I've been a remote engineer for about 10 years now, just over 50, enjoy programming but most of my friends have dropped off or gone crazy (trumpers) in recent years, and I never got married.
I recently took a local wheel throwing (pottery class), which was daunting at first, among a class of almost all females, younger, etc, but im 6 months in and literally just interacting with humans is one of the best parts of my week. Hobby is pretty cool too, so completely different than banging code all day.
Sometimes I don't feel like going after days of being alone and literally talking to no one, it puts you in a "zone" for sure, but then I go to the class, and you realize, at least imho, humans are social creatures. It's like food, we need that interaction or we whither and die.
The inability of your friends to have non-political conversations can be a big part of isolation. I follow the “no politics, no religion” rule when I go out and it’s served me well.
You can have political/religious conversations with people who disagree but often it feels like walking in a mine field.
On one hand, I always want to keep an open mind about religion and politics, and I'm always interested in hearing what others are passionate about, even if it's in those topics. That's how I've learned so much of what I have.
If everyone followed the rule of avoiding these topics, I wonder how many people would never hear an opposing opinion, maybe even a more beneficial one, to the one they've grown up with. I think these topics should be encouraged.
That said, the moment you disagree with someone on one of these topics, some people will definitely fly into a small rage, or instantly cut off contact with you, or even slander you to others, or some mix of these.
Ultimately, I think that's fine. For one thing, you have just learned that this is someone you probably don't want in your life anyway, because they can't handle disagreement in a civil way.
And you learned it fairly quickly and at a small cost. Even if they slander you, people whose opinions you'd actually care about will generously take their word with a large dose of salt, especially based on their character, since such a character usually has other tells too.
So my current stance is to just be open to these topics.
Just yesterday, while I was sitting here at the library, someone approached me and asked me to watch his phone while he used the restroom, in case ICE came in and took it. He was joking, but we went into a slight conversation about politics in general, in which we found out that we disagree on certain topics, and he almost took offense at me disagreeing. I was friendly and open to him the whole time, and he was friendly when he left to use the restroom. But when he came back and sat back down, and later left the whole library, he left without even so much as a goodbye or wave. It seems like he just didn't like me anymore because of my disagreement. And that's fine with me. Both would have been fine.
> That said, the moment you disagree with someone on one of these topics, some people will definitely fly into a small rage, or instantly cut off contact with you, or even slander you to others, or some mix of these.
I think this is what changed. I remember being a kid in the 80s, and when my parents had friends over, someone would inevitably bring up Reagan or something, but the discussion would always be polite and graceful, and then people would move on to something else. So many people seem to be incapable of this today. Politics comes up and suddenly the friend group is cut in half and daughters don't talk to fathers anymore. It's wild.
Huh, that's neat. I've suspected that our political fervor is one of those things that we take to be uniquely NOW, of the present moment, but has actually been a staple. (Like how every generation believes its successors to be dumber, less respectful, ...) But, maybe that's not so!
First, I didn't express an evil or hateful opinion, or any which could reasonably incite indignation or justified anger.
Second, I was willing to dive into a discussion, he wasn't. He seemed more closed minded, which to me seems to be a sign of emotional immaturity.
Third, we did (implicitly) agree to disagree, which I think is the right, peaceful, mature, and civil course of action when at an impasse.
Fourth, we weren't even at a genuine impasse, but an artificial one he created by simply ending the conversation after finding out that I didn't agree with him. Maybe if he heard my reasons, he might find something he agrees with, or something that tempers his emotinonal reaction?
I must have explained it wrong. He was the one who brought up politics, and also asked for my opinion about it during that interaction. He was clearly not in a rush, having come over to my table to ask the favor, and lingered here while mainly sustaining the conversation by himself, while I merely gave short answers to everything he said, partly to let him exit at any time to use the restroom, and partly because I neither expected or particularly desired a conversation, though I was okay with it as long as he wanted to have it.
