Sounds like a classic “To Serve Man” type of situation to me… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone)

You can sign up for Proton mail without providing email or phone number, as far as I recall.

Disclaimer: I’m not a social worker or other mental health professional or anything in any way related to those.

I’m a bit over twice your age though, so I’m speaking based on my experience in life.

There’s a lot of things I wanted to do. I wanted to be a nurse, I wanted to go to university/college, I wanted be a programmer ect ect but I just couldn’t.

All those occupations you listed require very specific types of intelligence. I fully agree with the poster above who said that there are many different types of intelligence. To expand on that a little, someone may be the best car mechanic or cook in town but be a terrible programmer or nurse. And vice-versa, a great programmer may be a terrible nurse, mechanic, cook, etc. The idea that IQ is anywhere near a full measure of someone’s abilities is truly, completely wrong.

Don’t let the fact that you “couldn’t” do those things stop you from trying a myriad of other occupations where you may be successful and find fulfillment. If you believe that you can only be successful or fulfilled by being good at one of the latest occupations trending in media, please don’t. Someone can be successful and fulfilled doing pretty much just about anything. Some examples: building trades, mechanic, driver, janitor, cashier, cook, bartender, hairdresser, anything. FYI, I’ve heard that in France, people in any occupation demand and get the respect they deserve for being experts in whatever occupation they chose for themselves. Just as an example, my hairdresser told me an amusing story of arriving in Paris and stopping at a fruit stall where she promptly started to squeeze the fruit like we do in the US. The fruit stall minder literally smacked the fruit out of her hand and selected the fruit for her. He was the expert in fruit and she had no business picking the fruit herself.

It sounds like your main issues probably stem from your father’s neglect and abuse and perhaps your ADHD and other learning disabilities, not from your IQ. You would do well to address your drug addiction first with whatever treatment options are available to you (this would also impact your IQ test scores, but do yourself a favor and forget about IQ). After that, or maybe at the same time, if you didn’t graduate high school, work towards getting your GED. After that, enroll in community college and take whatever variation of “succeeding in college” (study skills) and “career exploration” classes they offer as your very first classes. After that, many options should present themselves to you in community college. Focus on the careers that you can do with either only a high school / GED diploma, or that plus trade school or community college. Many community colleges also provide mental health counseling and assistance finding jobs. Take advantage of any opportunity you encounter.

I, like apparently many others here, believe in you! The answer to your question is yes, there is hope for you!

Too late: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/28/24276043/apple-new-usb-c-magic-mouse-charging-port-bottom

SUVs

I’m sticking to Mastodon because I don’t want to give into yet another corporate platform to eventually end up with the same results as Twitter and Reddit. Most people are on Twitter/Reddit/Bluesky? Who cares? Enough people are on Mastodon and Lemmy.

Ah, yes, I forgot about game jams! They sound like they would really help you spend some concentrated time on game dev and design and progress quickly. Thanks.

You’re welcome. Maybe you don’t have to make all 20, but I think the idea is just to get your feet wet with game development with simple stuff first (baby steps), rather than diving into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. Maybe you’ll feel you have the hang of it after making a handful of them.

Apparently, the navy is still using Windows XP on (some?) ships: https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2024/2/5/navy-looks-to-industry-to-digitize-ships

Then there’s this old classic when a navy “smart” ship was adrift for 2 hours after a Windows NT crash: https://www.wired.com/1998/07/sunk-by-windows-nt/

It’s essentially the “how do you eat an elephant?” question, isn’t it? Hint, if you’re not familiar with the reference, the answer is “one bite at a time.”

I’m not a game developer (yet), but would like to try it, so I’ve done a little reading about the topic. There are a couple things I’ve seen advocated that have made a lot of sense to me:

1. Don’t start with your dream game. Start with either tiny games to test specific aspects of your bigger game, or first practice developing clones of many relatively simple classic games, like pac-man, etc. This is a good resource I’ve found to help guide the latter approach: https://20_games_challenge.gitlab.io/challenge/

2. Don’t spend a lot of time on either programming or creating art before you playtest the heck out of your game, preferably with many people. This is what I’ve seen advocated in a popular game design textbook: https://www.gamedesignworkshop.com/ - this makes sense since the same kind of advice applies to any kind of software development and design - verify that your potential audience is actually interested in what you are trying to make before spending a ton of effort making it. I’ve seen very similar advice given in the context of solo app development and even business startups.

