++ but I think it can't be overstated how much effort social skills takes. Especially if you're starting from near zero.

Society cannot gift you friends…

It sort of can! Think about a very-religious church group or a military squad. When people are forced to spend all their time with a small group, they mostly become friends.

In the not-very-distant past, we lived in much smaller communities with much more interdependence.

I think some of the "male loneliness" talk is because society used to literally gift men with a friend group and a family and now they need to get all these things on their own but a lot of boys have not been raised to develop the skills they need for this new society.

ASD can be a challenge, for sure. "dont approach others since i respect boundaries" is the thing you need to change: respecting boundaries doesn't mean never talking to someone, it means allowing them to set boundaries.

A simple way to do this is, "hi I'm gmtom. Mind if I sit here?" Sitting next to someone is generally understood as an invitation to talk.

You could also try leaning into the ASD a little: "hi I'm gmtom and my special interest is arachnids. [smile, because you are making fun of yourself a little] Want to hear some neat facts about spiders?"

However you introduce yourself, the way you respect boundaries is that when they say, "no." You reply, "OK," and leave.

If you don't feel confident about reading peoples' body language, I would also try to check in every so often. Again, you can try owning the autism: "I'm autistic and can't read your body language very well. Am I boring you or is this cool?" And again, respecting boundaries means you accept it if they say "I don't want to talk anymore."

You will not succeed every time. Meeting people and making friends is a lot of work and takes practice (like: how much talking vs listening should you do? There's no one correct answer, unfortunately). Charismatic people got a head start from their brain-types during childhood, but they are charismatic because they keep meeting and talking with new people to exercise their skills.

It's shitty, but it's not "enshittification".

Doctorow's explanation goes

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification

What the OP describes is just obnoxious design. To be enshittification it should be a change from better UX to worse and the change should be an attempt by the site to grab some extra cash.

Twitter requiring an account to see replies to a tweet is an example--they're trying to juice their user-count.

Capitalism is when there's an owner-class controlling production via capital. It doesn't really matter what they're producing or at what cost or who's consuming.

No, because cross-country trains and heavy use of them to move goods and people predates cars by quite a bit. Trains were a key component of the North winning the Civil War, for example.

Lots of existing train infrastructure needed to be torn out to make room for car infrastructure.

Are you suggesting that's why the US hasn't improved trains? Is there something about train improvements specifically that you think is harmful?

Because (like genAI) crypto-coin people as a general population will not shut up and it gets annoying to keep hearing the same spiel. And it's an insulting one, about how everyone not on the Bitcoin train is a stupid loser and we'll be kissing their ass and wishing we were them when the whole thing really rockets off. Sometimes that part isn't entirely explicit, but I hear it in almost every pro-Bitcoin rant.

I don't have a problem with rich people choosing not to vote.

Continue to allow blank-ballot to be a legal vote (as it is today). Nobody has to vote if they don't want, and now if you're trying to do a protest-abstain it actually gets noticed.

Working hard, or jerking hard?

Giving a shit is more work than not giving a shit. But voting for a candidate doesn't mean you like them and it doesn't bind you to supporting them. I can post "Harris is a cop fuck cops >:-(" after I voted for her.

IMO the key is: how long does it take you to vote, and if you don't vote what are you doing with that time that is more valuable and progressive?

If someone told me, "I didn't vote last election because I was campaigning 18 hours a day for native land rights and there was no way to get mail or reach a polling place" OK. I'm not blaming that person. They're working way the fuck harder than I am to make the world better. If someone told me, "I didn't vote last election because I barely survive on my three jobs and the GOP has made my polling place a 6 hour line that I have to drive to. I can't even afford the gas to get there." Yeah, that makes sense.

But I never hear that from online progressives. I hear, "oh I didn't vote because both parties suck." "I didn't vote because they didn't support ." "I didn't vote because there's no point." These are all shitty answers. Better answer is: "I did vote for the Democratic candidate and I'll always vote for the most progressive candidate available." That's the minimum effort.