Living With Catastrophic Innovation

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

It is not a secret to anyone here — probably — that I’m a fan of classic science fiction and even more so a fan of Robert A. Heinlein. When I read him as a kid, the dates were already a bit impossible, but I used to think maybe we’d catch up in 20 years or so.

… Am I salty we didn’t? Well, somewhat, if with it we could also get his universe, with habitable Mars and Venus. But also, I suspect that his universe would be easier, in many ways, psychologically. Unless of course it’s his universe in Friday, which frankly, we might have missed by a whisker if in fact we did miss it, and thank heavens. Because radical greens forbidding all internal combustion and needing complex security for any decent private home is for the birds.

But the future of his juveniles was, in a way easier. Sure, things would have developed crazy fast, for us to have fully developed cities on the moon by now and — even with habitable planets — functional human colonies on Mars and Venus. (Part of the problem is that our population never exploded anywhere near enough for that.) But it was a future we had a model for and understood. One in which the big interactions stayed more or less intact and the model followed was that of the colonization of the US, particularly the journey westward.

What we got instead —

Yesterday on X I came across what had to be bait — had to be — talking about how girls are not dating and for the boys to be worthy of these girls they had to do all these things.

Half of those things were already crazy in my day. I know because my husband did one of them and freaked me out. He gave me a dozen red roses when we weren’t dating, just for my eighteenth birthday, and I didn’t know how to handle it at all. (I’d convinced myself he didn’t like me and…)

The other half were at best unlikely to work. Honestly, most of what I’ve found works for finding someone these days is either matchmaking by friends and family or knowing someone a looooong time as friends first. Gaming groups seem to be a hive of couple formation.

Of course the comments were also full of the idea that all these women were sleeping with every other man, except our putative pure-hearted hero, and that all women are sluts and don’t want to settle down. Again, I don’t think it’s true. In talking to young women I’m often more startled than not by how INNOCENT they are. They are desperately trying to follow the rules. They do want a husband and kids and are somewhat ashamed of wanting them, but do nonetheless, it’s just they can’t find the road to get there. But even those who have had a complex sexual history are weirdly, heartbreakingly innocent when you least expect it. Like thinking if they just stay another year with their “fiance” of five years who has already fathered three kids with her, he’ll finally trust her enough to marry her.

On the other hand, on the other side, there’s the guys thinking that these girls are in it pour le sport, and just want sex and money, and then relying on that stupid survey and even stupider influencers saying that if you aren’t six feet tall and making six figures don’t call them. I definitely advise not calling anyone who SAYS that, but don’t put their words in the mouths of women who never said it, some of which would do the biblical end times thing “I’ll support myself, just call me by your name and remove me from his oprobium” (I don’t remember the wording, but you get the jist.)

So the comments were stupid too, but reading the post on how to get a girl, reminded me of my parents not able to figure out why I didn’t have a “boyfriend.” Or rather I didn’t KNOW if I had a boyfriend. In their time it was very easy. The boy asked if the girl wanted to court. If the girl said yes, they were courting. If the courting went well, eventually the guy asked to marry. If the girl said yes, there was just time to get everything arranged to get married. That was it. Simple.

In my day we had… ersatz dating. You were dating, because you were seeing each other every weekend, but you had absolutely no idea if you should be exclusive or not. Actually talking about it was the zenith of uncool, and if you asked, he’d probably never call you again. If someone else asked the answer was “We’re just friends.” After some years of these stupid games, everyone assumed you’d get married, so you kind of went along with it, and eventually did, but marriage, when and where I grew up was very discredited. It was after all “just a piece of paper” and didn’t make any difference. And did you really still believe in all that medieval stuff?

In a way I think I married the way I did (reconnected with husband on the phone, wrote and called a lot, but because of the distance, everything had to be super-explicit) because it was easier for my mind. We couldn’t just casually drift along if I had to apply for Visas and come over and I definitely couldn’t say if we didn’t get married in a timely manner. So everything was clear and explicit. As in “If we’re going to continue calling each other all the time, do you mind telling me where this relationship is going?” etc.

I mean, sure, this is worse for me than for the average person, because I don’t pick anything up by context. I kind of need to be told. But honestly, looking at all the women with 5 ‘fiances’ in their past, and at all the men who assume every woman is sleeping with ten guys a week, I don’t think I’m the only one who needs more structure.

And yes, I’m aware that the nuking of the family and the relationships between men and women wasn’t the fault of technological innovation, but the fault of Marxists who broke all the rules, so that everyone is free-forming it, thinking the worst possible of the other and no one knows how to get to the place they’d like to be.

But technological innovation does plug into that too, from easier travel creating families dispersed over hundreds of miles, to the attendant prosperity which allows us to stay “juvenile” much longer than previous generations. I mean, dad didn’t because he was studying, but it was perfectly normal fifty years before I was born to go to work in your early teens. Now we’re prosperous enough and regulated enough (weird, government regulation is not something Marxists ever fight to abolish. Only social norms.) that no one under 18 can be hired without jumping through crazy hoops. And then they have no experience in anything and their start in life is much, much harder than previous generations’.

Again, for the young people reading this: You’re not precisely the lone ranger. My generation by and large started late, and came out of high school into the hangover of the Carter economy.

As that guy on X, my inlaws kept giving my husband and I advice for a vanished world: how to find the job you’d stay in for the rest of your life. When I considered starting a craft business, because my degree had no easy application where I was, my host-mother (the person I lived with as an exchange student. The relationship is closer than it sounds) told me I was better than that. I had a degree. I finally stumbled into a job that fit my degree, but not at the level I should have been, and it soon became evident I’d never get there. (Which is when we made the sane decision that if I was going to be an underpaid secretary but in reality an overworked translator, I might as well try to get published. Which worked. Eventually. Still underpaid, but at least doing something I loved and able to do the housekeeping, since I worked from home and not 16 to 18 hours in an office.) But a lot of people my generation, particularly those with the type of degree I had, literally never made it.

Academics? By the time we came in, someone else had the tenure and we were only 10 years younger. A lot of my peers are still underpaid “lecturers” or contract lecturers. And I mean UNDERPAID. They make less than I did in the years my writing crashed and nothing got published. … A lot of people with humanities degrees became programmers. Heck, for a while there everyone was programing, it seemed. Then it receded and a lot of the next wave got stuck in retail hell. And a lot of us do non-standard things, mostly running small businesses and trying to get by.

How much of this is unchecked immigration and importing a foreign workforce while Americans have to scramble, I don’t know.

But I know that a lot of it is how fast things change and have changed. Most of our friends not only aren’t working at the thing they trained for in college, but they never even started working there. (I worked in the field I trained for for maybe a total two years of a 41 year working life. Eh. I found out I didn’t like it much.)

It’s not even those with humanities degrees. It’s everyone. Including those with highly specific training. The average is a new career every fifteen years, sometimes in fields so different it makes your had sping.

