It makes me laugh how the modal consumer of our "high-protein" products is not actually some jacked gymbro managing his macros, but a fad-chasing low-information dieter who's doing the same sort of word-association magic that brought us "electrolytes" and "gluten free" everything. Working grocery has been a blackpill for direct democracy in this way: if I can't trust people to carefully shepherd the food they put into their own bodies, I sure as hell don't trust them to vote on weighty matters that affect my body too.
Must confess that it's been very strange how the random needles that occasionally litter our premises now include Ozempic injectors. (It's a public good to provide public restrooms anyone can use sans purchase, but holy shit is it gross. Can understand why so many businesses don't anymore. We all lose from public disorder, can't have nice things.) Can't wait till they approve the pill form: great for diffusion, great for cost reduction, less dangerous litter menacing the feet of the public.
Some enterprising soul could probably invent a dual-use injector, for that matter...prescription substances in one needle, proscribed substances in the other. Save 50% on paraphenalia costs!
Public restrooms should provide needle disposal containers, like ones we have in labs. You don't want that stuff in a regular trash can (and you sure as heck don't want it on the ground! Jesus, people!).
Oh, we do provide them! Many places in SF do! Unfortunately you can lead water to a horse, but you can't make it wet. Not all shooters care enough/are lucid enough to properly dispose of the sharps. You don't want to know how many plumbers we've had to call because they ended up in, uh, other more accessible waste streams.
The gripping hand is that carefully shepherding the food that goes into your body is overrated. Balance calories with exercise/output, hit macros if you want, everything else is a hobby. You really shouldn't expect people to pay too much attention because the marginal benefits are...marginal, and the obvious extension is that people who are 'fat' or 'out of shape' (please feel free to have a brawl about defining those terms) shouldn't have a vote over matters that affect your body either (which is literally everything because we are embodied).
If someone can't balance a calorie budget, why should I trust them to balance a budget budget? Tradeoffs in miniature and macro stretch the same muscles. Selling slop makes a lot more money, and funds a much bigger portion of my paycheck, than fresh produce...doesn't mean I have to like it, or reserve zero judgement for either the peddlers or consumers of poison.
Realpolitik does demand not taking this view to its logical conclusion, and obviously popularism means I don't air it too-publicly...but it is how I feel in my heart of hearts, egalitarian impulses be damned. "The reason most folk songs are so atrocious, is that they were written by the people..."
I'm frankly quite tired of your borderline incomprehensible grammar and perennially rude responses to people and posts you dislike. This is the first time someone's actually motivated me to use the block and mute functions, so congratulations.
Back in the late 80s I was working in the SLC area, ordered a margarita at a restaurant after a long day at Thiokol. They brought the drink to the table with no alcohol. I had to walk next door to the state dispensary and buy one of those airline bottles of tequila and I think they only allowed one or two to be purchased. I'm glad caffeine wasn't so limited there or I'd have been in big trouble.
The map of life expectancy in the US is a pretty strong correlation with smoking rates, almost no correlation with drinking rates.
Just don't put yourself in a position where you're going to do stupid shit and ruin your life while you're drunk. And if you're the type of guy who can't stop yourself from doing stupid shit when you drink, then don't drink. But if you can handle yourself, it's not that big a deal. I've come full circle on this.
My sister recently finished med school and told me the theme of many patient case studies regardless of the disease is don’t be obese and smoke cigarettes.
70% cosigned. Probably everyone who drinks would be a little healthier if they only drank 2/3 as much, but it is such a small social-problem fish to fry.
2/3 less alcohol is 1/3 of the joy. I marvel at those who can have just one drink---thats just enough to muddy the waters of the evening but not expand the universe.
But I am gonna take the hard-to-defend stance here and say that just because some or even a lot of people struggle with drinking means it’s a good idea to not drink.
At this point in our American culture, I think the decline in drinking (and to a lesser degree smoking) is clearly detrimental to human flourishing, and I doubt it’s worth the health benefits.
You’re gonna get aggressive or gross drunks (as still exist in those drinking establishments nobody else frequents anymore), but that’s like saying we might as well give up on birthday parties because some people are obese and shouldn’t eat cake.
Although that's part of the point of the oldsters who meet at the Panera in Quebec Square. The idea is that if you're retired and looking to socialize, come on by!
Even more so if you add in diner breakfasts, which are generally very much social and coffee-fueled. (I grew up in a dry county, and a non-drinking religion. Coffee, sweet tea, and "cold drinks" were the standard drinks for socializing.)
This is true to the extent that it is also true that people work while having a beer. It definitely happens. Is far less common, though. You can easily just look at the numbers.
I would be interested in exploring why this is the case.
I don't think so--I'm not an arthropologist, but it's my understanding that it was pretty much an everytime drink, because the water would kill you.
Thinking out loud, it's pretty natural that we would tend to prefer stimulants early in the day, and depressants later. Fire is what molded our ancestors into something greater than chimps; it makes calories much more available and makes the big brain possible. Anatomically-modern humans could not have existed without fire. You're always going to build your fire after the hunt, not before--that's when it's most useful for cooking--and we are daytime hunters. So fire comes at ~twilight, and work comes in the morning. The fire dies down over time, it doesn't flare up as it burns through fuel.
It all just seems totally natural regardless of whether, if stuck in a 24/7 daylight bunker, we did better/more work on one substance or the other.
I haven’t gone back to fact check this, but I recall learning that the introduction of coffee to beer-drinking Europe (drinking beer as you say because water was unsafe) contributed to the Enlightenment. If true, probably a radical difference across society.
I left out a few steps--you're more likely to want a hot beverage in the morning, when it's colder. And obviously you sleep off a depressant. You don't sleep off a stimulant.
It challenges Halina's lines "Stimulants like coffee suit a life focused on productivity and performance, not socializing," and "You go to a coffee shop to work on your laptop with your headphones on and parallel play with strangers you likely won’t speak to."
They can fight it out amongst themselves, to the extent they're interested. I think my German collaborators (no, not like that!!!) are a bunch of slackers.
Inter alia, “intimacy” is often not on offer in many bars. Rather, AIUI the theory is that by making it painfully loud and difficult to converse people are more likely to drink more and talk less.
Like, yes #notallbars but it’s definitely a thing.
This calls back to my hot take the other day of "the sci-fi-lover cohort thought Big Data could be the answer to everything--but society is being ruined by us having too much data, rather than too little data".
And the more I ruminate on this concept, the more I wholeheartedly believe it.
I didn't mean it to be aggressive but can see how it could come across that way. I was just wondering if your comment was more along the lines of "there are a couple sentences in the article that should be tweaked for clarity" or "the article should be seriously reworked due to this oversight". I appreciate clarity and accuracy, so I'm not trying to suggest that there's anything wrong with commenting to express either type of sentiment; just trying to understand which it is, because to me, they're very different.
From what I've seen, drinking coffee socially is a very small proportion of overall coffee drinking. When I go to a coffee shop to pick up a coffee, there are some groups of people talking, but most of the people inside are working alone. And even the people talking are often doing interviews or other work discussions. Plus, I assume that many more people get coffee to go (or get it from their home or workplace) than drink it in the coffee shop. So if, let's say, 2% of coffee drinking is done for social reasons whereas 70% of alcohol drinking is, then it's still very different.
Even the scenario you mentioned of senior citizens gathering over coffee is probably not due to the nature of caffeine but just because they like drinking coffee anyway. If they preferred lemonade, they'd gather over that; caffeine doesn't directly promote socializing like alcohol does.
So I agree that the article should probably phrase the quotes you shared a little differently, e.g. by adding the word "usually", but to me it doesn't challenge the notion that alcohol generally promotes socializing whereas caffeine generally discourages it or is at best neutral to it.
Although it’s notable that it is standard to ask someone out for coffee or for tea or for alcohol. But not for lemonade or other unstuffed beverage (even if people sometimes get one while “out for coffee or a drink”).
Agreed. Where I live, the only two specific beverages that I hear mentioned like that are coffee and beer. Of course sometimes people go "out for coffee" and have tea or a smoothie, or they go "out for beers" and have Coke or whiskey. The expressions are probably more about specifying the type of venue - coffeeshop/café vs. bar/club.
From what you’ve seen, that’s how things are now. But that may have less to do with coffee than with present-day culture. Coffee shops existed long before laptops, in fact I recall reading somewhere that the American revolution was plotted in coffee houses. The folk music scene of the 50s happened in coffee houses. And of course, AA meetings run on coffee. Halina also featured a rather rosy version of alcohol use, where no one has more than one or two drinks and nothing bad ever happens aside from a greater risk of all kinds of health problems.
That reminds me -- in the 1980s, there was a coffee shop plus used bookstore in Chapel Hill that was designed by a recovering alcoholic as a gathering place for other recovering alcoholics. Someplace to hang out, talk, read books, and, unfortunately, smoke. That coffee shop was absolutely saturated with cigarette smoke. I still went there sometimes and people were definitely socializing.
Yes, this. Coffee from the (surprisingly excellent) kiosk at my university's library was a popular first date among the sort of people I dated in college.
I have a bunch of coffee shop friends I gained by hanging at a coffee shop with a record player. I write there and people definitely work there, but the vibe allows for conversations. Plus it's open late! Pick your java establishment well and it can be a third space
I’ve been going to bars alone as a woman for almost 20 years, mostly playing pool. I’ve also been going to coffee shops for my entire life. I’ve never made a new friend at a coffee shop, and I’ve made a half a dozen romantic connections and at least 3 dozen friendly connections at bars.
