The part everyone seems to be missing is: I don’t need help conversing, I need to know the locations of like groups of nature loving book readers that actively want to chat and how to find their schedule.

You say this, but you’re also in this thread rejecting advice about how to find people because you don’t want to talk to people that you find that way, and telling a story about how you’ve apparently not followed through with someone who asked you on a date. It sounds like you’re self sabotaging by refusing to try.

Edit: and to be clear, my main point in this line of comments is that people with active friendships tend to have a much easier time finding available potential partners. That’s an active part of the search strategy.

“Friends” beyond the superficial level that is basically natural requires us to not be busy ass 30-somethings.

Generally speaking, for people who don’t even have the time or energy to foster friendships and superficial relationships that are already in their life, it’s gonna be hard to find, evaluate, and build potential romantic relationships.

That’s what meetups and hobby-based activities are for. They’re supposed to be fulfilling enough for the activity alone, with the added social benefit of new friends added on. If you’d be willing to do that for the possibility of meeting new romantic partners but not the possibility of meeting new friends, that’s gonna be a pretty tough sell even to the potential romantic partners, that you’re not really there to make friends.

I suspect the strictness isn’t with the procurement process where a contracting officer defines very specific criteria in compliance with acquisition regulations and submits the process to competitive bids. The strictness is in the mission parameters where NASA’s ownership of the thing has already been established, but the NASA employees in a strict hierarchical decisionmaking process need to justify why a thing that NASA already owns should be included in the packing list on a mission.

Finding romantic and sexual partners is really, really hard for people who are unable to find new friends generally.

It’s a lot easier to meet women to date when you don’t have much trouble talking to women and men you’re not at all interested in dating.

The friend of friend angle remains one of the best filters for finding available partners who might actually be compatible with you. And that pool is a lot bigger when you can get along with people through hobbies and activities, who have already kinda vetted that you’re a good person who is fun to be around.

I’m just realizing from your comment that the pan- in PANTONE is the same as the pan- in pansexual.

Don’t agencies have some kind of de minimis threshold for just running out to the store and buying basic stuff? I thought that’s why the DOGE freeze of government credit cards a few months ago was causing labs to cancel experiments and employees paying out of pocket to feed horses and working dogs.

So the military does have a strict procurement process for rocket fuel, but they generally refuel their civilian vehicles (vans and such) with a government credit card at normal gas stations.

At least that’s how I understand it.

it probably came in a 100 count

A 100-count box seems like an absurdly large unit size. Are you doing the very thing that the anecdote is intended to highlight?

Even if we could get a perfect DNA genome of a dinosaur, how would we go about getting the biological machinery that would’ve converted those blueprints into a living organism?

We can modify the genes of living animals by creating viable zygotes, growing them into viable embryos, and implanting them into living wombs, because we already have a factory that is configured to process blueprints of a very similar type.

We don’t have the ability to rebuild a dinosaur factory, even if we get the dinosaur blueprints again.

My wife and I are really good friends with our neighbors, a couple that are great social complements of each other.

One is an awkward extrovert who loves to socialize but isn’t great at reading social cues, avoids eye contact, tends towards dominating conversations and steering them towards his own preferred topics. He’s legitimately hilarious though, and is a good guy.

His wife is a charismatic introvert. She’s charming, engaging, a great listener, and really funny, too. But she admits that she needs a few days to herself just reading at home and being away from people after every time she socializes with people outside her family. She likes to leave early from social gatherings.

The two of them together make a great team, though. They really do bring out the best in each other, and are a ton of fun to hang out with.

I don’t have an issue with the product. It could be funny in the right context.

I have a problem with the manner it’s marketed. The ad doesn’t say good things about its own product, but instead tries to attack competing products as girly.

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in my local birthing center’s new parent training, and I’ve been involved in numerous home diaper changes, and I have over 300 confirmed formula bottles. I am trained in gorilla binkies and I’m the top “got your nose” player in the entire US playground system. You are nothing to me but just another babysitter. I will put your baby the fuck to naptime with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of nannies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your diaper genie. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can change your diaper in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in one-armed baby wipe retrieval, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the American Association of Pediatrics and I will use it to its full extent to wipe the miserable shit off your baby’s butthole, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.