This is a list of things that are permitted. These aren’t all the things that are permitted, but everything listed here is permitted.

  • make friends
  • make friends on the internet
  • meet internet friends in real life
  • sleep on their couches
  • let them sleep on your couch
  • pay for their food
  • let them pay for your food
  • negotiate a job offer
  • read research papers
  • email researchers with questions and hear back
  • write code and put it online, in public, for free
  • get recognized by the code you put online
  • get a job by talking about the code you put online
  • put up a sign to organize a spontaneous same-day meetup amongst people who’d never met before
  • ask politely for something you’d like
  • ask politely for access to a multi-million dollar supercomputing cluster
  • get access to a multi-million dollar supercomputing cluster
  • ask John Cena “where is champ?” because he follows you on Twitter now
  • ask an internet forum moderator some behind-the-scenes questions
  • learn a bit how ranking algorithms work
  • do a particular exercise way more than you thought you ever should
  • not do a particular exercise at all
  • host dinner parties
  • host show-and-tell
  • build furniture for toddlers
  • read stories to toddlers
  • ask her out
  • fall in love