Another thing that worked well for me is to keep discussions very low and quick on topics like personal relationships, work, career and hot button topics like AI, weather, traffic, climate change, house prices, etc. Basically avoid anything that a newspaper would think is worthwhile for frontpage or editorial column.
I go heavy on food, travel, culture, rumors, art, movies, music, design, festivals, holidays, games. You could talk hours on stuff here, just pick an artsy cultural magazine or subreddit and keep up.
Side note, inviting views from both sexes makes for some very interesting short conversations. Both have very very different takes on the same things and therefore won't talk too long. Both being interested in very different things (think dress belts, hair supplements, birth control vs fishing, bourbon and soccer) brings some newness into the conversation.
Cutting people off because you disagree politically is new. I remember having friends in different political parties when I was younger. (20 years ago)
The red scare famously effected social groups from the very wealthy to the poorest immigrant. Civil rights before it. Social-political exclusion is not new in the U.S, but how big the “I ignore politics and politics ignores me” group is, is highly variable.
In good times, when people are generally happy, political representatives have a fewer differences and the “happily apolitical” group is very large. This aligns with the Clinton-Bush JR era.
The problem is, those eras are uncommon even in the U.S in the broader view of history, and depend entirely on being the right demographic. Such as being a Muslim American in the decade following 9/11. I can assure you, they did not experience the “friends of a different political party” effect at that time.
I had the same experience, but the difference these days seems to be that so many people can't NOT talk about politics. There are certain folk who just find a way to shoehorn it into any conversation. It is really draining.
Yea, it's possible to be very politically enthusiastic and active, but also NOT bring up your favorite (or hated) politician in every damn discussion. We all have that uncle that can't let everyone else enjoy Thanksgiving dinner anymore because he has to make it about Trump or something.
This feels like a uniquely American advice. I have had pretty heated, but not damaging, discussions with people on the completely different side of the political spectrum here in Norway. I can't remember a single time I have cut someone out for having a different political opinion.
Maybe the loneliness problem is partly connected to the American political system at this point in time?
Half this country voted for and supports a vile lunatic president hell bent on destroying the U.S. to enrich his personal wealth and power. It's not surprising that over here we Democrats view Republicans as a cancer we want nothing to do with.
It wasn't always this way. In the past Republicans actually had some decency. That went out the window after they elected Trump twice.
I'm the same age as you and most of my friends are remote, on the other side of the country or in different countries, etc, and I maintain contact all the time, for decades. I still have friends from elementary school, middle school, high school, university, and from most of my jobs going back 30 years. I can pick up my phone and call some of my coworkers from 25 years ago without hesitation and we will go for lunch at the next opportune time.
> most of my friends have dropped off or gone crazy
If you find yourself to be the one who is isolated, then I think you need to look inward. My best friends and I share completely polar opposite politics. We have known each other for almost 50 years now. We have had yelling matches over politics, especially during the Pandemic. We have now stopped talking... about politics. We still chat every single day throughout the day. I laugh heartily at least once a day over some extremely offensive joke that one of us sends, usually at each other's expense. But we never, ever talk about politics anymore and we are happier for it.
Maybe you need to rekindle those friendships and see if you can avoid politics. If you can't then I think it's more on you than them and you should reflect on that.
I remember doing a report on this in high school in the late 80s. I'd love to do an order of magnitude comparison to a modern M4 Mac... Amazing how far we've come.
I just did a BOTE calculation for my iPhone (A17 Pro chip; GPU rated at 4 Tflops). According to the sales blurbage in TFA, the Cray 1 performed at 80 Mflops. (Yes, that is OBVIOUSLY not comparing apples to Apples -- pun intended). Unless I've dropped a decimal point, my iPhone is (capable of) 50,000 times the floating point speed of a Cray 1.
I remember computer magazines of the time talking about "a Cray on a chip" in their April 1st jokes.
Well... we're there. Far past, in fact. We live in the future that then was so far out of reach that people could only joke about it, not consider it a realistic possibility.
