openknot

The professor withdrew the offer to the author to have a research internship with the lab (seemingly as a result of the conversation), then both researchers avoided discussing project details with him.

Near the conclusion: "From then on, both Alphonse and Beckham were very tight-lipped about the project. They consistently needed to leave for a meeting right when I came to talk to them after class, and would say that the project was "undergoing some changes." I managed to corner Professor Alphonse and one of his grad students towards the end of the semester to ask whether I would still have my research assistantship for the Summer. He, very politely, told me, "I would say that the position is...tentative. I'd recommend that you take any other opportunities instead of waiting on this one." As I was about to explain that I did not have any other opportunities, he had a meeting to get to and hurried off, interrupting me when I tried to speak."

I enjoyed the story, though maybe it's just me, but I just don't understand the source of tension between the researchers and the author. I interpreted the story as: i) the author volunteers to join research project => ii) a professor on the project sends the project proposal => iii) the author reads the proposal, then asks another researcher on the project why there was verbal discussion on using virtual reality devices, when the written project proposal doesn't mention it => iv) ??? => v) the author loses the research position offer, and the VR club no longer has to be evicted from the room where the research project would take place.

I don't understand why the author's remark that the project proposal lacked a VR mention would have such large consequences. Would it have been against the rules to expand the project beyond what was proposed? Even if so, why did the VR club keep the space, when I expected them to still lose the space for the researchers to conduct the non-VR segments of the project? (Upon further thought, maybe the issue was more that they would lose the VR equipment, rather than the space.)

I also didn't understand the researchers' hostile behavior towards the author. If the professor forwarded the proposal so freely, wouldn't multiple people have noticed? Furthermore, the author just mentioned the omission in a verbal conversation as a point of curiosity, rather than accusing them of wrongdoing. I believe the story happened, but I just don't understand why the people acted the way they did.

While respecting ethics (e.g. never asking someone where I was in a position of any power over, even if it was a volunteer student club), I respectfully asked out the people where I did feel that kind of tension (in other words, I always asked out the people who I had a crush on when I was a teen, except when there were professional boundaries).

Unfortunately, I got turned down several times. One initially said yes, then quickly changed her mind within the hour, saying she wanted to avoid getting distracted from academics. So, I never had the opportunity to date in high school or my late teens, though I did have the chance in my early twenties.

As an aside: From a research perspective, I'm unsure if the feelings were mutual in many of these cases. As the Scientific American reports [1]: "Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends."

I suppose that if my current partner were to tragically and unexpectedly wish to break up, I may be able to enter a new relationship after being very sad for a while. However, learning from my teenage years, I would likely avoid dating friends even if I perceive tension (to avoid changing the friendship, as I have in the past), as I don't think there is a reliable way to figure out if someone is interested according to research.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/men-and-women-can...

Eh, I appreciate GP's honesty. I can see where the user is coming from, and the user also acknowledges the potential disadvantages later in time.

I used to spend a lot of time, hours a week, at university just hanging out with people instead of working hard on my career (the opposite of hustle culture). The vast majority of these friends entered a relationship and/or moved far away, and I don't see them anymore (we've also become different people since then). I've since focused more on my career—no longer taking time just to hang out—and I'm subjectively happier. I still make a best faith attempt to treat others respectfully, help others when I can, and also make time for my partner and care for her, but I genuinely like reading, watching a good film, or doing a solitary movie more than investing a lot of time in friendships, especially when they're likely to be temporary and transient.

I wish friendships would last longer, but in my experience, it takes two to invest in one (and the vast majority of people don't)—though in contrast, romantic and familial relationships are more likely to last. I've learned a lot more from reading and exploring artistic works with the time and energy that I could have spent hanging out. In addition, career work will help myself and my family secure a comfortable life in the future, whereas I wouldn't realistically expect friends to materially help me out that far in the future (assuming we'd still be in touch and geographically close).

Bad relationships, including friendships, can cause one to adopt poor communication habits (e.g. guilting others or ghosting others), and also have a higher tolerance for negative behavior instead of communicating a boundary.

There is a bit more discussion on this in an old Hacker News thread from February 2020, where several people discuss the serious impact of unhealthy relationships in the quality of one's life: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22214066

For guys, martial arts is a pretty good activity for creating relationships with others.

