I don’t believe it is worth it. You’re much better off keeping your data off the Internet in the first place.

The problem is, if you employ a service like that:

• It is a cost that returns every month.

• What happens with your data? You have to give your data to the company so they know what to remove. Can you imagine what happens if they are hacked? Would they even tell their customers? Or just keep quite? They have everything you don’t want the Internet to know in one location, not only for you, but a lot of users. It’s a target, for sure.

For me, it’s not worth it. I keep minimal info out in public. I don’t have social media. If I Google myself, I find nothing. So why would I pay for a service that I don’t need?

Can you even see what data a service like that removes? And how often?

Now, if you know your data is on the Internet and it’s being used you may consider it. But it’s probably to late already. The people using your data already have it, and may sell it to their scamming buddies too. There’s not much a company can do about that.

I don’t follow pro sport at all. Only the formula 1, and only through articles on news sites.

I just don’t care. It’s not affecting my life.

I also find it hard to stay fan of a team, when the players constantly switch to other clubs. If the people are constantly changing, how can a club stand for anything?

This week players are all about how this club is their favourite, next week they get a transfer and suddenly that club is a better fit. …

I know this guy, did judo for at least 20 years. Stopped doing that, but kept doing the bodyweight training every other day. Push ups etc.

He’s now 70. I hope I can be as fit and strong as he is by that age. He still does his exercises every other day, and he still works in the garden etc.

So, what I do is even if I don’t go to the gym anymore, I try to do bodyweight stuff every other day or so. Push ups, belly exercises, squats, pull ups on something. Yes, the gym is more intense, but if I can keep this up for the rest of my life the gains will be there.

I also try to be careful about what I eat, and I’m failing hard at that. I do walk a lot though, I have an active job and also a dog.

I have a pretty good amount of tools. I think I’ve made every single one back by now. I’ve done multiple renovations, lots of repair work, build some furniture, did a lot of flooring and also did my front and back yard including fences with it.

I think if I hired a contractor to do what I did myself it would have been faster, but at least three times the cost. There are still some things I cannot do myself or am legally not allowed to work on, but the rest I will definitely do by myself.

Even worse. Recently I was watching a video in Dutch, and it decided to automatically translate the sound to English. AI generated. That was just…it sounded so fucked up.

And why does YouTube think it needs to do that? If I want that, I’ll so it myself.

In my honest amateur opinion karate seems more about both strikes and kicks, while the other one is basically almost all kicks.

Either would be fine I suppose. Also depends what you want to get out of it. Both sports will make a kid tired, both will have some sort of discipline build in.

Why decide now? Try both, see what the kid likes better. At a young age it is mostly about who their friends are and what they are doing anyway.

What was that famous saying again? Something about developers making things idiot -proof and the universe producing bigger idiots?

What you need to understand is, it doesn’t matter how hard you work,how much you learn or what you do. If you don’t blend in with your coworkers at least a little bit, you’ll always be the odd one. Depending on who your manager is, that’s enough to get tired.

For a lot of people, for a long time, the surviving mechanism has been social interaction. There are incredibly stupid people out there, doing less work and getting paid more because they know how to fit in the group and form relationships of all sorts. That is a fact. It’s from the hundreds of years we lived as gatherers-hunters where we all had to work together to get food on the table and not die.

You need to realize that you are different. I’ve been like you, struggling to blend in. I still find it hard to show interest in people, because I don’t really care that much, as long as they do their work.

But I’ve learned to at least show some interest. One of the things I am struggling with is that for most people, being together and social seems to give them energy, while it drains my energy.

So I just ask my colleagues how their weekend was and try to relax a little. Which I think you should too.

It’s good that you want to learn and improve, but if you think that leaves no room to talk and be social, you’re too black and white. It feels like you use the job to not focus on colleagues at all, and I have through painful experience learned that most people don’t like that. They want to feel seen, valued.

I’m not saying hang on their every word, I’m saying, the balance right now is ripped too much towards work work work.

There is so much to learn about communicating with people. If you don’t ever speak to them, it’s very hard to predict how they respond to things. How does a colleague react if you ask a favor? How does a colleague react if he/she discovers a mistake you made? If they think you’re a great guy or at least nice but maybe a bit quit, they could talk it over with you. If they think you’re an asshole, they walk straight to the manager.

I think you’re pretty good at your job. Most people like you are. But to succeed you must find a way to be more social, take critism and be aware of the way you communicate and behave towards others and how others will see you because of that.

I have a colleague who also has the habit of telling me what to do in a commanding voice. He doesn’t do it on purpose, in his world that is how it should be, and there is no other way. However, that is generally not acceptable behavior. I would not even accept that from my manager. But the guy often has a point, works hard and has lots of experience and brings solutions that are useful.

However, if he tells it like a dick, nobody cares. Nobody listens. Would you yourself listen to some arrogant prick who thinks he knows best? I won’t. But Steve from accounting, who congratulated me with my birthday yesterday, I like that guy. And when he asks me: "what do you think about doing this or that to solve problems x?’ I’ll give it some thought.

You need to accept that you are different. I am different. But I am an outlier, not the norm. So I found coping mechanisms to navigate the social world at work and with friends. Find yours if you can. It’s not easy, but try it.

Let me know if you have questions, I’d be happy to help.

My parents had a caravan when I was like 4 years old. Ran into it full speed, hit my head hard. I had an anger attack because blood was coming out of my head, my parents got a heart attack because of all the blood.

Another one would be when I found out I needed glasses. At school, at the gym class, we were playing around as a warming up.

I ran after a ball, and hit one of those horizontal bars you can do tricks on. Full speed, nose first. That hurt for a couple of days. Spent the rest of the class holding my nose closed because I was bleeding a lot.