I’m sorry. Sounds like you’ve had some shitty experiences. I have, too, so maybe I get it at least somewhat (based on this very short description), but my experiences aren’t yours, and it sucks. It changes you and can fuck up future relationships and happiness if the aftermath doesn’t go well. Hoping you have found a better path toward happiness.

Oh, I am highly attracted to certain kinds of intelligence in women, but (a) I think I have acquired this over my post-teenage life, and (b) I still very much need that intelligence to be in a body I also find attractive. We are all victims of our evolution and cultural messaging, to varying extents.

100%. The mechanism is (I think) this: legally, there’s nobody to prosecute or sue, now.

In the early 2000s some of us who were Way Too Online learned this lesson: A major pillar of internet security, a company whose entire reason for existing was to protect its customers’ personal information, went bankrupt and sold all its customer data to the highest (or possibly just first) bidder.

No matter how “trustworthy” the company, no matter what their Terms and Conditions say, no matter how “solid” their “values,” everyone sells your data when they go bankrupt.

(And most of them will do it long before then)

It might just maybe be similar to why men are also not attracted to intelligence.

Does this mean kernels will be less stable? Big changes all at once seem to imply that, generally.