The downsides are that it can be expensive for membership fees, take a lot of commitment and time, and also be a competitive, high-pressure environment. Each of these can be mitigated to some extent, but it takes effort and independent thinking (especially when resisting the social pressures to be competitive).

Other activities can include: rock climbing (though no personal experience), board games including chess (I heard lots of good anecdotal experiences with this), Dungeons and Dragons (minority opinion, but this can be tough to commit to due to the required time, often ~4 hours per week), other physical sports (e.g. pickup basketball if you have a skill at it), and volunteering. Book clubs can also be good places to meet others and have discussions.

Committee activities can also be a good place to meet others. I suspect that many older adults join committees such as homeowner associations or parent-teacher associations, partially to meet other people and socialize. Outside of these, there are committees at smaller, local non-profits where people can also meet and socialize with others, while working toward a goal.

>"Is my soul yearning for spiritual connection? I've got a good friend for that. My libido looking for an exhilarating one? There's bars and the ubiquitous 'more-than-friend-but-not-quite-committed' friendship we all seem to have but never seem to really look to for that sort of thing. The least lonely person I know is in his late 70s. He's always talking to someone whenever I see him."

Academic research may be a good starting point. A 2021 study reports that ~29.5% of Americans aged 55 and older "were considered high in loneliness" in 2020 (source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34283657/). Loneliness was correlated with "those who reported depression, who were not married or in a relationship, who lived alone, and who were unemployed at the onset of the pandemic."

Anecdotally, I found it unusually difficult to go to pubs for hookups when I was younger. I never once had a "'more-than-friend-but-not-quite-committed' friendship." I suspect it was partly due to race as an ethnic minority; there is an effect has been well-established from studies (source: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/09/575352051/least-desirable-how...) that there are negative preferences against men and women of a specific race in online dating. Factors largely out of one's control, from ethnicity to difficulties with picking up social cues, can contribute to a lack of relationships.

To connect this to the previous study, where loneliness was correlated to those "who were not married or in a relationship, who lived alone," it's quite possible that a significant driver of the loneliness in the United States the lack of committed long-term relationships between people.

The search for a solution to a lack of relationships by an individual can lead to many dangerous paths. It can tragically lead to extremism and terror attacks (such as the 2018 van attack in Toronto, source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54895219). It can lead to people to join movements such as the "manosphere" or "female dating strategy," where they feel less alone with their problems, but pick up bad habits that make it far more difficult to have a healthy relationship. I believe that these movements have contributed to emotional abuse in relationships and sexual assault by people who push boundaries.

A starting solution I recommend is this:

i) Recognize that many people are lonely because they can't create romantic relationships, or even friendships.

ii) Instead of isolating them or alienating them, figure out why they can't create these relationships. Are they in good psychological health (e.g. would they have untreated depression, anxiety, ADHD, or grief)? Do they have social skills? How can they access readily-available treatment methods from a reputable source (i.e. a competent and experienced counsellor, versus a dating coach who exploits people who are lonely)?

iii) Building on the previous step, ask: are they economically secure? Can they find a stable job where they can provide for themselves, which can treat the root causes of potential depression and anxiety (which also helps them find relationships and friends more easily)?

Each step can be very hard, but I believe this can help reduce vagueness to some extent.

However, there are unfortunately many edge cases where these steps don't work. Examples include severe and persistent mental health disorders; people who want a relationship but struggle greatly due to a physical or mental disorder; or people who don't want to help themselves. For at least some of these people, some countries offer "sexual surrogacy," where a licensed counsellor eventually provides physical intimacy in a controlled environment (source: https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-sexual-surrogacy), but I haven't read enough about it to tell if it's effective. It's tougher for what to do with people who don't want help, though.

For the individual struggling with loneliness, I would recommend focusing on improving the stability of one's own life and working on social skills without studying pickup artistry. Good resources for improving social skills without pickup artistry are typically written by psychologists or psychiatrists with clinical experience, such as "Intimate Connections" by David Burns (same author as "Feeling Good," a reputable book on cognitive-behavioral techniques). At the least, a focus on financial independence and stability can be a good foundation to working on the other problems in life, as it's harder to be happy and create meaningful relationships with money problems.

