I don’t think it’s comforting at all.

If you remove the top 1%, the remaining wealth is concentrated in the top 10%. This group of people is highly invested in the status quo; their wealth and power is usually used to prop up the current system.

These people are reffered to by many names: petit bourgeoisie, professional managerial class, small business tyrants, etc.

Your heart is in the right place, but I think “no regrets” is an insane take.

As a fellow unemployed CS grad, I once thought software engineering was my best shot at a middle class life.

Now after 5 years of unemployment, the financial reality is setting in. I will never be able to afford a home. I will never be able to afford a family. I will never be able to afford retirement. I will never be able to afford a vacation. I will never be able to afford most things that make life worth living.

I thought I was going to be an engineer. I thought I was going to be a professional. Now I’m fasting at the end of every month bc food stamps always run out, and the electric company is threatening to shut off my power.

Choosing CS is deeply regrettable.

Lol well I guess it’s easy to get confused. I was submitting job applications to write computer applications.

I was submitting app apps.

Over the years I have tried a handful of subfields.

I always felt particularly adept at assembly language programming, so I had a couple projects doing that, and applied to every relevent job I could find.

As a math nerd I enjoyed data science and machine learning, I had quite a few projects like a neutral network from scratch in Matlab, and many data analysis and computer vision projects in R. I was always aware this field is very competitive and my chances were low here.

I had a friend get a job in the biomedical field, so I tried to follow that, I have Python projects doing basic gene sequencing and analysis, even a really cool project that replicated evolution.

Another friend landed a government job, so I followed his advice and got some security certs.

I also had smaller projects and attempts at databases, finance programming, and video games.

There was even a class action suit against UW for their negligence during covid. I guess the case is already settled, so I’m looking forward to my meager restitution check.

And I actually feel lucky that most of my serious classes were complete before Covid lockdown, bc the quality of education during covid was absolutely pathetic.

I’m not sure I was misled, what you said was explicitly taught to us at University. I think my degree is the #1 thing on my resume, but of course I also had projects, a few certificates, and multiple attempts at more specific fields.

Back when I was applying, my GitHub activity was pretty solid green.

You’re right that my time was wasted, and knowing the outcome, I wish I could go back and do more project work before trying to enter the job market.

But I don’t think that is a financial possibility for most Americans. Going to school drained my savings, when I graduated I had almost nothing except for school debt, medical debt, and high rent. Saying “I’m gonna take off and work for free for a year” never really seemed like a possibility.

And as for my apps, the 3000 were not shotgun, they were all personalized, custom cover letters, keywords, etc. It only averaged out to 3/day. I did not track the apps where I used AI to submit them- the AI ones were definitely shotgun.

I fled from the Midwest because there were no good jobs outside of the oil and gas industry, and ended up in the Seattle area. Saving up and moving cost 2 years of my life, Im not sure I could do it again.

…and I did apply to some jobs on the west coast, although most of my apps were around Seattle.

But please tell me, where should I have went instead of Seattle?

No I have a spreadsheet with 3200 lines of submitted applications, which includes both entry level positions and internships. Many with customized cover letters.

When you do the math its not even a strong pace, only about 3/day over 3 years. On a good day I was submitting 12-15.

I even applied to some famous ones, like the time Microsoft opened up 30 entry level positions and received 100,000 applications in 24 hours. It is rumored thet they realized they cannot process 100k apps, so they threw them all away and hired internally.

Whether they actually threw them out or not, that one always sticks with me. Submitting 100k apps is literally a lifetime of human work. All of that wasted effort is a form of social murder in my opinion.

I graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the University of Washington in 2020, during the height of Covid.

After over 3000 handcrafted applications (and many more AI-written ones), I have never been offered a job in the field.

I know of multiple CS graduates who have killed themselves, and so many who are living with their parents and working service/retail.

I think the software engineering rush of the early 2000s will be looked back upon like the San Francisco gold rush in 1949.

Tens of millions of people did.

There was a time when Rush Limbaugh was one of the most politically influential voices in the country.

Not to mention the huge number of evangelical propaganda AM stations.

I think it’s safe to say that telecom deregulation and the subsequent AM radio boom is one of the core reasons why American adults above 50 are rightwing/fascist.

At what point on this graph is ecoterrorism justified?

I don’t feel strongly about Coldplay, but I think their style is “whatever Radiohead was doing two years ago, but watered down for the masses”.

