Most of the birds on New Zealand are flightless, because they evolved without natural ground-based predators (they only had threats from birds of prey). Cats’ impact on the avian population is actually pretty dramatic.

Meanwhile, a significant percentage of the islands remains undeveloped. The population of the entire country is only five million, on a landmass larger than the British Isles (population 65m+). Human settlement in NZ is actually pretty light-touch, which is why a ton of movies that need lush outdoor sets are shot there.

What would be a more respectful alternative?

As I understand it, most of that group prefer “Aboriginal Australian.”

That’s really clever. And dumb in exactly the way Silicon Valley would actually do something like this.

It was for me about ten years ago, but because of that brief dalliance, when Microsoft really finally started running toward this particular cliff last year, I was already familiar enough with Linux to be comfortable diving in completely; I don’t have a single Windows install in my house anymore. So it’s not always for nothing.

Given Australia and New Zealand’s proximity to one another on the map, it makes sense to assume that the latter was originally settled by explorers from the former; and, indeed, Aboriginal Australian people can be credibly dated back more than 50,000 years, when they were able to walk to the continent from what is now New Guinea.

But no! There’s no real archaeological sign of Aboriginal Australians (or anyone else) settling on the island that would become New Zealand until the Maori arrived from Polynesia, around 800 years ago.

I didn’t leave out a zero; human habitation on New Zealand has a history of less than a thousand years. In fact, the Maori only beat Europeans to New Zealand (which they called “Aotearoa”) by about 300 years, and archaeological records indicate that they brought invasive species with them, too. They also caused the extinction of at least two bird species before European colonization even began.

Maori are great, great people. But I don’t think that they’ve “proven [themselves] capable of co-existing with the local ecosystem” any more than the European descendants have.

(As a side note, the word “aborigines” in that part of the world carries a potentially problematic connotation. Some Aboriginal Australians see it as a holdover from that country’s colonial era.)

Yeah, we all need people, but none of us need every person.

A couple people have told me that they are just feeling burnt out/depressed/etc

That’s legit. A lot of people are. And when they are, they pull back, which leads to them getting even more depressed. It’s a pretty terrible cycle.

And it really is happening everywhere. There have been a lot of jokes (and rightly so) about the “male loneliness epidemic,” but while it isn’t male-exclusive and it isn’t sexual, there is indeed a loneliness epidemic. Some of it happens because online/social media/parasocial relationships feel like they fill that gap without actually doing so. But it becomes an epidemic because the diminished socialization with one person causes them to socialize less with their own friends, and it spreads like a contagion from there.

I’ve basically just stopped reaching out to anyone at this point.

I’ve talked about this with other people a lot, too, as I’ve gone through my 30s (I turned 40 this year): it really honestly always feels like “I’m the only one reaching out.” Like, it tends to feel that way to everyone I talk to, even the people to whom I feel like I’m the only one reaching out myself.

I think that’s partially for the same reason that teachers say they’re the ones doing all the work to grade students’ homework: teachers have to grade 30 assignments per class, whereas from the students’ perspective it’s “only one assignment, how hard can it be?” Meanwhile, the students themselves have multiple assignments from multiple classes to handle. In the context of this conversation, realize that while the individual touchpoints with a specific person feels like “just one friendship,” they’re trying to maintain several relationships, too. So you get the divided attention of all of your friends, because they’re dividing their attention across of all of their friends, just like you are. So you all feel like you’re shouting into the void, and you all pull back.

But it’s also partially because, in any friend group, the “squeaky wheel gets the grease.” You don’t tend to see a whole lot of outpouring of affection and care over people except when they’re in a dire situation. So if you seem outwardly fine, you might not get much in the way of proactive outreach.

Both of those factors get amplified significantly in the presence of (1) ADHD (I can literally just forget about contacting my friends for weeks) and (2) introversion (if you’re friends with a lot of introverts, they may find that just having your number in their phone feels like a strong friendship and feel no real need to reach out).

This imbalance shows up in a lot of peoples’ friendships. Sometimes it just means that one person is the “planner” of the group and just has to bring everyone else together. That’s an asymmetric friendship in a way, but if that person’s ok with it, then it’s fine. It doesn’t mean that they’re any less loved. That takes communication, and sometimes you just need to start up that conversation.

But it can also mean that you need to find new friends because you no longer fit with your old ones. And that’s also ok! As you grow up and discover what you need, you realize what you’re looking for.

Outside of my work, literally the only people I talk to are my parents, sister, and my girlfriend.

