I’m in my mid twenties and I can’t drive a car, I have a crappy job, and I still live with my parents.

Can you hold someone’s hand while they rant about their shitty day? Can you pack a lunch, hail an Uber or find a bus for a day at the park, and rub someone’s feet while you both sit in the sun? Can you carry a tune or tell a joke? Can you show up on time for a date?

You’d be surprised how many people can’t. Lots of people have shitty jobs in their mid twenties. Lots of people still live with their parents because rent is so obscene. You’re not alone.

I feel like what I can bring to a relationship isn’t enough though.

Meet other people. Show them a good time. Let them be the judge. Don’t hang this on yourself beforehand

Time heals all wounds. But you do have to stop picking at the scabs.

Get a gf. She says “good morning <3”. You feel like shit, so let her know. “<3 you too. Rough start. Hope your day is going better.” You might be surprised what you get back.

It’s funny, there was another thread a while back about a girl who meets a guy and clicks. They hook up. She keeps trying to be sweet to him and he ghosts her. So she goes into her own depressive spiral because she assumes she’s the one who isn’t enough.

Other people have shitty days too. Other people are going through what you’re going through. Other people will understand. Reach out, speak your truth, and if that chemistry you had at the beginning meant anything it’ll mean they’re sympathetic to your plight.

And then go do some fun shit together. FFS, it’s a nice time to be alive. Get some sun, eat some food, suck in some fresh air, and hold hands. See if that doesn’t put you in a better mood. Sometimes it really is just a bad start to a normal day.

happiness comes from within

In my experience, having a constant companion has a positive feedback loop. People you can continuously interact with - joking, catching up, eating together, helping one another out, just Netflix’n’Chilling… it’s reaffirming.

But it is a loop. You don’t just wake up happy forever. There’s ups and downs. There’s psychical and emotional adjustments. You’re not immune to despair. You just have someone you can be glum around who - ideally - fills you in on the lows and rides with you for the highs.

If you’ve got a bunch of mental baggage going into a relationship, your partner (ideally) helps you unpack that shit and dispose of it. Or, at least, shows you their own baggage, so you know you’re not alone. It doesn’t just go away instantly, but over time you can put it behind you precisely because you’ve got someone else in your life affirming your own worth.

The bar has been low for at least 30 years.

It was comically easy to get enlisted during Korea if you were under 18. You could just walk up to the office and lie. They’d take you.

“More like the Gay-vy, amirite? But seriously, just come in and talk. I need at least three other people to fill out a form or they send me to the front.”

The joke about incels is that they’ll blow up your phone with red flags, then freak out if they get anywhere near first base.

Sooner than you’d think.

Guterres also pointed out that fossil fuels still get almost nine times the government consumption subsidies as renewables.

The problem, as always, is not the technology but the politics.

Every time I see a story about the national debt, I look for information in the article about who is buying the debt. It is vanishingly rare when I see an answer.

In case anyone is curious, the breakdown for 2025

For 2026, the answer is harder to find. But there are some interesting shifts in appetite for American debt instruments being driven by the private bond markets.

single-player campaigns won’t come to PC

glances at the Steam catalog

glances at my unplayed Steam library

laughs

To answer OP’s question, I think the place “we went wrong” was allowing ourselves to be driven by the industry hype cycle rather than enjoying the genuine quality games in the orgy of content available on every platform.

There are more high quality games released in any given five year span than you could play in the next ten. If 90% of AAA publishers released nothing but slop for the next 20 years, you would never miss a day of gaming if you just stuck to the existing stock of bangers.

You don’t even need a particularly good computer to play the classics - your Starcrafts and emulated Super Marios and Forza racing sims. Nevermind the privately hosted MMOs that can eat up thousands of hours of playtime. Go check out FF14 or Guild Wars 2. I’ve got a friend who has been doing WoW for 20 years.

If new games are slop, who cares? We are at the tale end of a Golden Age of game development. You’re sitting on a treasure trove. Just don’t buy the next Call of Duty game and you’ll be fine.

