31 Comments

Youth is wasted on the young. I'm a youngish (67) pro musician who recently relocated to the GREATER BOSTON area after having lived in VT @ 30 years. My son--now 31, married w/new baby-- in particular nearly drove me 'round the bend as a teen/young adult. But, the cream is now rising, and I'm lapping it up...wisdom matters.

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First and foremost thank you Josh for all you do. It's well worth the money supporting your efforts.

I must say Baby Boomers drive me crazy. They have this sense of entitlement that only gets worst with age.

That being said, new is not always better. Notice how damn difficult it is now to open some packaging now. I nearly have a hernia opening a new bottle of mustard. Or technology that goes into an endless loop. Or technology that just requires more complex technology. Sometimes just staying the same should be good enough. No wonder we're all becoming neurotic.

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The surpassing absurdity of believing that a twenty-something, with only a few years of experience as an adult, knows more about life than a fifty-something, with more than three decades of experience as an adult, is hilarious.

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I am constantly frustrated at how difficult finding anything on a website is today. From no longer being clearly navigable to information that would have been there no longer provided.

For media companies, websites no longer provide useful information but are essentially a UI for their fee based services.

Even windows is harder to navigate with basic functions buried behind multiple clicks and menus.

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I think the ultimate glorification and tragedizing of the "teenager" was solidified with "Rebel Without a Cause".

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The ultimate tragedy of the boomers is that they persist in being rebels without an effect.

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I don't participate in the silly generational tribalism that's become so popular in recent years, but if I did I'd be classified as a "boomer". I'm not a rebel, I'm not responsible for any wars, I didn't invent Social Security, and it's not my fault if twenty-somethings can't afford to buy houses. The generation game--assigning a new letter and a new set of blames to whole groups of people born every few years--is an intellectual dead end.

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A dear and irreplaceable friend died last Monday. Yale was four months shy of 86. In addition to my deep grief for his specific absence, I'm also keenly aware of the general loss of his wisdom and witness to history. Dear Yale was not my first elderly friend, but as I get older myself, and the world increasingly feels like a funhouse mirror, I realize how precious our elders are. What will this world be when the sane generations have passed? When the last millennial falls, so to speak. People say Idiocracy was a documentary. I have to guess it didn't go far enough.

Sidenote: if you have been diagnosed pre-or-full-on diabetic, for yourself and those that love you, please please deal with it. Intermittent fasting, specifically the work of famed cardiologist, Dr Pradip Jamnadas, is accessible to all, and a powerful healer. Yale died due to heart damage caused by a lifetime of sloppy self care. We all gotta go, but we don't have to go like this dear man did. Thanks for the space to say all this.

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Another way to reverse diabetes: a healthy vegan diet. Just putting it out there.

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No doubt. One of the last packages I sent him was a cookbook for diabetics. But it was too late for a lot of reasons.

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I had a conversation with a friend the other day, who needs to take better care of himself, and he brought up some famous person who lives a healthy lifestyle but had a heart attack. I finally found a good counter to this and said "but up until that point his quality of life was still better than yours right? and he didn't die and probably will recover a lot faster than you would?"

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That's a great point. I hope he heard it. For Yale, it was bad decisions on top of bad decisions. Weeks after his heart attack and placement of 3 stents (during which recovery he sounded great and felt better than he had in a while) he decided to fly. I begged him not to, but, Alas. He flew out, lost the ability to walk, then his daughter and her doctor husband put him on another plane in that condition. This is for sure TMI, but I'm so angry and sad about it all. Further TMI. His funeral was streamed. I could see the daughter and the doctor shed no tears, and smile. I could also see an older woman confront the daughter at the very end of the broadcast. It's so so horrible. He was elderly, but he had good days, months, maybe years left. if only.

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That's terribly sad. And vent here where they can't see it! Like many new vegans, I preached loud and no doubt annoyingly years ago. I don't say much now. But it was unbelievable to me when I found out that most cases of diabetes can easily be reversed with a healthy plant-base diet. I told my diabetic friends, so excited with the news. Nah, people don't care enough to put in the effort. It's a big change, and I disagree with vegans who try to say otherwise. The one who I worry about the most is a diabetic friend from church, 74, with a severely autistic son she has had living at home all of his life. He's 50 now. Her husband died 3 years ago. Hopefully one of her other 'kids' will take over his care when she is gone.

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Oh my gosh. I can understand not wanting to change, or give things up. It is a radical departure from the usual. To your point - and perhaps of use to your friend? - there's a lot of data backing fasting in reversing type 2. Maybe she'd find abstaining easier than reinventing? I mean, there's even a basis for it in most religions. Maybe she'd hear that? https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2022/intermittent-fasting-may-reverse-type-2-diabetes

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Oh, this is so weird: at 3 pm I had an email in my inbox about intermittent fasting, haha. I am going to forward it to her, and the info you gave me. I'll simply put in the subject line "interesting..."

