As someone living in the USA going into my late 30s still without kids, you nailed it. We’ve been married for 10 years. In a different world, we might have had a kid at some point in the last 5, but between covid and climate change and the second Trump term and the general sense that everything is about to implode, it doesn’t really make us feel inspired to try.

To be clear, at the moment we have everything we would need to be parents if we wanted to. But the prospect of subjecting a kid to young adulthood in the 2040s seems brutal. We’re what I would consider “nudge-able” into having a kid or two, but the world keeps giving us nothing but nudges in the direction of choosing to be childfree for life.

Random example from this year: we keep getting barraged with news slop about how our jobs are about to all be replaced by LLMs or the economy is about to collapse under the weight of the LLM bubble. Not particularly reassuring. I realize there’s no perfect time to have kids and tons of people make it work, but as a couple who have always been in the “maybe” camp, inaction feels like the only thing a logical person would choose, year after year after year.

We don’t have many years left where it’s actually viable, and frankly I can’t imagine it’s going to change.

Yeah I believe that. The way we are subtly encouraged to live as Americans is deeply unhealthy. I just assume that a little more exercise and steps probably has a more immediate effect than the food, but I’m sure it’s complicated

A lot of Americans cite foreign food as being “better” and note how much better they feel while traveling. The average American also probably walks 10-20x more while on a European vacation than they do at home. I don’t think it’s the food

I don’t think those are the categories where most people are finding LLMs frustrating. We keep being told human white collar work is on the precipice of being replaced, but LLMs continue to be really inconsistent. Failing to parrot easily retrievable info like how to build a legally restricted thing or off yourself isn’t what people are finding lacking it’s that half the time it does something sorta correctly and the other half of the time it lies, fucks up, or fucks up and then lies about it.

This isn’t really an answer to your question, but you should honestly try Netrunner. It’s a cool game that previously was originally created by Richard Garfield, briefly lived at WotC and then was rebooted and run by Fantasy Flight Games as Android: Netrunner, but now is 100% community managed.

https://nullsignal.games/ is the community managing the game, they release new expansions about once a year and run tournaments. You can print and play the game 100% for free and there is no artificial scarcity. The community is small but active. A new expansion just came out in early March, Vantage Point. They also maintain a set of “starter decks” for newbies.

You can also play online for free at https://jinteki.net/ - people there are very welcoming and many are very happy to teach new players.

It uses TMR sticks which are similar and in some ways better. The hall sensors technology but a little different

If anyone is, yes it would be executives. I think again it depends on the industry. You won’t catch a tech ceo dead in suit unless they’re testifying in front of congress, for example. But in more traditional industries yes

Most office jobs, no. Certain industries are hold outs, but it’s very rare to see office workers in suits nowadays

535 bodies in congress, somehow zero spines