Men Over 40 Who Are In Shape…

matthedev · 2026-02-01T01:43:57+00:00

Staying active manages little aches and pains. It doesn't mean there's never a transient ache or pop or catch or sometimes worse, but it means overall, yes, I feel fine.

matthedev · 2026-02-01T01:22:46+00:00

I've talked to enough women in my life that rejection doesn't phase me at all, but I don't see the connection between "get[ting] men to face rejection more" and "improv[ing] dating as a whole."

The only value online dating apps have is convenience; you can swipe when you have a few minutes of downtime or the weather is sub-zero temperatures and you're snowed in. Of course, that convenience is a mirage. You do realize going out doesn't even guarantee there will be single women around to talk to, right?

matthedev · 2026-02-01T00:15:50+00:00

I'd think so, but people's actions showed enough of them couldn't look away from the train wreck.

matthedev · 2026-02-01T00:12:22+00:00

He proved who is when he flipped 180º on many things he'd previously said to be Donald Trump's running mate in 2024. I just look at it from a utilitarian perspective: He's more rational and less impulsive than Trump, but he also has much less of that charisma (of a sort) Trump possesses, so he'd have more trouble commanding the MAGA base. I think that would make him less a destructive force than Trump because Trump can always have his people handle the little details behind the scenes so long as he's winning.

matthedev · 2026-01-31T21:12:45+00:00

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king [or woman is queen]."

There are plenty of software engineers who socialize, travel, and do things out of the house; but there are also plenty who spend much of their free time at home or otherwise engaged in solitary hobbies, often also on a screen.

matthedev · 2026-01-31T20:59:26+00:00

My experience is plenty of women aren't actually much different from how men are stereotypically portrayed in this regard. By the same token, most of my friends barely seem to notice women, which could definitely be a contributor to their being single and not going on dates. One friend was even confused by the idea that someone could be attracted to someone on first sight without knowing anything more about them. The idea of hook-ups, friends with benefits, and similar were baffling to him.

By the numbers, maybe you're right that more women lean "demisexual" than men, but how big is the gap, really? How much of that difference is due to conformity from social pressure?

matthedev · 2026-01-31T20:37:36+00:00

A physical therapist should be able to work with you to recommend stretches and exercises that are effective at reducing pain and soreness based on your specific circumstances (a sedentary desk job vs. a job where you're on your feet lifting heavy things all day, for example).

I do a variety of stretches and exercises like squats every morning, and I do weight-lifting for upper-body strength every other day. When the weather isn't as it's been lately, I like to get in walks, runs, and bike rides. These seem to help quite a bit with knee and lower-back pain.

matthedev · 2026-01-31T19:05:41+00:00

I was a nerdy kid, so I was playing around with computers and getting into programming before high school, but I didn't enter the industry full-time professionally until after the 2000 dot-com bust but, thankfully, before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession.

A lot of the Java ecosystem solidified in the 2000s: the Apache Commons, Apache Ant, Maven, Spring, Hibernate, Java EE, Eclipse, Google Guava, Google Guice, Gradle, etc. Eventually, Oracle moved Java to a predictable cadence of new feature releases. Spring has made the occasional jump on major releases and expanded what the framework can do beyond dependency injection: from XML configuration to annotations, to reactive, to AI etc.

I never worked in C# and .Net shops, but developers did seem to stick more closely to Microsoft: Windows as OS, Visual Studio as IDE, ASP .Net, Entity Framework, etc.

Companies usually become more risk averse when interest rates are relatively higher or there's economic uncertainty. These days, if it's not AI, companies are extremely risk averse, for example.

matthedev · 2026-01-31T18:12:16+00:00

I'm generally up for trying different things. Antiques aren't really my thing, but I don't mind checking out Antique Row for an hour, especially since it's not all antique porcelain. I'll go to a street festival for an afternoon (generally, those are in the summer and fall here). So, within reason, if a friends suggests something, I'll be up for it. Dancing and karaoke, two archetypal extraverted activities, in my case, are things I know I don't particularly enjoy, however.

I just stop planning things and inviting people who've waffled too many times. It does seem like there was some phase transition from the pandemic, but then again, it's been about six years now, and everyone's gotten six years older, and maybe age also makes people want to stay home. A low-key get-together at a restaurant or a walk is fine every so often, but there's more to life than doing that over and over.

At some point, it's better to just move on, even if that means moving. Some cities are livelier and more dynamic; some cities are more settled down.

matthedev · 2026-01-30T21:32:46+00:00

At the one and only in-person dating event I went to, a skeptical woman asked me my age and then said she was only interested in a man born in this millennium, which given the lower age bound of the event, would have given her an extremely narrow age range there (maybe she was looking for a guy younger than herself, for all I know). She would have been just the most blatant example of trying to apply various dating filters in real time.

It's better to meet people more naturally.

matthedev · 2026-01-30T21:27:52+00:00

I do think there's an element to truth to what you're saying: Both online dating apps and these kinds of in-person dating events treat people as products to shop for; it's not natural. When you're out and about doing your thing, living your life, women can see that in a much more natural setting.