We’re now starting to talk retirement. It’s not real. I mean, I don’t think either of us can “retire” in the traditional sense. For one, we come from looong lived lines. Yeah, perhaps we’ll be the exceptions, but if we’re not, we’re around and probably compus mentis and capable of looking after ourselves (however creakily) for another thirty five years or so. And that’s way too long to take a vacation. For another the money won’t extend and no, neither of us trusts social security. We’re frankly surprised it’s still around. For a third, we’d go insane. My dad’s first retirement lasted six months, and then he went back to work as a contractor, because he was bored. So, it’s not “real” but there’s the idea of “retiring” and working at other stuff. Oh, oh, not me. Don’t panic. This is pretty much my retirement job. No. But Dan being free of the nine-to-whenever (we had dinner two hours ago, it’s eleven at night) is an exciting idea. It would make our lives more flexible. We’ll probably still work too much and eventually go with our hands on the keyboard.

But– what I meant was — we’re kind of contemplating one of those transitions. At our age. When in the past most people were really retiring. That’s the other catastrophic innovation: people living longer. It hits everything from our politics, to our marriages to… well the job market.

If I could convey a thing to those of you who are younger, it’s this: yeah, it’s … very complicated right now. There are no guarantees. But there have been no guarantees, ever, save for one brief shining moment after WWII for Americans, and honestly you don’t want that, because it means the rest of the world is in rubble. But other than that, the times and places when there were “guaranteed jobs for life” and you could work just one thing and be secure came with ideas of vassalage and patronage, of caste and rigid social structures.

And I don’t mean rules for dating. I mean “you’ll be a tailor, because your father was a tailor, and we don’t care you hate sewing.” I mean “who do you think you are to write poetry, when your father is a farmer.” This is not natural in America, but it is in Europe, and it was secure. And strangling.

So, you’re going to have many spicy times in your life, when one job disappears, and you don’t know what comes next.

I’m not going to give you the boomer “if you eat at home and never take an uber ride, you’ll have three million in your retirement account by the time you’re my age.” That’s not true. you know that’s not true. Or at least it was never true for us, and I doubt it is for anyone else.

And I’m not going to tell you if you work hard and do the right thing you’ll never go hungry. You will. You’ll also scare yourself to death at times. (A handful of flour, a mushroom and an egg in the fridge. And two days till paycheck.) And I’m not going to tell you to deny yourself all luxuries, and stick to a strict budget. My parents managed that for a while, but I’ll say their temptations were smaller, too. If you try to live by denying yourself everything fun, at some point you’ll lose your mind and blow your entire pay check on lottery tickets, or lucky charms cereal or a glorious outfit you’ll never have a chance to wear anywhere. In fact, I’m going to pass on Robert A. Heinlein’s dictum because it worked for us: when things are very tight, budget luxuries FIRST. Now depending on how tight things are, the luxuries change. If you’re medium tight, then a date night a week to somewhere mid-price is fine. But if you’re really on the edge of ruin… well, we’ll just say when Village Inn had free Pie on Wednesdays (I THINK) we would go and have a glass of milk each, and a slice of free pie, and it was the nicest thing EVER.

What I’m going to say is the way there is a mess, but some of the old things still work. You’ll be better off if you get married and stay married. I suspect this is because you don’t face those sudden upheavals alone, and two people climbing up the ice wall by their bleeding fingernails can at least help each other. Have kids, if you can. Look, it gives you something to fight for. Yeah, it will bring you to times of one egg, a handful of flour and a mushroom, but note that happened only once. Because you scramble harder when it’s not just for you. And besides, it truly is the best thing you’ll ever do. (Trust me.)

Scramble. Scramble really hard. Yes, you’ll find yourself in the outer darkness at times, but if you scramble like hell, instead of laying down and dying, something eventually gives.

And on the catastrophic innovation thing? be flexible. I don’t know how to tell you HOW to be flexible. We’re still coping with this ourselves, every day, but just be flexible. Okay, so this thing you’ve done for fifteen years is gone. What can you do with what you learned?

In fact, if you’re young enough this matters: right now I don’t advise going to college. Look, it’s a temporary thing. Some form of “formation” will come back. but right now it would be expensive and stupid. But don’t wed yourself to a manual skilled profession either. Sure, sure, we have a shortage (kind of. That too has a lot of competition from “immigrants”.) and it pays well, and… but I hate the idea that you’re going to confine yourself to manual labor for the rest of your life whether you want to or not.

Perhaps society is incapable of anything but rigid prescription “EVERYONE TO COLLEGE” then “EVERYONE TO TRADE SCHOOL.” Then–

I’m going to tell you, yeah, learn what you have to to earn enough to support yourself and the family you’ll hopefully have. But stay flexible. Keep learning. In your trade? Maybe, or in something else.

The technology that is destroying established fields is creating other fields. Read widely enough to be aware of what those are and find a path. Heck, pave one if you have to.

And if colleges come back in some usable form, and going to one is germane to what you want to do, do that too.

Just don’t think you’re going to do one thing for the rest of your life. Don’t marry yourself to that. it will leave you broken when it fails, and it’s not worth it.

Yeah, I’ve had mostly ONE career but it sure doesn’t feel like it. And trying to wed myself for ten years to one part of it almost killed me when that failed. Don’t do that. Stay flexible.

Stay ready to jump.

Remember when the Titanic sank, one of the survivors was floating on the grand piano. There’s always a grand piano. (Or the cook who was so drunk he didn’t get hypothermia.)

Most of all — look, I remember being young. It was just yesterday. Everything feels so urgent. Every defeat is crushing. Every victory is forever. A year short on funds is the end of the world. A relationship that failed and you’re going to be alone forever.

It’s not like that. The future is a very long time. And people are living longer all the time. And in that time there’s space for a lot of reverses of future.

If you want rules: Deal plainly; work honestly; learn as much as you can when and where you can; be ready to decamp at the change of a circumstance and find another job, another place; and keep at it. Don’t give up. The future is a very long time, and it contains good times as well as bad.

When your heart breaks, make a new heart out of your gut, and go on.

Yes, you live in confusing times. Yes, things are screwed up. But before you say my generation screwed it up, ask yourself how much control you have over the screwedness of the world for the next generation. You don’t. It’s a vast, chaotic system. Blaming others is satisfying but futile. And loses you people who might lend a hand.

Look we lived in confusing times too, every generation does. Maybe not times that change as fast. But that’s both good and bad. There’s hope — and wealth — in change.

So, on the count of three, step off the sinking ship and onto the grand piano. It’s an adventure. And if you don’t give up, you won’t sink.

Look at it as a game. Don’t let the future defeat you.

