Once I hit my 40s, massive home diy projects have either become necessities (too expensive to hire out), pipe dreams, or like PA DOT working on route 202 in my youth (never ending with incremental steps that never improve the experience of driving). The energy loss is off the hook, and I’m not a flubbynutter.

I do like that theory. Unfortunately my wallet disagrees with it. Thankfully we’ve locked it in for 2.2% for 20 year, and semi-realistically we should be able to pay it off before that runs out. But the official period is 30 years, since that’s the legal maximum.

I am! I am also sleep deprived lmaooo.

First time in years though I felt genuinely content with my life and it’s over something as insignificant as this!

Yes and no! It’s a difficult initial process if you have no idea but becomes extremely easy once you know how PCs work.

Knowing how to diagnose problems is I feel a more difficult part. It’s more complicated than knowing “These parts go there and have cables that connect to the CPU switch, main power and hard drives” because cables and parts, to a huge degree, can only fit where they belong.

I imagine in the line of PC repair work you’ll encounter much more complicated issues and often multi-part damage. Also probably a lot of filth, I heard most normal people NEVER clean their PCs, change Thermal Paste or even let some nasty bugs accumulate in their PC.

Bonus points for if it’s a laptop instead of a PC. Their tight compact nature makes repairing them hell I’d imagine. BONUS bonus points if you’re working on an outdated PC who’s parts you can’t just easily swap out.

Considering they said “60 square meters of living space,” I’m going with option b

The latter. Health insurance is something I simply don’t need to worry about.

i was and still am confused that chimichanga isnt a universal term

if i may ask are you from southern usa area?

If you had written “hot burrito with melted cheese on top and inside”, i would be craving it now.

As a zillenial (to young for millennial to old for gen Z) I can tell you that if feels basically awful only ever knowing the ruinous aftermath of the “fuck around” era

Outside of my immediate friends and family, whom I cherish, I couldn’t be fucked anymore. Everything is so shit all the time. I hope things get better of course and I look out for others when I can. But I’m just trying to keep me and my own afloat at the moment.

Eh. It didn’t really start going to shit until 2001. Things stayed pretty darn good after 92. Not a lot of decades with that track record.

I mean, in the 90s we bitched about mostly distant global things because things were pretty good in general for most. And we had time to worry about less-catastrophic domestic things like Mumia or Peltier or what have you.

Now things aren’t so good and we end up bitching about far more local things because things around us are so bad.

It’s a great trick

my whole childhood in the 90s was the “ozone layer is dying” but at the same time optimistic outlook on life?

That was different

Oh man… I’d hate having you as a father. Eh your kids probably will too.

Sounds like you’re just trying to cope tbh

We live in a world where I could be arrested or canceled for trying to contribute to it.

Go ahead, make a YouTube channel that tries to bring to awareness the evils of sexual assault. You will be accused of having something to hide by the audience and you will be screwed by the network when they make you use the weirdest and most awkward euphemisms to describe these heinous acts, meanwhile Penis Prager can say the N Word as long as his show keeps the lights on…

I’m 32, I am infertile, but that is for the best. The human race doesn’t deserve to continue, I can only hope that reincarnation is real and that we can be reborn as something else, something that won’t fuck it up quite so magnificently.

So just stupid then. The game is over dude.

That phrase is past its expiration date, like many of the boomers.

Outliers don’t nullify the majority of data point

Sure, but those were extreme outliers.

The oceangate thing is a better example. Like “I’d just hold my breath and swim to the surface, no big deal”.

Except for the whole turning into ketchup in a millisecond or two part, ofc. Some people just don’t understand things like that.

That kid on the sub was smarter than the rest of them combined.

And at least one person survived the Titanic.

What happened to the rest of them? Possibly does not mean probable.

You can kindly go fuck yourself. By assuming people not only aren’t doing anything about the state of the world because they complain about it online but also assuming that they are in a position where they can do more, you are part of the problem. Especially by giving such polarized statements that simply shame people and have no clear, actionable suggestions on what to do. The system is designed to isolate people and prevent them from utilizing the power that they have to change things, and here you are, whining that people aren’t utilizing their power to change things. You’re just as bad as the people you’re complaining about. You’re not changing anything other than the number of people in the world who want to punch you in the throat.

There’s a reason that historically, most protests in the US were centered around a core group made up of college age kids, up until the past 50 or so years. It’s because that demographic has (had) the most free time and least financial burden. It’s the reason that college is so expensive nowadays. It was retaliation against the college kids who protested against Reagan when he was governor of California. The lack of free time and financial pressure on the workforce ensures that we’ll be less able to exert our power to change things.

If you actually want to help, you can help get people to the polls, especially for state and local level elections, or help aid groups that support striking workers. The reason old white people control so much of the state and local level government isn’t because people are sitting at home whining - it’s because their boss told them that they’ll be fired if they take the day off to go to the polls, and their district is so gerrymandered that it wouldnt make a difference anyways. The racist retirees are the ones who go to every town meeting and show up to all the hearings and community polls because they have all the time in the world while they live on their pensions. So, if you want to change the world, start by driving people to town meetings and to the polls on the local election days. Fight to ensure that people have the time and can afford to exercise their rights to make the world better. Or you can keep whining on the internet like a baby.

