4grams

My career has been in building infrastructure for internet services. I got into this line of work because I felt like it was democratizing knowledge and bringing people together. The way it’s instead gone, I regret being part of it, and I wish I would have gone into another line of work.

It sucks because it’s beginning to feel like a life wasted. I got in early, my career pre-dates the 1st .com crash. My first browser was Mosaic, then shortly became Netscape with the big pulsating “N” animation.

I LOVED the early internet. I loved the personal sites, webrings, IRC and newsgroups. I remember the first time I spoke with someone on the other side of the world (hello to my Canberra friend, it’s me, your midwestern buddy). I felt part of something that was new and exciting and fun.

Then ads came and it’s just gone to shit ever since. To the point where I now hate being online, all my shit is selfhosted and I barely interact with anything besides lemmy and mastodon (they still feel like the actual internet).

I used to be slightly disappointed my kids didn’t turn out as nerdy as me. Now I am just thrilled that I was able to be a cautionary tale for them.

Come on, this is the perfect reply. Well done.

That looks like my play through of a fallout game. For some reason it amuses me to no end to make a random, huge pile of found alcohol, in game.

I’m humbled by this man doing it in real life.

Well said, I had the exact same thought experience, and I am at the exact same conclusion.

I know expensive, shitty healthcare in the USA is a stereotype, but in my experience it’s also largely true

I had a brain injury from a bicycle accident. The fact that my health has bounced back, but my finances likely never will, tells me everything I need to know about our system. One injury, and I now have a lifetime of bills to pay off. I guess it makes sense in some sick way, I do owe them my life, but man, they don’t let me forget (even if my broken brain tries).

There’s more to it than that but of course that is a large part of it. We live in a society that prefers to reward a confident idiot to a pensive expert; essentially we reward dunning krueger.

When exactly did society decide to give the dumbest people on earth, all the money?

That story is immediately what came to mind.