I was going to write that this was demonstrably untrue, but then I saw the muted-microphone shot of an interviewee laughing without context before cutting to a straight-faced interview segment that appeared more natural (at time = 80 s), which was quite possibly recorded after the straight-faced segment to make the video's happy tone consistent: https://youtu.be/N0ng8R0_Tis?t=80

There are legitimate opportunities to act on the news. For example, I avoided a fairly convincing phishing attempt with my work email due to reading a relevant article in a mainstream newspaper. News can similarly help a person avoid scams and cons.

News also provides common conversational topics with different types of people. A lot of people in business read The Wall Street Journal, and it’s easier to find common talking points with them if I read the news (especially on news about their industry). Similarly, a lot of academics and people in education read The New York Times. Though reading the news isn’t necessary to start a conversation, it’s often an easy starting point.

That is the point of my comment: not all news sources are designed for clickbait. In contrast, consider The Financial Times's (FT's) headlines:

>Tiger Global slashes bets on tech groups after stock market sell-off

> News in-depth. Military briefing: why Russia and Ukraine are fighting over a Black Sea outcrop

> Investors pull $7bn from Tether as stablecoin jitters intensify

> Buffett buys $3bn Citi stake in value-hunting stock splurge

> Ethiopia atrocities cast long shadow as city of Lalibela prays for peace

> Qantas says synthetic fuel could power long flights by mid-2030s

Some of the news itself is tragic. But it's a false equivalence to claim that the headlines and article content between news sources (e.g. Washington Post vs. the FT) are equally outrage-provoking or informative. The Washington Post was listed in the middle because their articles are usually highly informative (from the number of interviewed people and documents analyzed), though their headlines are more clickbait.

Both The Washington Post or the FT are different from (typically) Salon, and each is a far cry from social media. Also, the debate of news media in place of discussing social media is exactly the effect that Zuckerberg intended with his comment.

>"Snark aside, why is this a recurring obsession of HN posters?"

The topic is related to technology (and thus easier to justify as relevant to the forum) and has a low barrier of entry to discuss. A significant majority of people in Western countries use social media and it doesn't require technical knowledge, so it's easier to share opinions about it.

Reading HN threads on social media is almost like consuming junk food: the arguments are predictable but comfortable and easy to digest. It's enjoyable in a perverse way, though not a real source of growth as the ideas aren't as hard to struggle with (versus threads on more technical topics).

Depends on the news source. There is a noticeable difference between Tweets and unverified Facebook posts, news media from Buzzfeed or Salon, articles from a local newspaper, articles from The New York Times/Washington Post, and articles from the Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal.

Not all news is designed for outrage. Several publications publish in-depth articles in a neutral way, where you can actually learn something. Investigations are also often genuinely useful for a better society. Zuckerberg's position therefore doesn't hold true for all news media.

Separately, depending on how your social media feed is set up, you can be feel jealous/lesser due to seeing the high points of the lives of people you know (depending on your personality type), seeing news on your feed, or seeing neither due to subscribing to accounts in niche fields.

>"But if you are close to someone who is a user, over the long run you will notice differences. Sometimes its just that they don't have the same spark."

The loss of a spark can happen regardless of drug use. Work in an unsupportive environment over a long period of time, a breakup, or the failure to achieve a long-sought goal can cause a person to change over time. In addition, the underlying condition that the medication is treating may cause the effect, which could have been worse had the medication not been prescribed.

It's plausible that medications may have understudied long-term effects, but there are too many confounding causes to attribute a behavioral change to long-term medication use.

I strongly agree with your main assertion. I heard several professional journalists recommend "networking" and "effective self-promotion and marketing" to get internships with well-known companies to add to your as the main advice for new journalists, versus focusing their advice on how to do quality reporting to produce good work samples.

However, I speculate that The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are equivalently great places for advancement for reporters (if only because the NYTimes's new executive editor/editor-in-chief spent much of his career with the WSJ).

It depends on what you’re selling, but roughly $500 per month is seen as solid on the r/PPC forum (that is, no major objections when brought up), with $100 a month as not outrageous (especially as a starting point). My assumption is that the forum is credible and not astroturfed (which seems fairly reasonable from intuition).

