Work is the worst place to make friends. You don't get to choose the people you work with. If you change jobs or get sacked, your social circle is vaporized. Work is a place to make money. I work remotely, don't miss the socialization because many of my co-workers are sucky people. I have friends I've made through hobbies, veterans groups etc.
We have a library of now thousands of books, history, science, any many other topics. The internet I remember as a kid had lots of information but today's internet indeed seems fruitless when I search for anything.
That argument is a bit of a canard. Wages haven't kept up with inflation for many years yet the rich are getting richer. And we're supposed to maintain our motivation to "benefit society" or whatever.
How many of those experienced personnel stick around to pass on their knowledge? Not nearly enough to have an effective military. We'll find out our true readiness when we face a competent enemy.
Do you you want to make art yourself, or experience art that's been made?
I have an art degree but I've learned more on my own than I ever learned in school. Youtube is a good resource if you want to get hands on. The "PaintCoach" channel is pretty fantastic if you want to give oil painting a shot. His videos break down the process from absolute basics and a minimum of materials are required. I'm not associated with this channel in any way.
I've done this, pirate a game just to find out if it's any good. I don't do full playthroughs. If the game is good, I'll buy it. 99% of the time it just gets deleted after an hour.
But if we all rely on machines perpetually and our English comprehension skills degrade, we won't recognize if a post is written poorly. We just need standards to slip more, then all of our writing will be "good".
My cynical take is that the rest of us will be funneled into endless war and plague scenarios until the population is small enough to be less of a threat to those who enjoy that concentrated wealth.
In my mind, the value in a created work is that it is communication between humans. I have zero interest in AI generated art, however superior, because there's no soul driving it. AI will never be able to feel the way we feel; it's output will always lack this important component.
If welding paid, I'd be doing that rather than sitting at my computer dealing with corporate bullshit. I didn't get a degree but I'm still sitting here coding and not welding. I'm just saying I think there's more to the issue than that we sent people to college. The trades just don't pay well enough.
I was USMC infantry, and I have PTSD. I've been working on it for it for years and I'm still having a hard time. Remote work is a huge blessing. I can sit and think about my responses and temper them. That doesn't work as well face-to-face.
Do you dual boot? Are you able to return to MacOS easily if you want to? I've been thinking about trying to run Linux on my 2015 MBP but I haven't done anything with it yet.
I have the same feeling; society is sick. But I cannot just quit my job and escape society. I have no idea how to make a living on my own outside of a company.
I've worked with a couple of these guys at my current company. I spent six months trying to get along with a guy and get some kind of compromise going. After lots of abuse and long, painful workdays I finally asked to be switched to another team. If your management doesn't value the integrity of the workplace and doesn't hold the person in question accountable, there's no use fighting it.
I enjoy Firefox and I'm still thankful but a lot of Mozilla's actions over the last year or so have degraded the product. In particular, mobile Firefox gets worse with every update. I haven't contributed to the vitriol but imagine that could be part of the reason.