I did it. I grow organic market/CSA produce and provide opportunities for special needs individuals on the farm. I go to bed dog-tired, I make a fraction of what I would in software dev these days, but every single day is rewarding, and my resting heart rate is in the high 40s/low 50s without going to the gym. No jira tickets, no sleepless nights slamming caffeine during a sprint, no out of touch execs forcing me to enshittify, no more eye drops for excessive screen usage. I grow delicious food, support a wholesome local community, and feel like I'm making a positive contribution to society instead of pumping out CRUD apps and gamified bullshit like I was in tech.
I agree that farming is definitely romanticized in some tech circles, and it is not for everyone. Of course my tech experience wasn't universal, but even if ZIRP free money comes back to tech, I'll still be here tending my field :)
Farming is "easy" when you have your tech savings and the option to plunge back into a high earning career when shit goes sideways (with wise sage aura, cause you took care of some goats). Farming is harder when your entire family depends on you working hard and you have very little capital.
True. This is one of the best arguments for not having kids. I could never imagine putting myself in that uncertain situation. Much better to reduce those risks, and focus on yourself.
Having kids is a personal choice. The stress of having to support them is real and it might mean, at times, you sacrifice more than you would have without kids.
It's been entirely worth it for me and I cannot imagine my life without kids. But it's a deeply personal choice and I am not buying or selling the idea. I would just say nobody is ever ready and the fears around having them probably are more irrational than rational. But not wanting them because of how it might change your own life is a completely valid reason to not have kids.
> the fears around having them probably are more irrational than rational
My $0.02 is that if anything, the fears people have about how much their lives would be transformed are significantly lacking, and a lot of the "it's not so bad" advice is post-hoc rationalization. I mean, it's evolutionarily excellent that we humans choose to have kids, but it's very rational to be afraid and to postpone or even fully reject this on an individual basis. And as an industry and as a society, we should probably do a lot more to support parents of young children.
Ya, this is a fair callout. I moreso meant fears around being a bad parent. If anything, people experiencing those fears will be fine parents because they've got the consideration to already be thinking about doing a good job for their newly born.
This is the truth. I've been exposing 22 and 80 for decades, and nothing has happened. The ones I know who had something bad happen to them exposed proprietary services or security nightmares like wordpress.
And why would I bother with a home setup? Sure, for industrial IT go for it, VM:s and/or containers, but for my own personal stuff, baremetal, packages, and good old fashioned way is more than enough.
It is actually very simple to control what you feel, and very much possible. This deterministic idea about our feelings must die quick. Pro-tip, call the psychology department at your local university and they will happily teach you how to control your feelings.
WTF? How are you attacked by russian accounts? This childish notion of thinking that only "true" thoughts are allowed under free speech, and the rest must be eradicated needs to die.
If you don't like the risk of russian accounts, don't follow them, and follow accounts that you like. It's as easy as that.
You have news, government news sites, journalists, newspapers, it's never been easier to find sources to trust and compare them against each other.
Screaming murder because Sergei6778 says that Ukraine is evil is just stupid. Take responsibility for your own reading and mind, and stop using the law as a hamfisted tool to stop free speech. Take the bad with the good, or else there won't be any good left in the future.
While I agree with your sentiment, it's more and more clear to me that reality doesn't reflect it. Many people are extremely easily influenced by easy to digest soundbites.
I'm often baffled by the level of superficial and binary thinking even in "intellectuals" (as in people who hold degrees and you'd expect to have at least a modicum of critical thinking). More often than not it seems based on emotions.
Now have these people spend most of their waking hours doomscrolling some echo chamber on tiktok, and I can see why some may be worried about the influence of some "bad actor".
Given this, and the highly polarized political scene (and I'm in Europe!), I have to say I'm quite worried as to how things will unfold. Hell, there's no need for Sergei and his friends! Just the local politicians' popularity contest is enough.
We don't have freedom of speech for its own sake because of some inherent good. We have it because it's a useful tool to get other peoples perspectives and allows us come to more realistic conclusions where most feel included. People paid by the chinese or russian government are in complete opposition to that spirit.
Your politicians have created the migrant crisis by fucking up the middle east - as part of the same hybrid warfare on our institutions as said propaganda.
Other parties don't have friendship treaties with Putins party.
The US with accomplices invaded Iraq in 2003, NATO bombed Libya in 2011. Western politicians and mass media encouraged Arab Spring insurrections. All that led to the rise of ISIS among other things.
And yet oddly you blame Russia for "fucking up the middle east". Why? Have you considered the possibility that it's you who is a victim of propaganda?
>Other parties don't have friendship treaties with Putins party.
I'm sure other parties have friendships with the parties or institutions in countries other than Russia.
The European migrant crisis is mostly driven by Syria and the Sahel countries. Syria and Sahel are direct results of Russian military intervention, same with Lybia.
So you force a a migrant crisis and the spread information about the failings of liberal democracy... it's KGB basic training.
I don't want them unknowingly consuming foreign propaganda campaign content and maximally politically divisive conversation.
Having spaces where identities are confirmed is really important for honest and open debate. Screaming at each other in Reddit and Facebook comments amongst society-fracturing influence campaigns isn't free speech.
And if someone wants to leave the identity confirmed space and go yell in the anonymous sea of voices they can but we need other options.
>I don't want them unknowingly consuming foreign propaganda campaign content and maximally politically divisive conversation.
Good point.
That's what Putin's "foreign agents" law addresses.
The law is much criticized by Western media and "NGOs" for some reason.
As a matter of fact, it marginalizes any recipient of foreign money even if they do something genuinely good for Russian people, but I doubt it is why the West doesn't like this law.
True. It is part of the general industrial ritual of reducing workers to a number or a letter combination. That way, managers reduce the emotional attachment to the people, and they can fire them more easily.
If, instead, you would be Tom, Bill and Biff, there is a risk that the manager would build attachment, and make it harder to treat you bad. If you're IC1, IC2 and IC3, you can be exchanged like machine parts when you break, without anyone crying.
No that’s not really how it works in tech at all. There’s a deep recognition that individual engineers (and other functional practitioners) have important knowledge and expertise that is essential. Of course you do need some overlap and redundancy so that people can take sick days and avoid the wheels falling off through attrition, but competent shops aren’t ever treating people as numbers. To the contrary good ICs are widely recognized as being much less full-of-shit then management.
True. Remember that as well. I think I worked remotely for another client while I was waiting 3 weeks (paid) for my login, so had 3 weeks of double pay.
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