Ogmios

Those three pillars are my best assessment of how I managed to find myself as the singular best in the world at what I was doing (nothing career worthy, though it did point me in that direction). I was lucky that my parents got me started on it at a very young age, my other hobbies were strongly synergistic meaning I was spending much of my time developing related skills, when I first got into it I just randomly happened to meet up with the group that I reached the top with, so being surrounded by such excellent company had a massive impact. I met so many people who had very strong talent and dedicated themselves, but just never got the breaks I did. But like you said, it was largely because I already had the talent from early childhood learning and had remained dedicated my whole life that I was capable of fitting in when I did meet the right people.

I strongly recommend everyone read Chris Hadfield’s “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth,” as he argues very strongly, with some great anecdotes from his life, for the importance of preparing to receive good luck.

you can try your best and still fail

One of my favourite Star Trek quotes

I’ve always said personally that to be the very best at something you need 1. Talent, 2. Dedication and 3. Luck. You can still be very close to the best with only two of those things, but if luck is all you have you’re just going to be something like a lottery winner who blows it all in a month. Alternately, if you cultivate a habit of working hard towards your goals, then even in bad situations you’ll be prepared to make the best of it that you possibly can, to get back to a good place faster.

Ask yourself what you think your country would look like if the Internet was hyper fixated on every single bad example anyone could find within your borders.

The decisions being made regarding how to deploy and operate the Internet appear, to me, to betray a fundamental lack of understanding regarding just how incredibly complex the information environment within a healthy society actually is, and how much people depend upon it to maintain the basic functions of human life.

It feels to me as though early man discovered fire and immediately decided to burn down every single forest they encountered so dangerous beasts wouldn’t have anywhere to hide.

Reformatting.

This may take a moment.

The game of Life.

There’s been a concerted effort over the last several decades to push a men vs women dynamic online, and most men don’t buy into it, so it’s really just been people shitting all over men without consequence. Just look at the other answers here focusing exclusively on how men can be blamed (edit: many better replies have been posted since I made this comment).

Quite likely pushed excessively by foreign propaganda.

I’ve never seen anyone hate men just because they’re male

I’ve almost never actually seen it, but it’s BAD when it does appear. Had one boss tell me straight to my face that I was going to be useless because I was a man. She did all sorts of really petty stuff, like removing the clock from the break room and chewing me out for being ~30 seconds late coming back from break. Lost that job in less than a week when she literally lied to the manager that I never showed up for a shift. I could have easily fought and won for the job back, but I just didn’t care at all and spent my effort on more fruitful things.