148 thoughts on “Living With Catastrophic Innovation”

  1. I was wondering if you’d seen that mess. Todd and I spent a fair bit of time talking about how out of touch it was on TwitX, noting it’s not doing anything to help bridge communication and other gaps between men and women – something neither of us is sure how to do safely for both ends. Also that if the story of the original poster meeting his wife through friends was true that’s what he should be paying forward, to borrow from Heinlein again, not doing a Damn Kids These Days dunk. You did this a hell of a lot better.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. And a bit late but yeah some of the ladies I worry about most do have that weird innocence to them, too, now that I think about it, particularly those with some visible ’tism to them. Which I can’t honestly see as a bad thing having a good bit of it myself of course.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I’m not really surprised about the innocence. Believe it or not, I think the Cornell incident that just blew up is a perfect example of that.

        1.) From what I’ve heard, texts from the girl seem to suggest that she liked one of the guys in the fraternity.

        2.) I’m confident that she didn’t expect her social credit on campus to plummet from what she did that night.

        I suspect that she was there that night because she wanted to get closer with a guy she liked, someone suggested the night’s activity, and she innocently agreed thinking that it would make the guy like her more.

        (note that people have also speculated that she was using a particular drug liked by wight lifters that increases both muscle growth… and libido)

        The loud part of society is busy telling young men and young women that it’s not just okay, it’s actually good to have lots and lots of sex with many different partners. And don’t just do boring missionary. Some universities (I don’t know whether Cornell is one of them) will even have an annual “fair” of sorts in which they invite “adult video performers” to talk to the student body, explain all sorts of stuff related to their on-screen performance, and encourage the kids to have lots of sex.

        So, yeah. Innocence doesn’t surprise me. The loudest part of society is telling people not to be a prude, and in many cases it’s hitting them the hardest right when they’re suddenly in a position to take responsibility for themselves.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. Being called a “prude”, is not new. (Might of dug in my heels and said: “Yep! And?” … This was the ’70s; both HS and college.)

          Liked by 3 people

        2. Some of that I’d heard about Cornell, some I hadn’t, so I’ll reserve judgment about what is and isn’t true in that case for now. The fact that I’m seeing more anger about it, and Shane Gillis, in what I’d call the normie spaces I check in on is a little worrying, though. AI related topics, too, but anyway. But what I do see is at least an attempt by some women who’ve been through a lot to hold onto hope for a happy lifetime marriage even if they’re not sure how to get there. It’s definitely not helped by the bad messaging that you mentioned about sex and other things. One of the ladies I worry about most seems stuck between what you’d call cool kids/high status things that are hurting her and things that, on some level, she knows would be fulfilling but would diminish her status, though I only have a few hints as to what those might be. And that’s all I can get into for purposes of maintaining what flimsy opsec I have.

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    2. Todd and I spent a fair bit of time talking about how out of touch it was on TwitX, noting it’s not doing anything to help bridge communication and other gaps between men and women

      That’s not what it’s for.
      People don’t interact with nice useful wholesome content that reduces drama and misunderstanding.
      So the algorithm shows them more of what they do interact with, which is crazy THOTS and PUAs and other outrageous content which is designed to inflame resentment and raise the heartrate.

      They don’t see the non-crazy of either sex, so they think that the crazy is all there is.

      Liked by 5 people

      1. All of that, which is why things are such a mess. The sort of thing that would be helpful involves hard work and no attention so we get crap like this taking up space. And what does it say that the useful, wholesome content, at least some degree, is a genderflipped Draco Malfoy playing to anime/manga tsundere tropes these days?

        Liked by 1 person

    3. It begins with ditching the Sh!te that y’all got told…just like Sarah said to you.

      The whole notion that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle has permeated and they may not claim that they believe this, but it’s in the back of their heads…it’s indoctrinated madness. Hints on HOW you can fix is simply can be seen if you stop to catalog your biological imperatives and own you CANNOT change them. Not really. You can adjust the gain on them somewhat, but you’re not changing them or ridding yourselves of them.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. By the same token, patronizing the minority who genuinely aren’t wired for partnership or parentage that they just don’t know themselves will only end in tears. Just fewer tears than trying to convince the majority that they aren’t wired the way they’re wired.

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      2. Based on the recent several testimonials by aging feminist icons, apparently some large fraction of fish wants a bicycle quite deeply, and desperately misses not having acquired one back in the day when they were lying around everywhere, with nary a bike lock in sight, once their personal sun is dipping towards twilight.

        Liked by 3 people

      3. The whole notion that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle has permeated and they may not claim that they believe this, but it’s in the back of their heads…

        “They” includes the guys.

        A chunk of whom decide this means that being a user is not just acceptable, but good, and anyone or any thing which imposes a consequence for obviously stupid behavior is Totally Mean And Evil.

        I’m not sure, yet, if this is a deliberate enemy action along the lines of ‘how dare you not walk down dark alleys while drunk’ or simply “motivated reasoning”.

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    3. I’m not retired, but I, too, almost never have a day off. Kind of the result of the Vocation I’m in.

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  4. relying on that stupid survey and even stupider influencers saying that if you aren’t six feet tall and making six figures don’t call them.

    You left out the third and most demeaning requirement: he must have an at least 6 inch “endowment”. How you are supposed to find this out is left to the reader’s imagination, but it involves a successful seduction on someone’s part, followed by justifyingly leaving him, and then any further contact on his part justifies a “sexual harassment” complaint.

    And since our current legal environment rewards false accusations in multiple fields with career destruction at best, it’s best not to risk it.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. My understanding is that a *lot* of the women using dating apps are quite willing to have sex with their matches on the first date. So, yeah, they’ll find out whether or not he’s really 6″ under there pretty quick.

      Of course, the usual disclaimers apply – chances of the average male app user actually scoring that first date to begin with are fairly low, as there is a four to one (or worse) ratio of guys to girls on the apps, meaning that the women get a lot more discretion in who they pick than the guys do. Or to put it another way, the top 10% of the guys probably get 90% of the dates. And with those kinds of odds, if a top 10% guy is staying on the app for more than a month, then he’s probably not looking for someone to settle down with.

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      1. Not helped by, and I have to credit Herb for this observation if he’s still involved or lurking here, them being defective for their stated purpose by design. Two people finding their Happily Ever After (with occasional thrown chairs *nods to Sarah and Chesterton*) isn’t Mission Accomplished. It’s money lost. Herb focused on the subscriptions they rely on but personally I can’t rule out the Evil Twins of Adtech (eyes on ads and data mining to sell) as at least as much of a factor. Either way the only kind of engagement that benefits them is engagement with the app no matter what Hinge’s marketing tells you about it being designed for deletion. So what’s going to keep the cash flowing other than monkey games, catfishing, scams, and cheap, meaningless hookups?

        Liked by 1 person

      2. The videos the six six six stuff comes from are also where the “he needs to spend at least [BIG AMOUNT]” stuff comes from.

        I am still side-eyeing the guys who object to all this nonsense, but not to “no, sex isn’t on the first date, that’s for when we’re one.”

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Regardless of where six-six-six comes from, it seems to be pretty widespread in profiles. A while back I mentioned the reporter that created a male profile on one of the apps (this was a few years ago), and apparently found it in a disturbing number of profiles. The article she wrote afterwards was pretty downbeat about the app experience for guys.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I remember that article.