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"Fasting for Survival" is a very engaging, even entertaining, lecture free on youtube by famed cardiologist Dr Pradip Jamnadas. I couldn't make Yale watch it, to my sorrow. Perhaps your friend will be more curious. I can only hope.

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Ermagerd yes. The browser pop ups. The irritating intrusiveness of them drives me to…. Wait for it…. Distraction. Ugh. Mission accomplished buttheads.

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This reminds me of the time I walked into the DMV and asked for a paper application. The woman said, "We don't have paper applications." I said, "What do you do when the computers go down?" And she looked at me, and of course had no answer.

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Fellow Anglophile so I loved your headline. I loved your latest Disaffected Podcast. Enjoyed your interview with Andrew Hartz. Gives me hope. I almost died laughing at your gay bombs joke.

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Firstly, happy belated 50th, Josh. Those of us ‘old’ enough to remember the ‘before times’ will fortunately be long gone before the current teenagers realize there aren’t any ‘nice humans’ with old fashioned wisdom to solve technical and other issues. AI will be progressively be based on the input of those who think they’re smart but who aren’t wise.

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Anyone who reads old books knows it wasn’t a typo.

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I thought your headline was about things pertaining to scuba. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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Our culture valorizes youth yet hates children. Make it make sense.

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After 4 decades living in one house in one town in Kansas, I moved to a suburb of Chicago🤪🤢. I know. Who moves to Illinois, much less near Chicago? Well, it was a tough decision, but I wanted to be close to my son and his family.

Today I had the unsavory experience of visiting a DMV to get my Illinois vehicle registration and tag. I wasn't heartened when I entered the very large parking area which was filled nearly to capacity. I dreaded the looming wait, possibly until closing time, only to be turned away without accomplishing what I was there to do. As it turned out the wait was a quick 10 minutes, but from there the experience was grim. The clerk who "helped" me offered no greeting. Her face was set in a stone cold expression of disdain. Rather than asking me for the documentation she needed, she sat there with dead eyes and in silence until I asked her what she needed. Speaking barely loud enough for me to hear her, and without looking at me, she demanded in a sullen tone each piece of documentation that was required. I think her face would have shattered had she even hinted at a smile. She could have been pretty, but her demeanor hid it. Seriously, she might as well have been a faceless self-service kiosk for all the human interaction she failed to extend.

She shoved the paperwork back to me and dismissed me without a glance, telling me to pay the fee at the cashier window. I thanked her for assisting me. No response.

I got nearly the same treatment from the woman who accepted payment. She offered nothing in the way of information. I gave her the paperwork along with the title to my car. She blurted that the fee was $316.00 cash or check or money order. No smile, no eye contact. When I asked if it was okay to pay with an out of state check she looked at me like I was an idiot for asking. I wrote the check and gave it to her and thanked her for her help, just because I wasn't going to be rude in retaliation.

After I got home I realized she didn't give me back the title to my car. Then I remembered that when I called to set up an appointment to get my driver's license the person I talked to said that after I registered my car, I would get my title back in the mail. Not a word of this was mentioned by the person I paid. I guess I was just supposed to know?

Are their jobs really that awful? Or boring? Or ill-paid? Or is it that they perceive themselves to be in a position of "authority" and as such don't feel obliged to offer any normal social discourse to the people who have no choice but to deal with them? The only saving grace was the whole sad affair was over in less than a half hour.

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re: age. I had that same realization recently. I'm reading a book to my preschooler that was published in 1940. Engaging writing, simple plot, developed characters, etc - rare to find a contemporary book as well written for kids, and that includes my rule of thumb to not even bother trying books published after 2016.

One of the character in the book is Grandfather Frog who's lived so long that he became wise and all the other pond animals ask him for advice. I hadn't noticed how antiquated that idea has become.

On the other hand, one of the markers of Grandfather Frog's intelligence is his reticence to speak at all, so that when he does speak his voice carries gravitas. I don't see that cultivation of humility in the current crop of elderly people. Or is that because the few loud idiots ruin the perspective for the rest of them and shores up the anti-boomer hate the internet is constantly stoking?

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I would def say the boomers in government and the ones spear heading activism don't help this anti-boomer hate. But, even I who loves my boomer parents who are not loud idiots, find myself angry at them for their decisions.

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When we are talking about the functionality of algorithms we are also talking about the directives of the programmers.

This uncreative functionality is under to save money to make money in Gov burocracy.

People I know who have serious disabilities and didn't earn enough social security, such as mothers for example, are harassed and threatened to have their benifits withdrawn.

It's deliberate, it's criminal.

A human could call a person's primary doctor and say, hey what's the situation, are they improving?

Oh but wait, a human is loving, creative and expansive, and we serve contractual values of materialism.

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