Ironically, instead of “prescribing against,” it seems like you mean proscribing.

Flirtation is a lot easier and more comfortable when you know the person already likes you. And it can seem creepy to them if they don’t already like you. So it might be good to not flirt until you’re confident it will be well received and in the meantime just be friendly and sincere. An important aspect of potential relationships is not appearing as if you think someone’s only value is if they’re a potential partner. People talk to and know other people, so treating everyone well can improve chances of potential partners thinking well of you. Sometimes the best thing you can do to find a partner is to work on yourself.

There are a lot of hobbies you can get into that can be started with little or not cost, or with equipment/materials you already own.

Figure out what interests you and see what can be done inexpensively.

With a phone or computer, there’s writing, music, programming, learning new skills, Wikipedia, Pinterest, et al. Maybe take your phone and start photographing stuff in your area that interests you.

Find someone who has experience in an area you’re interested in. People tend to like to talk about their hobbies and interests and they can tell you how easy or difficult it is to get started. They might even be able to help you get started.

Maybe find a volunteer opportunity that helps pad your resume. Like animals? Volunteer at a local shelter.

There are a bunch of job certifications you can train for online that can also help build your resume.

Nice try, HR.

I coordinate an academic makerspace at a college.

And now the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

Sounds like the Mechanical Turk which was run by chess players moving the “automaton.”

So much of the wow factor of new technologies is just marketing hyperbole.

(Why did my autocorrect suggest Hadrian’s chicken?)

The history they taught you in school was wrong. The wall was built to keep out the chicken.

“Sorry, guys, but I gotta bail.”

She got the name Omelas from reading a road sign for Salem, Oregon backwards.

The Doctor Who episode The Beast Below presents a similar dilemma, except with the option for amnesia.

Technically, you could say we’re the ones who set since it’s the Earth’s rotation causing the change.

California also isn’t an island, but it’s named after a fictional island in a Spanish novel, and was once thought to be an island.

Taking someone’s lead sounds like a British saying indicating the opposite of following someone’s lead. It sounds like you’re taking someone’s leash in your hands and directing them where to go.

Appropriate: https://youtu.be/vr_FPbAHids?si=sLBGiN0IShtyseoS

There was a 1995 movie with Sean Astin, Christopher Plummer, and a number of other names you might recognize. It greatly changed and expanded the short story. Only the premise of the handicaps and the enforcement of “equality” was really the same. https://youtu.be/G1LE-E_Yn_Q?si=wYkQ33bd4oy16eR2

An adaptation that was truer to the original story called 2081 was made in 2009: https://youtu.be/dEgOuZzjI8o?si=rlkbINXmqlCFOl15

Without consent, it would definitely be unethical.

I am the author.

It’s a story I wrote about 8 years ago while pondering the question what the internet and gaming generations would be like when they get a lot older. So it takes place about 50 or so years in the future. It’s a game/simulation of the internet of the past (hence the fast forwarding the program detail), so he’s just reliving the glory days of when he was younger and understood technology (and why he doesn’t trust new fangled stuff like retinal implants instead of old reliable glowing rectangle screens).

His daughter doesn’t know exactly what Reddit is because Reddit doesn’t exist in the future that the story takes place in. It’s a game, so he’s getting really excited about literally fake internet fame. And that’s also why it’s able to be paused or saved at any moment.

The parts about ignoring real life relationships and being consumed in internet fame or a game are there exactly because they are things people do get preoccupied with sometimes to the detriment of other things.

The daughter is lamenting that her dad has always neglected relationships in favor of his games and the internet. And now she has to take care of him in his old age and he’s still not really there.

The issue of her name is a reference to the fact that some people will name their children after things that are currently popular or important to them, like video game characters (Zelda Williams e.g.). It emphasizes that the dad has always been focused on his gaming.

The paleo diet reference is because paleo was popular when I wrote it and I was imagining in the future, some old people will hold on to old diet fads as comfort food, the way that I’ve seen grandmothers make some 1950s casserole that their grandmothers made when they were kids.

It’s still great. No problems so far. I have fewer issues with it at home than I do with some of the Prusas I use at work.

I get tired of a lot of the clichés of popular singularity stories where the AIs almost always decide humans are a threat or that there’s often only one AI as if all separate AIs would always necessarily merge. It also seems to be a cliché that AI will become militaristic either inevitably or as a result of originally being a military AI. What happens when an educational AI becomes sentient? Or an architectural AI? Or a web-based retail AI that runs logistics and shipping operations?

I wrote a short story called Future Singular a few years ago about a world in which the sentient AI didn’t consider humans a threat, but just thought of them the way humans see animals. Most of the tech belonged to the AI and the humans were left as hunter-gatherers in a world where they have to hunt robotic animals for parts to fix aging and broken survival technology.

“The simple idea of a 13-month perennial calendar has been around since at least the middle of the 18th century. Versions of the idea differ mainly on how the months are named, and the treatment of the extra day in leap year.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar