Makes sense.

Geopoliticts shifts, good idea to just stop, wait and see who’s ready to be on friendly terms.

Particularly in Europe, the result is like a few election cycles out. Could go in like 5 different directions and is impossible to predict.

I don’t think there is a huge need at the moment. Things will probably develop naturally. E.g. if some communities find they would like one, they would start one, with rules, blocks, membership, financing that fits their needs.

Alright. I hope that I’m wrong too, after all.

The first thing to consider is: can you afford the luxury of picking something you like?

In an ideal world we get the job we want, we have fun doing it, nice colleagues, etc… This may not be true for you. You can pick a job you don’t particularly like, if the job market seems good, use that to just afford living and go from there. That makes it somewhat easy, because you’re no longer picking something that’s “nice” you’re optimizing working conditions: working times, union coverage, how long the education takes, vs. how much it pays. Maybe you find that working in a sewage plant or being a plumber isn’t nice, but way better than doing a public facing customer service job. Or working your ass off in academia, 60 hours a week, with the reward of a wet handshake, a mention in a paper that’s cited 5 times that your supervisor uses to boost their standing but not yours and a two year timer on job stability.

I can’t picture myself in 5/10 years from now and can’t even imagine what type of job I’d love, bc everything seems out fo reach and impossible, just like it felt when I was 20.

I’m afraid of wasting time bc of my age

Besides the job, what do you even want? And that question is hard and some people don’t find the answer for decades, so don’t stress over it. Sometimes it takes a decade of life experience to come to an “obvious” conclusion. The trick is that the ten years aren’t “wasted”, they are *necessary" to give you the context to understand what you want.

We are generally limited in the time we have, but it’s only really urgent in three aspects: if you are terminally ill, you are becoming old or disabled and physically can’t do certain things and family planning. If you know you want kids, make a plan for 10 years into the future. That’s important because the requirements around kids are completely different than without. I don’t think traveling with toddlers is smart, kids are expensive, they will eat your time and attention. If you want to get something bigger done, consider doing it before having kids, or your kids making you choose them instead of your “dream”. Which can be bad, because you never ever want to think that you could have done X if only you didn’t have kids. That’s a regret that poisons a lot of things.

Anyway, YOU still have plenty of time. At least 10 years, probably 20, until you even have to start worrying about anything.

Do you care for art, people, technology, animals? Sitting on a couch? Sports? Cooking? Baking? Culture? Anything?

If nothing particular jumps at you, it’s totally fine to browse e.g. movies, technology, memes, comics, music, literature, or to travel until you find something that strikes you. Like, do you even know what’s out there? How are you supposed to pick something you like if you haven’t seen anything?

Society throws a lot of things at you that you are supposed to care about and supposed to do, but you have to actually explore and decide if those things are actually for you, or if you just believe or do them because everyone you know does them or talks about them.

I recommend writing a diary or taking notes on this. Revisiting your old thoughts can be difficult and it’s easier to organize your thoughts on paper.

Personally, I finished a technical education, worked in a few projects and even finished a few things I didn’t like to test out what I didn’t like and want to avoid. E.g. I worked in a city I didn’t live in, commuted 3 hours one way every other weekend, lived in conditions I didn’t like… It wasn’t nice in the moment, but now I know what to avoid.

Final note: statistics say you are not alone. The opposite in fact, lots of young people go through the same issues. So maybe that’s comforting, idk.

The problem is that of those 20/30% only 10% will actually get out on the streets so you are left with around 2% of the general population. And that ain’t much

So you do agree?

Getting mass protests organized is a tremendous effort. If you have 80-90% support for something, getting 30-40% on the street is a huge accomplishment. If only 30% support the idea in the first place, there is no chance.

The “mass protest” has to be at a scale, where it’s basically a general strike where society shuts down because people are protesting.

That it doesn’t work right now doesn’t mean they should stop trying.

but a very loud and significant minority

This is meaningless in a country that chooses to ignore public voices. Authoritarian regimes can stay stable with 10-15% support of the population, ignoring protests and complaints.

There are protests, they are just way too small.

Trump hast at least 40% of the population behind him, and a good 20-30% don’t care. Still.

You can’t organize “mass protests” with 20-30% of the population.

I mean, you can, but they are literally a loud minority.

I recommend these two books:

PR! - A Social History of Spin

manufacturing consent

They’re older, but I don’t think you need “modern examples”, once you understand how it works, the techniques immediately and obviously apply to social media.

Depends on how smart she is.

To not sabotage things, you can always leave it at a “mix of luck, talent and hard work”. And you’re working hard, and maybe you even have luck, but step dad might have all three.

If she’s smart, you can drop the whole thing on her: first of all, you love her, her mom loves her, her step dad hopefully does too or at least likes her and that has nothing to do with money. Then you can just be transparent on how much you earn, how much time that means in effort, and how much “lots of money” takes to earn. Then you can just do some math, and her step dad’s numbers won’t add up.

It’s a sensitive topic though, you can say your piece, communicate with your ex and the step dad about that she asked and what you said. They might have a different take.