            It was the no-strings hookup for sex app.

            That is, one where any profiles on at all should be somewhat disturbing, regardless of content.

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      3. There is also a major question of how many of the women on the aps even exist, and how many of the women on the videos are doing nonsense like the Tate brothers and lying (while making themselves dead broke) to look cool.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I definitely don’t have your research skills but there was chatter about employees at sites like PoF 12-ish years ago getting caught making fake, primarily female profiles to keep men in particular engaged, though I don’t recall any articles offhand. From my own experience back then, I do recall seeing multiple profiles with different details but pictures of the same woman. I’m not sure if it was a scammer (I figure I’d have gotten at least some badly mangled English contact if it was) or an employee doing this but the latter makes more sense. As for making themselves dead broke to look good… *Sighs in the aforementioned lady I worry about most having a bad habit of this*

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      1. 6″ might be limited to the dating apps, which seem to be full of a lot more “open to sex on the first date” women than the population in general.

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      1. Notably vs. the other definition, six feet/six figures/six pack is all theoretically verifiable before the young lady using such standards has to commit to any activities of note.

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        1. 6 figures usually requires a bit of a leap of faith, unless he shows the woman his tax return before their first date.

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          1. There’s a difference between 6 figures of spending and 6 figures of income. Whole lotta idiots do the first without the second to look rich while drowning in debt.

            I’m not rich but I’ve got money in the bank, positive cash flow and no debt other than a small mortgage.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I have been told by the salesguy who sold a buddy his Lotus a few decades back, and I saw a recent YT vid saying the same thing is still the case, that the majority of people buying Lambos or Ferraris or other extremely high flash cars are often quite effectively broke, living more paycheck-to-paycheck than the paycheck loan crowd.

              For young ladies doing visual credit evaluations, it should be noted that ‘making the payments so far’ is not remotely a good-enough data point. It does not matter how much you make if your spend more.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Which is why the 6-6-6 thing is on hookup networks.

                She doesn’t get anything long-term out of it, so someone who spends like that is a “good” choice.

                [yes, I’m gagging]

                Liked by 1 person

  5. “~but marriage, when and where I grew up was very discredited. It was after all “just a piece of paper” and didn’t make any difference.”

    I tried telling the auto dealer basically the same thing. But they still wouldn’t give me the keys on an undocumented understanding.

    Liked by 5 people

  6. Yeah, a lot of twists & turns in the road of life. My wife and I have both been through several changes of career path over the years. I got lucky and managed to spend a good part of it doing something I really enjoyed, many aren’t so fortunate. We are retired now, lucky to have some good investments and taking social Security (at least so long as it lasts, we certainly put enough into that government ponzi scheme, going to take whatever we can get back). I also have time to do as a hobby what I once did as a job, working the antique arms collector shows for a little extra.

    As to personal relationships my wife and I met through a cousins wife who wanted to play matchmaker (and it actually worked!). Our daughter has had trouble maintaining a relationship sadly but our son met his wife in high school. They both played in marching band (from two rival schools), met at band contests and have been together for over 15 years. Its hard for young people when so much of society seems to push bad ideas on them. Hoping for the best for our grandkids, they seem to be pretty adaptable and level headed youngsters.

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  7. If you’re going to work in STEM, you’re going to need some professional training. You may be able to learn basic circuit theory or Chem there, but Physical Chem, Electromagnetic Field Theory, Complex Analysis, and advanced Fluid Dynamics require four years of study for most of us. Community colleges probably won’t get you very far unless you get lucky.

    Residential colleges are, quite simply, out. On-line universities can help, but lab courses will be a b*tch unless you work by computer simulation. For fields like Chem where lab work is an essential part of the practice, that’s a problem.

    My advice at this time would be on-line learning, but pay attention to what kind of homework and project feedback you get. That can be critical in getting you over the rough spots.

    I suspect Law has its own, similar barriers.

    And, for the love of the Civilization that made you and the virtue of Gratitude, get some decent Western Civ and good History in there. Thumos, baby!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I suspect Law has its own, similar barriers.

      I’m not sure that’s true. Several states allow you to take the bar exam without actually graduating law school. Per Grok:

      California, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington are the only U.S. states that currently allow qualification for the bar exam through a structured legal apprenticeship (“reading the law” or law office study) with no law school attendance required.

      A few additional states allow a combination of partial formal law school study plus law office study: New York, Maine.

      I can see an AI tutor being sufficient…. once they cure the fake case citations issue.

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      2. Yeah, Reading the Law was a traditional way to qualify for the Bar up until recently. President Coolidge is an example of someone who obtained his law license that way.

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        2. As did President Lincoln.

          The term “Reading for the Law” is still in use, and apparently still is possible in several states to qualify for the Bar exam via reading and apprenticeship.

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      3. Note which route noted the obviously most excellent intellect Kammy took here in the formerly golden state. Sure she took two tries to pass after finishing her degree, but she did eventually pass the Bar.

        With grade inflation so rampant, giving the law school the money and showing up may be sufficient for the degree these days. Passing the Bar exam remains a barrier.

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      4. As an anecdotal data point, I have been told by lawyers who are pilots that the amount of stuff to memorize is roughly comparable between the Bar exam and the FAA tests for private pilot plus instrument rating.

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    3. Law does not need to be a graduate level degree. The only purpose a BA serves is to ensure you can study and presumably communicate fluently. (Though I will note that I saw a remedial extra-curricular writing class that included things like SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT!)

      Law school has traditionally taught “thinking like a lawyer” — how to drill down to the relevant facts and ignore emotional extraneous information. In doing this, you learn, not your local state criminal law, but the model penal code. You don’t learn your state’s civil rules and case law, but the UCC and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. I’d analogize it to a medical school without internships or residency, but I’m pretty sure medical school bothers to teach about human diseases, not just the ailments affecting all the great apes. Meanwhile, I could have paid off my tuition with a dollar every time a professor said “Don’t worry about how to do this; your first job will teach you.”

      An apprenticeship model would result in attorneys that actually have the ability to practice after finishing their training.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Software engineer in the ai era might go that way too although it hasn’t happened yet.The senior engineer helping interview and train up an assistant who will eventually succeed him as software architect and Ai wrangler, while the senior engineer uses the ai as a sounding board to figure out how to explain things articulate with the noob.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. I spoke with someone who graduated a couple of years before I did, perfect GPA on an engineering degree, and went to medical school. He was overwhelmed by the sheer amount he had to memorize–his word was “stuffed”. It can’t have gotten better in the years since, with more drugs added to the formularies, deeper und broader understanding of how drugs work, deeper understanding of the mechanisms of the human body, new things to test for, &c, &c, &c.