Honest question, do Gen Zers use the term "partner" to refer to someone they are dating now? Here's how this old Millennial thinks about it: if some you are "dating" stop texting you back you take the hint, if your "partner" stops responding you go and file a missing persons report. In that sense the hot takes about Gen Zers not "dating" are correct, Halina isn't "dating" she's in a long term committed non-marriage relationship here, if she has a "partner."
Or is it that saying "girlfriend" "boyfriend" is out of style? (Personally I think just because you are "dating" someone doesn't mean they are your "boyfriend", that implies exclusivity as in someone I knew one replied to a cop who said "Sorry but your boyfriend is going to have to spend the night in jail" after some drunken shenanigans got out of hand with "Officer, he is *not* my boyfriend"....as Elene would say, they were just having a good time.
As an older-than-Dennis fogey, "partner" is now just shorthand for "significant other" and/or carrying the subtext of "I don't give a shit if you're married or not, or whether it is hetero/homo in nature".
Who knows what those crazy kids are doing. Or apparently, who they're not doing.
It's definitely linked to the change among college-educated people that you get married when you're around 30 and/or ready to have kids, not just after 1-2 years with someone you love.
To me it sounds completely devoid of romance, and I always refused to use it before I was married.
I posted literally the same question. The use of "partner" is a little jarring because I think something is being signaled by it but I don't know what exactly
It’s deliberately elliptical in a way that feels somewhat obnoxious, like “guess my relationship status and sexual orientation.” American English traditionally encodes this information in the terms “boyfriend/girlfriend”, “fiance/fiancee” (written) and “husband/wife.” Choosing to use more ambiguous terms has the implicit takeaway “I’m going out of my way to withhold information from you,” which is at a minimum irritating. I don’t give a damn whether Halina’s straight or gay or married or not but I do find unnecessary neologistic ellipticism a form of trying to be cute with language that’s mildly irritating and kind of pointless at best.
I don't blame Halina for following a norm the yooths follow regularly. Maybe she is doing so consciously or not, and I wouldn't speculate on whether she has some ulterior motive.
But at the same time it seems like some type of social signalling, like Latinx or pregnant person. I'm all for inclusion but I hope the educated youth of today realize they are making a statement that is jarring to some (most?) of America.
Norms are basically defined by who hears them, so I don't get to be language police here, but it is utterly inconceivable to me that "partner" grates in the same way as "latinx" or "pregnant person".
It grates to a much lesser degree, but is similar in kind. Much like Sharty points out below, if someone refers to their "partner" you can almost immediately assume that they're an urbane, liberal college-grad type under 40.
I don't think it's obnoxious; it's a norm of revealing less information about yourself. But I do think that maybe this new norm is not great in its overall effects, just like what Halina describes in the article itself.
I've run into some (fellow) queers who are convinced that the proliferation of "partner" is queer appropriation by the straights in order to sound cool. ("Back in my day, we *had* to say partner so no one would know I was gay!!!") I think that's a bit much, but I do agree that it's just become more trendy for some reason. Maybe kids these days think "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" are too unserious, idk.
Instance #283 of the progressive-aligned flipping from "we want to use the same thing as you" to "you can't use the same thing as us" so fast I didn't even freaking notice.
Ignorant straight here, but I thought another part was the combination of the perceived unseriousness of girlfriend/boyfriend as you note, while also accounting for the fact that not every couple wants to be married, which would make husband/wife sound weird too.
Whenever people say they think that boyfriend / girlfriend sound unserious I’m always inclined to think “that’s a you problem.” I know of a dignified septuagenarian (well, maybe late sexagenarian) professor whose kids call his long term female signficant other his girlfriend. It’s fine and doesn’t seem weird.
Everyone I know who says "partner" is in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex pretty much regardless of age group, so I think there might be something to your theory.
My interpretation in my contexts is that “partner” is what is needed to make an attempt to hire two bodies rather than one (at a university). No one cares whether there is a legal marriage, but mere boyfriend/girlfriend usually isn’t enough.
This seems like something that I would have a hard time defending post-Obergefell. Like, we literally have an explicit legal status available to everyone specifically for long-term mutuial commitment. Conversely, “partner” versus “boyfriend/girlfriend” has no agreed on boundary that I’m aware of, nor any obvious reason to treat the former as binding on the university but not the latter given its ostensibly equal ease of dissolubility.
I could imagine a university administration playing hardball that way, but the department never wants to. It seemed convenient that Texas didn’t recognize same sex marriages when my partner was hired there, so Texas A&M couldn’t play hardball on that, but they haven’t changed. (For what it’s worth, that university seems to be very good at making partners hires and very bad at matching salaries, when recruiting mid-career faculty.)
I have, in fact, heard of a department telling a faculty member, "If you want us to make a commitment to [your partner], you need to make a commitment to her first."
(I could imagine this making sense if there's already a pre-existing personal relationship between some of the people involved, e.g. if the hiring department has a friend of the candidate who knows them and their relationship and thinks the person really does need to figure out if their relationship is serious or not.)
Then again, there's "Significant Other" (though perhaps that indicates something even MORE "serious").
As for "appropriation"? That's not about those of us who are gay; it's about "Queer." It's not about same-sex attraction; it's about an ideology predicated on maintaining (and assimilating oneself to!) "LGBTQIA+" as an implicitly adversarial identity.
(At age 76, I’ve fought all my adult life to advance a recognition that there’s nothing “Queer” about same-sex attraction. I’m attracted to other guys; I’ve never hidden that fact, and [as my parents raised me] I’m proud to be — as an individual, simply and uniquely — myself. I never signed up to “smash cisheteropatriarchy” in the name of some Brave New World.)
As for "boyfriend"? A recent NY Times article about sex among elderly people, featuring a couple in their 80s, refers to them as "boyfriend" and "girlfriend." The guy in the accompanying photos (complete with white hair, crow's feet, and jowls) is a "boy"? Gimme a break! ;-)
I see the "my partner" phrase as a cultural thing with some politics behind it (lib/progressive-coded?). Perhaps it skews younger but I've heard it be used by a wide range of people.
I will say as an older Millennial gay man, the label “partner” sounds incredibly un-sexy. Before I called him my husband, I called him my fiance, and before that I called him my boyfriend. I think of “partner” as something only college-educated women and nonbinary people say.
This article is...covering aspects all over the place. Let me see if I can try to collect everything I was thinking as I was reading it.
• I'm glad this grappled with the serious tradeoff about where alcohol can go wrong, versus how it can go right as a social lubricant. I don't think enough people are taking that tradeoff seriously, so it's good to see it highlighted here.
• I'm surprised that cannabis wasn't mentioned here at all. It of course has had an uptick in its consumption with it being legal in most place, and it too has its own tradeoffs with it being a more peaceful drug, but perhaps *too* peaceful in its reputation of lowering productivity.
• And that's interesting to contrast with what was highlighted, an apparent push for drugs to *increase productivity*. The rise of Zyn has certainly had its harm reduction not only from tobacco, but also less of an airspace nuisance with vaping.
• If there really is a trend toward more stimulants, then I have to wonder if this will be followed by another rise in cocaine down the road, after its decline after the 1980s or so.
• It's weird to mention third space problems without mentioning coffeehouses, which are very much a center for consumption of mild stimulants. I did that just today, like I usually do on Friday mornings! People not going there as much has its own story to tell, then.
• All in all, I think people collectively need to chill out a bit more on what recreational drugs they do enjoy, and focus more narrow on the people that are specifically causing problems with them.
Yes, I feel like zero mention of cannabis almost undercuts the whole thing. It's more like alcohol in that it lowers anxiety, productivity, inhibitions, etc. and increases appetite and laziness, while (ime) often being more of a solitary activity. This all points in the opposite direction from the supposed wellness and productivity drug trend.
I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of “social” gummies that only have 2mg THC but like 5mg of CBD. The latter seems like it reduces social anxiety and the former gives you a buzz like a few drinks. The effect is a bit unpredictable based on whether you eat a meal before or after taking the gummy though.
Agree - weed has replaced alcohol for a not insignificant number of people in my (gen x) life. It kinda goes like this: if you used to drink a lot, you probably switched to weed. If you used to smoke a lot, you might have switched to having a few drinks.
I have zero interest to pursue cocaine so I may be blissfully ignorant about this. Still feels like we're a far cry away from the days of Lawrence Taylor being a notoriously functional cokehead in the media culture.
My dad was in high school in New York in the 80s and it's always hard for my Zoomer mind to fully comprehend that basically every one of his favorite pro athletes to watch back then was off crazy amounts of cocaine all the time.
"It's weird to mention third space problems without mentioning coffeehouses, which are very much a center for consumption of mild stimulants. I did that just today, like I usually do on Friday mornings! People not going there as much has its own story to tell, then."
I'm not sure coffeeshops still count as a third space. In my experience, there's very little socializing that happens there. People either go there with one specific person they already knew, or they just sit alone at a table, often with headphones on. No one ever talks to strangers. It's kind of like a library. It might be one of the *worst* places for socializing.
