thowaway959125

To me, this is undoubatedly a huge part of the problem.

I noticed that my depression spiked when I started to become more isolated. I was getting older, long time friends are now scattered about the country/world, difficult to make new ones. Family members are isolated and scattered doing their own thing in their nuclear units. Parents are divoced and fending for themselves too. Finding a romantic partner under these circumstances is difficult ... having no friends can be seen as a "red flag". It snowballs.

I have also thought of the concept of shared housing for adults. I LOVE this idea.

They share the responsibilities much like a multi-generational family would, they just happen to be strangers.

> Make no mistake, for most people, life fucking sucks.

And for many, it's one small slip-up, poor choices, medical problems, etc. and they may have to look forward to these sorts of jobs ... potentially until they drop.

I have no back-up plan, and ageism is a thing. I have to play this software engineering game for as long as I can to avoid the service sector when I'm older. And I have to play it very carefully.

Right now I'm sitting pretty, good income, unlimited vacation, work from anywhere. A "dream" job. But for how much longer?

Fingers crossed. I am not sure about turning to drugs, that would likely amplify the hell and make suicide even more of a viable option.

It's a grim outlook, I try not to think about it.

One small screw-up and it can be all over.

I know it first hand. I got completely burnt out, ended up drinking too much, and lost everything.

At least with this career there is a chance to start over, depending on age and compensation.

But one small slip-up, whether it be a serious medical problem (especially in the US) or otherwise, and the "numbers" can be thrown out the window.

Fingers crossed.

You can see from my comment history that I have a history of problems with alcohol also.

I have spent many Christmas's holed up in motels alone with a bottle, thinking "what's the point?". You think going through that one year would be enough, but it wasn't enough to learn my lesson.

It's no place to be, but it CAN get better as you've pointed out.

I noted in a prior comment I went from a senior software engineer to a homeless shelter.

I'm back to being a senior software engineer.

Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays everyone.

> Looking across the street every day in California and seeing the homelessness crisis in full swing is an ever present reminder of what this economy and this society can do to you if you slip up for even a second and / or have even a minor run of bad luck. Working in software isn't always easy or fun or fulfilling but its still an incredible privilege to be working in this industry.

I'm a senior software engineer with decades in the industry, but a few years ago I completely burned out, ended up addicted to alcohol, and lost everything.

And when I say lost everything, I mean everything. I ended up in a homeless shelter.

Climbing out from there to get back into the industry was an insane battle. I finally got control over all of it and back on my feet, but I have a new found respect for just being able to keep a roof over my head and pay bills now.

That's all I want. I use my free time to give back to society now.

Can't dispute until posted, and the way the scam works is they get you on the phone as quickly as they can in order to continue to the scam.

Obviously, in hindsight the correct way to handle this is to call the bank yourself. The way the scam works is they spoof your bank's caller ID, and you get a standard "do you recognize this charge? Press YES if you recognize, NO if not".

When you type NO, you get a message stating "our fraud team will be reaching out to you momentarily to resolve this issue", followed immediately by a call from a very convincing "customer support" person, again coming in as a caller ID from your bank.

At this point, I made some "rookie" mistakes as I'd mentioned, but hindsight is 20/20 in these cases where they are trying to keep you on your toes.

I fell for this, and I have never fallen for a computer scam in my life, nor even had so much as a virus in the last two decades.

However, it is very sophisticated. They somehow managed to actually get a fraudulent charge on my card. When I got the spoofed message from "my bank", the first thing I did was log onto my legitimate account. Sure enough, there was a charge I did not recognize.

The rest was just a series of unfortunate "rookie" mistakes on my part. But the person who called me was highly professional, easily could have been a real customer support representative and spoke English perfectly with no accent.

They took the max, $5,000. My bank thankfully refunded it.

Is this not a national security issue when looked at in a broader scope?

The Chinese company behind this seems to solely target the North American market and makes medical devices, IoT devices, and other things.

According to their homepage, their LA based office employs engineers from "United Bell Lab, Oracle, Motorola and other well-known international companies".

