I retired four years ago just before hitting 50 years of age. There is no real purpose and never was. I got my degree, worked in a field I loved. I was good at it, learned and was successful. But there never was any real purpose except personal growth and being challenged in my field of expertise. I've seen CEOs come and go, engineers much smarter than me leave and poor replacements being hired. Nothing ever really changed. In the work setting nobody is truly important.
I don't know what Loom is and I don't really care. It was not spectacular. It doesn't matter. You succeeded. Now you can start on a new part of life. One where you do not have to prove your ability, you already did. So enjoy, you've earned it.
I am sitting in the cold, snowy Scandinavia. In a few days time I will be travelling to Spain. I cannot wait. When I leave the airport and walk into the sun and the heat, I will be grinning like a madman. After a week of hiking / running, exploring and drinking cold beers in sun I will return home and once I leave the airport I will sigh with relief, home sweet home. After a few days of chores at home I will start looking forward to the trip that is already booked for the next week.
Some people find this utterly depressing and nihilistic, but personally, I find it freeing.
The universe does not expect anything from you. That means you should do the most to simply enjoy life. Have fun and experience wonder. If you have the money to do whatever the hell you want, then do whatever the hell you want.
I already know what I'd do. I'd spend an entire summer on a massive road trip around the USA, visiting every major theme park. When winter hits, I'd go somewhere tropical and sip Mai Tais on the beach. Or travel to the north and drink a beer under the Northern Lights every night.
When free time becomes unlimited, I'd no longer feel like I need to min/max the usage of it.
Shit, just being able to go without an alarm clock for nearly every day of the year would bring immense happiness.
Sounds like you have had purpose for your entire adult life? What am I missing when you say "there is no real purpose"? Does the word "purpose" have some great significance that you feel a life lived well does not deliver?
What is a life lived well? It is very personal isn't it. There is no intended result or end goal. No greater meaning. I like my life but others may find it meaningless.
The poster asks "Why do I feel the need to only be on a journey if it’s grand?". Makes no sense to me. It is only grand in his head.
In the same situation, same age, I just didn't retire (but I can), because I still like my job.
I am mostly at home, working and doing hobbies, and most people would say that my life is lame and that I should travel more or something (and they do). But 2 me, it's the best life now ever and every day I say "everything is awesome", especially when I feel down a bit (hormones & friends, nothing else, waiting to pass).
You don't need anything except enough money so you don't have to micromanage your life expenditures (the only other thing money can't buy is love, and I was lucky there too (was it luck, really?))
I do have delusions of grand projects. But I don't mind that, even knowing the probability. Consistency needs to be practised anyway...
At 49 I retired and spent the following years travelling. I did not really see it as a midlife crisis though as it was based on hitting a specific net worth. Now 3 years later I just completed my first marathon. I guess that is text book midlife crisis.
All it would take is for the US to stop giving them weapons. That's literally it.
Their military, the IDF, is in extremely poor state. This isn't the same military that made history in the six day war. Under the same sort of conditions today the IDF would have their asses handed to them.
When I say "extremely poor state" I am referring to their discipline, precision, and ability to move under fire. The current IDF operates more like the Russian army who are absolutely having their asses handed to them by a vastly inferior force. These are just my personal opinions from my own 27 years of military experience.
History is already written, this is the age of everyone recording and sharing things. There's no meaningful rewriting it.
They don't get to directly and intentionally kill and/or cause death, injury and illness to high hundreds of thousands of people very publicly and proudly, while writing "death to Arabs", "good Arab = dead Arab", "Nakba 2023", and other vile shit on the walls of their destroyed cities.
Easy to see this is not Israel+USA trying to eliminate Hamas, but some holy war to eliminate Palestinians as a whole, in the most underhanded way possible, as to not get blowback from the non-USA countries.