Legal cannabis use is unfortunately not particularly social. The jurisdictions that have legalized it have (with a few exceptions) not allowed on-site consumption, and even in places where it is allowed it hasn't been all that popular. Unlike alcohol, the best formats for cannabis consumption (gummies, and to a lesser extent vapes) are simply too quick to allow for much in the way of socializing around it. Sitting around drinking and talking can take hours, while popping a gummy is instantaneous. Lack of socialization is also an unfortunate side effect of cannabis being so delightfully cheap. If your dose for a session is a 10mg gummy that costs less than two dollars, it's tough to make a business out of renting a space for you to sit and consume it publicly. I suppose one could sell appetizers.
Weed being legal has taken all the fun out of everything. Back in the 90s you still had to run from the cops if you had weed. All you could get was hash most of the time. And when you did get weed it generally sucked. Yeah, things were pretty great back then.
I'm the boring sober person in my social circle these days (when I was an addict, I wasn't boring!) and it always feels like I'm walking into bizarroland when I see people talk about nobody drinking anymore. I know the stats bear it out, but I still feel like every social event I go to centers around alcohol; work gatherings are always at breweries or beer gardens; people sneak liquor into "dry" weddings; someone's always asking who's going to bring the beer or sneak tequila into cookouts and picnics. I've had people sneak flasks into parties at my home where I've explicitly requested no alcohol because "socializing's no fun without it."
But I am a millennial in the legal profession, and I bet it's very different for a Gen Z graphic designer.
To be fair, you did say "in the legal profession." One of the things that I truly detest about bar (as in the legal kind) social functions is the extent they revolve around alcohol and the general assumption that pervades basically all socialization with other lawyers that you must enjoy alcohol.
My social circles are the same. There's obviously selection bias in play here but almost every typical event at happy hour or later I'm at is going to have some level of booze consumption. Are we so out of touch? No, it's the kids who are wrong!
Interesting, I’m also a millennial and my friends have all independently stopped drinking one by one.
I host dinner weekly and stopped buying alcohol because it would just never get consumed. Everyone had their individual reasons, from feeling like they maybe had a problem to medication interactions to it causing poor sleep.
Yeah, GLP-1 slows digestion and I since I’ve been on it, I feel like a few drinks either mess me up really quickly, or if consumed with food make you drunk for longer.
ICYMI there was a article in the MN Reformer about the The Minnesota Volunteer Legal Brigade who did battle with Kristi's goon squads: https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/02/19/lawyers-filed-over-1000-lawsuits-challenging-immigrant-detentions-during-operation-metro-surge/ I couldn't help but think of a HBO movie version. You are played by Scarlett Johansson/Maggie Gyllenhaal and furiously lead Zoom trainings as old timer family lawyers (William H. Macy) types who have spent their careers drawing up wills, young law students unsure in their place in the world, and hardened cynical corporate lawyers (played by Woody Harrelson) in 3,000 dollar suits go forward to do battle for the Lord.
A question to all the Youngs out there: why the switch to "partner"? I can understand when it's a polite way to head off prying into potentially complicated topics, like with NBs, but mostly tend to have an (irrational?) irritation at the ambiguity thus created. Knowing the type of people someone is into is a useful bit of information, even for purely non-prurient purposes. It'd be sort of like replacing all instances of mother/father with "parent", or at least that's how I view it. Generational linguistic differences are so weird.
I totally get your impulse. To answer your question, though, it’s generally used to make sure that anyone else who wants to leave the gender of their significant other ambiguous can use the neutral language without it being an obvious indicator of their sexuality. Some people think everyone should use it just to make everyone else comfortable using it.
Ah, coalitional logroll, got it. Sort of like the pronouns thing, which I'm also a wet blanket on. But it's an egalitarian impulse I can respect despite disagreeing with the premise. Thanks for responding, I haven't wanted to ask any of my actual gen Z coworkers because there's no non-awkward way to do so (or for them to answer, really).
My instinct is to say that both this and the pronouns thing port over much better in text, where you've often never interacted with respondents in person. Once you do, most of the lack of clarity disappears pretty quickly.
It's actually dramatically worse than "parent" because, even as a completely neuter word, it indicates that you're speaking of a relative. "Partner" drags like a file across my teeth because, as a lawyer, it not uncommonly creates an ambiguity for some period of time about whether the speaker is referring to (1) their boyfriend/girlfriend, (2) a senior attorney, or (3) someone they co-own a business with. This isn't hypothetical either -- I've seen multiple occasions where a "Who's on first" situation results from use of "partner." In a conversation where specific, concrete individuals are involved rather than a general discussion, it really, *really* serves no legitimate purpose, IMO beyond obfuscating what's being talked about.
Fair point, although I have to say that I default to presuming anyone using the term "partner" to refer to someone they have a romantic relationship isn't married to them because otherwise I'd expect them to use "spouse."
I'm 22 and I haven't found it to be very commonplace, and I've spent my entire life in very lefty places. My dad says "partner" when he's at work, but it's mostly because he likes to ragebait his conservative coworkers and not for any sincere reason. I've never met a gay person my age who uses it, so my prior is usually that their partner is of the opposite sex.
Huh, really? It's been the norm in my corner of SF for at least several years now, to the point where I especially notice when someone *does* regularly use boy/girlfriend instead. It correlates better with age than social conservatism, but fair point that that's another splitter dimension. Also, While I Cannot Condone This, have to admit that's an amusing tactic. Always keep them guessing! (Be extra funny if working as a lawyer, cop, or other profession where "partner" has additional meanings too.)
(Kelsey Cook observing that there's really no good way to refer to your 40-year-old paramour; "boyfriend" is silly but "man friend" makes it sound like they're a sex offender. Under the circumstances "partner" might be the least bad option.)
Unless the post was edited at some point before I scrolled back up to double-check before leaving my comment, this is not the case. Too lazy to Wayback Machine or whatever. But it'd be more amusing if that was the case.
I’ve been thinking about this trend a lot lately, Halina—a great post to add more context.
I’ve smoked since I was 16, and always found it easy to meet people in the small group of outcasts (I’m 41). I also recently switched to vaping, which has helped me at the gym without cutting out the odd social interaction.
But man, finding people who are both dedicated gym-goers *and* drinkers is looking increasingly grim.
I’m pretty concerned that in our haste to cheat death, we’re cheapening our actual existences.
I don't smoke, but a 10 minute smoke break outside with your coworkers always seemed like a great way to just get in a little chat time without having to get stuck for hours.
For a long time, we had a standing 3pm 15 or 20 minute team walk around the greater block, no shop talk allowed, weather permitting. It didn't survive staff turnover and/or covid, unfortunately.
It’s just everywhere, this type of thinking. People don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat anymore. It’s all “healthier”, and it all results in less socializing, more loneliness, more life dissatisfaction.
According to surveys, of course. Not accusing you of anything specifically.
I assumed that cannabis was going to be discussed here! That’s certainly what I think of when I think of drugs that are replacing alcohol, or someone vaping socially.
A few years ago I remember having a conversation with friends about how the dawn of liberalism and capitalism in the 1600s and 1700s was in part fueled by the rise of coffee shops, and that the contemporary rise of cannabis might portend a different shift in socioeconomic patterns. (We thought of alcohol as having its peak even earlier, though we don’t have statistics on that, and ignored the gin craze and so on.)
Is there an increase in consumption of caffeine or nicotine? Or just new forms of nicotine while it’s overall consumption continues to decline?
In my experience (guy in college), it seems like nicotine pouches have mostly replaced cigarettes in contexts where it would be annoying to take a smoke break, whereas cigarettes are still pretty popular if you're going to be out of the house anyways. There's some substitution effect going on, but only to a certain extent.
The little vuse “e-cigarette” vape is the way for clandestine nicotine consumption. Not as social by any means bc places here don’t let you do that either despite it leaving no after-smell, but I don’t leave home without it.
In my small PA town right outside Philadelphia there were a bunch of corner "tappies" (taprooms). My father was a near tea totaler, but most of my friends' fathers were not. They would get home from work, do whatever household chores needed to be done, have dinner with the family, and then walk to the local tappy to socialize and have a few. They were mostly on their way home by 9:30, spen a pleasant hour or so with their wives, and got to bed around 11.
The more direct combat you'd seen in "the War" the later past 9:30 you might stay, but still home at a respectable time. This wasn't a perfect situation, and it was no question was a bit unfair to the wives, who also tried to socialize during these hours, but there were both real male friendships, and I think importantly, lots of close acquaintanceships maintained this way.
When I reached adulthood there was still some semblance of this available to me, but it was receding. I wish there was something like this for me today, but there's not. Maintaining male friendships takes a lot more work these days, and mostly doesn't happen.
I tell my twenty something sons that they need a few close friends, but they also need some just acquaintances, and both categories are important.
Vapes and Zyns are demonstrably better for your health than smoking, but because vapes and nicotine pouches can be used indoors without attracting attention, there’s no longer a need to step outside with coworkers to smoke throughout the day.
Not only is a smoke break an excuse to step away from work and go outside, it’s an opportunity to socialize with coworkers. Those who’ve done this know how much a social experience it is.
It is much better that people live healthier, longer lives than they socialize a few times a day. But the social element we are moving away from, much like the one being described here about bars, shouldn’t be overlooked.
In the context of the health problems tobacco poses, I think it’s pretty clear that losing the social element is a worthy tradeoff. Think of all the joy and social interaction that one does not experience because they died of lung cancer at 50 years old.