          I just don’t see how you can turn it into an apprenticeship. It used to be something like an apprenticeship, back before WWII. It’s become something else. Some of that change has been necessary. Some has been bad. But I don’t think it’s possible to go back.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. He was overwhelmed by the sheer amount he had to memorize

            Which is something that an AI can actually handle for you.

            Like

          1. One year accelerated medical training based on WWII crash medical school model. One year rotating clinical training seeing patients semi independently by the end then it’s off to your first job and a lot of OJT. Better hope you get in with a good MD practice who’s willing to mentor you while building experience.

            Liked by 2 people

                  1. Impossible!!!! 😱😱😱😱

                    No, I was thinking do the one year of book learning for a PA and then just call the practicum “internship/residency” since my understanding is that’s what they are anyway.

                    Like

                    2. Which would also reduce the need to put the poor residents through such insane, overwhelming 90-hour work weeks.

                      “But it’s to prepare them for the insane hours they’ll face after they graduate!”

                      Which also wouldn’t be necessary if the number of doctors and nurses wasn’t arbitrarily restricted.

                      What American medicine really needs is more. More doctors, more nurses, more hospitals, more operating rooms…make keeping people alive and healthy profitable, and let the free market determine how many more are needed. Stop letting bureaucrats tell doctors how to practice medicine.

                      The system as it is now is unsustainable. Doctors spend 6 to 8 years in medical school piling up exorbitant debts, fight tooth and nail for the few intern/resident slots that are allocated, and then need to make half a $million a year to pay off those debts if they can find a job opening.

                      Turning it all over to the government à la B.S. Bernie would just make the situation a dozen times worse.

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                    3. poor residents through such insane, overwhelming 90-hour work weeks. — for FOUR years. For a little more than 50k a year. Yes. But “Doctors and lawyers must pay more!” Except for the debt and TEN YEARS OF NOT REALLY EARNING.

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                    5. How many people die unnecessarily because the doctors and nurses are constantly run on the ragged edge of collapse? We already know thousands die just because they can’t get scheduled for treatment in time, and that’s here in America. It’s a hundred times worse in Britain and Canuckistan.

                      Hordes of Canadians cross the border to pay for American medical services rather than rely on their ‘Free!’ government health care. Which ain’t so ‘free’ if you’ve got an expensive chronic condition. But, hey, there’s no waiting list for ‘MAID’. 😡

                      Like

                2. Because if it’s “Find some random guy in practice” it cuts off the “have random bastards do two and a half times the legal standard of work.”

                  Right now , the abuse rests on “there is no other option.”

                  Seriously, my mom was a functional veterinarian, while being a mom, an teacher, and a bus driver, plus side jobs.

                  Like

              2. I don’t disagree, those first couple years on the job as a PA were rough, especially because I did not have good mentorship but was thrown in at the deep end with a “supervising physician” who was remote (and in one notable case whom I never met). Had I not had a lot of years as an Army medic prior, I’d have been desperately lost in the sauce. I love what I do, and these days I’m the SME, even for some of the MDs in my office, but it was a rough start.

                Liked by 1 person

      3. Law is and undergraduate degree. They changed the LLB to JD AND NOTHING ELSE. the second degree I. law is still the LLM, not the LLD. Making you go for a BA first is just restraint of trade.

        Medicine and Law are Bachelor’s degrees everywhere but here. In most common law countries still, no degree is necessary and law is still taught by apprenticeship. Less than before, but it’s still there. becoming a barrister is entirely by apprenticeship. MY cousin is a. BMED in Ireland and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons so he’s a mister, which is higher than Doctor. All very complicated.

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      1. VERY serious abuse. I made a sub-career out of un-pooching the messes they made with those H1Bs… Products hopeless mired in unusable states because they thought they could save a nickel and ended up paying me a quarter for every dime they thought they saved.

        Liked by 1 person

    5. OK, partial agreement. Setting the way-back to Get Off My Lawn, my first two years studying for a BSEE entailed 5 lab courses. Chem 101 and 102 (the latter mostly organic), Physics 106, 7, and 8 all had labs, as did EE100 (essentially, “this is a voltmeter, that’s an oscilloscope, that’s a signal generator, here’s how to use them).

      Advanced classes may or may not have had labs. I took a semi-advanced Astro course, and did navigation work, as well as (attempting) to get star images in the on-campus observatory–which was a bust; heat was on in the rest of the building and stars were a blur. That telescope is long retired; not sure what’s replaced it on campus. My SWAG would be a decent portable, ignoring the observatory.

      The semiconductor fab courses were lab oriented (one basic ICs, the other hybrids), using long-retired pro equipment. (The grad students had access to state of the art stuff, bearing in mind that SotA in 1974 wasn’t impressive by current standards.)

      For the Civilization stuff, I endured two semesters of Sociology, with the main effect that I named our gas grill Max, since it is a Weber. History would have been more useful, but the Soc and Psych mafia got there first.

      I’d guess that a reasonable start for a STEM degree could be done at a decent (if it exists) junior college, with non-lab courses on line. My grad work (about 12 years after my BS) had some “lab” stuff, but these were projects I could do on company premises, with some materials from the company and others from now-extinct local suppliers (may Fry’s rest in peace, along with Quement Electronics).

      Like

      1. From the slightly later “get off my lawn” generation, but … We had labs for chemistry, physics, and almost every single forestry class. Lucky in that the college I attended we could have the labs at the same time as the class. The school forest is just outside of town. A few field trips on Saturday to the State forests, but not many. Made it difficult to schedule other classes, because those labs were 3 – 5 hours out of your Tuesday or Thursday. OTOH left summers free to work in the field if you were lucky enough to get seasonal work (a lot on fire or logging crews). Most other programs, including the Washington and California colleges, school of forestry, were not that lucky. Labs were away camps during the summer.

        Second round? No lab periods. There was a “computer lab”, that one could use for class assignments. But you could also use your own computer, or an employers should you have one. I could do either, if I could get a bootleg copy of whatever development tool was being used (not hard, not in the ’80s). Sure could not afford to purchase a copy. The Apple Mac version was given out in class. Not so much the Apple *IIe or IBM DOS versions.

        (*) Not 100% true. Community collect section had Apple IIe labs so then I could get appropriate tool copies. University labs were Mac labs, so had to work harder to get appropriate copies.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. “I don’t pick anything up by context. I kind of need to be told.” You just described ¾ of the male population. Hints don’t work for us, spell it the hell out, or don’t be surprised when we don’t get it. However, you missed one major enemy of the nuclear family, probably because you were still in Portugal when it started. See if you needed to be on the dole, as a single mother, you couldn’t have a man in the picture. To the point that they would come and inspect so see if there was a man staying there, and being found with a set of male skivies was enough to take you off the program. Guys that were struggling themselves, did the honorable thing, and bailed so that the woman and kid could get enough money from the state to keep body and soul together… and that started the pattern. El B.J. Has a whole lot of evil to answer for with his “Great Society.”