They'll destroy themselves, continuing doing this, provoking neighbors and inciting Palestinians for a massive revenge wave in the future. It doesn't matter when this happens, but Israel is done after this. They're not a superpower and USA backing under Trump, once he wins, will only serve to make their crimes more obvious, and self-destructive behavior more bold.
While writing "death to Arabs", "good Arab = dead Arab", "Nakba 2023", and other vile shit on the walls of their destroyed cities.
Can you provide incident details, please? I'm not doubting that stuff like this has happened, but specific (at least theoretically reliable) attestations are always helpful.
Just Iran alone is capable of defeating Israel if it wishes. Israel is only 8M people. There are hundreds of millions of Muslims living in Middle East. They aren’t united right now, but Israel, ironically, could unite them.
Not only does Iran not wish to destroy Israel, it is also unwilling to allow Hezbollah to successfully do so either. If it wanted to destroy Israel, Israel wouldn’t have any AD after the last strike.
You are delusional. Iran lost most of its deterrence, its proxies have been decimated and its ICBM capabilities, although not nothing haven't really managed to cause any significant damage and have shown that they lack sufficient accuracy.
Will the balance of power change a few decades from now? Maybe, who knows, but for now Iran is in a tough spot.
Uh-uh. The country which has just tested a nuke a couple of weeks ago and easily defeated the Iron Dome with its cheaper rocket stock is “totally decimated”. Sure buddy.
Enjoy your speculative theories. Lots of minor earthquakes don't have aftershocks, not to mention that Iran is one of the most seismically active countries in the world.
But please feel free to provide a trustworthy news source backing your claim.
What is a “trustworthy news source” these days. I saw the seismograph charts on Twitter. If you expect any “trustworthy” news in an environment where US MIC could get another trillion dollars in (borrowed) taxpayer money, I have a bridge I’d like to sell.
A news source that has confirmed with at least one seismology expert who has conducted a thorough (preferably peer reviewed) analysis showing that the charts are abnormal for an earthquake and are more inline with those of an explosion.
It seems to me like it's should be extremely easy to distinguish the two, there's more than enough earthquake data - and that fact that there is no such report says it all. For starters i'd even take an amateur analysis, but just some dude on twitter saying "there was seismic activity - must be a nuclear test" - nah.
You left out the part: "it was shot down by the Israeli fighter pilots after they did not receive a response to their demands for the aircraft to land"
You left out the part where the pilot of LN 114 apparently didn't realize that the approaching planes were Israeli (he thought they were Egyptian), and that he realized his navigational mistake and had already executed a U-turn before the Phantoms arrived (setting the plane on course for Cairo).
Also, it's not the IAF pilots "didn't receive a response" to their signals. One of their pilots signaled twice (first with hand gestures, then again by dipping the wings of one of the jets). They did receive a response to first signal at least, but may have been confused by it, or have interpreted as an attempt to flee. It's also entirely possible the pilot of LN 114 was understandably confused and in a very tense mindstate and wasn't sure how to respond.
From WP:
It continued flying eastwards into the Sinai at a speed of 325 miles per hour (282 kn; 523 km/h), until the crew realised they had had problems with their instruments and were off their path; at this moment, the French pilot performed a U-turn, in order to leave the Sinai and go back towards Cairo.[6] The Israeli pilots interpreted it as an attempt to flee and, according to them, then tried to make visual contact with the airliner's crew and to communicate with them by signaling with their hands. Still according to the Israelis, the 727's French pilot responded with a hand gesture indicating refusal, signaling his intention to continue back on his way out of Sinai. The fighters claim to have replied by dipping their wings, what was once again ignored by the civilian airliner crew. Then, the Israeli fighters attacked the civilian plane.
I don't think that is what Bjørn Lomborg said at all. IIRC he said money would be better spent on mitigating effects of climate change. Since you say things aren't looking great you actually seem to agree with him.
Not mitigation but adapting to an inevitable rise in mean surface temperature, because mitigation would require too much investment with too little ROI.
"Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says the group’s leadership was mostly spared during Tuesday’s attack targeting pagers that killed several members in Lebanon as they were using older devices while “new ones were sent elsewhere.”
Some companies do. At my previous company (I have since retired), I would get yearly outsized stock grants to motivate me to stay. I sincerely doubt I could have found matching compensation at another company.
I never had any expectation of loyalty from the company and it didn't from me either, otherwise the stock grants would be unnecessary. I had some loyalty to my manager and had promised him to give a heads up before leaving the company. He knew I would retire once I hit my target.
The escalation narrative is propaganda. It is intended to sway public opinion and end support for Ukraine. But people seems to forget that Russia invaded Ukraine and Ukraine can and should do whatever they can to defend themselves. There is no escalation. We can see that with the Kursk invasion and the other of Putin's numerous red lines that has already been crossed.
Forcing Russia to allocate a large amount of its limited air defences to defend Moscow seems like a good result in itself. It appears to allow Ukraine to attack airfields, fuel storages and other infrastructure inside Russia with good results.
Russia is physically large, but pretty poor (its economy is only about the same size as that of Italy) and its defence industries are increasingly cut off from essential supplies. Russia has limited everything right now.
As we’ve seen over the last couple of years, well-trained competent military personnel are also in short supply.
>its economy is only about the same size as that of Italy
You've been fooled by your geriatric politicians.
"In the realm of foreign policy discourse, few memes have been more prevalent or misleading than the oft-cited comparison of Russia’s economy to that of Italy’s.
...
Yet error in this comparison lies in the reliance on measuring nominal GDP itself, as it fails to account for exchange rates and purchasing power parity (PPP), which accounts for the standard of living and productivity (and from there, per capita welfare and, importantly, resource use). Renowned French economist Jacques Sapir has pointed out the inadequacy of this metric, arguing that Russia’s GDP, when measured in PPP ($3.74 trillion in 2013, $4.81 trillion in 2021), is closer to Germany’s ($3.63 trillion in 2013, $4.85 trillion in 2021) than Italy’s ($2.19 trillion in 2013, $2.74 trillion in 2021). This is a crucial distinction, and it is both puzzling and troubling that so many continue to parrot the Russia-Italy comparison.
But even the PPP figures do not fully capture the significance of Russia’s economic power. Sapir further expanded his analysis in an essay for American Affairs, a policy journal, and noted that the PPP measurement “may not yet reflect the real importance of the Russian [economy] when strategic, geopolitical issues are at stake.”
Sapir notes that, over the past fifty years, Western economies have become increasingly dominated by service sectors, which, while contributing to GDP calculations, lose their importance during times of conflict. In such situations, it is the production of physical goods that matters, and by this measure, Russia’s economy is not only stronger than Germany’s but also more than twice as robust as France’s. Furthermore, Russia’s dominant position in the global energy and commodities trade—as it is a key producer of oil, gas, platinum, cobalt, gold, nickel, phosphates, iron, wheat, barley, buckwheat, oats, and more—provides it with substantial leverage over markets and economies, making it less susceptible to sanctions and less easily cowed by Western pressure. "[0]
Why? No clue - probably gross incompetence and corruption. The fact is that they have been at war for two years against what was one of the smallest militaries in Europe and still have not managed to obtain air superiority, indicating that they have some kind of shortage in the AA department.
I don't know what Loom is and I don't really care. It was not spectacular. It doesn't matter. You succeeded. Now you can start on a new part of life. One where you do not have to prove your ability, you already did. So enjoy, you've earned it.
I am sitting in the cold, snowy Scandinavia. In a few days time I will be travelling to Spain. I cannot wait. When I leave the airport and walk into the sun and the heat, I will be grinning like a madman. After a week of hiking / running, exploring and drinking cold beers in sun I will return home and once I leave the airport I will sigh with relief, home sweet home. After a few days of chores at home I will start looking forward to the trip that is already booked for the next week.
Life is great.