I just feel old and stupid. I naively thought there could be something this time but they are all the same. I hate that I fell for it and couldn’t control myself.

I mean, what’s past is past. Absolutely no reason to feel bad because of a drunken hook-up. The stringing-along and ghosting seems more like a him problem than a you problem. More likely than not, this guy is just as insecure and flaky as he appears in hindsight.

It fucking sucks that we’ve got so many lemons in the dating pool. Your story is one I’ve heard a dozen different women of all different ages and experiences reiterate. A guy turns on the charm, you get swept off your feet, then he’s back to business as usual the next day and you realize he’s just a normal POS.

But we’ve got an urge for companionship, so we all keep putting ourselves out there. The struggle is real. Know that even if you’re lonely, you’re not alone. Lots of people feel this way and nothing you’re doing is bad or wrong, even if it feels frustrating.

One Night flings are rough precisely because you build a deep bond very quickly with someone who - in the long term - wasn’t going to work out. I’m not going to say “don’t do that” because people are horny and fucking is fun. But you can’t beat yourself up afterwards, because mixing guilt and horniness is miserable and ruins the fun part of fucking. Then you’re just left with this hollow urge divorced from the joy of sex.

I can say that finding love among friends (at least in my experience) tends to be more fruitful than trying to find friendship among lovers. Dragging someone out on a date a few times isn’t just about counting the encounters before hooking up, it’s about building a list of things you like to do together that you can do when you’re not naked.

And sometimes just going out and doing things you like to do, and meeting other people who do things you like to do, is the best way to find a long-term companion.

And if that’s going to parties and clubs - because you plan to keep clubbing straight through your retirement years - that’s great. But if you’re a golfer or a painter or a board game enthusiast or a mall rat, you gotta go find big groups of people doing this kind of thing and date from there. Cause the people you meet at bars are, more often than not, the kind of people who want to be at the bar for the rest of their lives.

This is all American politics right now.

Two guys sneering “I bet you feel pretty owned right now. Well, I feel great, because I’m winning” as the boat sinks.

the only reason they put Trump in charge

Brother, I have some terrible news for you. Americans put Trump in charge.

how many wars has Russia won that they actually started?

We can play this game, but we’re required to do the US next.

Almost as though starting a war is consistently a bad idea for your country.

You could have cross-posted. Or at least had the dignity to come up with your own pithy headline.

Quietly

I fucking hate headline writers.

While the Kubuqi Desert isn’t China’s largest desert, thirty years ago, the land’s main export was sandstorms. Today, the Junma Solar Power Station, which is located in the desert, generates tons of electricity, and the solar panels encourage plant growth by, among other things, reducing ground speed winds. You can now find plenty of shrubs and bushes throughout the Kubuqi Desert, as well as the occasional fox or hare darting between them. And like the Gonghe Photovoltaic Park, the benefits stretch beyond just clean energy. The Junma Solar Power Station also provides grazing areas for cattle, supports crops such as watermelons and jujube (Chinese dates), and encourages tourism.

A similar experiment is taking place in California. Project Nexus is a study designed to examine the effects of solar panels and the shade they provide over the Hickman Canal, which is located east of San Francisco. The theory is that the installation could help save 63 billion gallons of water by preventing evaporation. While not necessarily as life changing as encouraging plant growth in a desert, Project Nexus works on the same principle. Regardless, large solar farms (in addition to studies that utilize cyanobacteria) could be the key to preventing future desertification.

Listen. I like this article. It’s the kind of Hopium Lemmy could use more of. I like that we’re getting a target to aim for that isn’t just “ask politicians very nicely to ask businesses very nicely to stop lighting the planet on fire”. And I recognize that - because all the big commercial venues have been poisoned against Woke Green Energy - we’re just not going to see this kind of coverage in the NYT or the WSJ. I even like that it gets away from a bland “China Did Good” coverage and throws in a project a little closer to home, so we’re not reflexively inundated with China Hate as a response.

But this is some high school essay ass writing style. BRG is not sending their best.

Why not just ask Gemini directly?