I suggest Peter Watts.

most SF stories there are usually one or two central issues to grapple with—an evil AI, an empire, climate collapse—but rarely the overwhelming stack of interlocking failures we see in reality. Even dystopias often feel strangely cleaner and more legible than real life.

Writers try to build tight narratives. Portraying a polycrisis is hard. It’s even harder if you want to focus on one or two factors. Decent editors try to cut extraneous stuff out of stories, so they’ll try to trim out factors that aren’t necessary to the main story arc.

And then you need to consider the audience. Can a writer portray a polycrisis in a way that viewers or readers will stick with? Or will the audience get tired of a laundry list of problems?

I suggest Peter Watts because he writes (wrote?) good genre fiction that’s depressing and includes multiple reasons to be depressed.

My posts and comments linking to Lemmy have stayed up, and received comments.

Maybe it’s true for some subreddits as a mod choice, but it isn’t true for all subreddits.

I’m referring to Reddit: niche subreddits didn’t get a lot of traffic, and prolific posters wouldn’t see money for their efforts.

I have nothing but respect for the users who are posting stuff into otherwise dead communities for months on end. Sadly, I don’t have that kind of dedication.

The subreddits that I’m part of are too small for monetization. There are prolific posters (like our pugjesus), but nobody is making money from it.

I also care that there is very little content. I’ve tried getting conversations going on niche topics. My posts get upvotes, but no responses. It’s discouraging.

Aren’t memes generally fair use (depending on your jurisdiction)?

Sorry - I don’t think I worded that well. I’d try dates with folks who I didn’t feel chemistry. When I say chemistry, I mean social - not sexual. There are a handful of people that I click with socially, and then the vast majority that I don’t.

I ended up marrying one of the few people I do click with socially.

I’ve never really considered sexual chemistry before. In my experience, sex is an activity like many others: you need to practice to make it work; when you’re doing it with someone else, there’s a learning curve to get it right for both of you; and sometimes one or both of you don’t get it right, so it kinda sucks.

Asexual is a tag that came around long after I’d left the dating pool. I’m not really familiar with what it means.

Nope. I thought maybe I could find chemistry with people if I got to know them better, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. At least for me.

Going out to bars when I was a student. I wanted to spend time with people, not spend money on the outing.

Not pretended, but when I was dating, I’d say yes to a first date with anyone who seemed vaguely compatible. I’d try to make some chemistry happen. It didn’t.

Our society over-values sex, but there’s a pretty hefty biological component as well. Bodies want what they want. Different people feel it to different degrees at different times of their life.

Physical activity. Go play a sport. Get platonically sweaty with a bunch of other people. I found that helped. Hanging out with people sort of worked for me as well, but not to the same degree.

If you’re in a social leagues, you might even be able to meet someone.

I’d echo what others have said: if you’re having difficulty forming and maintaining romantic relationships, you might want to try therapy or some deep introspection.

I think it’s Rowan Atkinson.

It should end with “How many Ys did the man use?”

phew

Memes, clearly.

Planet Money did a really interesting episode on money in Gaza. Basically, bank branches don’t really exist, and physical paper money is really hard to come by, so getting money into Gaza is really hard.

Any money you donate would need to get past various embargoes to get to a Palestinian bank, then be passed to a person who can’t really access it.

It’s been years since I ran Linux as my DD, but the major updates seemed to break my setup pretty regularly. Audio, or USB, or sleeping when I closed the laptop lid.

I assume that isn’t the case anymore.

There are multiple factions. Some of us are happy to pay the people who produce the stuff we enjoy.