dirtybirdnj

I lost my ex wife and cat to divorce last May. My world fell apart the day after my birthday. My mom has been in and out of the hospital since November... two weeks after the divorce was finalized.

Trying to "live my life" has been the only answer to the grief, but it also has been profoundly painful and unproductive. I don't feel like I'm actually making progress... just perpetually existing in this state where I can never get my needs met as every last ounce of support, love and any family connection drains out of me.

Try to think of things that would have made him happy or proud of you. Do those things not just for them... but for yourself too. Keep their memory alive through your words and actions.

Feel your feelings... I've had to spend a lot of time just sobbing. Absorbing it trying to let it pass over me... I try not to fight it anymore. In fact I think sometimes I embrace it too much. Eventually you get better at holding it and letting it go... like a breeze of wind.

You will never forget them, you will have their memory forever. I don't know what comes after the grief of how to get through it but I'm trying to hang on with every last bit of strength I have left.

> really good workers, that would take their job seriously, and be excellent employees, are being knocked out of the game, and the unproductive, disloyal, rapacious sharks that have learned to game the system, are taking all the fish food.

This needs to be made illegal or at the very least cost prohibitive.

It's literally why the CEO lost his life. One side is destroying the livlihood of the other and even basic levels of "please stop" are hand waved away by the needs of the shareholders and YOY hockey stick growth. For some reason "it's business" is a valid and ethically clean reason to build an economic model on top of suffering.

Honesty and dignity need to become fashionable and valuable again. Until we can wean people off the cult of personality around narcissists and psychopaths we're just carrying water for the people who do the worst abuse and will never change unless confronted at figurative or literal gunpoint.

> focus on fewer goals at a time

Beyond this very specific thing, I think its also a struggle with trusting myself. I don't trust myself to finish anything. I can try as hard as I want but my locus of control is completely external. I am tired of being lied to about agency and ability. If it was easy as putting effort in I'd be there already.

So I work harder and harder in an effort to MAYBE be enough for society / work etc and I am STILL not enough. How can you believe in yourself when you are the source of all failure, lack of consistency, inability to change or adapt. It's me. I'm the problem. I try to be better but at some point I am just masking who I am, which is a WHOLE other problem that is not mutually exclusive. It's another one of those "can't follow the issue because it's too complicated" problems that's destroying my life. Nobody undertands, everyone tells me I'm not alone (they are wrong) and nobdody has any reasonable or actionable suggestions because nobody I have talked to yet even remotely grasps what I am going through. My therapist is really the only person who gets it.

So many times I have tried to do the "right" thing only for it to backfire and make everything worse. It's textbook learned helplessness, but I also have a proverbial textbook of evidence to support my reasons why things won't work. Nobody will listen to me, and then when the thing I tell them won't work FAILS it's my fault for pointing out the laws of physics or nature. I am tired of being the scapegoat for sociopaths and Machiavellian cancer.

I accept that I need to accept failure. I am trying, but it's demoralizing and only seems to cause pain not growth. I can usually maintain optimism for a week or more but inevitably the reality of life creeps back in and I can't lie to myself any longer.

> I also took a big step back from various forms of ambition, in favor of building a solid, enjoyable life.

I think you are onto something here, but there's no way to keep my current situation sustainable let alone live on less. The financial thing I can't do much about but the psychological maybe. It's hard when I feel like there is nobody to help me and I have to do everything alone.

Nail on the head. Lost wife / family (cat) / house over the summer. Mom in and out of hospital starting in November. I'm a cat locked in the dryer and there are no door handles on the inside.

> First you have to make space in your life for it. You need long blocks of time for deep work.

This is the obstacle to EVERYTHING in my life. It's very chaotic, which causes a lot of stress and has led to decreasing performance.

I try so hard to clean up, to improve things. To try to proactively get ahead of stuff. It never seems to be enough. Something happens I cannot prepare for, or in trying to save and be efficient something goes wrong I cannot afford. My whole plan, saving AND getting things done has now blown up. I no longer have one, I now have three problems and I have also lost/wasted a day. Tomorrow I have four problems, plus I am aware of this dynamic and unable to escape it so technically 5?

This compounds over time.

How do you escape this failure loop?

tl;dr: the "being poor is expensive" trap, how escape when so burned out you are struggling to tread water?

It's not just money, it's attention span. It's the ability to set my mind to something and accomplish what I set out. Having that muscle atrophy and tear has been traumatic and I am struggling to find emotional or medical interventions worth the effort.

> During this time I hopefully remember to take my medication.