I wish there were a scientific study to lean on as a more credible source. I personally don’t have direct experience for budgets smaller than $1,000 a month, back when I did work with some non-profits.

Roughly $100 a month sounds plausibly viable at the lowest uncomfortable end with skill, but you also need that skill in graphic design to make an effective ad, persuasive writing, and a good idea of how to target the right audience. That perspective also costs time to learn from books and/or money if outsourced.

Twitter ads are widely seen as ineffective versus other advertising channels (to verify for yourself, you can check r/PPC, r/marketing, and other subreddits via a site:reddit.com Google search). Results are likely lower due to poorer analytics, which translates to your ads not appearing to the most relevant people.

Google Search Ads and Facebook/Instagram ads are seen as more effective in comparison (results are likely higher as Facebook/Meta are relatively better at analytics, so advertisements appear to more relevant people).

In addition, $50 is not a lot to spend on an ad campaign. It generally takes a higher number of advertisement views by the same person (preferably across different websites and channels) to produce an intended result.

From Hacker News's guidelines, the preferred original source that the linked 9to5Mac quotes heavily from is from Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creat...

However, I suspect that a submission with the original source's headline would have led to less engagement (as it is "How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro," as opposed to " Apple’s secrecy created engineer burnout").

I would personally be very interested in such a blog, but so would Apple's competitors. I've read that being too open about methods can let competitors catch up to once-unique advantages quickly, especially as it lets them design a roadmap of future features to work on.

Suppose Apple had an engineering blog that released a roadmap about the M1 chips before their release. Then, Apple's laptops might not have such a massive lead on Intel/AMD processors today, as laptop manufacturers may have invested more in ARM processors by seeing them as viable due to Apple's work.

For me, it's about not being late or having to skip tasks (e.g. shaving). I used to also enjoy doing everything the "hard" way (e.g. pourover coffee instead of using a machine, and especially shaving with a double-edged safety razor instead of an electric razor).

However, there were times I had to skip coffee making to start a commute on time. The tipping point was when I was slightly late for a couple of low-stakes meetings because shaving with a safety razor took so long (lather, three passes, rinse), so I had to take an alternative commuting route after missing a train. There were other times when I chose to skip shaving and buy coffee outside to make a meeting on time (taking extra time to walk to the coffee shop, line up, and buy coffee).

I remembered never having these issues of having to skip shaving when using an electric razor. I've now returned to using one for most days, and also usually use a brew machine. It's nicer to have less stress in the morning.

You could say that I could manage my time better in the morning by waking up an extra half hour earlier, but I've found it very nice to make my life a bit easier while other parts of my days are more stressful.

I know a few people who spend hours doing intensive work a day (PhD program for one, medical school for another), and don't want to become involved in more intensive hobbies (e.g. literature study, art films). The deeper pursuits are left for the career, and hobbies are an easy way to get your mind off it during rest periods.

The French newspaper Le Monde in France requires a printout of a cancellation form sent via physical mail with tracking to unsubscribe, even if the subscription is digital-only.

From their terms [0]: "Unless otherwise stipulated in the Special Conditions, the cancellation of a Subscription must be sent by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt to the Customer Service department.

"A Customer who wishes to terminate their contract must print out (or copy on plain paper):

- For a digital subscription, the cancellation form is available here

- For a paper subscription or a mixed subscription (paper + digital), the form is available here

Cancellations received by Le Monde before the 15th of the month will take effect at the end of that month. Cancellations received after the 15th of the month will take effect at the end of the following month.:"

Back when the UK was in the EU, I also had to call long-distance to British newspapers to unsubscribe.

It's the same for many Canadian and US subscriptions. It's not cultural, it's common practice by newspapers. The best way to protect oneself consumer is to carefully read cancellation terms before subscribing to any newspaper or periodical and purchase subscriptions through Apple's App Store if you own an Apple device (as it lets you cancel without hassle) when you can.

[0] https://moncompte.lemonde.fr/cgv-en#ancre_engagement

I get the appeal of having structure, but I only think it works if it's voluntary to sign up for it. What you're describing sounds like a voluntary military enlistment (communal exercise, job, house, food, medical care, retirement, and disability), except with access to video games, alcohol, drugs, and Facebook (and also more hours).

