That was a good perspective though- I grew up hearing Citroen makes garbage.

Side note- The vast majority of pollution is from industry. By a lot. That is where the finger needs to be pointing. Pointing the finger at SUV drivers distracts from the real issue and keeps us blaming each other.

Keep in mind that at some places this is general policy, and that tech is given an exception. For example, my company has 2-3 days in-office, but everyone in tech is allowed to be 100% remote, even though that’s not written anywhere.

I was a studio recording engineer for about 7 years. I switched to software, and now I work in industrial global logistics. Job attributes I optimized for over the years: insulated from manufactured stress, autonomy, control over working hours, good relationships with my boss and coworkers.

But I see where things are going. I tried some of the newer tooling over the past few weeks. They’re too useful to ignore now. It feels like we’re entering into an industrial age for software.

It’s basically public daycare for a lot of people. Including us.

The social aspect is important for us. The idea of having to find other people with kids for activities sounds exhausting. We’re a gang of neuro-spicy introverts. My social circle is comprised of people I’ve been friends with for 25+ years. All from my school days.

I dealt with a lot of bullshit at school. But overall a net gain.

Eventually I burned out on programming-based side projects. I switched to activities that do not require staring at a screen. So I build analog electronics, study music.

Then I had a heart attack. My mortality and the fragility of life was never more clear. I accepted that I could die, and let go of all the mental baggage I was holding onto.

I’ve felt ‘cured’ ever since. I don’t recommend anyone get a heart attack. But I do think people fall into patterns, and get stuck inside of them. Sometimes a “pattern interrupter” can break us out.

It’s just like LLM generated prose to me. The orchestration and motif development is musical sounding, but there’s these artifacts that are like the “It’s important to consider” or “Would you like further suggestions” of the aural world.

I think it would be fun to write up a detailed analysis of a full piece.

Yes, cell phones are a problem. But what keeps getting ignored, by practically everyone, is the detrimental effect of letting covid spread unchecked.

Kids get long covid, we know this now. It represents differently in kids than adults. This can have a direct affect on their performance at school, including the symptoms described above.

Getting multiple covid infections increases your risk of long covid. We are failing to take even the simplest of precautions to protect our children. This will impact their everyday life, including academic performance.

I fully expect people will downvote this due to the mass denial that the pandemic is not over. That's fine. But I know there are people reading that actually pay attention to what Epidemiologists are saying, rather than relying on hearsay or institutions motivated to keep the economy propped up in the short term.

Paradoxically, I _feel_ like I have more time after I had kids than before. This is of course, after YOB (year of baby- first 12mo).

You see, I experienced such small slices of free time during YOB, that I became way more efficient at a ton of stuff, and dropped things that were time wasters.

Because I reproduced, I needed more dough. After working 3 jobs, 90 hrs a week for long enough, I decided to study programming.

Went to a code boot camp and walked out with a job. But the grinding didn’t stop there. What followed that was years and years of grinding, and studying as much as possible outside of programming at work.

Until finally, I got where I was going. I climbed up the ladder until I got tired of climbing, and avoided more stressful and time-demanding roles like management. I get senior dev compensation, don’t work more than 40hr/week, and I don’t commute. This is the life I built.

For everything I pursue, there are others who can run circles around me. But I can still look down from that ladder and see how far I came.

Wait, what am I talking about? Ok, the whole point is I became efficient and middle-class because I have mini-mes that deserve it.

Also, you never know what’s on the other side of that wizard level person you see. Everything I said sounds nice, but I wasn’t taking care of myself. Last year I had a mental breakdown, and am just now getting out of it.

So yeah, you’re not alone, etc etc, you know. There’s probably more people that can relate than you think.

I’m using this precious expanded free time to compose music, my primary form of artistic expression.

Software-wise, I’m on a platform team for a large company. I’m making some performance enhancements to our http client, and a plug-n-play library for app devs to easily integrate LLMs in their products.

I’ve been bored with building line-of-business applications, despite designing for complex requirements in high-volume distributed systems.

In fact I took a break from CS learning entirely 9 months ago. Even reading HN. I’ve been studying electronics and analog signal processing instead.

But now that I’ve built about 50 guitar pedals of increasing complexity, I feel ready to switch back to CS studies again.

You would create your tone rows and then write your composition. If you follow the rules, then it is also 12-tone serialism.

Edit: sorry, missed the portion of the parent comment mentioning used.