wonderbear's comments

That is bleak. Yikes. Sometimes, though, it's good to face the reality that nothing is forever, including one's own mind.

I'm glad your Opa has you there with him though this stage.

I'm sorry you're in that situation. I guess I don't have anything constructive to say, I just hope you find a chosen family.

You know writing has missed the mark when the only discussion is around the literary conceit.

Also let's please not start saying "techlash".

In my experience, whomever would normally do it. Many of us would meal prep ahead of time and leave the dishes for later. I often fail at this level of preparation and just make really simple meals.

Another Adventist here. One of the best things about living in a community of Adventists is observing Sabbath together. It's still meaningful and refreshing alone, but doing it with all your friends and the neighborhood is incomparably better.

My friends had a whole spectrum of things that were acceptable to do on Sabbath, but the common thread was connection. I miss that intensely, living in the Bay Area.

Wait, what? Why?

That depends massively on which state you're a resident of.

I'm going to try this. The questions my team comes up with haven't been very satisfying and this seems like a good way to find out what they do know vs what they don't.

I would argue we're just as pedigree based as ever. Just look at any list of the wealthiest (whatever demographic) people in the US. Inheritance and connections dominate it.

It's the wage-earners competing in a pseudo-meritocracy, just like fifty or a hundred years ago. The difference now is that our skilled trades require more formal education.

It's so easy with all the stories of "discovering" around the 1300s/1400s to not realize that earlier cultures were actually interconnected and had appreciable impact on each other.

The cost of college is going up dramatically. The younger engineers I've worked with recently often have six figures in debt starting out, and a lot of them went to state schools. They'll be paying that well past the traditional home buying age.

Yeah, they could have made some different choices and only been, say, $60k in debt, but "it gets better" comes with some pretty big caveats for a lot of people right now.

Similar. If I'm not excited about a tv show by the time the first set of credits is shown, then I'll only watch the rest of the pilot if my friends have assured me it's really good. And even then I won't watch more than the pilot if it doesn't speak to me. Maybe it will get better in the second season or whatever, but life is short and a tv series is a lot of time.

Books, I'm a bit more dogged about. It has to be pretty bad before I won't at least skim it before giving up. Partly this is because I'm a very fast reader and most books I can finish in a sitting or two.

That is an excellent book, and expounds on the ideas in this article.

> Maybe is because "just hangout with someone" is not clearly defined. What is the point? what do we want to talk about? I don't socialize a lot outside of work.

I felt this way for a very long time. Never had many friends growing up for much this reason; it didn't feel rewarding to spend time with anyone except my stepdad (my mentor, because I was always learning with him and he was one of the only people that made me feel safe) and my sports comrades (but only when we were practicing).

In adulthood, though, there's several people I enjoy so much that it seems worth it to spend a fair bit of effort just to be in their presence for some time. We don't even have to do anything particularly interesting. I don't understand why I want to be around them so much, but I do, and I wonder if this is the connection I've been missing the whole time.

The other weekend I took a six hour flight just to go on a hike with some of these people (there's plenty of hiking where I was already) because I missed them so much being away for work. It's like being hungry. Being around them is a dopamine hit.

For a while I only felt this way about a tiny handful of people I met in grad school so it seemed like the same sort of thing where you spend a lot of time and effort at a hobby and then find that you are passionate about it. Spend a lot of time (and college type bonding experiences) with some people and you'll find you're passionate about your friendship. But then in my early thirties I met a couple new friends and the same feeling happened within days of meeting them, so I don't understand the dynamic at all. What makes someone fall in love with their friends?

Apologies for going off on a tangent here. It was a thought provoking comment.

> ... behind every great movement there can be and often is great horror.

Exactly. It _was_ a great movement. It was singular and amazing there were brave people who did incredible things. At the same time: they left a lot of people worse off than they would have been otherwise. Both things are true. It sucks when you want a pure righteous hero to look up to, especially people that ultimately gave us so much. But that's what happened. Nothing honest that we can do looks past that.

> Renters endured longer commutes than homeowners in San Francisco, Detroit, and Cleveland.

I'm surprised there's working homeowners in San Francisco.

"18-35"

I just realized how soon I'm going to be "older" for demographic purposes.

I was rather excited to find out that I had a rare blood type and that donations are so easy and that I live near a clinic. My regular visits are quite rewarding. It feels good to matter for more than the tickets closed this week.

That analogy is fantastic.

Oh snaaap.