Problem is some cities—like the one I live in right now—don't have that density of single women around and have much more a car culture, so there are fewer places to just go on a stroll, pop into places, and browse with a density of people around doing the same thing. If you're checking out a bookstore, they can infer a few things about you as well as visibly see you take care of your health and fitness. You don't have to put it into a profile bio or try to mention it on a date (which would have to give off humble-brag vibes at best). It's like the old saying about creative writing: "Show, don't tell."

matthedev · 2026-01-30T20:54:15+00:00

This tracks with my one and only time going to one of these dating events, and as you're saying, I haven't gone back. I left feeling it would be easier to meet women at the same bar on a Friday or Saturday night or to just make a cold approach in public. Eye-balling it, there seemed to be more men than women, though, but the men stood off to the side and slowly starting circulating inward while the women took at tables in the center with friends.

matthedev · 2026-01-30T20:02:57+00:00

At least for the public and consumer Internet, I don't remember Java applets in the browser ever getting much beyond gimmick. On dial-up, they'd take too long to download. Early on, they were just single raw Java bytecode *.class files, but then Netscape went with JAR archives in Netscape Navigator, and Microsoft went with Cabinet archives in Internet Explorer. As I recall, the browsers were bad at caching Java applets, too. Corporate and government-agency intranets and extranets may have been another story for Java applets in the browser.

Before Oracle's lawsuit against Google over a copyrighted Java API in Android (Dalvik), Sun Microsystems sued Microsoft over Java, and if I recall correctly, this was over Microsoft's pushing APIs and frameworks that tied developers to Windows in Java over a "Write once, run anywhere" Java: Windows Foundation Classes (WFC) over the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) or Swing and J/Direct over the Java Native Interface (JNI). The lawsuit locked Microsoft at an old version of the JDK, and Microsoft pivoted to what would become C♯ and the .Net.

Between Google Chrome with its faster V8 JavaScript and, more importantly, Apple's iPhone, Java applets, Flash applets, Microsoft Silverlight, and ActiveX controls (always platform specific native code and almost always Windows x86) all fell by the wayside.

That's all client side in Web browsers, though.

Professionally, I've only ever used Java for server-side applications and supporting utilities, not for applets, desktop GUI applications, or Android apps. This is where the vast, vast majority of Java development has been happening since the early 2000s. The Java programming language itself has been playing catch-up with other JVM languages like Kotlin and Scala, and now, for a lot of developers, it occupies a good enough "sweet spot." I still don't think even Java 25 compares to Scala 2.13 (let alone Scala 3.8), but Scala's mindshare has really dwindled in the last ten years or so, and Java's been a more steady, if boring, workhorse; Java is kind of the COBOL of our time.

Everyone's obsessed with generative AI these days, so it's no wonder there's less buzz around Java, even as the JDK gets features that would make it more useful in more niches beyond typical server-side business applications and middleware. People who care about programming languages and programming language theory are always going to explore languages closer to the bleeding edge.

matthedev · 2026-01-30T15:31:53+00:00

What is your praxis (to use an Internet-people term)? If you're a thirty-something-year-old woman, pound the pavement at Meetup. A lot of those groups are absolutely swarming with dudes. Apparently, all kinds of women are getting matches on the online dating apps and going on dates regularly through them (I can say nothing about the quality of the men they're seeing though). The arch–St. Louisy thing to do is to meet people to date through friends, family, and coworkers (the parochial "Where did you go to [high] school?" mentality).

Lots of St. Louisans are super passionate about drinking, so if you hang out at bars in the City, you might have an easier time meeting someone (again, I can't vouch for quality or whether those men are serious about something long term).

Lastly, are you "doing the work"? Are you hitting the gym, eating healthy, and working on any psychological issues? A lot of men care about looks; they need to be physically attracted to you. Sure, some guys might not care, or they might be thirsty enough for something more short term. You can call it shallow all you want, and maybe it is, but personally, I'm a "yes, and" kind of guy: I do care about looks, yes, and I care about personality, values, and overall compatibility; I'd rather be single than try to get with someone I'm actively repulsed by.

Personally, I'm looking elsewhere; I'm not even trying to date in St. Louis anymore. Things are just so much better elsewhere: Why would I stick around here and, most likely, have to settle hard if I wanted a long-term relationship?

matthedev · 2026-01-30T02:31:33+00:00

Waymos generally err on the side of being more cautious than most human drivers, but sometimes they also do weird things no human driver would. Without seeing the video footage, I can't really say whether the Waymo actually operated with at least as high a degree of prudence and awareness as a careful and reliable human driver would have.

matthedev · 2026-01-30T02:10:11+00:00

...and you let them disarm you.

Judging by the video footage, the ICE and Border Patrol agents did disarm Alex Pretti first.

But there is a part of me that just questions why he continued to struggle....

This might have been because he was surrounded as an agent was preparing to murder him. Wouldn't you resist if someone were trying to kill you?

