The “optimist” in me wants to believe that the idiots who have all the power and money will never be satisfied and thus will keep crushing us to the point where the conditions for forcibly removing them from power will be met: enough of us will feel there is nothing else to do and nothing to lose.

As for what comes after that… Lots of instability and misery for a while, with the hope that whatever emerges is better and fairer than what we have now.

A strange combination of circumstances. I originally wanted to do maths research or, failing that, be a maths teacher.

After a stint of research, and given how long getting to a tenured position would have been (with all the sacrifices that demands by chaining one or two years contracts all over the place, and with no guarantee of success), I decided to stop applying after my last contract came to an end.

Meanwhile, I met my wife who lived abroad where my teaching qualification did not hold, so I took a leap of faith and when my contract ended I left my country to move in with her and figured I’d find something there eventually.

At the time, the standard pipeline for a maths PhD looking for work in the industry was to do “data science” so I learned a bit of deep learning (this was pre chatGPT) but very quickly decided I did not want to contribute to that. I decided to start looking for other stuff, loosely related to my degree (and had a shitty admin job for a month).

I luckily found soon after quite a niche job as a software engineer where understanding maths was really needed (working on the geometric kernel of a CAD program) and thus managed to get my foot in the tech door and learn “enterprise” coding there. I moved on from that particular job but remain in something very close to that.

No she did not seem interested in me.

I was sat opposite a woman who had a grocery bag filled to the brim with crisps packets, or so it seemed. She started out just munching on crisps, mouth fully open, shoving her hands in there. She emptied two packs in between two stops (metro). Efficient.

When she had enough she started rumaging frantically through her bag for a solid 20 seconds, and then triumphantly dug out a can of whipped cream (squirty cream format for my UK friends), opened it, and just emptied the whole thing in her mouth in one go!

It was in France, of all fucking places.

Not American. And whilst that is true, this is definitely not limited to trump, we have our own version of that bullshit over here (and have had, in some capacity before the orange pedo)

It’d be quicker for me to list what I don’t hate these days, but I guess the main stuff that makes me tilt is:

Capitalism, billionaires, billionaires’ bootlickers, conservatives fascists, state surveillance, bloated anti-user and anti-freedom (i.e. modern) software, anti-intellectualism, being in a “post-truth” era, AI slopaganda, and the relatively general apathy to all of that and lack of solidarity amongst us working people (at least where I live).

Anna Karenina and Promise at Dawn

I saw the post that this was on, and yeah, that comment was uncalled for. So I get that it may have been confusing or even made you angry.

That being said, you can’t let some bitter person or some troll get to you on the internet like that, they’ll just spew their bullshit and move on. You won’t do yourself any good dwelling on it.

I’ll add to that that seeing as you’re studying for a maths PhD, chances are you are going to meet your fair share of insecure/competitive/self-important assholes who’ll like nothing more than to belittle you just so they can feel good about themselves/eliminate the competition. This won’t stop at academia either. So a good thing you can pick up during your PhD is to learn to not care when it’s not worth it, and to bite back properly when it is.

Source: been there, done that. I am now out of the academic cesspool but still (very) occasionally run into an insecure twat with a PhD who feels threatened by the fact I also have one and tries to start the dick measuring contest. You’ll make your life impossible if you give these people anymore attention than they deserve: none.

There is no age at which it’s ok to stay in a relationship that makes you miserable. One can fix it or leave it. By the sounds of it, you seem to believe yours is beyond repair. And there is also no age that is too old to experience new love again.

A good friend of mine, about your age, was in a somewhat similar situation minus the religious element. He held as long as possible, until their children were out of the house, at which point there was no glue between them anymore and he filed for divorce. That was a year ago. This summer I met his new partner, and he’s the happiest I have seen him in a while.

That being said, I also have examples of divorced men who aren’t as lucky relationship-wise. Some of them are ok with it, others not so much. I am not saying this to agree with your family, I just don’t want to give the impression I am looking at this with rose tinted glasses. It’s always easy for strangers to give advice, but when actually faced with the situation, it’s another dilemma entirely.

Ultimately, whether it’s leaving or staying, you do whatever is best for you. I sincerely hope you can figure it out for yourself, with honesty, and without external pressures.