I wouldn’t be surprised. But yeah it’s not like smoking a pack of Newports daily is the only way to stave off a miserable, lonely existence. You can chain smoke and be miserably lonely…ask me how I know!
I am going to give Crockett credit for *mostly* being a good loser and *mostly* saying the right things after she lost. No desire to kick her while she's down. She had some complaints, but they were fairly mild in the grand scheme of things. On to November.
From a Bulwark Focus Group podcast, it seems like Texas voters liked both candidates and they both had high approvals among Democrats, as opposed to the online version of dirty bloody warfare.
A bit of a throwback to 2020 where Bernie & Biden online camps despised each other, while in reality, they were both each others voters #2 pick.
That was a fascinating read, and even taking it all with a grain of salt, it tells me Talarico is at least a competent politician and candidate.
I was struck by this early line: "Widely known and beloved by Democratic voters..." Maybe this means Texas democratic voters, but I'm a democratic voter who pays for things like Slow Boring so I think I can consider myself at least fairly well informed, but I had never heard of her before, and I did hear about Talarico before she joined the race. There is still a difference between Social Media famous and actually famous.
I realize that his name isn't really Beto. I intended my comment with a bit of sarcasm -- as I assume you did with yours. :-)
I have a hard time seeing his prominence in ANY campaign as a source of strength: His history is a pure distillation of "getting a bad candidate to almost win." ;-)
At least in the article detailing the campaign I didn't see any shady tactics, but there were a lot of bad assumptions, I think mostly thinking that how well known she was as a twitter/national/progressive figure was the same as being a well known to actual voters in Texas figure.
I'm not sure the specific substance involved is as much to blame as other factors that simply are killing socialization in general. In the 1990s, my friends and I would hang out in coffee shops in the evening to chat, but even before the people I knew got married and had kids, that started drying up in the early 2000s. (I also feel like there are fewer coffee shops that are even open in the evenings -- the four coffee places within six blocks of my house all close no later than 6 PM.)
I agree. Honestly, I think the problem is that "third places" are declining in general. Whether those spaces are bars, clubs, coffee houses, or churches isn't as relevant.
I don't know about other people, but I take the preworkout so that I can lift more, so that I can look good, so that attractive people find me attractive. Sounds pretty pro-social to me.
More seriously, I don't get why protein is lumped in with actual stimulants here. Sure, high-protein everything is trendy right now, but it's not remotely in the same category as caffeine or nicotine.
Is attractive people finding you more attractive the same as having a more social life? Having more friends even if none of them are attractive is greater "socialness" than fewer but more attractive firends.
I hadn’t heard the term “preworkout” before it was used as an aside in the article. I would have guessed it was a protein shake, but does it have stimulants as well?
Yes, they're mostly caffeine, with some other supposedly ergogenic stuff like taurine etc. Tbh preworkouts are of questionable value besides the caffeine, and coffee gets the job done just as well.
A lot of the utility of preworkout supplements also depends on what sort of work you're actually doing. In my sport, beta-alanine and bicarbonate are both pretty popular (and seem to have measurable performance effects, judging by a quick skim of the literature), but they're both pretty much useless unless you're doing a very specific length and intensity of exercise.
"Stimulants like coffee suit a life focused on productivity and performance, not socializing"
Says someone who has clearly never seen the Saigon coffee scene with 100+ college aged kids sitting on the sidewalk outside a cafe at 2am, definitely not on any laptops!
Some Google images to illustrate the kind of thing you see on every corner of every street every night. Thuc Cafe (thuc means "wake up") is a reasonably large chain whose main selling point is every shop is open 24/7.
"non-alcoholic protein beer."
This is an abomination unto the Lord thy God.
This isn’t a beer. Rather, it’s a different beverage
Keto consumes everything in the end.
It makes me laugh how the modal consumer of our "high-protein" products is not actually some jacked gymbro managing his macros, but a fad-chasing low-information dieter who's doing the same sort of word-association magic that brought us "electrolytes" and "gluten free" everything. Working grocery has been a blackpill for direct democracy in this way: if I can't trust people to carefully shepherd the food they put into their own bodies, I sure as hell don't trust them to vote on weighty matters that affect my body too.
It's got what plants crave.
If someone is on Ozempic and can't consume many calories, they need to get their protein (and fiber) where they can.
Must confess that it's been very strange how the random needles that occasionally litter our premises now include Ozempic injectors. (It's a public good to provide public restrooms anyone can use sans purchase, but holy shit is it gross. Can understand why so many businesses don't anymore. We all lose from public disorder, can't have nice things.) Can't wait till they approve the pill form: great for diffusion, great for cost reduction, less dangerous litter menacing the feet of the public.
Some enterprising soul could probably invent a dual-use injector, for that matter...prescription substances in one needle, proscribed substances in the other. Save 50% on paraphenalia costs!
Public restrooms should provide needle disposal containers, like ones we have in labs. You don't want that stuff in a regular trash can (and you sure as heck don't want it on the ground! Jesus, people!).
Oh, we do provide them! Many places in SF do! Unfortunately you can lead water to a horse, but you can't make it wet. Not all shooters care enough/are lucid enough to properly dispose of the sharps. You don't want to know how many plumbers we've had to call because they ended up in, uh, other more accessible waste streams.
I have a better idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP9b8yySqL0
There is a pill form, at least for Wegovy.
The gripping hand is that carefully shepherding the food that goes into your body is overrated. Balance calories with exercise/output, hit macros if you want, everything else is a hobby. You really shouldn't expect people to pay too much attention because the marginal benefits are...marginal, and the obvious extension is that people who are 'fat' or 'out of shape' (please feel free to have a brawl about defining those terms) shouldn't have a vote over matters that affect your body either (which is literally everything because we are embodied).
If someone can't balance a calorie budget, why should I trust them to balance a budget budget? Tradeoffs in miniature and macro stretch the same muscles. Selling slop makes a lot more money, and funds a much bigger portion of my paycheck, than fresh produce...doesn't mean I have to like it, or reserve zero judgement for either the peddlers or consumers of poison.
Realpolitik does demand not taking this view to its logical conclusion, and obviously popularism means I don't air it too-publicly...but it is how I feel in my heart of hearts, egalitarian impulses be damned. "The reason most folk songs are so atrocious, is that they were written by the people..."
A calorie "budget" has precisely Fuck all to do with financial budgeting.
the idea there is any relationship is fantastical twattery.
I'm frankly quite tired of your borderline incomprehensible grammar and perennially rude responses to people and posts you dislike. This is the first time someone's actually motivated me to use the block and mute functions, so congratulations.
?eh? - you're judging democracy based on "shepherding food" into body?
What kind of bizarre twattish judgementalism is this? Jesus
Whither the "small beer" of history, alcoholic enough to be safe for consumption in pre-pasteur days, but hard to get drunk off of?
I don't think I'd love it, but I'd try it. For science.
Just water down your Miller Lite in a 1:1 ratio to get the equivalent
Bear Whiz Beer!
Any Firesign Theatre fans here? No? Okay.
I think we're all bozos on this bus.
I think that's probably still too much Miller Lite.
Sounds like Utah beer.
Back in the late 80s I was working in the SLC area, ordered a margarita at a restaurant after a long day at Thiokol. They brought the drink to the table with no alcohol. I had to walk next door to the state dispensary and buy one of those airline bottles of tequila and I think they only allowed one or two to be purchased. I'm glad caffeine wasn't so limited there or I'd have been in big trouble.
3.2 represent!
you can make it yourself https://truetreatscandy.com/products/colonial-home-brew-kit
2/10, not Northern Brewer, would not click 'Like'
[shudder]
You mean like kvass?
Couldn't be worse than the NIPAs I drink to extend my bar session...
Counterpoint: chicken beer has protein! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-Tspdoouns
These words don't belong together.
Chicken AND beer, on the other hand....
A whole rotisserie chicken and a six pack of pilsner urquell are the Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen of Saturday night meals.
That sounds divine.
Wings and draft almost anything higher than Bud or Miller.
… is the name of a whole ass album.
I gagged.
But if you drink enough they get you fucked up, right?
The map of life expectancy in the US is a pretty strong correlation with smoking rates, almost no correlation with drinking rates.
Just don't put yourself in a position where you're going to do stupid shit and ruin your life while you're drunk. And if you're the type of guy who can't stop yourself from doing stupid shit when you drink, then don't drink. But if you can handle yourself, it's not that big a deal. I've come full circle on this.
My sister recently finished med school and told me the theme of many patient case studies regardless of the disease is don’t be obese and smoke cigarettes.
It's sad that these two goals oppose each other, to a certain extent.
The main reason I regulate my alcohol consumption is because of the calories. Perfecting the dad bod with the post-workoit beer.
70% cosigned. Probably everyone who drinks would be a little healthier if they only drank 2/3 as much, but it is such a small social-problem fish to fry.
I'm all in favor of jacking up alcohol taxes. I don't think we're at a large risk of reinvigorating the moonshine market.
You could have a rigorous bootlegging market going across the Columbia and back...
(implying the Jantzen Beach liquor store parking lot isn't already 95% filled with Washington plates)
God could you imagine how much more crowded that state line Costco would be if you were allowed to sell hard liquor at grocery stores in Oregon.
Busiest one in the US IIRC
Competition strengthens everybody!
Make it a social outing!
