I used to think my dream job would be building custom furniture in my own workshop at home, but now that a small part of my work actually involves making custom pieces, I’ve learned it’s not my dream job after all. I’m far more productive when I have a set time and place to show up - otherwise I’ll procrastinate until noon and end up working through the whole evening.

In my experience you don’t even need camo to blend in. I’m a self-proclaimed military autist and my entire wardrobe is earth tones. That alone is enough to startle people on the trails when they’re not looking ahead and I suddenly appear in front of them on my bike. Camo obviously helps, but it’s not about perfectly blending in - it’s about not standing out. When I spot people in the woods it’s always because of a pale face or hands, or some brightly colored or white piece of clothing. Black stands out a lot too, but anything gray, brown, or green usually disappears into the background unless you’re staring right at it.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/debt

Is it not debt when you owe money to the bank?

You can invest in index funds online. I passively earn over a month’s salary that way every year.

The value of my portfolio dips too, but I don’t actually lose anything unless I sell. I just hold and wait for prices to recover - as they always have so far. In fact, when the market drops I buy even more, because the same money gets me more shares. People don’t lose their savings because of a crash; they lose them because they panic and sell for less than they paid.

No. Loss of vision alone would be enough.

My savings are invested in the stock market, and the returns I get from that are higher than the interest on my mortgage. If I liquidated my investments to pay off the house, the savings from not paying mortgage interest would still be less than what I’d make from the market over the same period. I’d rather use the profits from my investments to cover the mortgage interest - that way I still have money left over. If I did the opposite, I’d lose that extra money.

I’m not sure what you’re asking about exactly. If it’s the key to happiness you’re after, I’ll let you know once I find it. But when it comes to meaning - and feeling like I’m valued by society - that shift happened for me when I went from being an employee to being self-employed.

In my old job, building mostly apartment blocks and schools, I never interacted with the end users. Nobody appreciated a job well done, and nobody ever said thank you. The only thing that mattered was how fast you got it done. It wasn’t much different from working on an assembly line.

These days, people call me when they’ve got a problem with their house and I show up to solve it. They’re usually relieved I’m there, and many are just as glad to have someone to talk to - especially the elderly, who make up about half my customer base. I’ve done everything from recovering lost TV channels to full kitchen remodels, with very few limits on what I can help with. People are almost always incredibly kind and hospitable - nearly everyone offers coffee and snacks, and a few even cook for me.

On top of that, I get a ton of repeat customers, which tells me they were satisfied with my previous work. Honestly, I can’t imagine a more fulfilling feeling than getting genuine gratitude for what I do.

Being in debt isn’t synonymous with being broke.

I could pay off my house tomorrow if I wanted, but financially it doesn’t make sense - so I keep the debt. That doesn’t mean my net worth is negative or that I don’t have disposable income.

Everyone has a price but if we stick to realistic numbers I’d say that working on a clothes store or fast food joint would be the first two that come to mind though most office jobs would apply as well.

I just wanted to chime in to posture with my superiority

Not in the traditional sense, but I have a pet theory about the continuation of consciousness.

You can only experience being, not not-being, so even if your consciousness went dark for a million years before being “reincarnated,” there would be no gap from the perspective of your subjective experience. You can only go from having one experience to having another. Nothingness can’t be experienced.

This cup? I must say I’m relatively worry-free at the moment.

I genuinely struggle to come up with a topic for a news article more mind numbingly uninteresting than celebrity drama.

None of my nudes include face and I stand behind everything I’ve said, and I’m not that worried about it. I basically expect that one day some supercomputer will stitch it all together and create profiles for everyone based on our entire internet histories. And honestly, I don’t think it’s the quirky people with weird fetishes who’ll be screwed - it’s the mean, lying hypocrites who’ll have to stand behind the mountain of crap they’ve been spewing for decades.

Never liked Jack Black and I can’t point to why

It is a big part of the issue, but as Lemmy clearly demonstrates, that issue doesn’t go away even when you remove the algorithm entirely.

I see it a lot like driving cars - no matter how much better and safer we make them, accidents will still happen as long as there’s an ape behind the wheel, and probably even after that. That’s not to say things can’t be improved - they definitely can - but I don’t think it can ever be “fixed,” because the problem isn’t it - it’s us. You can’t fix humans by tweaking the code on social media.

Ofcourse not. The issue with social media are the people. Algorithms just bring out the worst in us but it didn’t make us like that, we already were.

They also mindlessly broadcast whatever lies the CEOs of the big tech company’s are telling.

LLMs? Want to give an example of this? When ChatGPT 5 came out I asked it what the “thinking built in” means and it told me it’s probably just a marketing term.