techiferous

"by almost any measure, anyone gainfully employed in the USA is rich beyond the world's wildest dreams"

I'm not sure your mental model holds. A lot of Europe has higher standards of living than the USA. And a lot of Asian countries have made huge strides in the last few decades. Also consider the difference between Mississippi and Massachusetts. I wouldn't say that anyone gainfully employed in Mississippi is "rich beyond the world's wildest dreams".

Strange that this page has weird distracting "gnats" flying around in the background. A key rule as a communicator is: never compete for attention with yourself! If you want people to read your words, why add distracting gnats?

The other problem is that when I see "leden" my brain immediately switches to German.

That's where I stopped reading.

> Instead of consuming other peoples interpretation of stoicism I decided to go as close to the source as feasible for me.

Good for you! Everybody has their own "twist" on Stoicism, and that's fine. You have to find your own twist on it; you have to make it your own.

In my own experience, what is most rewarding and promotes my progress the most, is when I put philosophy into action. Then I get authentic feedback from life about what actually works. It helps me separate mere opinions and good sounding ideas from true insight.

Don't forget how they found a way to squish closed caption information into analog broadcast. The electron beam traces a path on the CRT display by drawing the odd lines from top to bottom (which draws half the image) and then the even lines (the rest of the owl) from top to bottom. While the electron beam is repositioning itself from the bottom of the screen to the top of the screen, there is a brief period of time where other data can be transmitted. That's where closed caption data was shoehorned in.

> I'm considered old here, in my mid 30's,

The 30s is the first decade of life that people experience where there are adults younger than them. This inevitably leads people in their 30s to start saying that they are "old" even though they generally have decades of vigor ahead of them.

Same! I use ST for my to-do list and personal wiki, with custom highlighting and commands, and VSCode for coding.

Power implies the ability to cause change. When you say "real" power I think you might have some specific kind of change in mind. What kind of organizational influence are you considering "real" power?

> those with actual power

The power that comes with a job title or position is actually quite limited. And it also calls into question as what exactly is meant by power. Personal power (getting your way?) or creative power (putting forth your energy for the benefit of the organization). I find that it's actually not too hard to have a great deal of creative power, regardless of personal power -- by listening and responding well to the needs of others and by effectively solving problems.