    “Retiring” Heh, Yeah, I did that… Three times. USN retired. BPD retired. Puget Sound Naval Shipyard retired. So now I own a farm and continue to write. Retirement just doesn’t stick for some people.

    As for career advice, the best I can offer is find something to do that you like, or at least can tolerate, that is hard to outsource offshore and hard to completely automate. Cooking at a burger joint is very automatable… Cooking at a good restaurant? Not so much. Electrician? Damn hard to automate. Same goes for plumber and auto mechanic, hell Robot mechanic… Anything requiring creativity? Hard to automate, if you can find a niche that pays. Yes AI art… But it still requires the prompts, and the eye that says “that’s not what I want, lets’ try this.” Writing? Well if you can be entertaining enough to get people to pay to read your shlock, it’s still a paying gig, maybe not all by itself, but it brings in “play” money, so you can have some luxuries.

    V/R William Lehman ________________________________

    Liked by 3 people

    1. We tell the women over and over and over and over again that we’re clueless. But do they ever believe us?

      No…

      One amusing thing that’s come out of the recent dating arguments on X is that someone posted a sample invitation for a woman to use to invite a guy out for coffee. It explicitly states *twice* (iirc) that the invitation is for a date. And most of the guys who looked at it agreed that, all other things being equal, they’d accept that invitation. Some of them even said that it was romantic.

      Over the past few weeks I’ve mentioned on X the old “woman gets the guy to think it was his idea to ask her out” strategy. But I don’t think most women these days are able to do that. It’s not a slam on women so much as it is against society in general that isn’t properly training women on how to interact with guys (as well as telling guys that nearly everything that they do when trying to ask a girl out is borderline sexual harassment).

      Liked by 6 people

      2. “We tell the women over and over and over and over again that we’re clueless.”

        Who, then, is the more clueless: Those clueless with sufficient self knowledge who so openly profess, or those who disregard said professions?

        Liked by 3 people

      3. That was a very cute post. “No, make it more obvious than that.”

        It’s not a blanket solution to the dating problem, but the girl very clearly asking the guy is a great way to get over the hump for near-couples.

        Like

  11. Don’t forget the ‘minimum wage’ laws that price entry-level jobs beyond the reach of your hypothetical 18 year old U.S. citizen with zero work experience. (Also barely able to read and do simple arithmetic thanks to the Dept. of Education)

    Shady companies solve the problem from their end by ‘unofficially’ hiring illegal aliens and paying them crap wages. Like Tyson Foods, which closed their processing plant in Perry, Iowa, put 1,300 Americans out of work, and replaced them with illegal aliens in other states. Because it’s hard (and risky) to hire illegal aliens in Iowa. I’m careful to avoid anything made by Tyson.

    Liked by 7 people

    1. Michigan regularly upped the minimum wage and added other costs and all the high school kids who worked summer jobs, now don’t have those jobs.
      (years back, one year to the next cost $20,000 per employee for my Aunt and Uncles Ice Cream shop/Deli. Yeah, it became the 2 of them working all open hours. The 4 to 6 kids and the Manager all had to go or go bankrupt)

      Liked by 2 people

          1. I saw (somewhere on the ‘net) that fast food kiosks were starting to disappear. My dietary restrictions make walking into McDs or equivalent a rare thing, but as a retired techie and obstinate SOB, I refuse to use the McD kiosk. ‘Sides, dealing with a person at the store helps to get my Minimum Weekly Human Interaction numbers to the Approved level. (Kidding. Mostly.)
            (Costco has the kiosks, but the only time I looked for a “bunless hotdog”, it drew a blank. Nope. Hotdogs with dire-to-me wrappers will not get purchased.)

            And yes, I’ll skip the self-checkout at the grocery store. Will use it at Home Desperate, because they have minimal checkers, mostly for the pro/materials lines.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. RCPete said

              I saw (somewhere on the ‘net) that fast food kiosks were starting to disappear.

              At least here in Massachusetts (with minimum wage Laws nearly as insane as California) kiosks are de rigeur in MacDonald’s. There is usually one person taking human orders, in between moving bags to the pickup spot and dropping and pulling the cooking fries. You’ll wait a LONG time for service if you don’t use the Kiosks (like 10+ minutes) and the accuracy of the order is poor. And even the layout of McDonald’s is changing, there isn’t a row of registers to have a large number of order takers usually only counter space for a single register, with the rest of the counter space closed off by a wall or a counter with a large group of slots for the orders. That they remodeled away the ability for multiple order takers hints they don’t expect that to come back soon if ever.

              This seems less common at other burger joints, though they lean hard into app ordering like some other fast-food places (e.g., Chipotle, Starbucks, Dunkin’), and drive-through kiosks are becoming common.

              The only heavy user of humans in fast food is Chick-fil-A. Their drive-through layouts are the epitome of efficiency, handling 3-5 times the traffic that a McDonald’s handles, with wait times well under 5 minutes from entering the line to leaving with your order. I think their system would be in trouble if their demand wasn’t so high, it uses A LOT of folks outdoors 4-7, depending on the time of day and how busy it is.

              Like

            2. I order a regular hotdog at Costco, kiosk or human, then sidle to the counter and ask them for a bunless dog as they are loading mine. They’ll grab a sausage and put it into the bag then give the bunned sausage to a following order.

              Like

            3. We avoid the fast food kiosks too.

              The self checkout? Depends. These days? No. Hey, if Costco employees can make a mistake? This is with all the checking that is done after check out is completed. They sure do not pay me enough to deal with any mistakes I make.

              I know why the mistake was made. Still embarrassing when taking back an item you swore was properly checked out and paid for, only to see the proof that it was not. Only happened once, but it will not happen again. Now I double check the item count too.

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  13. “Gaming groups seem to be a hive of couple formation.”

    LOL! That’s how I met my wife. Wow. Has it been 42 years already? And I know 3 other marriages happened out of that group. And we’re still the only one that lasted. /sigh

    Liked by 3 people

    1. It turns out that when I put in year after year, diligently hiding in my room, I can miss out on a ton of socialization, and some of it is actually important.

      Liked by 3 people

    3. Most of the folks giving advice on how to find an SO are single.

      So… you are providing a valuable service of being able to go “Dude? We’re both single, shut up.”

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Like all the people who publish “how to be an author” books, and all they’ve written is books on how to get published. Um …

        Liked by 2 people

  15. Reinventing every 15 years sounds about right, at least that’s been my experience. I’m doing it right now 43 years after starting out. Fourth time. retirement? Pfui!

    my basic aptitudes and skill set are still the same, adjusted by a lot of experience, what’s changed is exactly how they’re applied.

    Funny enough, all my technical skills, all the math I studied, all the technical finance, are secondary to being able to write a clear, concise five paragraph essay.

    Liked by 2 people

  16. Darn it Sarah, you always do this. I read maybe a third of your post, and I go, “Yeah, I need to tell that story of how Sharon and I ‘met‘”.

    Then I keep reading and start thinking I need to tell how I landed on an unplanned career, but I wrote a whole book about that.

