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One important (and mostly non-mainstream) concept is the idea of manufactured consent. The idea was originally described in a book authored by Noam Chomsky and some other guy in in the 1980s. For a quick summary, check out this video on YouTube which provides a great summary (use youtube-dl to completely avoid the ads).

I was recently trolling someone on Reddit, and in a brief (and regrettable) fit of passion I made a remark only I could love about “transcending the bullshit”. I have often repeated that I intend to one day publish a book titled “Everything is Bullshit”, in honour of the late David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, but extending to pretty much all facets of society.

Over the last 5 years of my career I’ve shifted my priorities in life. When I was younger, I was willing to deal with a lot of bullshit at work so long as they kept paying me a salary. Nowadays, I care more about my own happiness, and I’m not willing to work with people who are jerks.

I was reading Hacker News comments and someone was complaining about how they weren’t able to find a job in computers anymore due to ageism in tech. Reading this, something occurred to me which I thought was worth writing about, which is the idea of malleability. First of all, I agree that ageism in tech is a thing and it’s a problem for experienced people trying to find a new job.

I saw a discussion on Reddit about entrepreneurship recently that got me thinking. What’s the point of being an entrepreneur when the odds of success are incredibly low? This is especially true if you’re low on resources or clout. For me, the reason I want to be an entrepreneur is simple: I have valuable skills and I want to work on things that I care about.

As a kid growing up, I studied music in school and played a few different instruments. One instrument I always wanted to learn was the guitar, which I never did because I could only play what the school had available for free, because my parents couldn’t afford to buy me my own.

I’ve always tried to be an optimist, but I think my natural state tends toward realism with a hint of pessimism. Sometimes, optimism is at odds with the current state of reality. Wall of Vets, from Reddit If you spend much time reading the news lately, you might think think there’s an ongoing civil war.

One of the basic concepts of capitalism is the idea that competition is good for consumers. I think in most cases this is true. One famous example is the history of General Motors, a company that became so powerful and dominant that the US government considered breaking GM into separate companies.

One of the hard truths in startups, especially VC funded startups, is that perception matters more than reality. Many people are able to raise vast amounts of money at high valuations on little more than excitement about the prospect of a viable business some time in the future. Most VCs earn their living from fees, and they earn more in fees when valuations go up, followed by subsequent funding rounds, with larger amounts of capital invested.

I really wanted to be a founder of a successful startup (where successful to me means the company can pay its own bills, and pay employees well). However the reality hasn’t matched my ambition and I’ve decided to find a job like a regular chump. I assumed that with work ethic, skills, persistence, and plenty of trial and error I could eventually find success.