There is a vast frontier of knowledge and value to be gained in renewable energy, fusion technologies, CRISPR/medical science, systems integrations and automation, environmental cleanup, food science, etc.

These all take hard work and knowledge and aren’t quick fixes, so of course it seems like all the low hanging fruit is gone.

There are a ton of problems that need solving. It’s not the dog eat dog universe you say it is.

I used to be nihilistic and cynical for a time as well. Then I went through a divorce, went deeply into debt, became an alcoholic, lived in my car for a while and got sober and got my shit together. Not to say I recommend it, but the survival instinct is strong, and a wife and kids are a wonderful thing to wake up to every day.

I hope you can get some distance from the drugs and you might also get some perspective.

Your story is at least interesting, and if true, it sounds like you at least have the resources to improve your mindset and lot in life.

Well naturally, but I was and still am a dumb hick from Appalachia, so I didn’t understand that at the time. I’m a senior engineer now who does system integrations. I was speaking of the cliché advice given to people without marketable skills in a bit of a tongue-in-cheek way.

Is it not work to make connections? Is there no value in learning to learn? I think this is a pretty short sighted way to go about life.

You seem like you’re younger than me and also not from the USA, so I can’t understand the exact realities of your situation without more info.

I got straight A’s in school (1992-2005) and found later in life that I was learning what other kids already inherently knew or learned way earlier. My “AP Calculus” was algebra I for the kids in the larger/wealthier cities in the state. Once I got to college/university I made up the difference somewhat, but I still felt very out of place.

Grades are not the end all be all, but learning to learn is important and it shouldn’t be reduced to just “testing once or twice”. How will you pass the test if you don’t know how to study or have at least some underlying knowledge of the test subject? Maybe I’m misunderstanding your meaning.

I may regret engaging, but I can say as someone who grew up in Harlan County, KY (one of the poorest places in the USA), hard work and education absolutely do still make a difference. You can get educated in a variety of ways, and you can meet people and lean on those connections even if your family isn’t born with them.

Raging about the world on the internet won’t fix your problems even if it does provide catharsis for a brief time. You’ve got to do some work. Whether that’s learning to grow a garden and giving produce to your neighbors, or learning music to join a band and connecting to others through songs you write. Those things take work. People want to connect with others who have skills, even outside of a capitalist system.

Anecdotally, I “LeArNeD tO cOdE” instead of bitching that all the mines closed, and it’s worked well for me. Wrapping my head around coding concepts when I objectively got one of the worst educations available in this country has been hard work and I’m proud to be where I am. I hope you find something you can work towards.

Job: Software Dev

Internal stakeholder or C-Suite: presents nebulous idea for workflow/product/feature with no actual end goal

“We have a CRITICAL need for this product. It will REVOLUTIONIZE everything we do here. The stakes could not be higher. THIS MUST BE COMPLETED ASAP”

My boss: Okay. We will move heaven and Earth to get this done for you.

Me: Works 60 hours a week for two months to ensure the new product is successful

Also me: checking usage statistics six months later…last used by me during go live testing

I hate my life.

A former prosecutor selecting AOC also suggests a semblance of growth on the part of the prosecutor.

Yes, she put away a lot of people on drug crimes and I’m sure other BS. The conservatives are already circulating memes with a collage of black faces she put in prison. As if they give a fuck about black people in any capacity outside of when it’s politically expedient. They’ll be in the camps with the rest of us if Trump wins.

Someone like AOC diffuses some of the Israel and ACAB criticism. Or it could be turned to say AOC is a sellout, which I think is a hard argument to make. No one saying that should really be taken seriously given her record.

In this political climate of violence, it’s basically also a giant “fuck you” to the right. You’ll get this centrist woman, or you’ll get this left leaning woman. It hints where a Kamala Harris admin is wanting to take the country in the future and could also serve to finally motivate the youth vote.

AOC seems to understand realpolitik better than the many on the left, and I think she’ll eventually save us all. I know she probably won’t be on the ticket, but manifestation is a thing right?

