Some interesting context: the city of Camden, NJ had its (much larger) police department closed by the state in 2013. Its duties were handed over to the county police, the same as they're doing in the linked article.
The Camden County police successfully brought the crime rate way down. And in the summer of 2020, when riots rocked the US, the CCPD was held up as an example of good policing.
> Putting this on gender is such a weird thing to do.
Yes -- this phenomenon is somewhat gendered, but not overwhelmingly so. From the article's own statistic:
A 2025 Pew Research Center study found that 54 percent of women say they turn to a friend for emotional support but only 38 percent of men say they do.
So I think this is a problem that affects men somewhat more often than women, but happens plenty to both.
Not turning to a friend for emotional support, is not the same as not having friends.
That study would point to men having other ways to deal with emotions or indeed bottle them up, but the phenomenon of having friends or not like OP said, perhaps isn't gendered.
I feel like this article oscillates between sympathy for the lonely men, and victim-blaming that they're not trying hard enough, they're expecting their wife to manage their social life, etc.
I will say that loneliness and depression go hand-in-hand. And if someone's husband is clinically depressed, that's going to look a lot like "they're not even trying."
My lodge is also over 90% retired-age men, a few even over 90 year old... last month July 3 members died, but younger members are joining and replacement rate is probably evens out. The thing with younger men like me is we are too busy with work and family to contribute meaningfully to the lodge's operation.
It's likely there is, though it might be difficult to find. One place you can look is the local unitarian universalists. These can vary widely, but often you'll find them open to all religions (including non-religious), and full of open, curious, non-judgemental people.
One thing about UU's is that it's not dogma based. There's nothing you have to believe to be a UU. Instead, it's covenant based. You are in the community when you adhere to the agreements of the community. These are usually things like mutual respect, deep listening, etc.
Refactoring legacy code seems like something where formal methods could help. "Prove that these 2 subroutines are equivalent, across all inputs" is exactly the kind of thing that they're good at!
Always happy to see D2 on here! In my last job, I had to do several architecture diagrams. Learning D2 took maybe 1 day, and saved me much more time than that.
> Really the main issue [is] ... energy production
I know that's what the rhetoric focuses on, but is it the real issue? The people I know personally who are against "data centers" are really just against AI, period. "It takes jobs from artists, it's going to take my job, it's going to enrich a handful of oligarchs," etc.
I suspect that even if some magical breakthrough meant that AI usage could grow and grow without building a single new data center, these guys would still oppose AI.
And understandably so! "I'm worried that AI will take my job" is a reasonable worry, for many jobs! But I feel like "data centers" is, for many people, a pretext.
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