    Then I keep reading and think, “I need to make some comment on how our society has conducted less a war on the family than a war on the young, burdening them with debt for no reason and doing everything to prevent them from ever paying it off.”

    And then theres retirement….

    Aargh! Make it stop, Sarah. Make it stop! :D

    Liked by 2 people

    1. We also used to run into each other on campus at lunch. She would always attract a crowd at her table, and her best friend once commented after she had left, “You know, when either you or Sharon are here, people can have a normal conversation, but when you’re both here together, something happens, and the conversation goes out of control.” That was us.

      :Grins with fond memories:

      That was the Geek Group on ship.

      Any one, it was nothing. Any two, you had a chance. We hit three or more?

      “Who will win, Batman or-“

      Liked by 1 person

  17. Beloved says he’s lousy at retirement. He’s at the table, before we go back to rebuilding a outdoor stairway at a retreat center, trying to answer a client’s tax questions.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. My Dad retired as a lawyer.

      Then he started working as an attorney hired by the state to help poor people with their legal appeals.

      He eventually stopped doing that to take care of my mom.

      Then he started up again after she passed away.

      He doesn’t need the money (afaik), but it helps keep him busy, and he enjoys the work.

      Liked by 2 people

  19. “Yesterday on X I came across what had to be bait — had to be — talking about how girls are not dating and for the boys to be worthy of these girls they had to do all these things.”

    I see these things on PooTube all the time, your Feminist Influencers banging on about how men are scum, your Manoverse dudebros denouncing women as scum, your Christian Influencers decrying the first two and saying the usual nonsense they always say…

    I don’t know what the Lefties say about it because I avoid them like the plague. Ew.

    I have concluded it’s a psy-op. Three-or-more sides having a click-bait war over how hard the current generation have it. Frankly, I remember all the same things from when it was my turn back in the mists of time. Lots of stupid people who didn’t know what they wanted and didn’t deserve it if they did know, the odd gem or gleam of gold here and there.

    Business as usual! It’s deja poo, we’ve seen this sh*t before. ~:D

    Liked by 4 people

  20. “large started late, and came out of high school into the hangover of the Carter economy.“

    –

    High School/College. I think I’ve mentioned a time or two that when we got married and started our first post college careers we started out in debt. Not just our college loan debts, but had to borrow money for moving fuel, rental deposits and rent (first/last/second), a refrigerator (a damaged floor model), and food, until first pay checks arrived.

    How did we meet? Five years of friendship at a college school club. Not just meetings, but club did a number of fund raisers, and educational activities. Groups within the club had sub-groups. Married 48 years come this December.

    Career? I am not the only ’70s/’80s forester who became a programmer/developer. There are a lot of us (not counting the ones who got dual degrees in the ’90s and ongoing). Do not know if I am the only one who went back to school for the additional degree or not. Conversations did not get into that. In a lot of ways, I was lucky with the second career, I was able to stick it out until retirement. Too many, not just former foresters, got nailed by the various .DOT crashes and never recovered.

    Retirement? 100% Both of us. Yes we are taking our SS, started at age 62 (while it lasts). It stretches our own savings. Our only miscalculation was our income during retirement. It was suppose to be “less”. Not so much. Not enough to kick us into a higher tax bracket, yet. But another 2 years, income will go up, again (when my required distribution kicks in, the year I turn 73). Regarding days off? Everyday is a day off; 11 years and not regretting a single day.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Oh. It’s Sunday? Wasn’t yesterday Tuesday? Call it retirement, call it removing myself from the workforce, whatever. The only thing that keeps me moored to any timeline whatsoever is that I attend church on Sunday and supervise the young women on Wednesday.

    I am slowly building a lifestyle that will feed me and remove that expense.

    I work harder now than I ever did with a 9-5.

    Liked by 2 people

  22. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Boomer Twix guy’s advice except for the part about picking up chicks at a yoga class.

    If nothing else, dressing nicely and bringing flowers would have the value of novelty in today’s market.

    … Though the likelihood that most women would have a vase to put the flowers in might make a potted plant or a corsage a better choice.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. No. Bringing flowers creeped the heck out of me. I didn’t know what he wanted. Giving flowers to a girl you’re not dating is crazy cakes.
      Of course, my husband is a mathematician, so uncertain attachment to reality. He thought “Red rose is a symbol of love” if I give her 18 (which is actually what he gave me) she’ll get the point!
      Instead she thought “Does he think I’m easy and I’ll put out for him. ARRRRGH.” And despite having a massive crush on him, I started avoiding him.

      Liked by 2 people

          2. I get the concern, but who would roofie a girl when she’s eating candy at home and he’s not there? Tactically poor planning there, evil guy…

            Liked by 1 person

              1. There’s a known kink of putting … er … bodily secretions, or similar, into food.

                That case of the gradeschool teacher who fed his students … that… in spoons of sugar is probably the best known, but even listening to Idiot Guys you’ll hear about someone teabagging other folks’ bagels or similar.

                Liked by 1 person

      2. Hitting the gamers are unwashed losers stereotype early on was certainly off-putting, too, though unsurprising considering how much shaming of that hobby makes the rounds in those kind of posts. See also Sarah Huckabee Sanders stepping in it with her ad about welfare.

        Like

  23. The old saying “Why buy the cow when the milk is free?” still holds today. Of course, it does lead to some folks having an undesirable reputation, and more so for those that contract an communicable disease that lasts for a lifetime. You play, you pay.

    For some reason, the College degree became equated with a skill that guaranteed a prosperous future, regardless of the degree. It’s ironic that the lowly skilled laborer, such as a plumber, or an HVAC tech can make six figure wages when those with advanced master degrees in some rare subject have little options other than entry level jobs that may only pay minimum wage. It is what it is, and only time will reveal the outcome.

    Like

        1. The “slut shaming” of yesteryear was a check on this. “Sally sleeps with anything that moves, so now the boys are getting ideas, and poor Tammy is too shy to say no, and…” Ostracizing promiscuous women kept men’s worst expectations from getting out of hand.

          Feminism and the internet effectively killed that, and now we’re scrabbling for new rules without much luck. I’m not sure which status quo is better, but we’re clearly missing something to keep the gears of romance turning smoothly.

          Liked by 3 people

          1. And of course that could and did go both ways. “Lord Michael is a cad and a rake, my dear, and you should take no interest in him.”

            Liked by 2 people

  24. “(Or the cook who was so drunk he didn’t get hypothermia.)”

    I didn’t know that O’Malloy guy had been on the Titanic. No wonder the cops didn’t believe he died!

    Liked by 2 people

  25. The easiest way to get women is to have Money and a future. The easiest way to keep a woman is to be her partner and even then its still not a guarantee. That not being a guarantee is supposed to keep you engaged, even then some times it all goes to shit.

    Liked by 2 people

  26. It’s not even those with humanities degrees. It’s everyone. Including those with highly specific training. The average is a new career every fifteen years, sometimes in fields so different it makes your had sping.