Hahaha oh man, I feel you on this! I have a 7 day pill organizer that I have found does wonders for my ability to #1 take my meds and also #2 have a visual reminder that I did, that I DONT HAVE TO REMEMBER. Nothing worse than being 3 hours into the day and being gripped with "OH SHIT I FORGOT MY MEDS".

Lately I have been on a kick where I do some plain greek yogurt, some fresh berries (whatevers good) and a healthy pile of granola. While prepping I try to keep them separate like a pie chart. I don't mix it all together per se but as I eat there's the most delicious venn diagram in the middle.

Lately I've had a strange obsession with instant coffee and sweetened condensed milk. Maybe not the highest quality but its so quick and easy when I have zero energy.

I really enjoy breakfast and the morning meal... the getting to work part not so much. Definitely more productive in the afternoon / evening, but breakfast makes the morning worth it.

Growing up in NJ my family got together at my uncles place for Christmas, which also happens to be my cousin's birthday. I'm not sure if this was directly on the holiday but it WAS winter / snowy so we're gonna roll with it.

My dad had brought over a self-propelled walk behind snowblower to help my uncle clear a sidewalk in front of the house. My cousin and I were doing as kids did in the 90s, running around in the snow having fun when we made a discovery. A squirrel had not survived the cold and was frozen solid.

My dad and uncle had gone inside for some reason and left the snowblower unattended. We decided that it would be really funny if we put the squirrel in the snowblower chute, so that when they turned it on it would shoot out and we'd all have a good laugh.

Except that isn't what happened. The frozen squirrel blocked the auger mechanism from working correctly and after some very unpleasant noises some kind of belt or other part broke. The squirrel was not hilariously propelled across the sky as anticipated / desired.

My dad and uncle were PISSED, I am sure there was some fallout but it's gotta be one of my all time favorite holiday / winter shenanigans I've been involved with.

On a sad note, this is my first Christmas alone after going through divorce earlier this year. I hope you get to spend time with your loved ones, and I encourage you to remind them how you feel about them. You never know how much time you have left, so make the most of it. You have less than you think don't wait. Tell them now.

SaaS is just hype around MRR.

Monthly Recurring Revenue is a morally bankrupt business model that attempts to take things that do not belong in this pattern and force them on consumers.

It offloads the risk from the company onto the customer. They get money, you have to remember to cancel.

They can raise rates any time, and you are at their mercy.

They are rent seeking parasites.

SaaS can be good, but I have seen it used for evil far more than good.

The proliferation of this pattern means that less and less people build software you can buy and own. Less and less software can run on your compter.

What are you going to do when the internet goes down? Then next clownstrike event?

SaaS is a liability. The cloud is not your friend.

I'm not sure what my idea is worth, but here it goes.

I once worked at a really cool company that had robots that could do handwriting. I thought it would be cool to get the robots to draw pictures of people, and after a little hacking I had a prototype UI that could convert bitmaps to traceable vector paths.

Since then I have worked on automating the process. I have a half-built machine that will be able to do pen plotter stuff, without any connection to the internet. I am currently using a Cricut machine to render plotter art which ties me to the useless bored mom cloud. Also I can't use the machine without internet... NOT OK!

The biggest problem with the Cricut cloud is the process is so clunky and painful that I cannot do "realtime" drawings. The process of bouncing between my UI and the awful cricut cloud makes the process too labor intensive for me to talk to people and do the P.T. Barnum thing while I also execute the art. I would love to have an assistant but I cannot afford it.

So I have a machine, eventually I will be able to run a server process on a raspi listening for requests, and when it gets one it will execute some gcode to do some drawing.

I also have figured out how to use a DSLR library to control cameras.

The end goal is for camera to fire, automated tracing to run, and then the robot should kick out a sketch in 3 mins or less

It's called "Robot Draws You!" because people couldn't understand what "facetrace" meant and I also found existing companies using that wordmark / term.

I have been dragging this project behind my failing career for about 6-7 years now. I hope to get back to it.... I'm not giving up. I love making vector pen plotter artwork but unfortunately I am a shining example of the starving artist stereotype.

https://www.instagram.com/robotdrawsyou/

On one hand I feel bad for holding onto this project and not being able to give up. On the other hand, it's too cool and enjoyable for me to let go of. If I can get a MVP demo working, I'll be able to bring it to parties and hopefully get paid to do "photo booth" style events. I also would like to use the project as an educational tool to teach people the difference between bitmap and vector graphics.

If anybody wants to join me in this project or is interested in funding me send an email to mat at vtapi dot co

> In situations like these it's good to remember that people are much more likely to take the ethical and principled road when they also stand to gain from that choice. People who put their ideals above pragmatic self-interest self-select out of positions of power and influence.