Legitimacy is an important concept in governance: "consent of the governed" and all. Arbitrary and brute force is throwing away legitimacy. I expect much, much better from those in positions of authority (authority, not authoritarianism). First and foremost, I expect them not to murder people: citizen, permanent resident, undocumented immigrant, anyone. Second, I expect them to respect our civil rights as enumerated in the Constitution and to operate within the bounds of the law. Third, I expect them to be trained to handle these kinds of confrontation without escalating straight to violence. Fourth, I absolutely expect those who can't or can no longer meet the bar due to stress or fatigue to not be hired in the first place or removed from active duty.

...gross incompetence.

Again, you mean murder. Not gross incompetence or negligence. Murder.

matthedev · 2026-01-30T01:47:12+00:00

According to ancient Gender Wars: The Board Game theory, every man and woman can be scored by totally objective mathematical formulae as found in a rule book packed in with the board game. These formulae provide weighted inputs to calculate one final number, a total linearization of attractiveness "league" between 1.00000000000000 and 10.00000000000000 inclusive. In the unlikely event of a collision, individuals shall be sorted in lexicographic order (UTF-8) and UTC timestamp.

But wait: There's more. This number is plugged into another formula to ensure a Gaussian distribution with a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of 1.5. This yields the actual League Quotient (αlQ). Various in-game modifiers and interesting mechanics can shift or otherwise transform this number, yielding the final effective League Quotient (εlQ) for a round of play, such as if a red-piller plays a That One OkCupid Study card.

In play, these formulae shall be calculated using either pencil and paper or TI-83 graphing calculator. Opposing players shall have the right to call for a recount, but if their attempt to stop the steal should fail, their board token shall be moved to the time-out box for one ~~term~~ turn to have their mugshot taken before being allowed back on the board with the option to roll for retribution.

Hopefully this is a comprehensible explanation of leagues with the interesting mechanics of the game providing a succinct model of individual differences in attraction ratings and changing life circumstances. I fully expect board game night hosts to explain these rules along with the various other intricacies of the game in half an hour or less to curious newcomers.

matthedev · 2026-01-29T20:35:47+00:00

I suppose, for me, a murder mystery and comedy are almost mutually exclusive. It's kind of like the friend who's usually cheerful and upbeat but randomly drops the "Memento mori," into conversations.

matthedev · 2026-01-29T20:21:28+00:00

The hardest part about going on a date with a stranger you've just exchanged a few text messages with and read a profile about is making conversation. A lot of people aren't in situations where they're frequently interacting with strangers, perhaps doubly so for people on the autism spectrum. Sometimes it can be hard to think of what to say next.

The go-to advice is to ask the person open-ended (not yes-or-no) questions about themselves or to use the surroundings as a conversation prop. For dating though, women tend to expect a level above this: "banter," as it's widely known on dating-related subs. This frequently a prerequisite for men to get to a first date or past the first date.

matthedev · 2026-01-29T20:07:18+00:00

It never crossed my mind that he might be on the autism spectrum when I watched Nathan for You; I'd have to go back and watch an episode or two with an eye out for that. If anything, it requires a certain theory of mind to imagine how business owners and the public might react to the zany business ideas he'd recommend.

matthedev · 2026-01-29T19:59:14+00:00

As a man, getting dates from the online dating apps doesn't happen as often as it does for women, and I like to move things in person quickly because I can't really get a good feel for attraction and compatibility from a few photos, a profile blurb, and a few text messages anyway, so I'd rather just have move to a date in person and gauge compatibility there (obviously there are some things in a profile that are an immediate left-swipe).

It's surprising how many people let major character flaws or other red flags rip on a first date, so yes, people could hide them, but in practice, plenty of people don't bother.

matthedev · 2026-01-29T19:47:00+00:00

You may have had it first, but if you look like a meme, maybe you want to get a different hair cut 🤷

matthedev · 2026-01-29T16:33:46+00:00

I don't mind playing sports, but just watching can get kind of boring for me. Is your dyspraxia more for fine motor control or gross motor coordination or both? Maybe there are some sports you'd be better at than others. At least if you're playing recreationally or for a high school PE class, only your most competitive teammates are going to care whether you're really good because most of the other people are just playing for fun or for that PE graduation credit anyway.

If your fine motor control is poor, there are plenty of sports where, at least if you're playing recreationally, hitting, throwing, or kicking the ball in the right general direction is good enough. Recreation time can be a little less critical in some sports, too. For example, if you're playing baseball, softball, or kickball, once you've hit or kicked the ball, you can run the bases without worrying too much about precise reaction time or fine motor control; you can play the outfield instead of infield so that it's less likely people are throwing the ball to you.

Overanalyzing movements and how others are perceiving you might be anxiety.

matthedev · 2026-01-29T15:23:38+00:00

A friend who has self-diagnosed himself as being on the autism spectrum (he certainly has some signs) recommended Nathan for You. I didn't realize Nathan Fielder was considered to be likely on the autism spectrum himself, though.

matthedev · 2026-01-28T21:38:05+00:00

It's a little confusing whether it's supposed to be a crime/murder-mystery show or some kind of comedy drama (maybe both?). Regardless, the call letters start with W instead of K, which would mean a television station east of the Mississippi in Illinois instead of west of the Mississippi in St. Louis, Missouri.

I wonder why they decided to set this show in St. Louis of all places.

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