What else are they root-kitting? With this particular Android one they are freely able to brick devices at will, if it was ever necessary.

http://www.teleepoch.com/company.html

> The technology could propel China to dominate global pharmaceuticals, and also potentially lead to genetically enhanced soldiers, or engineered pathogens to target the U.S. population or food supply, the advisors said.

Or genetically modified viruses that target specific populations. Forget the food supply.

Something like a Covid-19 with a bit more specificity and a little more lethality.

No wonder the military has their hands in this.

And in this context, this is interesting:

> and since 2015 it has restricted foreign researchers from accessing gene data on Chinese people

And this isn't a "tin foil hat" post or a conspiracy theory. It's food for thought.

The paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-92388-5#Abs1

It found that the coronavirus is most ideally adapted to infect human cells – and not bat or pangolin cells.

There was also an interesting 2019 event possibly involving Ebola but is still being kept under wraps for national security reasons.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-e...

Very interesting. This is certainly a scientifically valid response.

> Here we show that SARS-CoV, but not HCoV-NL63, utilizes the enzymatic activity of the cysteine protease cathepsin L to infect ACE2-expressing cells.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1142358/

You are right to question all of this. The science thus far backs up what you are claiming and the public narrative is shifting.

Sort of. Very different without getting into the weeds.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-020-0184-0

It's absolutely not a troll comment.

I stand by the science and I would love any evidence of something like natural zoonotic spillover.

The big difference here is that now we have the added problem of dealing with ACE2 bindings which affect human lungs/liver/heart/pancreas/etc.

This is a dangerous difference.

> SARS-CoV recognizes angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) as its receptor, whereas MERS-CoV recognizes dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4) as its receptor.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0400-4

There are numerous reasons why we need a proper investigation into this. If this came out of WIV, we need to determine exactly why these bat coronaviruses were being studied with regards to human ACE2.

This ACE2 binding is causing numerous issues, including damage to human heart, lung, kidney, and pancreatic cell death.

This is serious stuff. If anyone is looking at the "low" mortality rate, they are missing the big picture.

Role of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) in COVID-19

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7356137/

The genetic structure of SARS‐CoV‐2 does not rule out a laboratory origin

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7744920/

SARS-CoV-2 infects human pancreatic β-cells and elicits β-cell impairment

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(21)...

Your article specifically states "not one acquired recently via recombination" unless it was an ancient strain.

It is almost as if Sarbecovirus acquired portions of the Hipposideros genome. You'll note your article also says this did not come from pangolins or its closest bat relatives, which shoots down another media narrative.

> Strains of SARS-CoV-2 (we also added sequences from the GISAID database) have furin cleavage sites at spike S1/S2. Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 is the only virus in subgenus Sarbecovirus having this feature, while even its closest relatives, bat coronavirus RaTG13 (sequence identity 97.7%) and pangolin coronaviruses (92.9%–90.7%), do not have furin site.

Note that SARS-CoV-2 contains a unique furin cleavage site, unseen in other coronaviruses.

The first to point this out, in February 2020, was the Wuhan Institute of Virology:

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12250-020-002...

This strange furin cleave site allows the virus to bind to human ACE2 receptors. An interesting scientific reading on this, which does not rule out genetic manipulation in a lab:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bies.2020002...

In September of last year I was experiencing a combination of symptoms that I did not link to COVID, but looking back on it I'm starting to question it.

First, I had debilitating brain fog. It felt link I was thinking through pea soup. I went to my doctor twice due to this symptom, but my blood work (CBC, not a COVID test) looked normal and he suggested this was due to "stress" or "changes in sleep", although I was not experiencing either of those.

Around this same time, I would experiencing "near-syncope" upon standing. It got to the point where I everything was fading to black and I would have to take a knee to maintain consciousness. Again I talked to my doctor he shrugged his shoulders. He said my blood pressure was normal but he referred me to a cardiologist.

I passed a stress EKG so they said there was nothing structurally wrong with my heart.

Fast forward a few months and the symptoms have abated, although they still persist in a diminished form.

This makes me really wonder if this was COVID due to autonomic nerve dysfunction.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/...