Does the value the NYT adds to the internet outweigh the negatives of turning people into dangerous communists by weaponizing misinformation? No.
Does the value added by sources like the Breitbart outweigh the negatives of being occasionally biased or outright wrong? Yes.
I was senior level but unable to shave yet when the movie War Games came out. That movie changed things socially and eventually at work. Young Bill Gates rise in celebrity also changed things. Quite a bit later, the dot-com boom started and we were hiring anything with a warm pulse to script HTML and Cold Fusion. Some of those kids were pulling $150K/yr in 1996 money! When the Crash happened, the kids moved home and laughed it off, eventually to reemerge as $7-$17/hr contractors while almost everyone over 40 was permanently retired (exceptions abound, but not enough). It happened because the older workers had more serious bills to pay and that involved changing careers and/or cracking open retirement nest eggs. The kids lacked any tenure with the grey beards and snow caps to guide them, but they had Google Search and the remotely connected Europeans (who were not as badly affected by the Crash due to socialism). Those kids of that era are fundamentally screwed because of lack of formal training and learning from those with decades of experience (and, of course, CS majors started graduating again ..about 17 years ago now.. and while initially outnumbered by the idiot kid masses, did manage to replicate to the point where things like PHP and Node are being slowly killed off and the applied science is coming back —along with renewed efforts to put training wheels on everything like was tried a generation ago with Pascal/Modula/Ada). However, one thing all those workers ALL shared was peer age group camaraderie! The older people were not seen as credible because the kids came to believe the entire industry had suddenly appeared out of thin are along with the advent of the WWW. Jeff Bezos took care of their heavy lifting for them (as long as they worked somewhere with a credit card lol) and is now the richest man in the world. Of course, I’m speaking very general here, but, for example, I doubt FB could have ever taken on Google because of this issue. I realized I was in trouble one day when I interviewed at Qualcomm wearing a suit and the kid who showed up late in casual attire accused me of being a fraud —not to my face, but to the recruiter. I notified their Legal and the response was like “Do we have a problem here?” Things are a bit better now, some of those kids look older than they are. Still, it’s not wise to let the young know what decade you were born in now, just as it once was with the old, before the War Games movie and Billy Gates.
Well done. I really don’t understand it either. I have close to 30 years experience, and have always stayed relevant in terms of approach, skills, and knowledge.
According to the folks I’ve worked with in the past, I’ve done great work, and I’m still in regular contact with many of them.
Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet are ‘required’. Haha. Robinson Crusoe on Mars is great.
The Black Hole is a Disney movie.
How about some TV?
Classic: Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, need I mention, Star Trek?
Current: Lost in Space, …
(Yikes. If 2001 is slow and boring, Solaris (1972) is watching paint dry. Sheesh)
… age appropriate is difficult, ahaha. You could also try your local library, the might have DVDs of TV shows and staff usually have kids section, and classics separate.
Echo recommendation for CBT. Helped me greatly and it will help you.
How old will you be in 5 years if you do nothing? 45. If you make big changes, how old will you be in 5 years? The same? The point is: your age has nothing to do with it. At 40, you're still young.
Get thee back to the US. You can change careers.
You can have a wife and kids. Although be prepared to meet women with "baggage" - a prior divorce and children. The key to find a wife is to treat it like a second full-time job. Were you raised in a particular religious faith? If yes, join a singles group associated to it? Worried that you'll meet a woman who will want to go to church every Sunday? Stop worrying -- you can sit through anything for an hour.
You need to see a psychiatrist for diagnosis and treatment. You are showing symptoms of depression. If you have depression, you can't get out of it by yourself -- you will need help. Fortunately, there are professionals standing by who have dedicated their lives to helping people just like you.
There can be biological causes for low mood and energy. I'll mention two.
The first is hypothyroidism (low thyroid). This comes on insidiously, with lower and lower levels over a span of years. Your energy gets lower and lower, slowly over time. Thyroid hormone is needed by every cell in your body to produce energy. Can be diagnosed with the TSH blood test (if above 3, suspect hypothyroidism).
The second is low testosterone, which can also be diagnosed with blood tests. It also develops insidiously. Testosterone has a powerful effect on the brain. A hundred years ago, testosterone was used as a therapy for depression (it worked).
Go see a doctor. You can't get out of it by yourself.
