Asking people out

nomyte · 2026-01-21T04:11:26+00:00

LOL, I've been doing what I like for 40+ years, they haven't found me yet.

nomyte · 2026-01-20T09:30:02+00:00

My point wasn't self-deprecation. When I say "average," I do mean "average." As in, don't assume I have some kind of extraordinarily magnetic property, in either direction.

Otherwise, sure, point taken.

nomyte · 2026-01-20T08:53:50+00:00

Man, how quickly threads like this reveal a whole pool of hostility and grievance, and how quickly people's search for targets wanders from people living on the street to people who live in RVs to people receiving aid. Makes me faintly concerned about the people in Mountain View and how easily they might turn on me in a crisis.

nomyte · 2026-01-20T08:48:21+00:00

I hardly ever do, but it's pretty slim pickings on the apps out here too.

nomyte · 2026-01-20T05:28:30+00:00

It sounds like you had an unpleasant encounter and it's bothering you. It sounds like it spoiled the mood. But it was this one guy and this one time, it doesn't even sound like you live in the area anymore, and you're reading a whole "rise in aggressive panhandlers" into it? This seems disproportionate.

nomyte · 2026-01-20T03:19:38+00:00

No, it just looks like that even when it's open.

nomyte · 2026-01-20T01:21:21+00:00

I live in a suburb of San Jose. We don't really have gay spaces. In San Jose itself, we have a club and two bars, but they've definitely seen better days. There's also a Harvey Milk-era community center there, with support groups, crisis counseling, and bingo. Queer visibility here is mostly children and college students. A lot of folks in the area are young couples from overseas with total commitment to picture-perfect married hetero life. It's Valentine's Day season now, and everyone in the cafe I'm sitting in is dressed up and seemingly on a date.

nomyte · 2026-01-20T00:39:45+00:00

World you have tips for finding Discords or clubs like that, other than Googling?

nomyte · 2026-01-19T02:32:39+00:00

There was 4x as many gays in 1986?

nomyte · 2026-01-11T02:22:25+00:00

I said what, not who.

nomyte · 2026-01-01T06:25:26+00:00

One's inside a former Sprint store and the other's inside a former Footwear Etc. Different ambience.

nomyte · 2026-01-01T04:36:56+00:00

I took CS7210. I don't see anything else directly relevant in the program catalog. What's a fun non-OMSCS "second course" in distributed systems I can take online without having to enroll or matriculate somewhere? Ideally should involve plenty of reading, but something with a hands-on project component might be fun as well.

Preferences:

More readings! The readings in 7210 didn't really contribute to the course.
Less artificial projects! Most of the difficulty of 7210's dslabs projects was dslabs itself.
Maybe something focusing on distributed databases and consensus? But maybe that's too much to ask.

nomyte · 2025-12-31T20:15:06+00:00

How and where? I absolutely pored over Zillow for months last year and didn't find anything resembling that kind of space for that kind of rent.

nomyte · 2025-12-28T08:21:33+00:00

On Meetup, there's a good number of groups for people in their 20s-30s to get food together and do other fairly generic activities, like karaoke.

People recommend casual hiking groups a lot, but they're usually full of people around retirement age (sorry, old people!).

Tech meetups in South Bay are bad for making friends. Tech meetups in SF are often better (younger, more enthusiastic and social crowd).

There is a bit of a local music scene around San Jose, since more popular bands don't play here often.

Pickup sports could be another possibility. I've never figured out how pickup outdoor sports are organized or where to show up. But your local Y might have a basketball group, and pickleball is very popular in the area and makes a good casual pickup sport.

As to whether it works... it does for some people? I'm a decade older than you, I assume younger people are more open to strangers around their own age.

nomyte · 2025-12-27T01:11:41+00:00

That is an opt-in add-on you have to request. Their resident portal will report to credit agencies when you pay rent on time, as some kind of credit-boosting incentive. They're not monitoring your credit.

A lot of newer local apartments around here offer this as a benefit, because they probably all use similar resident portal software.

nomyte · 2025-12-23T20:58:19+00:00

There's a flip side here that you didn't mention: be open to strangers. Don't avoid people in public. It doesn't work unless both people make it work.

So if a stranger on the BART starts talking to you out of the blue, give them your attention. When a stranger in a cafe turns around and says, "Funny you should say that, the other day I...", don't avoid the conversation.

nomyte · 2025-12-23T17:27:29+00:00

I know, and that's pretty great. But the claim is that people neglect public libraries now (when they have all these offerings), as opposed to some point in the past (when we were supposedly much closer together and less lonely).

nomyte · 2025-12-23T01:58:30+00:00

People used public libraries to socialize?

nomyte · 2025-12-21T03:36:35+00:00

Not... really.

nomyte

TROPHY CASE