However, the system will fall apart if it's mandatory for all. People will shirk their 32-hour work week, do the bare minimum for 8 hours mandatory education (e.g. clicking through modules super fast, or Googling all of the answers), make their own video games (which would be great), go through the motions of mandatory exercise, brew alcohol, grow or synthesize drugs, and create their own social network, even via amateur radio.

The counter-culture sounds a lot more fun. Also, the utopia is incompatible with people with dreams of becoming game developers, people who critique expensive wine, and people who spend a variable amount of time self-learning on their own, versus fixed hours.

The imposition of how a person spends their time is a separate principle from guarantees of a job (an income guarantee is preferred, because a lot of people will effectively and potentially rationally do the bare minimum/no work at the job), housing, food, and medical care.

I agree that the baseline isn't enough. My intention was to summarize his initial perspective (that it was enough), then question whether his self-criticism (he's a "shitty husband" because he didn't see it soon enough) draws the right conclusions.

My view is that I don't think it's healthy for him to take all the blame. He had a responsibility to care more, but his spouse also had the opportunity to communicate about her feelings of neglect. His harsh self-criticism is unhealthy, and not something to emulate (though I agree with his point about caring about low-level requests from a partner).

If a person takes all the blame for any negative situation in life, it can be empowering to an extent, but it can also stop a person from moving on from the past (for reference, his divorce was in 2013, but he's still analyzing it as of 2022).

He's also selling services in "relationship coaching and divorce support coaching."

For what it's worth, I do think he's being genuine, and sounds motivated by the want to spare others from his suffering. However, I just don't think he's qualified, because his solution seems to repeatedly be to care more for your partner without compromising (in excess, this can lead to a well-documented trait by clinical psychologists of "codependency," where one can never do enough for their partner).

There has to be a balance between your interest and your partner's; it's unhealthy and not noble to completely sacrifice your own self-interest for your family's. A person ultimately miserable can't support others, and there is also inherent value in enjoying the opportunity to live for yourself.

Yeah. I selected a few of the volume descriptions to abstract the principles he was trying to communicate.

Overall, it sounds like the divorce was unexpected and out of his control, so he's trying to reassert control by nitpicking his faults and using emotionally charged, self-critical language ("I was a shitty husband").

Some make sense (and all likely contributed). However, Vol. 9 and 11 were strong indications that that there were broader issues than neglect. In specific for Vol. 9, his spouse wasn't willing to respect his want for alone time, implying a compatibility issue.

-Vol. 3, don't be neglectful to your spouse at a party: "I was at a party and I had a tiny crush on the married birthday girl, and I watched her husband ignore her all night (and already knew him to be a less-than-ideal partner). The whole scene made me sad because it reminded me of how I used to treat my ex-wife."

-Vol. 6, remove some of the burden of decision-making: "You can destroy your marriage by trying to be “nice.” By letting your spouse make all the decisions. You think it’s a nice gesture, letting the other person have their way"

-Vol. 8, don't roast/mock your partner so much: "What starts at an early age on playgrounds, turns into a relationship killer in adulthood. Men using jokes, sarcasm and mockery to belittle their wives and girlfriends both privately and publicly."

-Vol. 9, wanting alone time is neglectful (I disagree and don't think it's a "guy" thing; it's very possible to be in a relationship with an introvert who gets the need for alone time): "Guys like “Me”-time. Maybe everyone does. But a lot of time when husbands and fathers do it, it looks and feels to his wife and children like he isn’t interested in them or that he’d rather spend time alone than with his family. "

-Vol. 11, fixing a marriage is about working on yourself (it's plausible, but it sounds one-sided): "I think married couples who are sad and angry about their lives and relationships make the mistake of trying to “fix the marriage.” They spend all their time trying to figure out how “we” can do things different, and how the other person can make changes to make life better. But I think people need to work on themselves to fix the marriage. To look inside themselves and figure out how they can be their best self."

General neglect was a major driver, but there were other bigger issues. The lack of respect by his spouse for his alone time is a major one, like in the full Vol. 1 article [0], where he says a major failure was choosing to see a televised once-a-year major golf tournament instead of going for a picnic in a park because she loves the outdoors.

