After seeing some 800~ events take place at The Commons i've learned 3 things:
1) plausible deniability: if you say we're here to make friends, friendship doesn't happen. if you say we're here to research or talk about niche topic x and y, friendships always form. same applies to dating.
2) communities are built from strong 1-1 relationships. as an
"To the people whose labors go beyond ideas into the realm of 'real materials'- to the dry-land ecologists, wherever they may be, in whatever time they work, this effort at prediction is dedicated in humility and admiration."
―Frank Herbert
In Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa describes Nepantla, a Nahuatl word for in-betweenness. A space where you are not this or that but where you are changing