I think you need to be a bit more explicit in your usage. I use Claude Code as the plugin in Cursor, to me the marriage of all the great, tastes great, less filling. You see all the changes as you normally would in VSCode / Cursor, but the Claude Code command line UI is absolutely bonkers better than the Cursor native one. They really have it dialed in beautifully in my opinion.
Location: New York, NY, USA
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Love him or hate him (I'm more the latter at this point) Elon showed you could trim 70% of the workforce from Twitter and it's still up and running. So with that logic, that being on the extreme side, trimming some smaller % is a no brainer to the boards of most companies now.
If the rumors are to be believed, revenue has cratered. At the very least, the quality of ads has steeply declined - from A tier brands to B and C tier ones.
Perhaps eviscerating the sales and content moderation teams was not a genius 11-d chess move?
Give it another year. Rumor mill is that many are silently seeking new jobs. The site is in a slow decline right now, several journalists talking about the weird consistency bugs they are encountering.
I suspect that with some time the people who are left there will burn out from the maintenance load due to the 70% cuts. Elon should have been more empathetic when cutting people, to not burn the good will of everyone who was left imo.
Twitter still runs due to fear in others of losing their job in these tough times. If the market was as great as before, no Twitter employee would agree to work 10+ hours or weekends, or sleep in office.
I have to say, I didn't realize how strong Hydrogen powered vehicles are right now in development. That could be a legit competitor soon if they work out some of the smaller kinks and develop a fueling network. Literally zero fueling time, much less lithium in the manufacturing process and a closer feel to traditional ICE.
There's really not much to drive sales for 2023 either. Was watching a summary of new EVs for the year and I'll give him credit on the "jet powered" roadster as very cool, but all the new exciting EVs for the average consumer are coming from GM, Ford, BMW, Toyota (with a very interesting Hydrogen powered offering which is technology I had no idea was even this developed) and a few other smaller startups.
I think Ford really is going to get traction with the F150 Lightning. That's the smartest move you could make, i.e. electrify the #1 selling vehicle with something similar and practical. That's what people want, and if you convert that demo, you basically win over the rest.
> Toyota is taking on a lot of risk with their bet on Hydrogen
They took a lot of risk on it, but it was hedged with hybrids
, including PHEVs (with which they have done quite well), and while they are a little late to the party with a pure BEV, they are rolling those out to.
There isn’t any real sense where I see them gambling on hydrogen now except as a side bet.
The only non-commercial electric model they sell right now is the 'Proace City Verso', and it's not exactly a sales success. There is the BZ4X in the works (what a name) but you can only reserve it, they don't actually have them yet, production was halted, resumed, then halted again and they had a recall before they even shipped them (I don't know how that is even possible, the cause: wheel fell off).
The rest is - from what I can see - all hybrids, with minimal batteries. No Prius, Yaris, Aygo or Corolla with all electric drive, which would be an instant sales success. Their 2023 lineup? More hybrids. Meanwhile VW is on their second iteration of their all-electric line with four models across a broad spectrum.
I honestly don't get it. They can't be that stupid, and with the hybrid era pretty much over they have lost what was once a pretty good lead. They already had the drive train pretty much all they need to do at this point is to replace the mass of the ICE with a much larger battery pack and they're set to compete. That would still require a redesign of the vehicle but they have done that so many times I don't see that as an obstacle.
> all the new exciting EVs for the average consumer are coming from GM, Ford, BMW, Toyota (with a very interesting Hydrogen powered offering which is technology I had no idea was even this developed)
Toyota has a new FCEV? The only thing thet seem to be pumping new on the EV front is their new BEV, the bZ4X.
> I think Ford really is going to get traction with the F150 Lightning
I agree, I think this will be huge. Tesla's moat really is narrowing. I'm still rooting for them, though, and I'd like to see some of the other startups get traction as well.
The F150 Lightning has been terrible so far as a truck replacement. If you treat it as an oversized car it works (and many Americans do), but put any load on it and the range plummets to useless outside of small city runs.
