Don't listen too much to other peoples experiences. So many people have the 20s built up as the most important years of your life. Truth be told they can go either way. Mine were pretty boring and harsh but my 30s have been deeply satisfying in comparison.

carl is out here with banger ideas for no damn reason, damn. get this written as a chuck tingle inspired absurdist book, or genuine kink writing. whatever sells better

People don't give enough credit to the fact that incel chuddy types genuinely want something like this, or, at least, feel it's a moral violation that things aren't like this.

strong institutions

what institutions should be strong I wonder

Ms Rachel is by far the most based person imaginable who can also drop a million for a donation.

That the dude who burned himself was an individual action and not a collective one

its just that the crime of all crimes is occurring

The individual doesn't control the systemic conditions people are born into. No one does, but those interested in perpetuating the system are going to continue having kids regardless.

Something some people overlook is that kids can still end up 'messed up' even if you do everything right. You can also raise a good kid in a bad environment. Kids are their own people and you shouldn't place too much of a value judgement on the act of having kids.

This feels way older than 10 years, 'I am very intelligent' feels like it's always been around.

Good luck with your mid-life career change comrade, the prospect is very scary. I've been focusing on diversifying my skillset with different side hustles but kind of dream of picking up a trade at this point. Spreadsheets drain the soul.

Just a bit of a ramble but when I switched high schools near the end of my education, my new principal looked at my unimpressive test scores and said something along the lines of, 'well, somebody needs to drive the trucks.' It was reflective of the attitudes drilled into me through my primary educations, that Blue Collar work represented the 'bad path' you'd fall onto if you failed your education.

So, even though I had no particular interest in academics at the time, and had no idea what fulfilling work felt like or what I wanted to do with my life, I had always told myself that I needed to end up in White Collar work. That I would have at least 'made it' then and not be cursed to labor, something I saw as a punishment for lack of performance. I went to uni and accomplished it, too, ending up in a comfortable but deeply unfulfilling bullshit job.

I'm the rube, of course. As I became more politically actualized I realized who actually held the value, it became clear that I had put myself in the ideal position for a worker under capitalism. Earning hardly enough in an insecure position - I'm not exactly a specialized professional. I could be laid off in one bad swing of the job market and since my skillset is built around a bullshit profession, I am vulnerable to having to accept any work should this happen.

My peers from school, the ones seen at the time as lacking promise and doomed to 'drive the trucks,' have of course built practical and valuable skill sets directly valuable to the economy and always relevant for society - concepts I had never been properly exposed to in my education. They're not on the greener side of the fence, of course, as they are dealing with their own material issues like health issues and longer work hours. It just amuses me sometimes how effectively me, a young directionless boy, was steered away from work that would have built character and purpose, in favor of chasing a deadend desk job that, at one point, made me feel superior.

I think this is actually a pretty common experience for not-dirt-poor white dudes in the western world, and is of/c reflective of that deep societal rot everyone is ignoring. There's a lot of complicated feelings causing that build up of resentment among the White Collar world to their Blue Collar comrades, and I find, more and more, that it doesn't go the other way.