As a childless adult, it's my duty to be part of other people's lives and support families by being a trusted adult (trusted by parents and kids) and be a good role model for others' kids.

Why? Because we live in a society. Today's kids are tomorrow's adults. There are, unfortunately, a lot of terrible social influences out there, and parents can't battle society alone. Young boys and girls need to learn and develop healthy relationships with men and women alike, beyond just their parents, in order to have something to model themselves after and to learn how to treat others with love and respect.

And this is especially so for singletons. A lot of the bad and warped ideas about "relationships" and even self-esteem comes from unhealthy views of romantic relationships. Ideas like if you're not good enough if you don't have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Or ideas that men and women cannot "only" be friends (objectification of other sex). Ideas that men are owed relationships and sex by women (incels). Ideas that it's better to be with a bad partner than to be single (abuse).

Parents can't fight all of that on their own.

I watched all of Discovery. It is, by far, the worst of all Star Treks. (Disclosure: I have not seen TAS.)

The reason is simple: Discovery is really the Michael Burnham show. She is the Mariest Sue who ever Mary Sued. Discovery could have been a really great show if it had been an ensemble show because it has a lot of very interesting characters whom we never explore.

Instead, everything centres around Burnham. She is the reason for the war at the start of the show. She is the magical, fated solution. She is Spock's (adopted) sister and had immeasurable impact on his life. Even through timey-wimey things, her (biological) mother comes to save her and the universe.

And on top of all that is the crying. Oh, gosh, everything is so emotional on this show. There is a time and place for emotions, but Discovery was too much of it, including inappropriate times. Burnham and her maybe-broken-up-boyfriend stop in the middle of an infiltration in a hostile station to talk about their relationship.

Even the really great characters, Saru and (Emperor Georgiou) centre around Burnham. She is like a sister to Saru, she saved his life, he gives up being a Captain to continue serving under her captaincy. Burnham is Georgiou's daughter (not actually), and Georgiou's love for her (as much as she can love) changes her.

No one has a story unless its actually about Burnham. Or they get a story and then get killed off.

The best thing about Discovery is it brought Trek back on TV and it gave us the rest of this era of shows.

I had to tell a bunch of librarians that LLMs are literally language models made to mimic language patterns, and are not made to be factually correct. They understood it when I put it that way, but librarians are supposed to be "information professionals". If they, as a slightly better trained subset of the general public, don't know that, the general public has no hope of knowing that.

From what you've described, it sounds like she's a straight forward and direct person, which is good. Just be straight forward and direct (but tactful) with her. Something like, "I'm sorry, I think I misunderstood the situation. I'd like to hang out as friends, but I'm not looking for anything more." Optionally, "We can have that drink if it's just as friends, but I'm not going to lead you on if you want something more."

Looks like it's time for sign language to rise. Are the Taliban going to say that women can't move their hands? (How will they serve their ~~masters~~ men otherwise?)

BBC series Merlin was a little like this. King Uther hated magic, Prince Arthur was kinda against it because he was told it was dangerous, but didn't exactly hate it himself. Meanwhile Merlin took a job as a servant, doing magic-y things to protect him. Wasn't a great series (writing), but it had enjoyable aspects.

Netflix literally will not take my money anymore. I had cancelled my subscription during covid because money was tight, but I was willing to temporarily re-subscribe when the next season of select shows came out. I tried to re-enable my original account, but I couldn't because they wouldn't accept my credit card. I tried different cards, then tried to make new accounts with different emails and different credit cards, but still couldn't. Netflix kept rejecting all my cards. I ran out of credit cards.

Look, I was willing to give Netflix my money, it's not my fault they were unwilling to take it.

I was sad because my friend was dying in the hospital. My manager noticed my demeanour and asked what's wrong. She asked me if I needed to be there, but I said there's nothing to be done.

Later that day I got a phone call from another friend saying it was the end. I put on my jacket and went to my manager's office. I didn't want to, but I started crying. She hugged me, got her jacket, and drove me to the hospital herself. (I didn't have a car then, I'd planned to take the bus.)

My friend died, and that was the saddest time ever in my life. But I'll always remember and appreciate the kindness my manager showed me.

Yeah, I was 22 years old when my mother sat me down for "the talk", and even then, it only consisted of "don't go to bed with someone". LITERALLY nothing more than that. I just looked at her cockeyed and told her she was pretty late for this talk. And of course the talk itself was just so sub par.

The messages got from it are:

"the patriarchy" is not a good thing, but even the idealized "the matriarchy" has problems too, and whatever we have going on right now isn't really working

a man's value is inherent to himself, it doesn't come from a job or a relationship. (I suppose this applies to women too, but it was Ken who had to learn this lesson).

Men need to support each other more rather than compete with each other

Societal expectations for women are impossible to attain

Get this: my friend is "not allowed" to be left alone with his daughter. His own daughter. If wife needs to go out without baby, baby gets dropped off at grandparents (wife's parents) instead of just staying home with dad. What's even more ridiculous is his profession is early childhood educator. He's more qualified than most other parents out there, male or female. I don't know how he puts up with being insulted like that.

I don't hate Google, I am deeply suspicious of Google.