I don't know what world you live in, but my experience has been 100% the opposite. Most people will not do what is ethical or principled. When you try to discuss it with them, they will DARVO and congrats, you have now been targeted for public retribution by the sociopathic child in the drivers seat.

The thing that upsets me most is the survivorship bias you express, and how everybody thinks that people are "nice and kind" they are not. The world is an awful terrible place full of liars, cheats and bad people that WE NEED TO STOP CELEBRATING.

One more time WE NEED TO STOP CELEBRATING BAD PEOPLE WHO DO BAD THINGS TO OTHERS.

this is amazing work, looks hand done. can't imagine the time that goes into something like this, just figuring out how to compose it... and not making mistakes?!

very cool

I got a mac app called Graphic off the app store a few years ago and it does everything I need in a vector graphics tool. Illustrator can go get fucked.

I really wish I could get behind inkscape but the UI has never improved enough for me to tolerate it. Graphic just feels much better.

Use Pixelmator Pro for photoshop stuff. I don't do a lot of work in it anymore but it's great for making youtube thumbs and other basic stuff. The photo retouching stuff is nice, stills from my gopro are kinda dark and it does a great job making them look better for web use.

Looks neat, is this a self-made thing or a project one could use to deploy a similar forum? I've been noodling on the idea of a HN style board for a non-tech audience that is older. I think the more primitive UI will resonate with the target demographic.

Yours looks too nice for my use case honestly :) Weird complement but I really do like how it looks, you did a good job.

shhhh don't say the quiet part out loud

If your not banning tiktok for it's ownership opacity... ban it for destroying attention span and training people into being mindless content consumption robots.

We regulate cigarettes and heroin this is a much bigger problem than people give it credit for.

It's an even worse problem if a bad actor is using it subtlety to influence a population.

It doesn't matter if ByteDance or FB are doing this they should both burn to the ground for the damage they have done to the Internet and society.

Finding people that vibe on the same things you are passionate about is really, really difficult. Feedback and just being around people doing stuff I think is super, super important.

One way I'm considering doing this is running a local HN style invite only message board. There are lots of FB groups for my target activity (fishing) but people are notoriously guarded about their fishing spots so I'm thinking maybe a small $5 a month membership will keep the tire kickers out and reduce the riffraf.

Put it this way, if someone was doing this around here already I'd sign up right now. It's not just finding a community, it's finding a CURATED community where the things / people you need are available for you to interact with.

Edit: WHOOSH I totally missed your link! I think your idea is awesome if you couldn't tell by my participation :)

TOO MUCH!

I've been fighting depression and anxiety on / off the past year. The past two or three months things have been improving a lot thanks to meds.

Three projects I'm working on are starting to really start to buzz:

1. I have a small e-commerce site I'm almost ready to launch. Need to get over myself and the fear of "what if something goes wrong" and just fucking send it.

2. Custom pen plotter machine, I was stuck on this for a LONG TIME but last week I finally did enough diagnosing and troubleshooting to get it working! FEELS AMAZING! s/o to the Duet folks their support forum is second to none.

3. Electric motor for my kayak. Some very cool people on the internet are selling ESCs designed for brushed / brushless motors and it just so happens they perfectly overlap with the small / lightweight motor I'm using on my kayak. You can spend $$$$ on an electric setup but I'm making it work with a $130 motor, $200 battery and maybe $60 of electronics? Suck it torqueedo.

Honestly if you'd have told me all this would be going on at once six months ago I might have got in a fight with you for blowing smoke up my ass. It feels great to be productive both at work and on my projects at home.

I wish I could go back in time and tell my depressed / stressed self to have some hope and hang in there.

This article was fascinating and insightful, I find this dynamic resonates with me as a developer. Instead of VCs fighting over funding, it's me trying to explain why something is not simple or why disparate pieces do not magically integrate without any human intervention.

the idea that you can trick developers into doing things they don't understand is offensive. we aren't just cogs, but tell that to some C level terrorist who lays off half his workforce before jetting off to vacation(s). he got a bonus for blaming this quarters failures of the business on the peons who did the work and in 6 months he'll fire the next batch when they fail to achieve his poorly articulated vision. Forbes will do a piece on his visionary technical management prowess.

I have ZERO respect for this grey area negotiation /management behavior. As someone on the spectrum the social challenges of understanding good faith / bad faith make life and business in general almost impossible.

If you cannot trust the people around you life is hard and terrifying. if you have people you are employing that you are not being honest with them: they hate you, and I hate you too.

Find a side hustle you can put sweat equity into.

Keep working your day job. If you have an idea that gets traction eventually you will be able to make the switch.

