Maybe this isn’t the answer you’re looking for: my job is my passion and the idea of retiring sounds horrible. I image it will only happen when I’m too senile to keep doing what I love, and that’s clearly not something to look forward to. But who knows… I know old people who are tired and just want to rest.
(I got lucky, since I happened to be passionate about computer programming. I know most other people don’t have the same option.)
I read Montaigne’s essays (written in the 1500’s) and while his views are remarkably modern in many ways, one thing that stuck out to me was how unabashedly elitist he is. The translation I had used the phrase “common herd” to refer to the large majority of people who failed to impress him due to their lack of education or strength of character. I hesitate to speak for him since I think he was a wiser man than I am, but I expect that our modern notions about democracy would have seemed ridiculous to him. He might accept that universal suffrage is in practice the least-bad option currently available to us, but he would argue that at least in principle it would be better to exclude people who don’t actually know how to run a country from the process of deciding how the country is to be run.
(He would also be unashamed to say that the life of an exceptional person is worth more than the life of someone ordinary, but we think that in the modern day too. We just consider it rude to be so explicit about it.)
It actually hasn’t been bad overall. Those were my missed opportunities but there were also other opportunities that I didn’t miss.
(I do live in New York City again and I do still think it’s really boring here. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do that doesn’t involve a crowd of strangers which ruins it for me. The main reason I’m here is to be close to my family but even visiting them requires a miserable two-and-a-half-hour round trip on the subway. I got to live in a small town for a while and I liked it a lot better - having a house with a big yard, being able to drive everywhere, and easy access to nature were great.)
Hah, or you can be me. I grew up in New York City with the ability to go pretty much anywhere unsupervised and I never did - I spent all my free time either reading books or playing videogames anyway. I had almost zero interest in the real world (I think it’s pretty boring even now that I’ve been an adult for a while) but I still feel like there was something wasteful about not bothering to experience things that so many other kids would have really enjoyed.
The worst part was college. I attended a famous party school but went to zero parties, zero dates, etc. At least I managed to graduate in three years with a double major. (By the time I got to college, I did want more social interaction but I thought that I was incapable of it so I didn’t try.)
Recently, I started my second campaign in Baldurs Gate in addition to the campaign I play with my wife in co-op. My wife and I opted for the easiest difficulty in our playthrough since neither if us ever played similar game....
The game starts out hard and then gets easier as you get more tools, but there’s a low-level build that helps you even the odds until your other characters catch up…
Bring Karlach and have her throw things. She gets two attacks a turn at level 3 with the Berserker subclass and Enraged Throw (most other classes have to wait until at least level 5 for a second attack), an enormous boost to her damage and accuracy from Tavern Brawler at level 4, and then a third attack at level 5. Potions of Haste or Elixirs of Bloodlust give her even more attacks, and certain magic items boost throw damage significantly. You can buy a reusable throwing spear for her in the goblin camp, but even before that you will have lots of javelins, axes, and daggers to throw. You just need to pick them all back up after the fight.
(Some people say that throw barbarians make the game boring, but Karlach can pick up and throw small characters like goblins. This never gets old. Imagine that Karlach is about to win the NBA championship for you with a three-pointer, the basketball is a goblin, and the basket is another goblin.)
I feel terrible when stuff I buy says it was made with love. Do I deserve the love of someone who never even met me? Do I deserve love at all? That’s why I prefer eating food made by unfeeling machines.
A couple of years ago I got fed up with replacing phones because the battery wouldn’t hold a charge, so I bought a new-in-box, then-six-year-old LG V20. It has some problems, chiefly bizarrely poor reception, but by God it has a removable battery and a headphone jack! I was going to replace it with the Fairphone when that came to the USA but when I saw how expensive the Fairphone was, I decided to stick with the V20.
(The funny thing is that by the time I need to replace the battery, I probably won’t be able to buy one anymore.)
Well, yes - George W. Bush appears in retrospect to have been sincere. Some of the other powerful supporters of the war did profit from it, but at the expense of American taxpayers rather than Iraqis.
This meme contains a common accusation from 20 years ago, but I think it’s odd that it is being posted in 2024, long after it became clear that whatever the purpose of the invasion of Iraq actually was, it wasn’t to obtain oil wealth.
Isn’t that how most people socialize at parties? Some people can do it naturally, but I figure most people are pretending. I frequently ask myself “What would a normal human do in this situation?”
Did you read the article that you’re linking to? Rent seeking in the economic sense does not mean purchasing property in order to rent it out to tenants.
Renting out property does create wealth. Think of a house as a factory that produces shelter. Running the factory, as opposed to leaving it idle, increases the amount of shelter in the world, and shelter is a form of wealth.
That’s a well-established economic theory and I’m not contradicting it. What I’m saying is that renting out the house after it’s built continues to create wealth. A world in which I build a nice house but keep it empty is wealthier than a world in which I leave the land unimproved, but a world where I rent that house out (or live in it myself) is wealthier still. The experience of living in that house, as opposed to some inferior option, has value.
Did you know that you can be a landlord too, even if you can’t afford a whole house? There’s such a thing as a REIT (real estate investment trust) where you can buy shares in a company that owns and rents out real estate and sends you your share of the profits while you don’t have to do anything except give up the option to invest that money somewhere else, which is actually really important.
I don’t expect everyone here to be able to invest in the stock market; my point is that there are easy ways for even middle-class people to obtain income from rent and yet most of them aren’t doing that because other types of investments are usually better for them. Being a landlord is not some unique source of money for nothing; it’s one of many ways to invest your money in a productive asset and usually not the best one.
Somewhere on a remote mountainside in Colorado’s Rockies, a latch flipped on a crate and a wolf bounded out, heading toward the tree line. Then it stopped short....
How do you deal with the thought of having to work for 40+ years and then when/if you retire, you're too old to do much?
There has to be a better system than this.
Ancient wisdom often sounds like common sense now that it is commomly taught. What is some ancient wisdom that we no longer teach because it was wrong?
This question inspired by this post..
This is too relatable (lemmy.world)
[SPOILER] Am I playing Baldur's Gate wrong?
Recently, I started my second campaign in Baldurs Gate in addition to the campaign I play with my wife in co-op. My wife and I opted for the easiest difficulty in our playthrough since neither if us ever played similar game....
Seems we've already got the plot for Barbie II (lemmy.world)
What are some small things we should change about the human body?
Ripping off a post I just saw in the Isaac Arthur subreddit. Imagining we work out the technical ability. Examples they suggested were:...
At the fast food (lemmy.world)
author: Meg Adams
Why the hell did that stop (lemmy.world)
We at the Westville Marriott want you to know that we hate you and hope you die. (lemmy.world)
For real though, I think about this at least once a day (i.imgur.com)
Democracy (lemmy.today)
A good grade at parties (startrek.website)
When Fallout asks you to make difficult choices (lemmy.world)
Via Is It Cannon
Yankee Claus giving toys to British children from his tank, Perham Downs, England, WW2, 1942 (media.kbin.social)
The system is broken (lemmy.zip)
deleted_by_author
5 wolves released in Colorado as part of reintroduction plan (www.nbcnews.com)
Somewhere on a remote mountainside in Colorado’s Rockies, a latch flipped on a crate and a wolf bounded out, heading toward the tree line. Then it stopped short....
I can cook at least (lemmy.world)
he hate the tomate (media.kbin.social)
Is your life on track? (i.imgur.com)