Might even spin it into making her think about what she wants to do in the future.

I think fundamentally, it’s about what kind of person you want to be, psychologically.

There is no problem with a self image that’s not “puritan” and then the actions that reflect that. If you think of yourself as having a style and attitude and projecting and communicating that, aggressively, it’s fine to be who you want to be. E.g. punks dressing as punks, “expensive brand stuff”, or tattoos or plastic surgery.

Being about your attitude towards other people can also just be “you”. So I wouldn’t worry about doing it for yourself or doing it for “other people”.

I would make 100% sure to talk about it with your husband, this is a thing you definitely don’t want to backfire. Maybe be dislikes the idea of plastic surgery more than he would like the new shape.

By contrast, if you work in a public service job, or in a big office and there is competition and how you dress is part of office politics and competition and the difference between getting clients to sign or not, that is where I would say you’re dressing for other people. Same if you’re in a punk band and worried about not being “punk enough” and getting piercings or whatever because of that, to fit in and not necessarily because you like the idea of piercings.

I generally don’t think modifying your own body is a good idea, and it’s unnecessary. The whole “if someone demands to be impressed, they are not worth impressing” thing.

But it is your body, do what you want.

Also inform yourself about the medical side of things, as mentioned by others.

I wish you happiness with your decision either way.

The same way you take an interest in any other person.

Ask them what they like and why they like it. Make it clear that you would like to understand.

And absolutely do NOT react in any way negatively. No “that’s it”, no nothing, no “ew”, no disappointment, nothing. If he tells you he watches paint dry in his free time, ask him what color and if you can join him some time. And be persistent and try make specific plans, I have relatives I like with shared hobbies and we barely manage to schedule something.

If your son already has a hobby it’s kind of easier because you can ask him about things he did and things he finds inspiring. If he’s doing performance or sports, you can watch and support him doing that? Shop for equipment together, etc… If he has a competitive, creative problem don’t pressure him and reassure him.

If he likes media, try to lend some of his and try to enjoy it. Usually, even with hobbies you dislike, there is a point where it’s somewhat interesting if you are motivated to learn about it. That does take some time though and you will need to invest that time. You can just weave in a quick “… and how is your [x] going”. That’s reserved for more distant relatives.

But also he’s 15 so none of that may work for biological reasons.

And also, it takes two. If you want to bond, but he does not, period, there isn’t really much you can do, except persistently offer it.

In a sense yes. Once a company has captured the entire (global) economy, including banking, it would control who to give credit to, who to employ, what to pay them, what their own products are priced.

They could at most reap as “profit” what they give out in credit and payment.

There may be sub-limits for capturing entire industries.

One of the events that comes to mind was a “open” conference at a university that “actively encouraged” “low class” participation. (They didn’t say this).

What I mean by that is that it happened during normal work hours and you had to send an email to sign up, but they did allow you to come.

Over the course of the event it became clear that it was a joint PR thing for the sponsors and the university to appear to be “doing something about [issue]”, so they had 2 talks, an audience participation thing, where it was very clear that the thing needed most was more funding for people and work material and tools (think PPE, it wasn’t that or that critical). …and a panel discussion between [company] and [5 politicians] that in absolutely no way addressed the issues that were brought up in the audience participation part.

There was very nice, expensive catering.

Pretty surreal experience and something that solidified my belief that some very important parts of our society are utterly broken beyond repair.

Depends, it’s been a bit disappointing to see virtually no change since I started using it, particularly in terms of QoL. It is open source, so that’s on everyone, including me, but I had hoped for more speed, etc…

Mastodon is way better when it comes to filtering.

Having the option of a reddit clone is pretty good though and I will stick with it. Who knows when and where it will get that critical bit of momentum.

It’s already superior to regular forums, in my opinion, so now the question is what kind of format you want to have discussions in, instead of having to default to forums. That choice is a definite upside and I’m glad it exists.

Sorry, I can’t seem to find it, but I can tell you that those filters exist on mastodon. I am using them a lot there.

and it seems like the only people that use Linux are HEAVILY experienced with those things I just listed… HOWEVER… I’m not.

Nah. Or at least, it should just work if you boot from your USB.

Just try it.

When things collide, they transfer their movement energy. If things collide like this >- They will continue in roughly the same direction. If they collide like this -> <- their movement will cancel out and they will fall into the sun.

Satistically, at the “beginning of time”, in a random sphere around the sun, things will not be completely the same. So everything will either collide and fall. Or it will collide and continue in roughly the same direction. What we have now are the leftovers that were moving in roughly the same direction and colliding so little that they didn’t fall into the sun because of that.

The same is true for the “disk”: If you start with a roughly evenly distributed sphere of gases or something, there is a middle somewhere where there is a little bit more mass than anywhere else. That’s where things will go.

The show runner insisted on telling “their version of the story”.

Which… let’s put it like this:

If you’re making a TV series about a book series written by a world famous author, and you think you can do a variation / “your take” on the story, because you think you’re just that great of a writer, artist, director, etc., then you better actually be on his level.