It will take years. It will be really hard and you will question whether it was worth it.

Don't quit your job. Figure out how to build a manageable project / business you can have full control over. For me this is more important than profitability, and my day job keeps the bills paid.

Staying in the corporate environment will irreparably damage your spirit worse than your feared repetitional suffering for taking risks. People won't respect the slow hustle either, but it's sustainable not sexy so don't be surprised when people don't get it. I don't know if it will be worth it but it's the path I'm on right now and it allows me to accept myself and my situation instead of fighting it and stressing out.

> it might enable you to build a world leading ai company

Sure I had to ruin a few careers, but look at all the shareholder value I created.

There is a level of whitewashing, gaslighting or to put it very gently "less than truthful accounting" of what actual success takes in the whole "gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette" argument.

It's a choice, not a necessity and people need to stop acting like their hand was forced to make unnecessary or unpopular decisions. It's not illegal to be a shitty person, but you can't just Dj Khalid yourself out of backlash by proclaiming "that ain't me / no I didn't" and expecting the people around you to agree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDkmelexPYM

> When I said the parent's post sounded more like they were describing autism

I have a feeling that the venn diagram between autism and the ASPD stuff is more than we realize. Same spectrum, just extreme dysfunction at polar ends.

> I strictly meant the part about struggling to understand social dynamics.

One thing that's been amazing for me (re: autism spectrum) is understanding the difference between "not seeing" the social dynamics and simply not feeling the same way the rest of society does... which is interpreted as "doesn't respect authority". To me it's stunning how groups completely lack any critical thinking. It's scary like falling asleep behind the wheel when driving, not a thing to be proud of and wear like a badge of honor.

This introspection makes it easier to (attempt to) comprehend how ASPD people don't feel empathy. I don't feel any respect for people in positions of power who do not treat their subordinates (or customers) with respect. If I see it, I respect them... if not... I don't. I can only guess how ASPD folks feel like "well if I can take advantage of this person I will. If I don't someone else will, so I deserve it because it will happen."

For me I think the issue is ASPD people do not see themselves as a problem, when they clearly are harmful to society. Somehow bringing them in line with the expectations of everybody else is a grave attack on their personal character. They are such effective manipulators that they can get away with it.

They are like drunk drivers with a pass to DUI and cause as much wreckage as they please, because the cops like them and they have fun whenever they pull this person over. The victim the drunk driver injured has to "deal with it" on their own both financially and emotionally. Any complaining from the person who suffered the consequences is just "playing the victim" when the drunk who caused the crash faces no consequences.

Why would this person ever change?

> I think normalizing sociopathic behaviour is something to be worried about, but I personally don't see that happening anywhere so I am unsure what your point is.

The normalization of sociopathic behavior is pretty clear to see in politics and celebrity culture. If you don't see it you have had your eyes willfully closed to it for 10+ yrs.

Maybe you have or are currently engaged in some of these behaviors and you "can't see" them because it would damage your ego's view of yourself as a good person who deserves the success they have experienced.

> Shunning those people from society seems like not an option to me, they are people after all

This is effectively what happens to the victims of the sociopaths. They are driven out from the margins. The way I read this is "sociopaths can do whatever they want, but when others complain they are the problem".

I cannot stress how wrong that last statement is. So much suffering and therapy to recover from people who behaved this way. People at the top. Bosses. Managers.

People who were supposed to be looking out for the group and were not.

> actively reject abusive narcissistic behavior with no qualifications.

There is an inherently difficult task in this. To combat manipulators, we must ourselves engage in manipulation of others whether we like it or not. Depending on how skillful the ASPD person is, trying to call them out on their behavior may actually simply be "outing" yourself to a group that has no interest in hearing what your saying.

This can be INCREDIBLY stressful in work or school settings where removing yourself from the social situation is impossible. Eventually the only way to "win" is to walk away, and in doing so at times cut yourself off from social groups. This just allows the ASPD person to tar your name and further manipulate others to isolate you. "Living your best life is the best revenge" yeah sure but it's hard to do this with less of a social group... it doesn't feel good to lose friends even if the reason you are "losing" them is a choice to not tolerate their behavior.

I said this in another post, but the real challenge is convincing general society that the awful behavior of psychopaths and sociopaths is in fact bad. That not having or even making an attempt to practice empathy does in fact make you a bad person.

The cheerleaders of the sociopaths have been duped, manipulated and controlled into submission by people who have no regard for their wellbeing. In my experience most people are unable to accept this reality. The ones who at least can accept part of it, or agree and have seen the unfairness are the type of people NT or ND that are worth interacting with and need to be seen as advocates and beacons of hope.

