Libb

Old dude speaking, here:

• if you’re inexperienced like you said you were, you probably should not let some random person pay for everything at least when you first start dating them… They may (I insist, conditional form) quickly come to expect something out of all the money they’re spending with you. Maybe not but I would not take any chance, if I were in your shoes.
• As an old dude (bis) I think I should mention I’m always willing to purchase books for younger people (boys as well as girls), even kids, provided there is no possibility for my gift being misinterpreted as something I certainly do not wish it to be.

I remember composing letters in college, just barely pre-internet. It was a lovely art. Next time I find a book of letter, I’m picking it up.

+1 because I can’t do more :)

I’m a regular contact type of person. This whole thing of “we don’t talk for years but then we have a phone call and catch up” is not for me.

• It needs not be years, it’s just a way of speaking.
• Like anything new, we learn to be good at it. Remember your first bike ride? Mine hurt. How you learned to write? Was it by writing an amazing poem in an not less amazing cursive or was it by clumsily tracing batons letters (and getting them wrong)? Me too ;) Remember how you learned to walk? Was it by running and winning a marathon or by falling, over and over again on your diapered bottom? That’s learning and that’s worth it. Bot saying you should do this or that, just that maybe it’s worth trying even if it’s not that great to start with ;)

being a romantic partner seems to be the only way to be a priority in anyone’s life.

I would say this may not be the ‘right’ way to consider the question. But it’s hard to explain, even more so in English. The aim should not be to be a priority. It should be to be valuable to one another.

I know a few people but I’ve one friend. One, that’s it. We’ve been friend since we were kids (now nearing our 60s). We don’t live in the same country anymore and, naturally since we also both try to reduce our impact on the environment by traveling (a lot) less, we don’t see that often. Also, we both have our life(s), friends, and family. And that’s fine: we seldom meet, we even seldom chat like we used (spending countless night discussing philosophy and politics (we both are complete opposites on that matter) and spending countless hours writing to one another the moment we could not meet IRL anymore) but we are friends. We both know from experience the moment we need it the other will be at our door, virtually our in person depending the situation. To me that’s friendship: we don’t spend a lot more time with many other persons, but that doesn’t change a thing. I mean, we can and have put such or such discussion on hold, sometimes for a year or more and get back to it the moment the opportunity arise like if we had left it the night before…

It is something we learned back in the 80s and 90s, before we had readily available ‘Internet’ and before everybody and their mother switched to email and later on to social networks, back when we had to use snail mail to discuss despite distance and wait for our letter to reach them, and wait even more to receive their response. Not just the two of us, many other people used to do that back then. Being patient and being fine with only getting a few minutes here and there and make the most out of those.

like, I don’t (expect to) spend all my time with my spouse… 34 years and counting together. A liberty we both consider a key part in respecting one another’s. She has friends and activities I can’t be bothered with, like I have mine she can’t be bothered with. And we both are fine with that. We’re a couple but we remain two individuals that will do stuff on their own, including spending time with other people and having fun without their partner.

All of that to say we should be fine not being the constant ‘priority’ of someone we truly care, and appreciate whatever time we can spend together, no matter how little.

What you’re describing i snot friendship. Friendship is a rare thing, like love is rare. What you’re describing is just people you know and enjoy spending time with. Which is fine, btw, it is just not friendship ;)

how long do you think we have until the heat death of the universe?

The universe is not threatened by our heat wave(s) and global warming. If anything, the universe (which is quite larger than our little planet) will die out of cold. Edit: in many, many, (many,) billions years… don’t worry about getting a cold.

I feel we’ll be all dead in a few weeks.

Like all of us, you started dying the day you were born. That is not what should worry you: dying is OK if not great as we’re devised to be replaced by younger people… like we replaced our elderly people.

I am incredibly apprehensive on the high amount of discrete greenhouse effects and carbon footprint emissions polluting the air we breathe

Fear doesn’t help much. What can you and what do you do to help prevent that, is the only question you should ask yourself. It’s the only one my spouse and I are asking ourselves. Because we can’t force people to change, because we don’t decide for everyone else but we’re still allowed to decide for ourselves, we try to make the less stupid choices we can in our everyday live.

Why couldn’t they? Provided they learn to speak and to listen to spoken French. It won’t be easy to begin with but like with anything new, the more you do it the better you get.

As far being of different origins, things aren’t that simple:

• English share a lot of vocabulary with French. Even though of German origin, it also has been influenced a lot by Latin, like French obviously.
• France invaded England a few centuries ago (William the Conqueror was the French Guillaume le Conquérant) and it lasted long enough to have a real impact on the English language.
• To make things even more complicated, the French language itself, the one spoken by the French people is historically linked to the ‘Francs’ population (French is ‘Français’, in French) that, to grossly summarize, invaded Gauls following the final collapse of the Roman Empire, migrating from what is now Germany (very roughly speaking). So is it kinda… German too? but it would take a few more centuries before what we now consider as French language would resemble anything like French. At the very least, I would say it would at least need to wait for Charlemagne (approx 300 years after Clovis) and maybe even for le cardinal de Richelieu (XVII century/ under the rein of Louis XIII) when he founded the Académie Française (still active today) as a way to promote a single & common language through the entire kingdom of France… which up until then (and for a few more centuries, up well into the XXth the French government had to work hard to reduce the usage of regional languages) was filled with countless argots and patois, or dialects as you would say in English.

disagreeing with Reddit policy change, a few years ago. Appreciating Lemmy/Piefed being algorithm-free, and allowing me to filter out whatever content I would consider noise.

For those who lost weight, what was it like for you? Did people start treating you differently?

Yes, I immediately started noticing a change in people… as well as in myself (feeling more confident for the most stupid reason: the way people would look at me). Because the real trick is that it’s not just ‘them’ being weird, it’s us.

I had to reteach myself to behave like I used to but I kept on losing weight (not thin by any mean but not the obese dude I had been for so many years), because that was what I needed to do in order to preserve what remained of my health.