I would recommend joining a club or society or something. Not like a guild, but something that forces a little bit of conversation as a factor of its existence. RPG groups are great for this. If you have a background with a religious group and you’re still on good terms with it, maybe show up to some services. Service groups also can be great for this. You can even tag along with your sister or your girlfriend to one of her groups. Just try to find a way to get that socialization on the calendar so that it happens regularly and you can count on it.

Another option, though this is situational, can be to start a group thread. There’s less weight and difficulty around replying in a group thread, and it can be a place to just send memes or thoughts or pictures of a cool leaf you saw. Be honest and upfront that you want to socialize with people more, and that can end up being helpful. The reason this is situational is that it can help a distantly connected friend group feel more immediate, but it can’t really create a friend group that doesn’t already exist.

I used to have at least 10 people who I could call on a moments notice and all of those people are gone.

If those were people you only talked to at a moment’s notice, that might be the problem. It’s the scheduled, regular interaction that you both need in order to maintain the friendship.

Adult friendships are hard. And it’s a pretty safe bet that the answer to almost any friendship question you have that starts with “am I the only one who…” is almost certainly “no.”

That makes sense. This was probably in the mid-00s or early 10s.

In my city, there’s a guy who owns a local gun store chain. (Or maybe owned—I dunno, he was old in the 90s, he’s probably not around anymore.) He’s locally infamous for his crazy white hair and his creepy chuckle on TV commercials where he says “I don’t wanna make any money, I just love to sell guns. Heh heh heh.”

Anyway, one day I was driving home and I saw him in the flesh. He was driving a pretty expensive convertible, with his distinctive white hair and a vanity plate with his name on it. I pulled up beside him at a stop light, and he looked like the saddest, most depressed person I’ve ever seen. Not in a personal tragedy way, just in a life sucks way.

It’s tough to feel sorry for him. He’s clearly quite rich, and he made that money selling death machines. But that look of being dead inside, on a face I only ever associated with that creepy chuckle, driving a luxury vehicle, has stuck with me.

This sort of thing would’ve made Voyager an all-time great series: just having them sort of accrue crew members and even whole ships as part of their fleet, and rolling back into the Alpha Quadrant with Amelia Earhart as acting Captain of the Equinox and this Hirogen as her security officer, and like two versions of a couple of characters (after the “Deadlock” episode), and Neelix and Tuvok and also Tuvix, and maybe a Borg sphere operated by several of the liberated Borg they came across during the course of the series, and some of the allied ships they hung out with during “Year of Hell”… Honestly, it would’ve made the point about how awesome the Federation is even more poignantly if they kept gathering more and more people who wanted to be a part of it.

Yep. No way Activision’s going to leave an addressable market as big as SteamOS is trying to be just sitting on the table. Especially if Valve puts some incentives behind it.

Sam Altman told reporters at a private dinner in August that investors are “overexcited” about AI models and that “someone” will lose a “phenomenal amount of money.”

That feels almost like taunting.

I’m probably going to be allowing most of my streaming subscriptions to lapse over the next year or two. Gonna stick with Dropout and PBS, but that might be all.

Nah, as I recall he centered his own feelings, dismissed the entire interaction as a “mistake,” and then went on to learn nothing about it at all.

Remember the tech bro who created a female-presenting AI coworker and then immediately sexually harassed it? And then published the interaction online like it was a good thing?

I don’t have any specific recommendations for you, but I will say that

• pretty much every modern Chromebook will be able to have Linux installed over ChromeOS. You might have to open it up and remove a write-protect screw.

• Linux is a surprisingly good platform for games these days, actually. Steam has done a lot of work to get it there.

• If you’re wanting lightweight specs, you’re probably going to find the best bang for your buck in an old Chromebook; however, I don’t know if you’ll see as many of those coming on the market, and you’ll want to watch out for old school devices. Those things get worked over pretty hard.

I think it’s the fact that he has a recognizable username that gives me pause on that, though. For a lot of people, his position is naturally going to afford him some level of deference and authority.

If the people making decisions spent time as normal editors anonymously, I agree definitely that that would be a good way to get to know the community more.

Fair point. Migleemo and Kovich definitely both seem like they’re trying for a Vibe, though.

Looks to me like that link is broken. Must be something going on.

Honestly I kinda feel like “Multiple governments, NGOs, and legal bodies have described or rejected the characterization of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide” sounds more damning than just “Israel perpetrated a genocide.”

Still, Jimbo, you should probably stay out of this. Wikipedia’s whole thing is that no one person is in charge.

Nobody knows that he comes from the 21st century

Wears glasses

I mean, there were some signs.