    Aero degree from the School of Engineering at state U. Plan C led me to 24 years in semiconductor cubeland at a couple of different companies in different segments of that space, then career jumped to 12 and counting subsequently in hard-to-describe ancillary to health care, but mostly talking to lawyers, which has now wound down to a few hours a month billed these days. I certainly used stuff from my degree and my minor, but more came from figuring it out as I went.

    I think STEM at a carefully selected university setting still has some value, but that selection is vital.

    Liked by 2 people

  27. My friend networks over my life have been tremendously unproductive at matching me with a girlfriend.

    I think instead they’ve been protecting her. :-)

    Liked by 1 person

  28. Weirdest thing, it never worked that way. Apparently most dating has historically started from extended social networks undue matchmaking and supervision from parties interesting in the well-being of both.

    Just looking at my own family:

    My dad’s parents met at a social mixer for paring off the various teenagers.

    My mother’s parents, my Grandma’s coworkers set her up on a date with my Grandpa.

    My parents met at a war gaming club because my mom wanted tor ah along to it with her older brother.

    My uncle, my aunt decided she liked that one and enlisted both the church momfia and the Bishop to set them up. (The Orthodox have a married priesthood, and the Bishop wanted to get my uncle into the priesthood. A married man can become a priest, but a priest becoming married is a much more complicated thing.)

    My brother, his now wife’s sisters decided she was too old to be single and match made her until they found one that worked.

    That’s all the stable marriages in my immediate family. The whole set. Every single one was initiated by an outside social connection, not the guy could approaching a girl who did not know him.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. As I recall, Mom and Dad met through a bicycle club in the city. After Dad died, Mom met Stepdad at a Parents Without Partners group.

      Oldest Brother met his wife-to-be via a blind date arranged by his roommate in college. RM didn’t think it would be a match, but 59 years later, wrong.

      I met $SPOUSE at a commercial get-together outfit that dealt with Russian/Ukrainian brides on the side. (Neither of which were applicable for us. That’s 23 years now.

      Older Brother? 3 marriages (that I know of), at least two medium to long term living together arrangements. First marriage was a high school girlfriend, and she traded him in on an MD two years later. Second lasted 20 year, with the third 2ish. (On-line meetup, and I gather he didn’t stop looking after marriage. Said brother is unique for the family. Sigh.) I don’t talk much with him for multiple reasons.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Mom and dad met because dad followed her in a public place, making joking comments about her clothes to his best friend whom he was walking with. (The fashion was for buttons down the back of the skirt. He was saying either she was very original or couldn’t afford the buttons.) Mom looked over her shoulder, liked what she saw, turned around and said “that’s because my skirt has buttons on the front.”
        Talk about bad choices in ways to meet.
        They were together for 75 years and married for 71 when mom died.
        So, you know….

        Liked by 1 person

      2. My sisters and I are on our single and only marriages. This year it will be, in birth order: 48, 43, and 38, years respectively.

        BIL, hubby’s brother, is on his third wife, she is on her 4th husband. OTOH, they have been married, this time, for *35 years.

        (*) Easy to remember. No children wedding. We had to find someone to take our, then, 2 year old for the weekend (I was NOT happy). For reasons, grandparents, aunts and uncles, not available. But great-uncle, aunt, and cousins, were (their youngest was 3).

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Very oddly, all three ancestors I know the meetings of, were basically from a blank start.

      My folks met at a dance when mom fled the guy her friends were trying to set her up with. (Dumbest person on earth, I think the idea was “She’ll take care of him.” Mom does not do the game of “pretend to be the dumb one” at all.)

      One set of grandparents, he rolled into town as part of a group of roaming 20-somethings, his best friend married a friend of hers, and he was the only guy with the guts to talk to her. (Big lady for the era, and smart, but also sharp tongued and with Class.)

      The other was the kid brother of the electrification team, from the far side of the country, started talking to the reporter-chick interviewing them, and they hit it off. I wish I could’ve seen his response when he figured out who her dad was….

      Liked by 1 person

  31. Regarding career shifts, Scott Adams had the concept of a “talent stack”, a set of skills that build upon one another and open up new opportunities. That seems to be the path forward, as tricky as it can be. You can pivot when one skill stops paying, and you can find weird, useful niches that other people don’t have the right combination of skills for.

    Regarding romance, a certain Jaguar talks about the need for manners and how they help people navigate society. I think she’s right on the mark, but I have no clue which practices would help the current situation. It’s a puzzle.

    Liked by 2 people

  33. My children met their spouses through friends.

    Adult friend groups formed around inexpensive group activities (hiking, board games, church, running) are good for meeting people.

    I’ve been saving this Pew article for a while: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/24/the-never-been-married-are-biggest-users-of-online-dating/

    Louise Perry has made the argument that online dating sites are incentivized to keep users on the sites.

    Liked by 2 people

  34. Just got stopped by something that I did. I bought a silver* backed cameo (probably at the State Fair in October). I’m not sure if planned it when I bought it or not, but I went by my high school crush’s home that December (after we had both finished up our first semester at college—maybe I went home that way?) and to give it to her. I stopped by her father’s office to tell him. (I have no memory of the conversation but it was over four decades ago.) She was still asleep so I just left it.

    Then on Valentines I sent her a dozen roses. She called me up and told me to stop.

    So, yeah. Guys do stuff when they’re stretching out to grasp someone. Sometimes we fall short. Certainly, we don’t think of what she’s going to think; I’m sure I didn’t at 18 or 19.

    *Silver was inexpensive in the ’80s, at least the early eighties.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Dan also made me a pair of skates in ceramic, marked R and L because I was so awful at roller skating. They’re on my desk now, but they were a baffling gift. “Is he making fun of me?”
      …. It took us four years to get together because we were BOTH young and stupid.

      Liked by 1 person

  35. Hi Sarah

    O/T and FYI

    “It’s bots all the way down”

    “Not quite all the way down. But bots seem to be a major part of the traffic of certain people:”

    Matt Tardio (@angertab) ·

    Following Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers:

    Tucker Carlson's views dropped 71%
    Douglas Macgregor's views dropped 62%
    TCN views dropped 34% https://t.co/bzlx2QKUfG pic.twitter.com/ekkReqo33O

    View on X

    https://thenewneo.com/2026/10/14/its-bots-all-the-way-down/

    Via https://instapundit.com/829407/#disqus_thread

    BUT

    DDG Search Assist

    The claims of a drop in Russian bot traffic following Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centers are largely misleading. While there was a significant decrease in automated requests from Yandex’s network, this does not correlate with a reduction in social media bots involved in disinformation campaigns, as those typically operate through different infrastructures.”

    The original article I saw (and can’t find now) pointed out that the claim was from mis-interpreting Yandex internal data.

    Plenty on that with a DDG search using “drop in Russian bot traffic false alarm”

    Like

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