That you don't care about someone's wishes is deeply indicative of your own moral character -- or lack thereof. That we can't even agree to disagree turns my stomach a bit. I'm deeply disappointed, and you've made it very clear to me that I need to walk away from this "community".

So, my final thought will simply be this:

Silicon Valley and their enablers, through their arrogance, short sightedness, and dare I say.. general lack of humanity are creating a dystopian nightmare. In many places, that nightmare already exists in full force. That you don't or can't see it doesn't matter. It's well underway and it won't leave any of us untouched.

Forcing people to take part in a society that has already rejected them and conform to someone else’s view of normal, healthy, stable, etc., that, to me, would be literal torture. I don’t consider it humane to torture people.

How do you feel about all the busywork jobs that enable so so much more squandering of human potential? Should all those folks be forced to live your version of their best life?

Greed is at the root of your conundrum. Put that aside, and you'll see more clearly.

If you want to blame us for something, blame us for enjoying the empty comforts of modern life over choosing civil war.

I call BS. No one should accept this.

I don’t think anyone is disputing that — but every thing Google is doing is the result of fallible humans acting in pursuit of profit.

It doesn’t matter who or when. What matters is that people put aside their ethics in pursuit of profits. I think that needs to end.

Because really, when there’s a profit to be made, American companies are there to fill a “need”, right?

My father, an ex-Navy man, pointedly asked me once: “why do you want your own country to lose?” I don’t! I want us to be honest in our success, not smug while saying “if it isn’t illegal it must be OK!”.

The solution to this could be teaching ethics at all levels of education.

He stammered a bit, apologizing, and then hung up on me. I've always considered that dodging a bullet. It's a weird thing to ask someone with many years of professional experience. The only thing I could infer was that all of their staff were very young, and this was still relevant to them.

But then, every organization has it's quirks.

For me it wasn’t just tech though; its all of corporate America. I just can’t take the lack of humanity, empathy, kindness. Nor can I take the useless work, endless, pointless posturing, forced “fun” activities, and the general dishonesty.

I weep for what we’ve done and the awful future that awaits. All this is probably histrionic too. But like you, I’d rather be able to look myself in the mirror, and get a good nights sleep.

Running a local "pihole" equivalent might be possible then; really the sky is the limit if we regain control of our devices.

Every woman I know has a story to tell. Nearly all of them would make you weep.

We could do so much better, but then people like yourself just straight up don’t believe it.

Sales? SalesOps. HR? PeopleOps.

I worked ... in operations. We didn't get a shiny new name. But then, we actually did WORK, which had to continue at the datacenters -- not just get drunk on Zoom, like "PeopleOps" did.

Tmux, vim, and some tmux-fu to enable copy-on-select with the mouse.