I think the reason is less about “i, an individual, am getting my data harvested” (though certainly still a factor) byt more because China is still very much considered an enemy of the US, and they are not only harvesting americans data in a very invasive way - as in, recording pretty much everything you do on your phone, not just in the app - but an adversarial government now has access to all of that. Additionally, because the chinese “free market” has been effectively neutered in recent years, high chance that the CCP is able to influence TikTok’s algorithm to affect what people see and push propaganda. People should be concerned about it in the same way people should be concerned about russian bot farm, but more so, because there isn’t an audience of millions feeding russian bot farms their personal information.

The most effective ways to die sound painful, and even for the “painless” ones, if you fuck it up you either suffer way too long or get slapped with insane medical debt and locked up in a loony bin for a ehile (usa). While I don’t fear death itself or have a strong emotional attachment to the life I’m living right now, my life’s in no way bad, so it’s still an easy choice for me.

All hail Wall Street

Kyoto. Absolutely beautiful, awesome cultural landmarks, and when I went pre-covid - we stayed in an air bnb - it had a cool large-town vibe despite being one of Japan’s major cities. I liked it much better than Tokyo.

I am polite, most of the time. Wouldn’t really consider myself nice tho.

Ah, resting bitch voice

there is just not enough time and energy left to get my ass in front of an IDE again.

The solution here is to revert to coding with punch-cards

Dude, same. On top of that, I also struggle with imposter syndrome and a work for a company with a burnout culture, which a recipe for constantly kicking your own ass for not having literally everything done always, so I force myself to try to be “productive” the whole time, which always, ALWAYS backfires, but the guilt from watching everyone else work themselves to death is just too much. I’m hoping to switch to a remote job with a company who values employee wellbeing over “the grind” soon though.

OP did, in fact, confirm elsewhere in another comment. Still doesn’t guarantee he’s from a mental-health friendly nation, but it is kinda crazy that he was indicating that the USA was somehow inherently better for building relationships than other places…

Sounds like they’re not prioritizing the shareholders interests! Last I heard, that’s a fireable offense!

Imagine being in a meeting with all the most important people when they figure out the problem and it turns out that you were the one who fired the guy. What I wouldn’t give to listen in on that meeting lmao

Never heard of it before, but it looks like it’s useful as a salad green. Clearly the solution is to embrace the goat inside of you and send it the way of the dodo.

Question’s been covered by others here, but I just wanna pitch in with I can’t remeber names OR faces. Imagine how awful I feel when someone starts talking to me like they know me and I don’t recofnize them at all lmao

Can’t remember which is which but if it’s organized in a top-down way (broad category first) that’s just easier to look at and find stuff in the file system. I don’t want to have to actually read and mentally process the names of every single file to figure out if it’s the one I need. Sure, the “human readable” names are fine and good when you don’t have hundreds of them you’re trying to look through, but big projects I find are way easier to parse with the category naming.

Well okay then:

It wasn’t really alarming at the time because I was a stupid child, but I may have almost gotten kidnapped. One day in the 90’s when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old, my family all went grocery shopping at Target one day and I somehow got separated from them and started wandering around looking for them (hadn’t learned “stay in place” yet). Some nice lady offered to help me look for them, took my hand, and after wandering for a bit, said “maybe your parents are out in the parking lot!” So, she took me outside and we were walking to the end of the lot when I did, in fact, spot my parents. Turns out they had completely forgotten/not realized I wasn’t with them because they were loading groceries and getting ready to leave.

When I say “my family” went to Target, ot was my parents and older brother, so by no means a Home Alone situation. Really I’m more alarmed at them than the lady for having left their youngest child in Target.

Genuinely I can’t even remember because growing up, my dad was that type of guy who took us kids to obligatorily “fun” things and without fail did or said something that would make it feel completely miserable, then get angry at us for not having enjoyed ourselves at the fun thing.

A couple of instances I remember in particular was when he took us to Hawaii (he wasn’t rich, just wanted to look rich and was very good at avoiding debt collectors) and kept being an entitled shitbag to the poor staff which made me super uncomfortable the whole time, and the time he took us to a magic show in vegas and spent the whole time explaining the tricks when I didn’t even fucking ask.

I now find it very difficult to find any “fun” things actually fun.

Similar but different:

I was leaving a facility and went to get in my car in the parking lot. Unlocked it, it went beep beep, and I got it. Then I realized something was off. This isn’t my sweatshirt, this isn’t my drink! This… isn’t my car! It’s the same make, model, and color, and some cosmic bullshit luck had it set to the same frequency as my keyfob!!

I quickly got out and got into my car 2 spaces down that was hidden behind a truck, just in time to see the actual owners of the other car come out of the facility and get in.

I bought a lotto ticket that day and lost.

Damn. I had a story but it’s a hard nothingburger compared to this so I don’t even want to write it

I’ve only ever grepped log files. 9 years into my career now so not sure which side of the spectrum I’m on (i’m definitely on the spectrum)

I’ve always wondered why the consensus seems to be that it’s 100% necessary for an economy to continue growing for society to function, but maybe somebody smarter than me can explain it in terms I understand.

Because for real, if (IF) we could set things up so that everybody has access to food, pottable water, and shelter, then does it really matter if google took losses this quarter? Back when automation was still in its infancy, there was a hope that the human labor requirements would decrease without affecting survivability, so it’s not like what I’m saying is anything new. IF we were able to sustainably grow enough food, sanitize enough water, and build enough houses for everybody, make enough (NON-MONOPOLIZED) medicine for everybody, and just made it available for cheaply or for free, then you’ve successfully decoupled the economy from human survival.

Of course, the question becomes who would do all this with no profit to be had, which I know is the real crux of the issue, and is realistically not going to happen easily. But, as an idealist view, imagine this: A number of physically strong men and women and a number of scientists, who already have their own needs guaranteed, volunteer their time and expertise to spread the access to food, water, shelter, and healthcare to people in need because they actually just enjoy doing physical labor/ innovating technologies that will help humanity and aren’t just doing what a few suits who’ve never worked in that manner a day in their lives think is necessary to squeeze more money out of investors and poor people in exchange for a paycheck. After those needs are guaranteed, it should be possible to implement a form of capitalism for unnecessary expenditures without getting to the awful state we’re currently in (optional).

So to answer your question, no, I personally don’t think infinite growth is necessary perse, but our current setup does assume that it will somehow continue growing. As for the societal collapse issue, while our society is FAR larger and more interconnected than anything so far in history, it collapsing wouldn’t be the end of humanity (though on that note I would 100% rather society collapse from lack of labor FAR before I’d want it to collapse because Earth has completely run out of resources, so I guess I’m against your friend in that regard). Sure, there would be massive chaos (especially in population centers), and a lot of people will absolutely suffer and die (seriously, want to make clear I’m not making light of a collapse) but ultimately it still holds that anyone who can maintain access to food, shelter, and potable water (barring any health issues) will survive and eventually create a new society. Hopefully one that isn’t setup stupidly.