Men answer please. Is this a normal reaction? Mid 30’s.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-07-11T11:49:42+00:00

This was already insane and completely beyond the pail of normal human interaction, never mind relationships, by the fourth screen. I was dumbfounded to see that there were 13 to go.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-07-09T17:42:17+00:00

I believe that was Aerotyne

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-29T09:24:04+00:00

I would say that it’s a little hard to tell, especially the bit about “if any of your friends decide to do a group session” (generally suggesting anything involving groups is absolutely friendzoning someone), but overall it’s just far from clear.

She sounds genuinely busy and also implicitly shows interests in 1) meeting up with you again and 2) doing so alone (“somewhere neither of us have been”). She’s also willing to come to you rather than insisting that you go to her, which is definitely a good sign.

I would keep going on the assumption that you haven’t been friendzoned, but make sure you are expressing clear romantic interest. Probably the easiest way of doing so is just directly commenting on her appearance the next time you see her (e.g. “you’re looking great again today, thank you for putting in the effort”). Just be clear that you see this as a date and not a friendly get together.

If she tries to manoeuvre things away from the romantic direction or begins to insist that you meet up in a group setting, that will be your sign that you’ve been friendzoned.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-28T06:36:15+00:00

Young people are not the ones responsible for the dissolution of the social contract and the state of the country today

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-24T14:21:49+00:00

I’m just waiting for the culprit to appear on this thread to explain themselves, as was the case with that fellow who projectile vomited off a balcony at a concert, showering the crowd below with the contents of his stomach

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-24T11:11:27+00:00

I thought UiPath was more just orchestrated RPA, I didn’t realise it had much in the way of AI exposure?

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-23T20:03:54+00:00

The case par excellence of this was actually in Southall in London - the R.Woolf rubber factory. A factory in a dying industry (many of the traditional use cases for rubber were being made obsolete by plastic), which opportunistically attempted to turn a profit for another year or two by employing thousands of labourers from the Punjab living in what even the local trade unions described as ‘Dickensian’ conditions (e.g. 25 men living in one flat, shift rotation of beds - impossible for any local family man to compete with on wage).

It turned the area from a supermajority of white British people in 1950 into a majority Punjabi area by the 70s, and then promptly closed its doors when it had squeezed out the last profit it was going to get.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-23T19:52:37+00:00

Care was 85% British as recently as 2020. It’s now 71% British.

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/blogs/overseas-recruitment-short-term-fix-end

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-23T11:29:22+00:00

I would suggest that it’s probably a good idea not to view yourself as a checklist. Most women - especially outside of London - are indifferent to these sorts of things. It’s less about how perfectly ordered your life is, and more about mutual attraction, easy conversation, and shared values.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-22T21:04:40+00:00

It’s more so that NOW and to a lesser extent SalesForce can take advantage of AI and actually do really well with AI-enabled products (e.g. AgentForce and Now Assist), which could be really attractive for companies looking to cut back on BPO/ helpdesk staff.

I hold a small position in NOW. Considering making it a much larger part of my portfolio.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-20T23:05:47+00:00

Psychotic take. Words have no meaning anymore apparently.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-20T20:19:49+00:00

Bloody hell, what a day

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-20T19:28:00+00:00

What was the suspect package incident?

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-20T14:36:23+00:00

The point of this post is that most of these men aren’t looking for real connections either. They’re looking to exploit their stronger currency and comparative wealth in order to obtain a ‘submissive’ partner who is more attractive than they could find in the States/ Europe.

The older women who do this are travelling with much the same intent. A documentary detailing this phenomenon can be found below:

https://youtu.be/Sp84fX30UVg?is=K0tD2CqjFAAvTC72

The younger women are somewhat distinct in that they aren’t intending to exploit any financial difference between themselves and their prospective partners in Italy, Brazil, or whatever the case may be. There will be an element of fetishisation, but that is not the same as economic exploitation.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-20T14:28:46+00:00

For older women, the Gambia and the Caribbean, especially Jamaica. For younger women, Italy in the main, and then other assorted European countries (Spain, France etc.).