I can use a plunger and knock a turd loose in less than 10 seconds. Getting a bucket and filling it with hot water is at least a few minutes of effort.

This for real. Wish commutes weren’t so god damn awful and long that in office jobs weren’t so soul sucking. Or god forbid we get compensated for our commutes or having to live closer to offices and pay exorbitant rents/taxes.

Like okay, your office is downtown in a major city. It costs $3k or some dumb shit for a studio apartment but the job only pays $80k a year and of course no overtime. So either I have to live an hour out and take a slow ass dirty train or drive in (and pay for parking too?!), or you let me work from home and I save two hours of my life per day. You as a corporation should be lobbying politically for more housing to bring down prices and providing a housing allowance or something if you want me coming in. “Nobody wants to work anymore!!” Like dude pay my rent and I’ll be in the office every day.

I think it would do me some good to have some in-person interaction, but I refuse to take a job where it’s forced upon me because it’s just too expensive to the point where even if the salary is $50k higher I don’t think I would go back to an office even on a hybrid/part-time basis. Work from home is the practical solution to this problem, because the other solutions are too radical for corporate America to try on a wider scale.

OP be like, “You have to start slow and work your way up to the girthier toys.”

And what happens if Joe dies in his sleep before election day? No one is talking about this as a liability but given the speed of his cognitive decline and the stress of the job and schedule, why is it outside the realm of possibility? Trump will of course live to be 180 years old since he’s literally a conglomerate of McDonalds microplastics and literally one of the worst pieces of shit to walk the earth in the post modern era. Why would anyone want Trump over Kamala outside of being an impotent right wing Russia cuck?

Kamala sucks but she’s the contingency plan. She’s part of his admin that passed the IRA, CHIPS, etc. and trying to put forth executive action that would seemingly be beneficial for the American people. Presumably she’d continue many of the same policies as her predecessor. There is no perfect candidate in a FPTP two-party system.

Project for a New American Century - “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, anyone?

Still alive last I checked but dead to me if that means anything.

My dad used to say “your ass is grass and I’m the lawnmower” as a joke sometimes, but then he would beat the ever living fuck out of me with whatever was in reach and it didn’t seem like he was joking at all.

I was confused by what this meme meant, but it reminded me of that.

Fuck reddit.

Feeding user data to an LLM. Jacking up API costs. Being generally unusable on mobile. Usurping old.reddit.com to try and force me to the official app on “unmoderated” and NSFW threads.

Now with their IPO and a need to deliver ever increasing subscriber numbers and improved metrics for shareholders every quarter, the writing is on the wall.

I hope it goes to zero. The only sad thing is all the knowledge that will be lost due to the sky high API pricing when the site eventually does sunset. I’m guilty myself of trying to de-enshittify google somewhat by adding reddit to just about every search. Hopefully people smarter than me have ways to archive that info.

I’m not saying the argument doesn’t have merit. I’m saying that this case wasn’t about “paying hush money to a porn star”. I really don’t care who he is if he can’t be nuanced. The world is not black and white. Bad Empanada is guilty of a straw man here and the result is that people who generally agree with the argument can’t tell if this is for or against Trump. Read a certain way it minimizes what Trump did. “Oh those other presidents did war crimes but THIS? This itty bitty little fraud is what gets a former president indicted?”

I can never tell if these memes are astroturfing by monied interests/russian bots pretending to be progressives, if populism leads to the same brainwashed takes as the right, or if progressives are actually this dumb.

I consider myself a socialist and a progressive, and I understand that this was a case of defrauding electors and why the case was a felony. It’s not “paying hush money to a porn star”.

I can’t imagine someone on the right saying this in earnest, as they’d never care about Native Americans or any minority. Only thing I can think is that it’s the right trying to sow discord on the left by feigning moral outrage, or the populist progressives on the left being unable to understand how the world works at all. I honestly can’t tell who is making these brain dead memes.