Won’t get too detailed so I don’t accidentally dox myself or something, but I’ve been considering my life up to this point, and I can’t help but feel I definitely might’ve wound up on the wrong side of history if divine intervention and my own intuition hadn’t gotten in the way.
I know people who work at Neuralink, Facebook, Google, IBM, etc. My college was pretty successful for job placement at big name companies
I’ve been in some of the “financial centers and think tanks” of the world as a student. I was presented with opportunities to engage with their work, especially toward the end of my undergraduate career. Most of these people made me uneasy; at the time, I couldn’t place my finger on why. But I always felt the urge to keep those places at arms distance.
As a gifted kid, I feel incredibly blessed to have gotten out of public school relatively unscathed. I feel incredibly lucky I didn’t join the status quo in college despite the pressure to conform.
This refusal to conform is definitely giving me some roadblocks now that I’m trying to get started in my career, but it does feel like I’ve dodged many bullets on the journey. And I’m glad I’m not part of the hive mind like most of my peers.
Anyone else have the same experience?
Edit to say: thanks to everyone who has commented! Really appreciate knowing others have similar journeys.
I got lucky in that my DOD work never crossed those lines. They got close but the culture was such, at the time, that we were actually actively encouraged to say no, as if we failed to follow proper protocol we were warned we could go to jail.
The current Twit stuff I am seeing is just hard to even wrap my head around.
Stuff like the bulk data collection of twit users, with the correct subpoena forms is one thing, but the emails show none of the appropriate policy implementations by law. Technically speaking all the data collected "Casually" from twitter is, in many cases not remotely usable as evidence also due to mishandling. Worse yet its collection violates multiple constitutional laws as it constitutes "fishing" for crimes.