Isn’t the social aspect vis-a-vis health issues exactly what we’re debating, here?
People who can handle it engaging in semi-frequent moderate drinking seems optimal.
Granted, Sharty lives in the Upper Midwest so I can see why he thinks people might need to tone it down a bit.
2/3 less alcohol is 1/3 of the joy. I marvel at those who can have just one drink---thats just enough to muddy the waters of the evening but not expand the universe.
lol I have seen those maps.
But I am gonna take the hard-to-defend stance here and say that just because some or even a lot of people struggle with drinking means it’s a good idea to not drink.
At this point in our American culture, I think the decline in drinking (and to a lesser degree smoking) is clearly detrimental to human flourishing, and I doubt it’s worth the health benefits.
You’re gonna get aggressive or gross drunks (as still exist in those drinking establishments nobody else frequents anymore), but that’s like saying we might as well give up on birthday parties because some people are obese and shouldn’t eat cake.
People do socialize over coffee, though. It's a thing. "Let's meet for coffee."
There's a group of oldsters that meets Tuesday mornings at the local Panera to socialize.
To be fair, Halina specifically used the example of "where strangers can become friends," which is different that meeting someone you already know.
Although that's part of the point of the oldsters who meet at the Panera in Quebec Square. The idea is that if you're retired and looking to socialize, come on by!
lol, sounds like being a poll worker here
Which is not to say we don't take it deeply seriously. But sometimes it's 7:30 on a one-office primary night.
Yes.
Even more so if you add in diner breakfasts, which are generally very much social and coffee-fueled. (I grew up in a dry county, and a non-drinking religion. Coffee, sweet tea, and "cold drinks" were the standard drinks for socializing.)
This is true to the extent that it is also true that people work while having a beer. It definitely happens. Is far less common, though. You can easily just look at the numbers.
I would be interested in exploring why this is the case.
"Write drunk, edit sober" isn't an expression that sprung up out of thin air, though.
It wouldn't surprise me if it's just an hour-of-the-day thing.
Notable that weak beer used to be a common morning drink?
I don't think so--I'm not an arthropologist, but it's my understanding that it was pretty much an everytime drink, because the water would kill you.
Thinking out loud, it's pretty natural that we would tend to prefer stimulants early in the day, and depressants later. Fire is what molded our ancestors into something greater than chimps; it makes calories much more available and makes the big brain possible. Anatomically-modern humans could not have existed without fire. You're always going to build your fire after the hunt, not before--that's when it's most useful for cooking--and we are daytime hunters. So fire comes at ~twilight, and work comes in the morning. The fire dies down over time, it doesn't flare up as it burns through fuel.
It all just seems totally natural regardless of whether, if stuck in a 24/7 daylight bunker, we did better/more work on one substance or the other.
I haven’t gone back to fact check this, but I recall learning that the introduction of coffee to beer-drinking Europe (drinking beer as you say because water was unsafe) contributed to the Enlightenment. If true, probably a radical difference across society.
Coffee is a pretty common after meal drink, too? Overall, I can't disagree, though. More thinking out loud with you.
Question would largely remain on why socializing for a morning drink is different from the same in the evening.
I have to think it is related to people being awake? Especially back when it required live musicians to have entertainment.
I left out a few steps--you're more likely to want a hot beverage in the morning, when it's colder. And obviously you sleep off a depressant. You don't sleep off a stimulant.
Do you think that refutes or significantly challenges the main points of this article?
It challenges Halina's lines "Stimulants like coffee suit a life focused on productivity and performance, not socializing," and "You go to a coffee shop to work on your laptop with your headphones on and parallel play with strangers you likely won’t speak to."
Why do you ask?
I think there might be some truth to Halina's sentiment, but like many theories, it attempts to prove way too much.
Look to those bastions of hard-driving late-night coffee-pounding productivity, the... the Italians!
shit.
They often don’t even sit down pounding their coffee, so it goes towards Halina’s point.
Sad!
Northern or Southern?
They can fight it out amongst themselves, to the extent they're interested. I think my German collaborators (no, not like that!!!) are a bunch of slackers.
Inter alia, “intimacy” is often not on offer in many bars. Rather, AIUI the theory is that by making it painfully loud and difficult to converse people are more likely to drink more and talk less.
Like, yes #notallbars but it’s definitely a thing.
I dunno. I’m gonna dispute your assertion that “intimacy”—compared to non-bar settings—is rarely on offer.
I think anywhere alcohol is flowing provides a *sense* of intimacy for those partaking.
That is depressing but it tracks well with my experience.
This calls back to my hot take the other day of "the sci-fi-lover cohort thought Big Data could be the answer to everything--but society is being ruined by us having too much data, rather than too little data".
And the more I ruminate on this concept, the more I wholeheartedly believe it.
It was just a passing remark. Looking at all sides of the picture, that's all. I don't know why Nate got aggressive about it.
I didn't mean it to be aggressive but can see how it could come across that way. I was just wondering if your comment was more along the lines of "there are a couple sentences in the article that should be tweaked for clarity" or "the article should be seriously reworked due to this oversight". I appreciate clarity and accuracy, so I'm not trying to suggest that there's anything wrong with commenting to express either type of sentiment; just trying to understand which it is, because to me, they're very different.
From what I've seen, drinking coffee socially is a very small proportion of overall coffee drinking. When I go to a coffee shop to pick up a coffee, there are some groups of people talking, but most of the people inside are working alone. And even the people talking are often doing interviews or other work discussions. Plus, I assume that many more people get coffee to go (or get it from their home or workplace) than drink it in the coffee shop. So if, let's say, 2% of coffee drinking is done for social reasons whereas 70% of alcohol drinking is, then it's still very different.
Even the scenario you mentioned of senior citizens gathering over coffee is probably not due to the nature of caffeine but just because they like drinking coffee anyway. If they preferred lemonade, they'd gather over that; caffeine doesn't directly promote socializing like alcohol does.
So I agree that the article should probably phrase the quotes you shared a little differently, e.g. by adding the word "usually", but to me it doesn't challenge the notion that alcohol generally promotes socializing whereas caffeine generally discourages it or is at best neutral to it.
Although it’s notable that it is standard to ask someone out for coffee or for tea or for alcohol. But not for lemonade or other unstuffed beverage (even if people sometimes get one while “out for coffee or a drink”).
That's probably just do to their relative popularity
Agreed. Where I live, the only two specific beverages that I hear mentioned like that are coffee and beer. Of course sometimes people go "out for coffee" and have tea or a smoothie, or they go "out for beers" and have Coke or whiskey. The expressions are probably more about specifying the type of venue - coffeeshop/café vs. bar/club.
"Unstuffed beverage?" I have idea what that means and now I'm curious
Apparently my phone autocorrected “undrugged” into “unstuffed”.
From what you’ve seen, that’s how things are now. But that may have less to do with coffee than with present-day culture. Coffee shops existed long before laptops, in fact I recall reading somewhere that the American revolution was plotted in coffee houses. The folk music scene of the 50s happened in coffee houses. And of course, AA meetings run on coffee. Halina also featured a rather rosy version of alcohol use, where no one has more than one or two drinks and nothing bad ever happens aside from a greater risk of all kinds of health problems.
"AA meetings"
That reminds me -- in the 1980s, there was a coffee shop plus used bookstore in Chapel Hill that was designed by a recovering alcoholic as a gathering place for other recovering alcoholics. Someplace to hang out, talk, read books, and, unfortunately, smoke. That coffee shop was absolutely saturated with cigarette smoke. I still went there sometimes and people were definitely socializing.
I started making coffee with coworkers after RTO. We chat over coffee.
Would you say that the caffeine in the coffee promotes the socializing or is coincidental to it?
Yes, this. Coffee from the (surprisingly excellent) kiosk at my university's library was a popular first date among the sort of people I dated in college.
I have a bunch of coffee shop friends I gained by hanging at a coffee shop with a record player. I write there and people definitely work there, but the vibe allows for conversations. Plus it's open late! Pick your java establishment well and it can be a third space
I don't think I've ever had a real conservation with a stranger at a coffee shop. I definitely have at a bar.
I've never spoken to a stranger in a bar. Didn't you see "Looking for Mr. Goodbar"? Talking to people in bars is how you get murdered.
I’ve been going to bars alone as a woman for almost 20 years, mostly playing pool. I’ve also been going to coffee shops for my entire life. I’ve never made a new friend at a coffee shop, and I’ve made a half a dozen romantic connections and at least 3 dozen friendly connections at bars.
No doubt. But I don't like bars and I don't go to them.
I guess that explains why I’ve been serially murdered.
I get quite social and chatty on caffeine though I don't remember ever waking up next to a girl I hardly remember the next morning on it,lol.
But the causality is reversed here. The desire to socialize precedes the meeting, the stimulant helps to maintain it.
Honest question, do Gen Zers use the term "partner" to refer to someone they are dating now? Here's how this old Millennial thinks about it: if some you are "dating" stop texting you back you take the hint, if your "partner" stops responding you go and file a missing persons report. In that sense the hot takes about Gen Zers not "dating" are correct, Halina isn't "dating" she's in a long term committed non-marriage relationship here, if she has a "partner."
Or is it that saying "girlfriend" "boyfriend" is out of style? (Personally I think just because you are "dating" someone doesn't mean they are your "boyfriend", that implies exclusivity as in someone I knew one replied to a cop who said "Sorry but your boyfriend is going to have to spend the night in jail" after some drunken shenanigans got out of hand with "Officer, he is *not* my boyfriend"....as Elene would say, they were just having a good time.