I agree that people should be given the opportunity for their natural gifts being used effectively.

I do NOT think "I'm a sociopath, sorry that doesn't bother me" is ever an acceptable resolution to the damage, pain and suffering they cause.

If you help 100 but you have to destroy 5 to get there, was it worth it? I do not think people deserve the benefit of the doubt to make this ethical call. The problem with sociopaths is they HAVE NO ETHICS OR MORALS.

You cannot "teach them to feel"... it's like trying to teach a starfish to speak. The only thing you can do is give them negative consequences to their actions. If their actions worked in the past they will repeat them. If those are negative behaviors, they don't see / care that they had to "step on some toes this time".... it simply becomes that toe stepping is now a normal point along an ever-escalating path of social violence and disregard for others.

The whole "we can't pathologies it because the sociopath doesn't think they have a problem" point is the main issue for me. If someone was smoking in an enclosed room... and others asked them to stop it would be cut and dry. But because the person is being socially manipulative instead of breathing toxic carcinogens it's acceptable? Bad words ok, bad oxygen BAD! Why is this so hard to understand that the bad social behavior is JUST AS TOXIC.

I completely reject this. Socially manipulative behavior is wrong and destructive. I don't care how bad your childhood was your sociopathic manipulation is not justified in any way.

> This isn’t a disability, sociopathy is a self-propelled toxic character trait, typically resulting from deep childhood trauma that our society rewards structurally.

> Mostly we just need to identify and isolate people with ASPD as quickly as possible.

I find this interesting as it relates to the autism spectrum... there is pretty universal resistance to accommodating / understanding the difficulties people face. It seems like a really uphill battle to get people who benefit from their toxicity to voluntarily take a "more difficult" route than they otherwise can.

I suggest that we don't need to do anything with the APSD folks, what we need to do is normalize the idea that their behavior is abusive and support folks who are structurally disadvantaged via their behaviors.

If enough of regular society gets tired of their shit they will take corrective action... until their behavior "looks bad" to others they have no incentive to cooperate.

> Wow, that doesn't jive with my personal experiences or what I've ever read about sociopathy. It sounds more like you're describing folks on the autism spectrum.

The amount of undue hate that people on the spectrum get for being sociopaths or narcissist is awful. You are correct that they may misunderstand or "not get" social situations. You are incorrect in that they don't care / can't feel the emotion of a situation. Often they are overwhelmed by this and it's what makes "dealing" (passing as NT) difficult.

The amount of times I have had people socially manipulate situations against me is difficult to count. Any time you speak up about this you are the "crazy" one. These have mostly been situations where sociopaths are abusing me for the entertainment / social benefit reason.

They DO NOT CARE about the pain / suffering they cause. This has been a source of extreme stress, pain and suffering in my life. YMMV obviously but the amount of time I have to spend explaining this to people is disheartening. It's like nobody wants to believe that people can be so awful... and this belief can hand wave away any bad behavior being described.

> because even if you have little empathy, behaving like a creepy scumbag is generally not going to be beneficial in the long run.

I think you significantly underestimate the benefit to risk ratio. There are a lot more terrible, manipulative, sadistic people out there than "kind but misunderstood" people. The averages are not in our favor.

It was not an issue of refining the content on one site, you make a good point though.

It was more of an issue that they had a bunch of clients on an old CMS system, and they did not want to make any changes the way that the sites were built or hosted.

I can make arguments for and against either side of this idea, it all depends how you want to run your business.

> Again I have to question: why do you feel like most of these experienced, skilled white-collar workers

I worked at a tech startup in NYC that employed many local people in several different non-technical blue collar roles. They were some of the first to go when things weren't even over but sudden changes started occurring. Last time we ever saw the cleaning ladies was at a holiday party. All the developers still had jobs (me included) but the other team yeah we are moving what they do to another state. Ok now switch everything to mongodb and we have to decentralize our API because it's gotta run over there.

Unprecedented fad layoffs are having downstream implications on the job market, my experience was almost 8yrs ago. Yes most of the developers will be fine but the people that are on the margins will suffer first.

> The only alternative to having layoffs be a fact of life and business is for companies to provide “jobs for life”

What I want is less "thank you for your sacrifice" and more "this happened on my watch. I made a bad call. I am doing X so that the remaining hardworking people can continue the mission with/without me"

Was it just a bad luck / market forces, or was it an unplanned / risky bet?

That to me determines with/without. Sunshine cures all.

I feel like companies would have difficulty hiring employees if they treated the opening interaction with the same hostility they end it.

You're not wrong FpUser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6BYzLIqKB8