I am proposing a little community-brainstorming here and I am very curious about your answers to this very simple (and purposely broad) question:
What is your biggest problem right now?
On a more serious note, I would say people in power not following the rules. That includes managers at companies violating policies to the detriment of their employees. Another example is law enforcement and politicians breaking the law, violating procedures/regulations, or making mistakes that negatively impact citizens and not taking any responsibility or steps to make it right.
I list this as the biggest problem because it has so many problems throughout the system and very little recourse for when it happens (you're asking the very system that f'd you, to make it right).
BD (bipolar disorder) interferes too, can't find stability. Had to change meds (difficulty recalling words & little dumbed down) and just went ~1.5 month depression. Am kinda stable again, but not really normal stable (starting to forget how life was before BD).
Together with those have to fix my NPD personality disorder. Now this is a tough one.
But can't fucking read a fucking NPD book cause of the ADHD. It's complex.
I'm working on losing weight right now to build confidence and get into more things but until then it's just work -> gaming -> consume content -> sleep -> repeat.
I feel like I need to find something outside work to enrich my life and make new friends...
I guess you have to pay price for everything - so maybe in the future I will change my priorities.
I mean: work, produce, consume, agree and enjoy the show (only if you keep dancing and only as long as it lasts).
Where is the joy? How much joy am I neglecting to follow standards I have not chosen?
I am looking for alternatives such as more dedication to my people, hobbies and joyful knowledge, finding that this has little overlap with the expected way of life.
Now there are some interesting opportunities that pay a lot more, but i have the feeling that there is a mismatch between my CV and my current engineering skill level due to all this other stuff.
Could be imposter syndrome tho.
I'm halfway joking, but the USA has gone from "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave", "Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness," "From Sea to Shining Sea," to a boot stamping on a human face forever in less than one year. It's gotten to the point where I don't feel safe raising children here.
I've gained 20 pounds over the last year. It doesn't help that I bought a stand mixer and love baking. Cycling alone doesn't seem to keep things under control. I either need to do bigger riders or supplement it.
The one good thing is my eating out has been drastically cut. But there is still work to be done there.
And the lack of countries that allow permanent residency without tying it to large investment or domestic employment.
For maybe the last 15 years or so I've been blocking or avoiding ads. uBlock origin is probably the most valuable product I use as well as AdBlock Plus before that. I know I know! I'm morally bankrupt! Thats how people make money on their content. That's what makes the internet go round. But I can't help myself. I just can't stand advertisements. Where I can I pay to avoid ads like Netflix or Youtube Premium I do. But beyond that I've used ad blockers and various tricks over the last decade and a half to nearly completely avoid advertisements in my life. It has been delightful. I feel like I'm happier for it and have saved who knows how much time and attention by doing so. I've always said that for any given service if I couldn't figure out how to block the ads I would just stop using it and read more books or something instead. Short of that there is almost no ceiling for how much I am willing to pay to use an ad-free version of a service.
That strategy has been pretty effective and continues to be today. But whereas the deal used to be "we have content you want, but the trade is that you have to look at our advertisements" it seems like that deal has shifted a bit in the last couple years. Now it's more like "we have the content you want, but it's in a walled garden of really addicting algorithms." So even though I don't see ads on Reddit, Youtube, or whatever - thats no longer enough. I'm still finding my time and attention being taken up by this really addicting content that is optimized for engagement and leaves me no more informed and usually less happy.
The thing is the good content is still out there! In fact there is probably more of it than there ever was even though it doesn't feel that way now. For now I've stopped using reddit and feel much happier for it. I try all these little tricks with Youtube to use it in a way where I don't get sucked into that engagement trap but it's pretty tricky.
All the well known tricks like uninstalling the app and using it in the browser or turning off notifications feel like trying to smoke 3 cigarettes a day or eat just one potato chip. They work moderately well but I often find myself slipping. It's also a constant willpower battle that is it's own drain on time and attention.
I've considered giving up the lot of it like I used to threaten I would do if I couldn't block ads anymore. Just read more books and so on. But I don't want to! What I want is to have my cake and eat it to. I want to go back to being a freeloader where I get the interesting content that I love without paying for it with my time, attention, and well-being, in a labyrinth of engagement.
I want an algorithm blocker that works like an adblocker. Maybe using machine learning to identify content that fits the bill. It seems somewhat unrealistic honestly. I'm not exactly sure what you're training the algorithm on in order to get that. Also maybe ML isn't the path there. Maybe there is another clever way to do it. I'm not sure. But I do think about it from time to time.
Short of that I've also considered trying to shift the sources to sites that have interesting and novel content without being so addictive and negative. Random wikipedia articles or random github repositories, that sort of thing.
Thinking about the biggest problem I have this was the most concrete one I could come up with. It's hard to quantify just how much value I would get out of a solution if it was as big of a benefit for me as adblockers have been up to now.