If he actually skipped the tournament to go out, it's also likely he would have become resentful (even if he had the best intentions); bottled up, this can cause issues down the road. On the other hand, his spouse ended up as a person who was resentful, which did lead to issues down the road. He suggests the solution was to suppress his own wants, but a better solution would be to find some way to compromise, because both wants are important.

It's also concerning that he's then offering paid divorce/marriage counselling, when I don't think he's qualified (to his own admission of lack of formal credentials).

[0] https://matthewfray.com/2013/07/03/an-open-letter-to-shitty-...

I read the article and felt sad. There's a lot of emotionally charged language (repeatedly: "I was a shitty husband"), but stripping away that language, his main point is consistent with his Atlantic article. Namely, that while he tried to be a good husband for the 'big issues' (e.g. never cheating), he was neglectful for the little things, and didn't give her enough attention or care.

My interpretation is that the divorce was somewhat unexpected as there were no major issues besides the 'little things,' but he largely feels that the divorce was out of his locus of control. He's then compensating to assert that it really was in his control, and also severely criticizing himself with emotionally charged language for letting the divorce happen.

Given the information at the time, I don't think the divorce was avoidable. If anything, the ex-spouse at least has an iota responsibility to identify the feelings of neglect, rather than pointing out the neglectful habits without reflecting on why she was so bothered them.

It would be healthiest for him to let it go, and find happiness elsewhere in life (e.g. with another partner and pursuit) and move on as much as possible (though it's hard as he has a kid). It's hard to see him really make the divorce part of his identity, the point where he publishes a book about it, writes in The Atlantic, and even offers divorce counseling services at the end.

Yep. The vast majority of users don't follow these outages (aka don't browse forums like Hacker News or r/sysadmin), and thus aren't aware of them.

Many of these users are decision-makers who decide what tools to use, and will continue to use Atlassian out of inertia due to lots of existing documentation on the tool (this is compounded by not knowing about the outages, or not knowing the severity of the outages), and also because large, professional companies use their tools too.

I don't necessarily agree with the perspective to stay with it, but it uses a lot of political capital/innovation tokens/goodwill/etc. to change systems, when there are usually higher-priority things to do (than to get buy-in to switch).

It’s important to note that part of the job is to make it a fun job at the least, and daresay a fairy tale at the most.

This includes positive surprises (though care needs to be taken), thoughtful gifts (especially on Valentine’s and birthdays), and some element of spontaneity. Flirting is also important.

Spontaneity can be considered as part of the job, but it’s important to keep it fun to avoid boredom in a relationship. I’ve read anecdotes that a faithful but boring relationship can cause another partner to unexpectedly break up at the least, or have an affair at the most.

I recommend a person to work on making the relationship exciting instead of breaking it off, but as evidence that this is important to factor in, a few anecdotes of people with this problem are listed below:

-Thread with humane advice for the original poster: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/1qcomq/anyon...

-Thread with not-so-humane advice that I personally disagree with: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/oq7so/after_...

-Final perspective to establish a pattern, with the rule of threes: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/67df9t/i_29f...

A problem is that one has limited time and energy to respond to these comments, though the idea you've mentioned has motivated responses I've made in the past. It can be draining to submit a well-sourced comment written respectfully, then get downvoted (this is more prevalent on Reddit) where fewer people see it.

I've resolved to avoid responses, unless it's a subject where I have an especially valuable perspective (e.g. personal expertise, I have a passage from a credible book that could be relevant, or I have a highly relevant anecdote to share).

It's almost always not worth it to get involved in a controversial topic discussion (examples include journalism, Apple products, urban planning and whether the ending of a popular television series was good or not). It can be distracting and draining, especially if people respond negatively or you get downvoted (I tell myself it's just internet points, but it feels punishing despite my rational thoughts), and I'm unlikely to change minds. There's more to life that's more rewarding (e.g. reading a book, physical exercise, even playing a relaxing video game for a few minutes).

Stoner is one of the best novels I've ever read. He dedicates almost his entire life toward studying literature because he had a passion for it in university, despite never achieving resounding success (not a spoiler, as this is revealed on the first page of the novel).

There are wonderful passages like: “In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.”"

It changed my view on love and relationships.