As an older-than-Dennis fogey, "partner" is now just shorthand for "significant other" and/or carrying the subtext of "I don't give a shit if you're married or not, or whether it is hetero/homo in nature".
Who knows what those crazy kids are doing. Or apparently, who they're not doing.
Partner to me is what a lot of gay men would say when they couldn't get married, so it always strikes me as "serious relationship but not married".
It's definitely linked to the change among college-educated people that you get married when you're around 30 and/or ready to have kids, not just after 1-2 years with someone you love.
To me it sounds completely devoid of romance, and I always refused to use it before I was married.
To me it could totally be a straight thing, but something like "We've been together for six years and living together for two" etc
Yeah, on reflection, to me it's the living-together Rubicon. Or semi-shared finances more broadly.
I posted literally the same question. The use of "partner" is a little jarring because I think something is being signaled by it but I don't know what exactly
Also, it feels kinda cold and clinical
It’s deliberately elliptical in a way that feels somewhat obnoxious, like “guess my relationship status and sexual orientation.” American English traditionally encodes this information in the terms “boyfriend/girlfriend”, “fiance/fiancee” (written) and “husband/wife.” Choosing to use more ambiguous terms has the implicit takeaway “I’m going out of my way to withhold information from you,” which is at a minimum irritating. I don’t give a damn whether Halina’s straight or gay or married or not but I do find unnecessary neologistic ellipticism a form of trying to be cute with language that’s mildly irritating and kind of pointless at best.
I don't blame Halina for following a norm the yooths follow regularly. Maybe she is doing so consciously or not, and I wouldn't speculate on whether she has some ulterior motive.
But at the same time it seems like some type of social signalling, like Latinx or pregnant person. I'm all for inclusion but I hope the educated youth of today realize they are making a statement that is jarring to some (most?) of America.
Norms are basically defined by who hears them, so I don't get to be language police here, but it is utterly inconceivable to me that "partner" grates in the same way as "latinx" or "pregnant person".
It grates to a much lesser degree, but is similar in kind. Much like Sharty points out below, if someone refers to their "partner" you can almost immediately assume that they're an urbane, liberal college-grad type under 40.
I make immediate assumptions about the politics and social circle of the person using the term.
Thank you for your service. I'm sure we can create some kind of certificate to recognize your social bravery. Perhaps a medal?
I don't think it's obnoxious; it's a norm of revealing less information about yourself. But I do think that maybe this new norm is not great in its overall effects, just like what Halina describes in the article itself.
I've run into some (fellow) queers who are convinced that the proliferation of "partner" is queer appropriation by the straights in order to sound cool. ("Back in my day, we *had* to say partner so no one would know I was gay!!!") I think that's a bit much, but I do agree that it's just become more trendy for some reason. Maybe kids these days think "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" are too unserious, idk.
Instance #283 of the progressive-aligned flipping from "we want to use the same thing as you" to "you can't use the same thing as us" so fast I didn't even freaking notice.
(I note your use of "some")
Ignorant straight here, but I thought another part was the combination of the perceived unseriousness of girlfriend/boyfriend as you note, while also accounting for the fact that not every couple wants to be married, which would make husband/wife sound weird too.
I flat-out refused to use the word "girlfriend" after 30.
Well "mistress" is frowned upon, so...
I prefer consort.
I've a fondness for paramour, as a libertine signal.
Special lady/gentleman suitor ftw.
Whenever people say they think that boyfriend / girlfriend sound unserious I’m always inclined to think “that’s a you problem.” I know of a dignified septuagenarian (well, maybe late sexagenarian) professor whose kids call his long term female signficant other his girlfriend. It’s fine and doesn’t seem weird.
Do his kids think of him as a "boy"? That seems weird.
The term "boyfriend" indicates gender and relationship status. It doesn't convey age.
Everyone I know who says "partner" is in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex pretty much regardless of age group, so I think there might be something to your theory.
My interpretation in my contexts is that “partner” is what is needed to make an attempt to hire two bodies rather than one (at a university). No one cares whether there is a legal marriage, but mere boyfriend/girlfriend usually isn’t enough.
This seems like something that I would have a hard time defending post-Obergefell. Like, we literally have an explicit legal status available to everyone specifically for long-term mutuial commitment. Conversely, “partner” versus “boyfriend/girlfriend” has no agreed on boundary that I’m aware of, nor any obvious reason to treat the former as binding on the university but not the latter given its ostensibly equal ease of dissolubility.
I could imagine a university administration playing hardball that way, but the department never wants to. It seemed convenient that Texas didn’t recognize same sex marriages when my partner was hired there, so Texas A&M couldn’t play hardball on that, but they haven’t changed. (For what it’s worth, that university seems to be very good at making partners hires and very bad at matching salaries, when recruiting mid-career faculty.)
I have, in fact, heard of a department telling a faculty member, "If you want us to make a commitment to [your partner], you need to make a commitment to her first."
I see no problem with this?
We have two couples in our department who divorced shortly after one or both were hired.
Wow.
(I could imagine this making sense if there's already a pre-existing personal relationship between some of the people involved, e.g. if the hiring department has a friend of the candidate who knows them and their relationship and thinks the person really does need to figure out if their relationship is serious or not.)
Universities should start demanding that faculty formalize the class and duration of interpersonal liasons like in Anathem.
It just depends on how badly you want the first person.
That's interesting.
Nowadays I get to say husband and they get to say partner. Seems like a fair trade to me!
Then again, there's "Significant Other" (though perhaps that indicates something even MORE "serious").
As for "appropriation"? That's not about those of us who are gay; it's about "Queer." It's not about same-sex attraction; it's about an ideology predicated on maintaining (and assimilating oneself to!) "LGBTQIA+" as an implicitly adversarial identity.
(At age 76, I’ve fought all my adult life to advance a recognition that there’s nothing “Queer” about same-sex attraction. I’m attracted to other guys; I’ve never hidden that fact, and [as my parents raised me] I’m proud to be — as an individual, simply and uniquely — myself. I never signed up to “smash cisheteropatriarchy” in the name of some Brave New World.)
As for "boyfriend"? A recent NY Times article about sex among elderly people, featuring a couple in their 80s, refers to them as "boyfriend" and "girlfriend." The guy in the accompanying photos (complete with white hair, crow's feet, and jowls) is a "boy"? Gimme a break! ;-)
I'm fine with "partner."
Dating < boyfriend/girlfriend < partner/spouse
I’m not sure where significant other fits in this sequence.
Too many syllables.
I see the "my partner" phrase as a cultural thing with some politics behind it (lib/progressive-coded?). Perhaps it skews younger but I've heard it be used by a wide range of people.
"You said you were partners so ... What do you sell?"
https://youtu.be/hWhkF-8zZ1s
Personally it's a bit too business-like for my taste. SO is superior as it at least implies importance.
Halina and her beau/belle should totally get a old fashioned "partners desk" so they can bang out great takes both at the same time https://www.reproductionfurniture.com/desks/6-deluxe-partners-desk.html
A college student mentioned her "partner" to me the other day, and I almost said what I was thinking: "You're too young to have a 'partner'!"
I will say as an older Millennial gay man, the label “partner” sounds incredibly un-sexy. Before I called him my husband, I called him my fiance, and before that I called him my boyfriend. I think of “partner” as something only college-educated women and nonbinary people say.
it's primarily a function of how woke your social circle/environment is. much more common in blue cities.
I still see it as cringe but I'm also north of 40.
I don't really see much of it, to be honest.
This article is...covering aspects all over the place. Let me see if I can try to collect everything I was thinking as I was reading it.
• I'm glad this grappled with the serious tradeoff about where alcohol can go wrong, versus how it can go right as a social lubricant. I don't think enough people are taking that tradeoff seriously, so it's good to see it highlighted here.
• I'm surprised that cannabis wasn't mentioned here at all. It of course has had an uptick in its consumption with it being legal in most place, and it too has its own tradeoffs with it being a more peaceful drug, but perhaps *too* peaceful in its reputation of lowering productivity.
• And that's interesting to contrast with what was highlighted, an apparent push for drugs to *increase productivity*. The rise of Zyn has certainly had its harm reduction not only from tobacco, but also less of an airspace nuisance with vaping.
• Regarding nicotine synthetics, I'll reup this subthread from Dilan Esper back in October, which got very rigorous responses: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-forgotten-politics-of-big-tobacco/comment/169299748
• If there really is a trend toward more stimulants, then I have to wonder if this will be followed by another rise in cocaine down the road, after its decline after the 1980s or so.
• It's weird to mention third space problems without mentioning coffeehouses, which are very much a center for consumption of mild stimulants. I did that just today, like I usually do on Friday mornings! People not going there as much has its own story to tell, then.
• All in all, I think people collectively need to chill out a bit more on what recreational drugs they do enjoy, and focus more narrow on the people that are specifically causing problems with them.
I might edit with more later if I think about it.
Yes, I feel like zero mention of cannabis almost undercuts the whole thing. It's more like alcohol in that it lowers anxiety, productivity, inhibitions, etc. and increases appetite and laziness, while (ime) often being more of a solitary activity. This all points in the opposite direction from the supposed wellness and productivity drug trend.
