sceptical

What is a life lived well? It is very personal isn't it. There is no intended result or end goal. No greater meaning. I like my life but others may find it meaningless.

The poster asks "Why do I feel the need to only be on a journey if it’s grand?". Makes no sense to me. It is only grand in his head.

I retired four years ago just before hitting 50 years of age. There is no real purpose and never was. I got my degree, worked in a field I loved. I was good at it, learned and was successful. But there never was any real purpose except personal growth and being challenged in my field of expertise. I've seen CEOs come and go, engineers much smarter than me leave and poor replacements being hired. Nothing ever really changed. In the work setting nobody is truly important.

I don't know what Loom is and I don't really care. It was not spectacular. It doesn't matter. You succeeded. Now you can start on a new part of life. One where you do not have to prove your ability, you already did. So enjoy, you've earned it.

I am sitting in the cold, snowy Scandinavia. In a few days time I will be travelling to Spain. I cannot wait. When I leave the airport and walk into the sun and the heat, I will be grinning like a madman. After a week of hiking / running, exploring and drinking cold beers in sun I will return home and once I leave the airport I will sigh with relief, home sweet home. After a few days of chores at home I will start looking forward to the trip that is already booked for the next week.

Life is great.

At 49 I retired and spent the following years travelling. I did not really see it as a midlife crisis though as it was based on hitting a specific net worth. Now 3 years later I just completed my first marathon. I guess that is text book midlife crisis.

Never been healthier. Never been happier.

Similar to your collection of USSR stories, I bet.

But it wishes it already. Israel however has nukes and is backed by the US. Iran wouldn't last 10 minutes.

Quite a bit of wishful thinking here. Who exactly would be able to defeat Israel? Iran? They are cowering in fear right now. Hamas? Hezbollah? Please.

You left out the part: "it was shot down by the Israeli fighter pilots after they did not receive a response to their demands for the aircraft to land"

I don't think that is what Bjørn Lomborg said at all. IIRC he said money would be better spent on mitigating effects of climate change. Since you say things aren't looking great you actually seem to agree with him.

"Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says the group’s leadership was mostly spared during Tuesday’s attack targeting pagers that killed several members in Lebanon as they were using older devices while “new ones were sent elsewhere.”

Some companies do. At my previous company (I have since retired), I would get yearly outsized stock grants to motivate me to stay. I sincerely doubt I could have found matching compensation at another company.

I never had any expectation of loyalty from the company and it didn't from me either, otherwise the stock grants would be unnecessary. I had some loyalty to my manager and had promised him to give a heads up before leaving the company. He knew I would retire once I hit my target.

The escalation narrative is propaganda. It is intended to sway public opinion and end support for Ukraine. But people seems to forget that Russia invaded Ukraine and Ukraine can and should do whatever they can to defend themselves. There is no escalation. We can see that with the Kursk invasion and the other of Putin's numerous red lines that has already been crossed.

Forcing Russia to allocate a large amount of its limited air defences to defend Moscow seems like a good result in itself. It appears to allow Ukraine to attack airfields, fuel storages and other infrastructure inside Russia with good results.

Obviously they disclose this so we don't waste any more ATACMS. How nice of them.

I retired three years ago at the age of 49. I was rather successful as a software engineer and is content with what I achieved. My response to your thoughts.

1) I have not missed work at all for the last three years. Not a single day. I have not done any programming since I retired. Instead I spend my time on other hobbies and travelling. I try to take two week-long trips every month to new locations. That is plenty meaningful for me. I have nothing to prove, I already did that. My job now is to see the world while I still can.

2) Initially it was daunting to start living on savings / investments. Especially with an initial ~20% market correction and high inflation. However I am spending less than I expected, only around 2% withdrawal rate and I could reduce that by almost 50% if needed and still live rather comfortably.

3) Financial independence is nice. But you also have to spend the money, while you still can.

General rule is 100 calories per mile so 2500 calories for a marathon seems reasonable.

And yet you want people to trust your anecdata.

That is not accurate. Israel is seeking to destroy Hamas, not Gaza. Hamas must be utterly destroyed. Unfortunately they hide among the civilians, cowards as they are.

In Denmark Uber was cheaper, more reliable and vastly better than taxies until it was banned by the government to protect the taxi cartel. And it was actually profitable for Uber. I don't have to make up an anecdote about poor taxi service.

Why is 24/7 oncall exploitation? It is hardly unpaid when you are payed > $500,000 a year. Also you should know this upfront when accepting employment.

I like mine but mainly use the health / activity features, such as the daily tracking of movement, calories burned, etc. I use it as my sport watch for running as well and it is comparable to Garmin now. I have disabled pretty much all notifications on it though.

Mine is a series 6 and have at least another year left on it. I may consider buying series 10 if Apple decides to do some substantial changes for the 10th anniversary release.

It is not over yet. Seems to me that Russia is by far the biggest loser so far and my expectation is that it will get much worse for Russia still.

Article appear to be from 17 November 2021.

There is no trickery. Uber did lose $2.6 billion in the quarter but it also turned cash flow positive and posted $382 million in free cash flow.

Surge pricing is not about profit for Uber. Uber wants to minimize surge pricing as it implies the market place is unbalanced. I.e. not enough drivers. Obviously with demand spikes you cannot magically produce more drivers so surge pricing does happen. But it is not a good user experience. In the ideal state drivers are busy all the time maximizing their earnings and riders can get a reliable ride.

Nothing weird, just no snacking and avoid sugar.

I retired a year ago and decided to try and get into shape. And I wanted it to be a permanent life style change that I hopefully can stick to for a decade or two and also it shouldn't feel like I am depriving myself anything:

- Run for 30 minutes every second day.

- Eat fruit for breakfast. A banana and some berries.

- Lunch and dinner what ever I want. I often eat white bread, pasta, meat or fastfood. Just be mindful of portion sizes and if fastfood, skip any fries and icecream.

- No snacks in the evening. This was probably where I used to get most excess calories.

One year in I have lost 20kg and I am pretty much in the shape I was when I was a teenager. I can definitely keep this going, I don't really think about it anymore.

Alcohol will be next. Same arguments apply.

Wokeness is a religion. As such that is fine but why pretend otherwise.

I think it is competition for local talent. I worked for a US tech company in a remote office in a smaller Scandinavian city and at senior levels we got comparable salary/stock compensation. There was a slight adjustment for COL, ~10%.

There are other US based tech companies in the city which helped drive up the compensation. And at senior levels (staff+) employees are much much harder to replace.

Retired 6 months ago at 50 years old. So far I love it. I do not miss work at all. I have not done any programming since I quit and I have no immediate plans to. I had a lot of other plans for my retirement but from reading advice from other early retirees I have decided to just unwind and "do nothing" until that gets boring.

The days do feel longer but not in a bad way. There is plenty to do even when doing nothing. I exercise regularly, eat healthier and my overall health is a lot better now. I have started traveling a bit which I expect will increase once Covid situation improves across the world.

There is a ton of books I would love to read but so far I have not found time for it.