Tootfinder

How popular media gets love wrong
Okay, my attempt at (hopefully widely-applicable) advice about relationships based on my mental "engineering" model and how it differs from the popular "fire" and "appeal" models:
1. If you're looking for a partner, don't focus too much on external qualities, but instead ask: "Do they respect me?" "Are they interested in active consent in all aspects of our relationship?" "Are they willing to commit a little now, and open to respectfully negotiating deeper commitment?" "Are they trustworthy, and willing to trust me?" Finding your partner attractive can come *from* trusting/appreciating/respecting them, rather than vice versa.
2. If you're looking for a partner, don't wait for infatuation to start before you try building a relationship. Don't wait to "fall in love;" if you "fall" into love you could just as easily "fall" out, but if you build up love, it won't be so easy to destroy. If you're feeling lonely and want a relationship, pick someone who seems interesting and receptive in your social circles and ask if they'd like to do something with you (doesn't have to be a date at first). *Pursue active consent* at each stage (if they're not interested; ask someone else, this will be easier if you're not already infatuated). If they're judging you by the standards in point 1, this is doubly important.
3. When building a relationship, try to synchronize your levels of commitment & trust even as you're trying to deepen them, or at least try to be honest and accepting when they need to be out-of-step. Say things and do things that show your partner the things (like trust, commitment, affection, etc.) that are important in your relationship, and ask them to do the same (or ideally you don't have to ask if they're conscious of this too). Do these things not as a chore or a transaction when your partner does them, but because they're the work of building the relationship that you value for its own sake (and because you value your partner for themselves too).
4. When facing big external challenges to your commitment to a relationship, like a move, ensure that your partner has an appropriate level of commitment too, but then don't undervalue the relationship relative to other things in life. Everyone is different, but *to me*, my committed relationship has been far more rewarding than e.g., a more "successful" career would have been. Of course worth noting here that non-men are taught by our society to undervalue their careers & other aspects of their life and sacrifice everything for their partners, which is toxic. I'm not saying "don't value other things" but especially for men, *do* value romantic relationships and be prepared to make decisions that prioritize them over other things, assuming a partner who is comfortable with that commitment and willing to reciprocate.
Okay, this thread is complete for now, until I think of something else that I've missed. I hope this advice is helpful in some way (or at least not harmful). Feel free to chime in if you've got different ideas...
#relationships #love

i was put in charge of three grandchildren for a few hours yesterday so we headed straight to ben & jerry's to split a milkshake, then explored the state theater (and even sneaked into a movie but later got thrown out for horsing around on the escalator), then i gave a nickel tour of angell/mason/haven halls, then they chased squirrels on the diag which took longer than you might think, then we looked in all the windows in nickels arcade. it all went slowly and well.

The relative index in coarse index theory and submanifold obstructions to uniform positive scalar curvature
Alexander Engel, Christopher Wulff
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14301

The relative index in coarse index theory and submanifold obstructions to uniform positive scalar curvature
We provide a coarse version of the relative index of Gromov and Lawson and thoroughly establish all of its basic properties. As an application, we discuss a general procedure to construct wrong way maps on the $K$-theory of the Roe algebra mapping the coarse index class of the Dirac operator of a manifold to the one of a suitably embedded submanifold of arbitrary codimension, thereby establishing an abstract machinery to find obstructions to uniform positive scalar curvature coming from these s…

Everyone else is focused on the murder verdict. The Beeb, OTOH, wrings its hands over how the colonials fucked up a beef wellington. 🙄 https://flipboard.com/@bbcnews/world-c8sqdvr9z/-/a-Wojqa9t9RlSvQeKqSM8hKg:a:3199692-/0

Pictures of beef Wellington used in mushroom murders released by court
Pictures showing the toxic mushrooms and deadly beef Wellington at the centre of Australian woman Erin Patterson's murder trial have been released by a court. Patterson, 50, was found guilty by a jury of murdering three relatives with a fatal family meal in the small Victorian town of Morwell on 29 …

When DJ Cummerbund made this mashup in 2020 I did take notice that one of the acts was "BTS Skytrain" but I just assumed this was just some strange relative of Korea's BTS.
Shame on me for not knowing or at least spotting that it was an actual promotional video for Bangkok's mass transit system - which also means I was not able to tell the difference between Thai and Korean people.
My only defence is that they are wearing masks but still…