Alice

So the UK is going to start requiring IDs to view adult content. I'm in the US, but I've got a friend in the UK who obviously doesn't want to deal with this.

I suggested he use a VPN, but he's apparently heard they sell your personal data. Can anyone recommend a reliable VPN that collects as little data as possible?

ETA: thanks for the suggestions, everyone! I'm gonna research em and pass the info along. :)

Title. I signed up for a queer speed dating event recently and I have no idea what to expect. Not really looking for a how-to guide, just curious about others' experiences. Was it fun, would you do it again, did you meet anyone cool... That sort of thing!

A paper published Monday in Nature Medicine found that the tiny fragments of plastic are passing the blood-brain barrier and into human brains, and the amount of microplastics in the brain appears to be increasing over time. The concentration of microplastics in analyzed brains rose by about 50 percent from 2016 to 2024.

Genuinely can't figure out how other people develop active social lives. The most common advice I get is to look on Meetup, but I found pretty much one group and while I had fun, halfway through the event they started making fun of liberals for not having friends. I'm genderqueer so that ain't gonna work out. Everything else on Meetup is scientology garbage.

I go out and do things on my own and try to be open to people who approach me, but on the rare occasion someone wants to talk to me it's because they're horny and they've mistaken me for a straight woman. I can be out in the mud picking up litter and someone will strike up a conversation about the environment, something I'm interested in, and it turns out it's because they think I'm doing this to get the D.

I'm getting crazy bored. Does everyone just work a 9-5 and then go home alone? Except for when they have sex with the occasional random straight man??

I tried /r/suicidewatch on that other site, but even though I made it clear that I was looking for advice and encouragement, the only two replies I got were in agreement that it doesn't get better. 😐 /r/depression is even worse by the look of it.

Does anyone know of any good websites, or is it the nature of all of them that they just turn into a crabs-in-the-bucket nightmare? I'm trying to get better but it also gets isolating pretending I'm not depressed all the time.

Never done this before, turned out to be a lot of fun :)

I'm 30 and horrible at keeping friends. I don't know if it's the unschooling or the autism, but I'm told I come across as hostile when I think I'm being nice.

I know the basics. I make eye contact but not too much, I ask people about themselves and their interests to show I'm interested, I don't dominate conversations with myself and my own interests. I try to be a nice person people might want to keep around, too— I give money when someone's in a pinch, I remember birthdays, I help move, et cetera.

Eventually people either people tell me I'm being a dick in ways I never realized, or more likely, they just eventually stop messaging me back.

The one thing I'm sure I struggle with is body language. I've read a lot that you need to mirror the other person's body language, but I don't know how to do that. Especially since I normally meet people at work and we're usually pushing big carts around and moving products and I'm just not thinking about my body as something expressive, just practical.

I'm sure I have many more blind spots that I'm not even aware of.

So like... are there classes for this? Some kind of specialized therapy? I don't really want to try anymore unless I can stop being a dick

‘Family values’ bill is adopted despite being denounced by the president, rights groups and the European Union.

Kesaria Abramidze, a trans model, was murdered the day after the bill passed. Even if the president vetos it, this law already has a body count.