sirlone

This is the problem, we don't agree on the solution. You said

> e hostile policy positions towards social safety nets and foundational services (e.g. education, healthcare, childcare??).

Except the USA spends more on education than most other countries.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...

That would argue the issue is not about spending, at least for education, it's something else (not sure what)

I agree though on the general idea that something has to change. Housing in unaffordable.

So the mom-and-pop donut shop on the corner always optimizes for profits? The local donut shop?

Most companies do not actually optimize for profit. If they did they'd stop whatever it is they are currently doing and switch to whatever industry makes the most profit. They don't though, they keep making/doing whatever it is they start with generally. That means they aren't actually optimizing for profit.

So for example, my action builds on 4 different platforms (win-64, linux-amd64, mac-intel, mac-arm), it does this in parallel then gets the artifacts for all for and bundles them into a single package.

How would you suggest I do this following your advice?

It's frustrating to read the average person has (1-2) intimate friends and 15 people they stay in touch with contacting them at least once a month. I'm at 0 intimate friends right now and maybe 3 people I contact once a month where "contact" equals sending 1 or 2 sentences in a text message and getting 1 or 2 sentences back once or twice a month.

I don't consider myself an incel since I know several people who would be with me if I asked but I also know "we" aren't a match so I don't go there.

I also don't really know what to do it fix this issue. I look at meetup.com and I don't really see anything I want to participate in. A large portion of the activities there are limited to younger people, or specific demographics of which I'm not one. The few that are left don't seem inviting or interesting.

What are other good sources of activities?

It doesn't help that I moved 4 years ago away from friends and back semi-near family at their request. The truth is I'm just not that close to them, we've all been apart for 30+ years. At the same time, my friends back where I moved from, while still there, I'm not sure are enough to get me to move back. There's more to it. I'm old and it's another country. Getting a visa to move back would be hard. Getting a job even harder. And, even if I moved back, while it would arguably be better than my current situation, it wouldn't rise to the average listed in the article.

WFH has also made things worse. These last 5 years (including one at home during COVID) have been the worst years of my life in terms of people. I've gone many months seeing around 1 person a month.

There's this post from SLC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-roman...

Which I found interesting in that if loneliness is a health issue, then why doesn't may insurance cover it? Why doesn't my doctor suggest solutions? I suppose this used to be where churches come in but that's no longer a thing for most people.