I think others have mentioned this, but I’m disturbed that the article seems more concerned about guns than about the way our society and culture fails older men.

Sure it gets a mention but omg guns.

Yes, you're absolutely right. There's a lot of hopelessness and apathy, and it's only helping those who commit the atrocities.

But before you judge, I'll state that I've been a member of an activist group, progressivecoders dot org, for the last 5 years. I've worked on various projects, but overall watched the world situation get worse anyway. Even before that, I've done my best to be an activist and ally.

I've also been in the software industry for 30 years. I've watched it go from a genuinely useful and interesting information processing and delivery system, to a completely shittified ad delivery and surveillance tool. I've had to participate in it myself, I was actually part of the team that delivered the first animated GIF that made advertising that much more annoying. I worked for several of the big internet monopolies, and realized that it wasn't an accomplishment, they just crack the whip that much harder, and I have CPTSD in exchange for free lunches and massages.

So yeah, I'm starting to give up. But it's not for lack of trying.

By eliminating critical thinking, and polarizing everyone, those in power can do whatever they want, and the rest of us won't be sufficiently organized to stop it.

I'm seeing positive signs though, labor unions getting successful settlements, and more awareness. So maybe?

There's a science fiction story, I think by Cory Doctorow, in which one of the technologies was gender reassignment restrooms. Go in, spend (unspecified, but not too terribly long, since characters talked about going in preparation for activities that night) time, and emerge with the new gender as though born to it. And my first thought was, yes, I would pay any amount of money to have that available to me. Like genderdysphoria.fyi says, if you think about it at all, you're already thinking about it 100% more than most cis people ever do.

I built my own, based on https://github.com/rmd6502/esp_lights

This precisely. Maybe "us vs them" was useful when we lived in caves and resources were limited, but now, we should theoretically have enough food and housing that everyone could be comfortable.

But, Eisenhower's "military industrial complex" has bogarted all the resources, and emphasized tribalism by saying it's really "their" fault, where "they" are anyone not like "us". When we're all struggling together.

I took an old phone and fully reset it to use for all these shitware apps. I've looked into buying an anonymous SIM card so it won't be at all connected to me, but the underlying assumption seems to be if you want that you must be a drug dealer. Best I've found is mysudo, which requires payment, but it's really not much, and only stores the minimum on their side. Gives you an anonymous email and phone number. The other problem with all these apps is the engineers are given at best half the time they need to do a good job, so they're always buggy, insecure, and have a shitty UI. But some project manager managed to show Impact and get a bonus.