I've just read that section of War and Peace and was blown away by the descriptions of guerrilla tactics as well as Tolstoy's way of capturing the state of mind of the Russian POWs and their ever-shifting relationships with their captors.
As an aside, the word Guerrilla (little war) was coined during Napoleon's occupation of Spain to describe the resistance effort by locals and peasants against the French army.
This comment actually triggered something in me and I wanted to write a dismissive and condescending response but in the spirit of HN I’d like to try a different approach.
I’ve honestly never been able to understand this kind of thinking (uniformly ruling children as a negative because of the downsides), but I’d be curious to understand more about your perspective.
How do you weigh the joy and meaning many people find in having a family against the economic and time freedom costs?
Or the fact that societies do need to continue having children in order to: sustain economic growth, service their elderly population (that will be us in a few years to decades), maintain their armed forces, perpetuate their culture and values into the future, invest in scientific research, etc.
Are these not things you value? Or do you just see the tradeoff as not worth it?
I believe this applies to a large segment of the population. Diction, tonality, and "vibe" have a big effect on how open recipients are to cold calls, at least according to my SDR friends.
OP likely just has more self-awareness than most in being able to be honest about it.
https://mit6875.github.io/ - MIT's Foundations of Cryptography is publicly available with full lectures, lecture note pdfs, and 5 problem sets. It's very rigorous and proof-driven which can be hard at times, but the professor's enthusiasm for the subject is infectious and makes the lectures a pleasure to watch.
"Hey sorry, I've got some things on my mind right now and can't really talk. Have a nice day though".
That takes less than 10 seconds to say, let's you protect your time and peace of mind, and as a bonus there's no need for fuming, blaming, and judging that the other person won't ever even know about.
I'd highly suggest joining a Brazilian jiu jitsu gym. They tend to be filled with other computer nerds (although not only) and people are very friendly in a genuine way.
One of my major goals for 2026 was zero LLM use for writing, however I've found it a bit hard at times because LLMs are exceptional for research. Oftentimes I find that in reading an explanation or report that ChatGPT gives me about a topic there will be small turns of phrase or even whole sentences that capture a concept way better than I can. I then feel obstinate not using a clearly superior option, so I'm curious if you've run into that tension and if so how you navigate it.
Find me on github at: https://github.com/philangist