Things are changing, guys! Ace is on the case! If you just stop being mopey billionaires will stop being greedy, forests will stop disappearing, vulnerable populations will be safe, racism will disappear, the climate will sort itself out, everyone will get the medical care they need, no more starving… Thanks, Ace. We couldn’t have done it without you and your keen sense of dealing with all these minor little things.

Aside from bennies and pension, perks are shit (coffee? water? buy your own)

You are correct. It is definitely not a flashy career option. However, if someone is unable to get ahead financially, but then turns down that government IT job because “I have to buy my own coffee”, then they are their own worst enemy. They’re the reason they’re drowning.

Just like any other job, entirely dependent on your particular unit/department and manager. In the US Fed gov’t there’s a huge difference between working for CBP, civil Marines, and NASA, just to name 3 random agencies.

The difference with the feds is that you get a basically predictable paycheck (as long as Congress does its damn job), health benefits that make life habitable, the best possible version of a 401k around (TSP), and you’re extraordinarily unlikely to get downsized.

Last I checked, the plurality of civilian federal employees make GS-13, which in 2023 was between $98k and $153k depending on where you were located, and how long you’ve been at that pay-grade. It’s not an overwhelming plurality, butnit’s not unusual to promote into a GS-13, and then hang out there for most of your career.

Retirement is a three-legged stool: your TSP (aka 401k), Social Security, and a small pension. People hired before 1985 were the ones who got the sweet fat pensions, but it doesn’t work that way anymore.

If we clean up the mess, then it shows that it’s okay to create one because someone will take care of it eventually. I want people who created the mess to suffer from it too. That’s why we need a messier mess.

It’s not my responsibility.

scientifically proven ecological collapse

This is a pretty specific thing, but the general “we’re all doomed” vibe is definitely not unique to today. Boomers and older had the threat of nuclear annihilation looming over them, and before that… well, disease and famine and death and destruction due to war have historically been the norm.

Imagine how you’d feel living in the Americas in the 16th or 17th centuries and either watching the destruction wrought by European settlers firsthand or, maybe worse, watching your peers die en masse of the diseases introduced by those settlers. Imagine living in Eurasia in the 13th century and watching the Mongol army sweep through.

None of this is to say that today’s challenges aren’t real and serious. Just that we’re not the first to face such challenges.

The greatest and silent generations saw some shit

Considering science has only gotten robust enough to prove anything like that far more recently than any good examples of ecological collapse, I’d say this parameter is a little arbitrary.

The best example I can think of regarding ecological collapse is during and after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Their climate decreased in temperature, which reduces crop yields, which weakened the empire and encouraged migration from northern Europe, which brought their collapse (plus like 12 other things lol).

In 535AD, during Justinian’s reign in the east, the first black plague happened following a supermassive volcano that left the sky covered in ash blocking the sun. This was a massively ecologically damaging period of history and it caused the death of countless plant and animal life, along with the deaths of half the population of the Mediterranean.

It’s not like people of this age were taking soil samples and references trends or whatever, but they certainly understood how things were going poorly.

The ozone layer depletion was a very serious threat. The solutions were a lot easier though.

Find the good in eat. We can finally get rid of society’s parasites. Landlords

This is an interesting perspective, because in previous generations most of the long term fears were settled by simply doing nothing. They held their breath and it worked out.

The key difference is that the current generations are acutely aware that if we do nothing and just “stay calm and carry on”, we’re totally fucked. Inaction isn’t going to save us this time. We can’t put our heads in the sand and just sing ourselves to sleep then expect a good outcome when we resurface.

I think that’s a key differentiator. Previous generations were fearful of something happening. Current generations are fearful of nothing happening, because if nothing happens then the world will become uninhabitable by humans.

Yet, the majority of the decision-makers in our society are silent generation/boomers that drove to success by inaction and they’re largely doing nothing. We see this and understandably know how fucked we are.

Excellent point.

This is what gave me some peace: it could all end horribly for me at any minute. Anything could happen. I could get hit by a bus. I could die painfully from some fucked up disease. A fat asteroid could hit the earth. It’s all out of my control. Or things could turn out for the better, by some way I never foresaw. The best thing for us to do is to strive to be good people and care for what is in front of us.

I still find it a bit of a mindfuck that humanity is being such a deleterious effect on this beautiful world.

… and I do think that growing up under the threat of nuclear holocaust must have been similarly terrifying.

It’s a different situation but I don’t think ‘not as bad’ really works here. The average house during the 30’s was only twice the average wage, you could absolutely support a family on a single income. Other things were bad, like the unemployment rate, but it was temporary.

The issue in this post is that what we’re dealing with is ‘life’ being unattainable for the majority of people. For people in their 20’s now it’s always been that way. They can’t move out, they can’t get an education, they can’t get a career going, it’s grim.

I wish the events were chronological and they missed a few BIG things

But all in all I enjoyed it quite a bit anyways.

China has always wanted to reabsorb Taiwan and Taiwan has always been opposed to

Technically, the mainland and Taiwan both claimed to have rightful rule over the other, although sentiment in Taiwan gradually changed to favor independence instead.