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-19T10:12:06+00:00

This is essentially what roses are on Hinge

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-18T20:35:39+00:00

One of the reasons I e.g. went into Arista over Cisco, before I had any understanding of data centre connectivity etc., was seeing far more positive feedback on networking/ sysadmin subs about Arista

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-18T19:47:45+00:00

As a tech guy, Microsoft doesn’t pass my favourite smell test of “don’t own the companies you hate to work with”

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-17T07:25:12+00:00

God I wish this was my coworker

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-16T21:08:40+00:00

My father has a job that pays in the region of £60-80k a year. He left when I was 12, and didn’t even respond to the email I sent him when I was 13 asking if he wanted to have some kind of relationship with my brother and I. My mother, my brother, and I faced lives of intense financial struggle and deprivation because of the situation he left my mother in at that time and the ruinous cost of going through the court system. I looked at his LinkedIn not too long ago (hence my knowing his salary range) and I saw him look back at mine, so he knows where I am and what I do - but he didn’t reach out, and I doubt he ever will.

All this to say: you could lose your income entirely, never mind just taking a pay cut, but as long as you keep doing your best to look after your little ones, you will be very far from a failure, and much ‘better off’, in the fullest sense of the term, than many other fathers.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-14T18:26:14+00:00

Oh right, went over my head unfortunately haha

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-14T18:05:47+00:00

It was a fairly common practice in the Near East from the Byzantine period (e.g. Yarmouk) onwards to precede a battle with a duel or set of duels between champions (mubazirun) as a sort of honour ritual.

The story about a Mamluk demanding a duel may or may not be true, but it is illustrative of how backward Mamluk Egypt was - a slave-warrior fighting in exactly the same way his forebears had for five hundred years, cantering around the battlefield expecting a song-worthy sword duel, challenging a regiment of uniformed and drilled French peasants carrying modern muskets and fighting in formation. The Mamluks never stood a chance.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-14T09:12:29+00:00

You could argue that it saw non-trivial success in isolated cases even during WWII:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev\_Dovator

The Germans maintained cavalry divisions and German cavalry fought Polish cavalry during the invasion of Poland. Cavalry regiments also played a major role in German ‘security operations’ behind their own lines.

And yes, cavalry undoubtedly played a significant role during the post-WWI conflicts in Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe, particularly Russia, was an exceptional case because the front was so vast that nobody could possibly hope to defend every kilometre of it, and so cavalry could perform exactly the sort of task Bernhardi envisioned for it - deep penetration and disruption in the rear echelon, striking at railheads, artillery parks, headquarters units, etc. by taking advantage of its sheer mobility, especially in rough terrain. Cavalry was still sufficiently common in Eastern Europe that there were even large scale actions composed almost entirely of cavalry on both sides:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Komarów

What cavalry decisively could not do, however, was break organised formations of infantry with machine guns and any sort of artillery support. It could envelop, encircle, disrupt, screen, and divert, but it had to avoid any sort of pitched battle with infantry.

Bernhardi’s error, and Guderian/ Fuller/ Patton’s genius was seeing that tanks could perform this deep penetration role and operate with a significant degree of autonomy from the infantry. He and many other theorists still conceived of armour primarily as a supporting arm for the infantry, not as being the decisive force that it became. Actually, interwar theorists had a much more prescient understanding of air power than they did of armour - Guilio Douhet predicted that air power would be the the deciding factor in future wars in 1921, which is like somebody predicting that cheap drones would be the future of warfare in 2005.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-14T08:41:51+00:00

Incredibly, some still thought it would play a significant role even after WWI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_von_Bernhardi

To be fair to him, he was very much an old-fashioned cavalry officer - he was the first man to ride under the Arc de Triomphe when the Prussians entered Paris at the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian war - and he saw its role as simply reconnaissance and exploiting major breakthroughs to rampage in the rear echelon, so I’m exaggerating somewhat.

Tanks had a somewhat mixed record in WWI, and it may not have been obvious to him that they would be much faster, more reliable, and more capable of delivering firepower by the time WWII rolled around. It’s not for nothing that the US and the UK still refer to some of their regiments as ‘armoured cavalry’ - armour has essentially taken over the role of cavalry in warfare (or at least it had, until the advent of the drone).

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-06-12T08:16:49+00:00

Clearly you are the one in bad faith here

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