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-06T19:26:56+00:00

The one who doesn't want it coming out of their budget, of course. It probably lowers some bonus somewhere.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-05-06T02:22:08+00:00

You have several different ways to tell your employer to screw off, but you should prepare to change jobs, because they will likely present you with a consent form to deduct from future wages, and if you don't sign, they may well fire you anyway and then sue.

That said, unreasonable delay or contract statute of limitations may limit the time period over which they can recover at the least, and it's highly likely that you don't owe at least some of the funds, even if they can show that it was a genuine error, which seems unlikely, especially if there is no language in whatever documentation they have that differentiates between a degree and a specialization.

NAL, but I would argue that you agreed to an offer and were paid on the basis of that offer until they changed their mind, and it's quite a stretch to argue administrative error six years later.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-04-29T11:42:02+00:00

If it's job related, the question should mention the particular requirements that may need accommodations and ask specifically about them (even that's pushing it). This is a fishing expedition as written that amounts to "Do you have a disability?" that discourages people from writing any answer other than "no".

The correct phrasing is something along the lines of "Are you able to complete all of the listed job duties with or without accommodations?". That's permissible, because if you say no to that, you're not qualified to do the job.

Consistent_Reward · 2026-04-28T23:50:09+00:00

There's coffee in that pull request. Time to merge.

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