If I was a Mandalorian, I would wait until the other Mandalorians were eating, and then I would say “this is the way” to them, so they would have to say “this is the way” back with a mouth full of food.
If I was a Mandalorian, I would wait until the other Mandalorians had their helmets off, and then fill their helmets with cottage cheese.
I would be an unpopular Mandalorian.
Now, guys with zero game can try their luck with CupidBots. For $15 a month, an AI algorithm will pick out women for them on their dating app of choice, based on their previous swipes…. The AI then masquerades as the man behind the dating profile, and continues to talk and flirt with its unsuspecting target, until the woman agrees to a date or to share their number. At that point, the app sends a notification to the user telling them about the date it just secured for them. And no, at no point does the bot disclose its nonhuman nature.
I like to feel that I can tell an apple from a pear, and I don’t expect from the pear what I might expect from the apple. In other words, if I’m reading Conan the Conqueror I’m not demanding that it be Middlemarch.
How to help friends and employees living with long Covid cnn.com
We had our bathrooms remodeled in 2017, and I have finally figured out how to work the light switches in my bathroom.
I was a gifted child.
Why Did Men Stop Wearing Hats? gentlemansgazette.com
I saw these two tiny girls while walking Minnie yesterday. We literally died from the cute.
The turmoil at Sarasota Memorial, one of Florida’s largest public hospitals, began last year after three candidates running on a platform of “health freedom” won seats on the nine-member board that oversees the hospital. Board meetings, once sleepy, started drawing hundreds of angry people who, like the new members, denounced the hospital’s treatment protocols for Covid-19.
An internal review last month found that Sarasota Memorial did far better than some of its competitors in saving Covid patients’ lives. But that did little to quell detractors, whose campaign against the hospital has not relented. By then, the hospital had become the latest public institution under siege by an increasingly large and vocal right-wing contingent in one of Florida’s most affluent counties, where a backlash to pandemic policies has started reshaping local government.
— Patricia Mazzei, nytimes.com
Who Is Still Inside the Metaverse? Searching for friends in Mark Zuckerberg’s deserted fantasyland.
In September, my family and I move from our home in Dublin to a fancy East Coast college town, where I’ll be teaching for the semester. I grew up in Dublin, which means I have a wide circle of friends to draw on whenever I’m let out of the house. The street where I live is friendly: If I want to borrow a spatula or I need someone to look after my cat, I have only to ask.
Life is different for us in the U.S. We have, for the first time, a basement. But we have no friends. It seems as if none of the permanent faculty can afford to live in the suburb where the university has placed us. We technically have neighbors, but we never see them; they manifest only in the form of their gardeners, who are at work every day with their leaf blowers.
It’s in this strange scenario — alone on a continent, cut off from everyone I know — that I decide to try the metaverse for the first time. A whole galaxy of pals brought right to your living room? I think. Why not?
Funny, insightful, and moving.
By Paul Murray. nymag.com
