Ok, that’s funny. I’d go on a date with you.

Her: So, you want anything to drink?

Wait are you hitting on them at their place of work, as a customer? Don’t fucking do that.

Maybe forget “techniques” and be real.

For many people, being playful, like on OP’s example, is being real. I’m a playful person. I have generally been a class clown my entire life, and I’d even say it’s a pretty core part of my personality and my identity.

I’ve been married over 10 years, with kids, and I still do this kind of stuff with my wife. I enjoy being silly with my kids, too.

And when I was dating I’d rely pretty heavily on humor for flirting throughout all stages, from meeting a stranger to setting up a first date to being on a date, to going on multiple dates. The other person’s laughter was an indicator of whether we were making a connection. And then, later on, I learned that I could expect my partner to be funny too, and actively make me laugh.

Being fun and flirty is a legitimate strategy for making sure you have the opportunity to connect with people. It is, in itself, attractive to some. And it might be unattractive to others, but it’s better to be attractive to some and unattractive to others than it is to be forgettable and unnoticed.

If they like you they do, if not who cares?

I think this is a pretty naive way of looking at relationships. Connections require some level of effort, especially in adult life. As much as we’d all love to just naturally have friendships, romantic partners, and other relationships just fall into our laps, that’s not really how that works. Most connections require a bit of work to find others, to find commonalities, to develop interest, to have some give and take of making a deeper connection, to have some vulnerability and growth and change as that stranger becomes an acquaintance and develops into someone close.

For younger people, especially under 30, looking for a partner isn’t just about looking for someone they like now. It’s also someone they want to grow with and experience things together with.

I can change her

Coral can recover after bleaching, so the threshold for bleaching is different from the threshold for dying.

Average chicken size has risen significantly through the introduction of specialized huge breeds. This article summarizes an academic paper that describes how we went from breeds that averaged 900g (2.0 lbs) to 4.2 kg (9.2 lbs) at 56 days old.

Cooking is my happy place. I now have a white collar job, producing words on a digital page, where most projects are measured in months and even individual tasks within those projects are measured in weeks, so I like to work with my hands to turn around something tangible on shorter timelines. Cooking is how I can turn raw ingredients into something delicious and beautiful.

It also helps that I used to cook professionally, so I have a lot of useful experience and knowledge about how to do things quickly and efficiently.

I normally buy air-chilled chickens around 4 lbs. Those run about $3/lb where I live, at Whole Foods.

But I’ve been boycotting Amazon/Whole Foods, so I bought my chicken from a big box store near my house. There, the whole roaster chickens are ordinarily gigantic (6-10 lbs). And the chicken already cut up into parts might be 12 lbs or more.

But there was a particularly sad looking 8-lb chicken for $1/lb, nearing its expiration date. I figured I had a plan to use it up within 3 days, so I bought that one.

Long term I might need to find a better chicken source. There are some specialty butcher shops in my city but I’d have to drive out there.

Honestly, just noodles (I went with some generic “Asian” dried noodle from a big box U.S. grocery store), carrots, ginger, scallions, a lot of black pepper, and the simmered meat, in the stock I had made. I basically did it countdown style: added pepper and ginger at t minus 10 minutes, added carrots and meat at t minus 7 minutes, added scallions and a little bit more black pepper as I took it off the stove. I stirred in some chili crisp for my own bowl, but the kids got a non-spicy version.