I wonder if pot cafes would change the needle here
I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of “social” gummies that only have 2mg THC but like 5mg of CBD. The latter seems like it reduces social anxiety and the former gives you a buzz like a few drinks. The effect is a bit unpredictable based on whether you eat a meal before or after taking the gummy though.
Agree - weed has replaced alcohol for a not insignificant number of people in my (gen x) life. It kinda goes like this: if you used to drink a lot, you probably switched to weed. If you used to smoke a lot, you might have switched to having a few drinks.
From dribs and drabs of various hinted and not so hinted references, I think the return to rising cocaine use has already begun to happen.
Yeah it's called Adderall.
It already happened once in the early Aughts, too.
I have zero interest to pursue cocaine so I may be blissfully ignorant about this. Still feels like we're a far cry away from the days of Lawrence Taylor being a notoriously functional cokehead in the media culture.
My dad was in high school in New York in the 80s and it's always hard for my Zoomer mind to fully comprehend that basically every one of his favorite pro athletes to watch back then was off crazy amounts of cocaine all the time.
"Smoke too much of that and it'll rob you of all your ambition."
"Not if your ambition is to get high and watch TV."
"It's weird to mention third space problems without mentioning coffeehouses, which are very much a center for consumption of mild stimulants. I did that just today, like I usually do on Friday mornings! People not going there as much has its own story to tell, then."
I'm not sure coffeeshops still count as a third space. In my experience, there's very little socializing that happens there. People either go there with one specific person they already knew, or they just sit alone at a table, often with headphones on. No one ever talks to strangers. It's kind of like a library. It might be one of the *worst* places for socializing.
Since when is "socializing" something one does (predominantly) with strangers?
Cocaine is already on the way up
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/mexico-drugs-cartel-oseguera-trump-586f0cec
Legal cannabis use is unfortunately not particularly social. The jurisdictions that have legalized it have (with a few exceptions) not allowed on-site consumption, and even in places where it is allowed it hasn't been all that popular. Unlike alcohol, the best formats for cannabis consumption (gummies, and to a lesser extent vapes) are simply too quick to allow for much in the way of socializing around it. Sitting around drinking and talking can take hours, while popping a gummy is instantaneous. Lack of socialization is also an unfortunate side effect of cannabis being so delightfully cheap. If your dose for a session is a 10mg gummy that costs less than two dollars, it's tough to make a business out of renting a space for you to sit and consume it publicly. I suppose one could sell appetizers.
Weed being legal has taken all the fun out of everything. Back in the 90s you still had to run from the cops if you had weed. All you could get was hash most of the time. And when you did get weed it generally sucked. Yeah, things were pretty great back then.
I'm the boring sober person in my social circle these days (when I was an addict, I wasn't boring!) and it always feels like I'm walking into bizarroland when I see people talk about nobody drinking anymore. I know the stats bear it out, but I still feel like every social event I go to centers around alcohol; work gatherings are always at breweries or beer gardens; people sneak liquor into "dry" weddings; someone's always asking who's going to bring the beer or sneak tequila into cookouts and picnics. I've had people sneak flasks into parties at my home where I've explicitly requested no alcohol because "socializing's no fun without it."
But I am a millennial in the legal profession, and I bet it's very different for a Gen Z graphic designer.
To be fair, you did say "in the legal profession." One of the things that I truly detest about bar (as in the legal kind) social functions is the extent they revolve around alcohol and the general assumption that pervades basically all socialization with other lawyers that you must enjoy alcohol.
do they still do Thursday night bar review in law schools?
I don't know. I graduated from law school over 20 years ago and haven't really kept up with what the social scene looks like there.
same. I'm suspicious it's gone these days...but if anyone is a hold out in the no-fun generation it's lawyers.
My social circles are the same. There's obviously selection bias in play here but almost every typical event at happy hour or later I'm at is going to have some level of booze consumption. Are we so out of touch? No, it's the kids who are wrong!
The selection bias is that you’re actually going to a social event after work hours!
Interesting, I’m also a millennial and my friends have all independently stopped drinking one by one.
I host dinner weekly and stopped buying alcohol because it would just never get consumed. Everyone had their individual reasons, from feeling like they maybe had a problem to medication interactions to it causing poor sleep.
Yeah, GLP-1 slows digestion and I since I’ve been on it, I feel like a few drinks either mess me up really quickly, or if consumed with food make you drunk for longer.
Bunch of geezers.
My reason right now for not drinking is a geriatric pregnancy so I can’t even argue with you there.
ICYMI there was a article in the MN Reformer about the The Minnesota Volunteer Legal Brigade who did battle with Kristi's goon squads: https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/02/19/lawyers-filed-over-1000-lawsuits-challenging-immigrant-detentions-during-operation-metro-surge/ I couldn't help but think of a HBO movie version. You are played by Scarlett Johansson/Maggie Gyllenhaal and furiously lead Zoom trainings as old timer family lawyers (William H. Macy) types who have spent their careers drawing up wills, young law students unsure in their place in the world, and hardened cynical corporate lawyers (played by Woody Harrelson) in 3,000 dollar suits go forward to do battle for the Lord.
A question to all the Youngs out there: why the switch to "partner"? I can understand when it's a polite way to head off prying into potentially complicated topics, like with NBs, but mostly tend to have an (irrational?) irritation at the ambiguity thus created. Knowing the type of people someone is into is a useful bit of information, even for purely non-prurient purposes. It'd be sort of like replacing all instances of mother/father with "parent", or at least that's how I view it. Generational linguistic differences are so weird.
I totally get your impulse. To answer your question, though, it’s generally used to make sure that anyone else who wants to leave the gender of their significant other ambiguous can use the neutral language without it being an obvious indicator of their sexuality. Some people think everyone should use it just to make everyone else comfortable using it.
Ah, coalitional logroll, got it. Sort of like the pronouns thing, which I'm also a wet blanket on. But it's an egalitarian impulse I can respect despite disagreeing with the premise. Thanks for responding, I haven't wanted to ask any of my actual gen Z coworkers because there's no non-awkward way to do so (or for them to answer, really).
My instinct is to say that both this and the pronouns thing port over much better in text, where you've often never interacted with respondents in person. Once you do, most of the lack of clarity disappears pretty quickly.
So does it connotate some level of real seriousness, which would be my old person interpretation, or can it be just person I'm dating this month?
It's actually dramatically worse than "parent" because, even as a completely neuter word, it indicates that you're speaking of a relative. "Partner" drags like a file across my teeth because, as a lawyer, it not uncommonly creates an ambiguity for some period of time about whether the speaker is referring to (1) their boyfriend/girlfriend, (2) a senior attorney, or (3) someone they co-own a business with. This isn't hypothetical either -- I've seen multiple occasions where a "Who's on first" situation results from use of "partner." In a conversation where specific, concrete individuals are involved rather than a general discussion, it really, *really* serves no legitimate purpose, IMO beyond obfuscating what's being talked about.
Add a #4: someone they’re married to.
Fair point, although I have to say that I default to presuming anyone using the term "partner" to refer to someone they have a romantic relationship isn't married to them because otherwise I'd expect them to use "spouse."
This is where "S.O." is still gender neutral but never means business partner
I'm 22 and I haven't found it to be very commonplace, and I've spent my entire life in very lefty places. My dad says "partner" when he's at work, but it's mostly because he likes to ragebait his conservative coworkers and not for any sincere reason. I've never met a gay person my age who uses it, so my prior is usually that their partner is of the opposite sex.
Huh, really? It's been the norm in my corner of SF for at least several years now, to the point where I especially notice when someone *does* regularly use boy/girlfriend instead. It correlates better with age than social conservatism, but fair point that that's another splitter dimension. Also, While I Cannot Condone This, have to admit that's an amusing tactic. Always keep them guessing! (Be extra funny if working as a lawyer, cop, or other profession where "partner" has additional meanings too.)
There's some great Who's on First sketch with a gay cop just waiting to be written
absolutely common in dc. to the point that if you're under 30 and say boyfriend or girlfriend its probably signaling that you're conservative.
It makes me think of American Beauty.
Tangentially on point to this:
https://youtu.be/ExM7ZvQxHmw?t=85
(Kelsey Cook observing that there's really no good way to refer to your 40-year-old paramour; "boyfriend" is silly but "man friend" makes it sound like they're a sex offender. Under the circumstances "partner" might be the least bad option.)
One aspect of it I find funny is that my gay best friend hates it because it makes him think that they're gay when they aren't
But Halina said “he” right after saying “partner, IIRC?
Unless the post was edited at some point before I scrolled back up to double-check before leaving my comment, this is not the case. Too lazy to Wayback Machine or whatever. But it'd be more amusing if that was the case.
I didn’t RC. :-)
I confused Halina’s partner with Gordon Lightfoot
I’ve been thinking about this trend a lot lately, Halina—a great post to add more context.
I’ve smoked since I was 16, and always found it easy to meet people in the small group of outcasts (I’m 41). I also recently switched to vaping, which has helped me at the gym without cutting out the odd social interaction.
But man, finding people who are both dedicated gym-goers *and* drinkers is looking increasingly grim.
I’m pretty concerned that in our haste to cheat death, we’re cheapening our actual existences.
I don't smoke, but a 10 minute smoke break outside with your coworkers always seemed like a great way to just get in a little chat time without having to get stuck for hours.
