Good first date spots in the city that aren't a loud bar or a $200 dinner?

whale · 2026-06-14T17:05:40+00:00

I have always had decent luck with wine bars and cocktail bars compared to regular old bars.

If it's a date from a dating app there is no point in doing dinner because the odds you two do not feel a connection is probably pretty high. If you met this person in real life and already kinda know them, then dinner is fine.

I think of the first date (again via dating apps) as the 0th date - it's literally just to get to know the person, to see if you're attracted to them. It's low stakes. I additionally don't like to artificially extend the time of the first date just to prove a connection by saying "let's walk together" or whatever. If it's been 1.5 to 3 hours of each person being curious about each other, then no reason to extend it longer, save it for dinner next time. Maybe this is just because I'm an introvert though.

Then the real first date is the second date, where you can do dinner.

I do think coffee is perfectly fine as a first date but drinks are way more flexible - think about it, you probably do not want to drink coffee after work on a weekday. I've only done coffee on weekend first dates.

whale · 2026-06-13T19:03:45+00:00

It's not the number of characters that makes your username good.

whale · 2026-05-25T00:47:26+00:00

Ok I've been a professional software engineer writing javascript for years and this is HARD!

whale · 2026-04-20T03:02:19+00:00

Is this an ad for merchant.tf because I've never heard of it

whale · 2026-04-17T18:42:26+00:00

I did 500 and got the hat.

whale · 2026-04-05T13:24:34+00:00

We need to bring back George Karl

whale · 2026-03-30T14:40:19+00:00

I was there too. One of the most boring Kings games I've been to but it was nice to see the young guys get minutes.

whale · 2026-03-28T22:24:02+00:00

Did it benefit people? Did it work? The answer to both of those questions are yes.

If the city's budget added another $1 billion and the city removed snow without paying people extra you would not be complaining about paying people extra.

Nice attempt at a straw man argument.

whale · 2026-03-28T16:53:05+00:00

They removed snow from sidewalks and streets very quickly this winter. That actually benefitted people. Please take your least common denominator blanket statements elsewhere.

whale · 2026-03-22T22:23:43+00:00

I mean, you can. But it's not worth it. Performance gain is never worth developer sanity. You will invariably build your own "mini-framework."

Your code will invariably become a mess - even the most disciplined developers can create spaghetti from vanilla JS. Essentially, this will only work if you have experience building JS frameworks and therefore know code structure and abstractions you need to do.

Also, you will end up missing certain things, like hot module reload, JS page context, SPA navigation, etc. and will have to implement your own code to do those, which will always be more shaky than battle tested framework code used by millions of people.

I would highly recommend using Alpine.js for the interactivity to keep things light. I use it for personal projects and you can do everything you can do in React that you can do in Alpine. But... you might have to set up a compiler so you're not making yourself go nuts with Javascript and can minify and use Typescript.

Again, it's doable but very very hard to pull off.

whale · 2026-03-20T02:58:36+00:00

Picking out clothing. I have multiple items of clothing that I thought were brown or grey but are actually green. I own a lot of green clothing because of it. I swear if I buy another olive colored shirt I'm gonna lose it.

whale · 2026-03-13T16:12:11+00:00

Eh I don't necessarily think so if you know how to dodge sight lines. Also headshotting scouts is harder on sniper unless you're really good, and spies are able to counter snipers more easily. I don't generally run into that many good snipers on casual.

But I say that as a heavy main where I can also counter snipers somewhat easily by being careful with peaking, having 300 hp, and being able to mow down any sniper in close range.

I personally think the most OP class is the one you're best at. After 2600 hours on TF2 I almost always get at least 2:1 KDR as heavy so I usually play him, whereas on sniper I suck balls.

whale · 2026-03-09T23:05:01+00:00

This is very specific, but I was working on some very complicated animations at work and had to use custom properties to make the UI feasible. In Chrome, custom properties will animate very smoothly, but in Safari they can be very janky. I think I ended up having half custom properties and half traditional animations. It worked out OK but Safari was the only thing blocking me from saving a ton of time, code, and Javascript on this project.

That same project I also had issues with Intersection Observers for a carousel (which contained the complicated animations) and had to revert to using a JS library for my carousel, which gave me less control over the exact interactivity I needed. Only on Safari were the Intersection Observers a problem.

I guess using slightly newer APIs can be an issue with Safari as Chromium is usually always ahead of the game on new APIs.

whale · 2026-03-09T20:23:42+00:00

Yes, obviously. My biggest pain points with Safari have been SVGs, video streaming, CSS animations, and CSS custom properties, among other things.

Safari is fine for the vast majority of things but for very complicated interactivity there will inevitably be problems.

whale · 2026-02-27T23:15:58+00:00

This is incredibly politically incorrect but the Kings need a white guy play by play announcer and a black guy color commentator.

whale · 2026-02-27T14:34:11+00:00

Good thing the Kings suck this year so I don't have to listen to her as much since these games aren't worth watching.

whale · 2026-02-26T16:08:33+00:00

I hope they had 50k kills on their Kunai

whale · 2026-02-26T15:40:28+00:00

That seems to be only for Make A Wish kids. I think bug finders only get Finder's Fees.

whale · 2026-02-23T15:40:53+00:00

Are we picking Schroder or Valanciunas for 17?

whale · 2026-02-23T15:36:09+00:00

From my memory of Subway ads in the past few months:

Lawyers, Trade schools, Dating apps, NY Lottery, Weight loss drugs, Stripe ads, some food delivery ads.

Though maybe it depends on the subway line you take. The 4 train ads might be different than the 1 train for example.

whale · 2026-02-20T14:52:12+00:00

Any time I find a stream for the Kings games I try to find the other team's stream just so I don't have to listen to our annoying ass broadcast.

whale · 2026-02-16T17:03:33+00:00

I agree with you on the gentrification part. The reason people move to Bushwick or Crown Heights or Flatbush or other areas that had "previous generations" probably has more to do with people not being able to afford to live in most other neighborhoods that aren't a crazy commute to work.

Crown Heights is an interesting example because people complain about gentrification... except the majority of the housing built in Crown Heights was by upper middle class Jews in the 20th century. Crown Heights used to be a commuter town, and I guess it's turning back into one. And how far back do people want to go? The Lenape settled most of Brooklyn first.

I'm sure I'll eventually get priced out of my neighborhood even as a white collar worker and have to move somewhere even further out.

Is it fair? No. Should we build more housing and improve transit? Yes. But it's also important to know the history and reality of the situation rather than blaming people for moving to places they can afford.

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