Nothing wrong with that, but it does evoke a hipster vs. normie conflict.

Yes I agree.

If you use context instead of cherry picking a half-sentence then maybe you would understand that is part of the broader point I am trying to get across to a western, chauvinism-brained audience.

I like how she tags Neil DeGrasse Tyson as if the funny haha tv scientist podcast man is out there writing budget proposals for CERN or Fermilab

Since you are still completely missing the basics, let’s do a little history lesson then.

The bombing of Afghanistan started in retaliation to 9/11. After initial bombing of Al-Quaeda training camps and Taliban headquarters, we asked the Afghan government to hand over Bin Laden. They said “yes we will hand him over if you agree to stop bombing”. George W’s famous response was " we don’t negotiate with terrorists". The bombing continued, and Bin Laden fled to Pakistan to survive for years.

The propagandistic idea that we were there to nation build and create a liberal democracy only entered the picture a year into the brutal bombing campaign because the US populace was turning against the war.

Then, we propped up a classic puppet government that was always destined to fail when we left. Elements of a puppet government include:

• installing a leader from a minority faction
• allowing them to violently repress members of the majority faction
• brutal violence inflicted upon dissenters
• development of natural resources for the desires of the imposing nation, a lack of sustainable development for the local people
• creating a system with very little input from local leaders, and never giving them a reason to participate or have skin in the game

The Afghan army had many huge problems. There is a plethora of news stories from 2008-2021 showing how the army is poorly trained, unmotivated, and largely drug addicted. Military leaders have been saying the entire time that this army would not stand on its own.

The Afghan army did have one strong motivation though: money. It was a mercenary army. But when the US withdrew in 2021 we stole the majority of the funds from the Afghan Central Bank (over $7bln dollars was taken by the Biden administration). Not only did this immoral act of theft cripple the Afghan economy, it destroyed their ability to pay the mercenary army.

No one who was actually paying attention expected the unpaid mercenary army to defend the puppet government once we left. Maybe, if the money kept flowing, they could have held up for a few months, but the stolen Central Bank funds ensured that was impossible.

I’m not saying “we don’t care”. Many individual people did earnestly care, and tried their best. But the military and civilian systems created by the US were never built for the benefit of the Afghan people. Your positive spin on this war is naive and ahistorical.

So your thesis is that the 1950s war was inconsequential, and then you lay the entire blame on the Kim regime and their policies?

My dude, how do you think the Kim regime became a dictatorship?

Before the 1950s war, Kim was a weak puppet leader propped up by the Soviet Union. By the end of the war, the Kim regime had dictatorial power, which persists to this day.

I did not close my eyes when America turned it’s back on the thousands of Afghans who helped the American regime during the war. The people who helped America were left resourceless and with giant targets on their back. We betrayed them.

I did not close my eyes when the flimsy and deeply flawed education system America propped up instantly failed the moment we left.

The abandonment of Afghan allies and the destruction of girl’s education in Afghanistan are just two more data points showing the deep failures of the American model of foreign intervention.

We did not spend truckloads of money trying to get a functioning system in place. A lasting functioning system was never the goal. I urge you to read into our military’s functions and objectives in Afghanistan, because you are deeply misinformed. Anyone who suggests our goals were “democracy and human rights” is obviously infected with US propaganda.

You have obviously misunderstood me.

I was comparing the United States actions in the Korean War(1950s) to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The mass civilian bombing campaigns, complete destruction of civilian infrastructure, manmade famine, widespread preventable disease, and imposed economic isolation are very similar between the two cases.

I am not comparing current-day North Korea to current-day Gaza, and I agree with you that would not be a good analogy.

Kinda shocking to me how anyone can present such a whitewashed take on the Afghanistan War in 2025. It didn’t go to shit when we left, it was shit from the beginning.

We shortsightedly allied with brutal local warlords, and the failure at local politics blew up in our faces. We bombed 100s of villages, losing the hearts and minds of the people. We sent innocent people to be tortured in Pakistani black sites, creating a fanatical resistance willing to martyr themselves. We forcefully changed the main agricultural output from wheat to opium poppy, leading to widespread drug abuse and addiction. I could go on and on…

I’m not sure if there is a military intervention model that works, but American-style military intervention with mass civilian deaths and warcrimes from beginning to end is a proven failure.