For a long time, we had a standing 3pm 15 or 20 minute team walk around the greater block, no shop talk allowed, weather permitting. It didn't survive staff turnover and/or covid, unfortunately.
That’s a really interesting idea!
It doesn't work as well once most of your team has a dog.
That’s a…really interesting data point. Sincerely.
I don't smoke but I get this vibe.
Yuck to the 'baccy, but the last line sounds right.
Seeing them all in the little glass smoke-filled cage at the Frankfurt Airport during a layover was the best anti-smoking ad I could get as a teen
Seems more suitable as a propaganda piece against "mass incarceration." ;-)
Vegas, but yep.
It’s just everywhere, this type of thinking. People don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat anymore. It’s all “healthier”, and it all results in less socializing, more loneliness, more life dissatisfaction.
According to surveys, of course. Not accusing you of anything specifically.
I assumed that cannabis was going to be discussed here! That’s certainly what I think of when I think of drugs that are replacing alcohol, or someone vaping socially.
A few years ago I remember having a conversation with friends about how the dawn of liberalism and capitalism in the 1600s and 1700s was in part fueled by the rise of coffee shops, and that the contemporary rise of cannabis might portend a different shift in socioeconomic patterns. (We thought of alcohol as having its peak even earlier, though we don’t have statistics on that, and ignored the gin craze and so on.)
Is there an increase in consumption of caffeine or nicotine? Or just new forms of nicotine while it’s overall consumption continues to decline?
In my experience (guy in college), it seems like nicotine pouches have mostly replaced cigarettes in contexts where it would be annoying to take a smoke break, whereas cigarettes are still pretty popular if you're going to be out of the house anyways. There's some substitution effect going on, but only to a certain extent.
They should put nicotine in healthy snacks, like celery sticks.
Hahaha!
The little vuse “e-cigarette” vape is the way for clandestine nicotine consumption. Not as social by any means bc places here don’t let you do that either despite it leaving no after-smell, but I don’t leave home without it.
As Homer Simpson once said, the only dangerous amount of alcohol is none.
The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
In my small PA town right outside Philadelphia there were a bunch of corner "tappies" (taprooms). My father was a near tea totaler, but most of my friends' fathers were not. They would get home from work, do whatever household chores needed to be done, have dinner with the family, and then walk to the local tappy to socialize and have a few. They were mostly on their way home by 9:30, spen a pleasant hour or so with their wives, and got to bed around 11.
The more direct combat you'd seen in "the War" the later past 9:30 you might stay, but still home at a respectable time. This wasn't a perfect situation, and it was no question was a bit unfair to the wives, who also tried to socialize during these hours, but there were both real male friendships, and I think importantly, lots of close acquaintanceships maintained this way.
When I reached adulthood there was still some semblance of this available to me, but it was receding. I wish there was something like this for me today, but there's not. Maintaining male friendships takes a lot more work these days, and mostly doesn't happen.
I tell my twenty something sons that they need a few close friends, but they also need some just acquaintances, and both categories are important.
Vapes and Zyns are demonstrably better for your health than smoking, but because vapes and nicotine pouches can be used indoors without attracting attention, there’s no longer a need to step outside with coworkers to smoke throughout the day.
Not only is a smoke break an excuse to step away from work and go outside, it’s an opportunity to socialize with coworkers. Those who’ve done this know how much a social experience it is.
It is much better that people live healthier, longer lives than they socialize a few times a day. But the social element we are moving away from, much like the one being described here about bars, shouldn’t be overlooked.
> It is much better that people live healthier, longer lives than they socialize a few times a day.
Citation needed, actually, I think.
In the context of the health problems tobacco poses, I think it’s pretty clear that losing the social element is a worthy tradeoff. Think of all the joy and social interaction that one does not experience because they died of lung cancer at 50 years old.
Didn’t Biden’s Surgeon General famously say that loneliness is deadlier than smoking?
I wouldn’t be surprised. But yeah it’s not like smoking a pack of Newports daily is the only way to stave off a miserable, lonely existence. You can chain smoke and be miserably lonely…ask me how I know!
"Ask me how I know"?
Never ask a reformed "sinner" about a past activity that they consider a "sin"!
Losing campaigns are pretty much always portrayed as disasters run by morons in the media, but this is interesting about how Crockett never really took Talarico seriously early on, which might help explain why she relied on some really dubious tactics towards the end. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/06/jasmine-crockett-texas-james-talarico-democrat-us-senate-primary/
I am going to give Crockett credit for *mostly* being a good loser and *mostly* saying the right things after she lost. No desire to kick her while she's down. She had some complaints, but they were fairly mild in the grand scheme of things. On to November.
It seems like Crockett mistook popularity with being popular.
I know how stupid that looks as a sentence, but do you know what I mean?
"Just because you *are* a character, doesn't mean that you *have* character!"
--Winston Wolf
I mean, actually, yeah. That captures a lot of what I'm trying to convey.
Hence why I used that quote!
From a Bulwark Focus Group podcast, it seems like Texas voters liked both candidates and they both had high approvals among Democrats, as opposed to the online version of dirty bloody warfare.
A bit of a throwback to 2020 where Bernie & Biden online camps despised each other, while in reality, they were both each others voters #2 pick.
That was a fascinating read, and even taking it all with a grain of salt, it tells me Talarico is at least a competent politician and candidate.
I was struck by this early line: "Widely known and beloved by Democratic voters..." Maybe this means Texas democratic voters, but I'm a democratic voter who pays for things like Slow Boring so I think I can consider myself at least fairly well informed, but I had never heard of her before, and I did hear about Talarico before she joined the race. There is still a difference between Social Media famous and actually famous.
Crockett occupied a middle ground, which is MSNBC Famous.
I have always thought that getting a bad candidate to almost win is much more impressive than just winning with a good candidate.
that's true in any competitive field
Is your name "Oliver" or "Beto"? ;-)
Beto's name isn't Beto. But you have to give his campaign a lot of credit.
I realize that his name isn't really Beto. I intended my comment with a bit of sarcasm -- as I assume you did with yours. :-)
I have a hard time seeing his prominence in ANY campaign as a source of strength: His history is a pure distillation of "getting a bad candidate to almost win." ;-)
Making a LeBron over MJ argument
I think the bad assumptions and shady tactics are both downstream of character deficiencies on her part.
At least in the article detailing the campaign I didn't see any shady tactics, but there were a lot of bad assumptions, I think mostly thinking that how well known she was as a twitter/national/progressive figure was the same as being a well known to actual voters in Texas figure.
I'm not sure the specific substance involved is as much to blame as other factors that simply are killing socialization in general. In the 1990s, my friends and I would hang out in coffee shops in the evening to chat, but even before the people I knew got married and had kids, that started drying up in the early 2000s. (I also feel like there are fewer coffee shops that are even open in the evenings -- the four coffee places within six blocks of my house all close no later than 6 PM.)
I agree. Honestly, I think the problem is that "third places" are declining in general. Whether those spaces are bars, clubs, coffee houses, or churches isn't as relevant.
I don't know about other people, but I take the preworkout so that I can lift more, so that I can look good, so that attractive people find me attractive. Sounds pretty pro-social to me.
More seriously, I don't get why protein is lumped in with actual stimulants here. Sure, high-protein everything is trendy right now, but it's not remotely in the same category as caffeine or nicotine.
Is attractive people finding you more attractive the same as having a more social life? Having more friends even if none of them are attractive is greater "socialness" than fewer but more attractive firends.
To each their own!...
Supplements and stimulants are categorically different, even if some products combine them.
I hadn’t heard the term “preworkout” before it was used as an aside in the article. I would have guessed it was a protein shake, but does it have stimulants as well?
Yes, they're mostly caffeine, with some other supposedly ergogenic stuff like taurine etc. Tbh preworkouts are of questionable value besides the caffeine, and coffee gets the job done just as well.
A lot of the utility of preworkout supplements also depends on what sort of work you're actually doing. In my sport, beta-alanine and bicarbonate are both pretty popular (and seem to have measurable performance effects, judging by a quick skim of the literature), but they're both pretty much useless unless you're doing a very specific length and intensity of exercise.
"Stimulants like coffee suit a life focused on productivity and performance, not socializing"
Says someone who has clearly never seen the Saigon coffee scene with 100+ college aged kids sitting on the sidewalk outside a cafe at 2am, definitely not on any laptops!
Some Google images to illustrate the kind of thing you see on every corner of every street every night. Thuc Cafe (thuc means "wake up") is a reasonably large chain whose main selling point is every shop is open 24/7.
https://kinhdoanhcafe.vn/upload/elfinder/Dope%20coffee/c%C3%A0%20ph%C3%AA%20v%E1%BB%89a%20h%C3%A8/ca-phe-ghe-dau-phong-cach-gian-di-dung-chat-via-he.jpg
https://cdn.xanhsm.com/2025/02/c11a8a87-ca-phe-via-he-sai-gon-8.jpg
https://www.alamy.com/young-students-having-coffee-and-drinks-at-a-street-cafe-old-quarter-hanoi-vietnam-asia-image241177897.html
Or for that matter just sitting together in the park drinking takeaway coffee together.
https://cdn.xanhsm.com/2025/02/49eab293-ca-phe-via-he-sai-gon-6.jpg
So I wonder how much of this is due to the actual pharmaceuticals involved and how much is cultural.
I think it’s very much cultural!