Good luck and have fun!

Hmmm, not sure why you’re getting the downvotes, but your idea is not far-fetched. There have been multiple studies showing things like viruses living longer and traveling farther in cold dry air than in warm humid air, and also about the cold having immediate negative effects on certain aspects of immunity. The studies I’ve seen have usually been about the flu virus instead of cold virus, but some of it would transfer over, like the ones about immunity.

What’s weird is that for years (decades?) doctors / public health / scientists etc swore up and down that it was a myth that cold temperatures had anything to do with cold infections. It doesn’t surprise me now, after seeing the uphill battle it was to get the scientific community to finally, grudgingly accept that COVID is transmitted by floating around the air, sometimes over long distances. Many so-called “scientists” still don’t seem to accept this, despite having aerosol engineers break it down for them.

You do have good points, but even with it going endemic, measures could still be taken to reduce infection, with masks, ventilation, UV lights. I guess what bothers me is that the attitude all of a sudden became “whatever you wanna do”. Not even even a recommendation or requirements for healthcare settings. The healthcare settings in particular bother me.

Once it was determined that it was airborne and had become endemic, the mask requirements in those places should have become indefinite. That would also help reduce the spread of various other airborne diseases. As it is now, I keep hearing of doctors and nurses actually harassing patients to take their masks off. Completely batshit insane.

There is no longer any leadership or appropriate guidance from CDC or any other government entity. Sure, China and New Zealand gave up on it too, but as old folks are sometimes fond of saying, you wouldn’t jump from a bridge if everyone else did it.

The “California Earthquake Authority” provides the earthquake insurance for California: https://www.earthquakeauthority.com/about-cea/frequently-asked-questions

I had not realized before reading that now that it’s actually not state-funded. It sounds like it’s a pool of all insurers together.

I think that’s still too charitable of an interpretation. The CDC under Biden has been a disaster. They completely dropped any recommendations for masking, requirements for masking in high-risk environments (such as healthcare facilities), or even trying to model good behavior. The CDC director doesn’t even wear a mask in crowded environments or photos, and dismisses criticism for this, for crying out loud.

Agreed about Trump’s mishandling, but I’m not talking eradication. That was bound to be difficult. I’m talking about mitigation, harm reduction. This was essentially completely abandoned by the Biden administration.

A lot of that is fair, except that it wasn’t just Biden’s early days. The mishandling of the COVID pandemic continues to this day. It’s been a clusterfuck from the beginning under Trump to the present under Biden. The US doesn’t seem to be that unique in that regard though. It seems like it’s been a clusterfuck around most of the world.

I see, that makes sense. Thanks!

Top comment here. I was thinking along very similar lines in my commute to work this morning. The polarization that never ends or decreases seems to me to be purely a tool for rich elites to divide and conquer the general population.

The only minor asterisk I would add to your post is that I have personally been trying to avoid the term “cabal” because it can be accused of being an antisemitic dogwhistle. I don’t think you meant it this way, but wanted to alert you to that possible interpretation. In fact, I heard something a little while back that some people even claim that decrying “elites” in general is antisemitic. I don’t agree with this, but I think it’s a good idea to keep this in mind to try to prevent that line of attack.

How is there any hope against misinformation when the top comment on a thread decrying misinformation contains major misinformation itself? Specifically, way more Americans have died of COVID under the Biden administration than under the Trump administration.

Just one source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/09/18/covid-19-deaths-under-trump-1-million-fact-check/75197222007/

Granted, the Biden administration has had a lot more time under the COVID pandemic than Trump had, but the Biden administration has handled COVID in a very far from ideal way (see all the CDC missteps under Biden, for one example).

Please note: I am not a Trump supporter! I am only interested in truth, reason, and reality. Downvoting my post is a sign that you’re not interested in any of those.

Ah, ok, thanks. Now that you mention it, that rings a bell. I understand better what you meant with your earlier post. Thanks.