I've been surprised multiple times by coworkers who don't know the significance of midnight January 1st 1970... We support an embedded Linux device, among other things...
Hell yes. Statistically, the world is safer than it has ever been. None of those things are new, we just hear about them more. Fear sells, and it seems you're buying.
Not trying to deny your experience or anything like that, but a lot of people feel that way, especially around that age, are you sure it was because of your lack of citizenship? I know I have always felt like that, and I was born in Boston, Mayflower descendant too...
I'm willing to bet when your grandparents came here, it was a lot less difficult to enter the country legally than it is now. Why do you think we put up so many legal obstacles?
Layoffs will be a regular occurrence. Think you're safe because you have a lot of seniority? My wife was laid off by Chase just a couple weeks before her 20 year anniversary. Funnily enough, they had just switched everyone to thin clients a year or two before.
I will argue that if a problem was solved in the past without violence, it's only because there was nonetheless the threat of violence. Gandhi is the classic example - he's the one everyone remembers, but he wasn't the only leader in the struggle for Indian independence. Those in power generally refuse to negotiate with terrorists, but given the possibility of prolonged bloody conflict, they may choose to negotiate with the nonviolent alternative.
I don't know if it's a gift or a curse, but around my house, I'm the only one who can find anything - but it's not because I scan the room and see it, but because at some point in the past, I happened to notice, and I just remember where nearly everything is, whether I want to or not. I guess it's my coping mechanism.
Ugh, one of my right wing Farcebook "friends" recently made a simpleton comment about paying back student loans, and I couldn't resist saying "why stop at college? Defund public schools, if little Timmy can't afford it, send him to the mines" and of course he agreed, the irony was completely lost on him. No, his kids do not go to private school.
Lolololol tell that to literally every major bank, I'm sure they'll get right on it just for you.