> ... "it never gets easier and you only get older."
Hence why traditionally farmers either had large families, hired outside workers, or most often did both.
(Source: I grew up in rancher/farmer territory and earned some of my earliest "spending money" working for local farmers or ranchers during harvest season.)
I had a similar experience back when I was a web dev (in the early days of the web's growing popularity) and some clients would cancel a website project because their teen told them they could do it for them much cheaper with DreamWeaver or MS Word.
Several folks here suggest doing exactly what I did back then, and truth be told, it'll likely work today just as well as it did back then. Tell the customer straight up why it's a bad idea (just be honest and forthright here), and make clear that you'll be charging extra for the very much different skill of cleanup and debugging the "tag soup" garbage that DreamWeaver (or in this case "vibe coding") will produce when it inevitably fails to deliver the result they'd hoped for.
Then step back and find other work while you wait for the windfall as your prediction plays out exactly as you warned them it would. If it doesn't, then "good for them". Be happy for them that they're happy, and be happy for yourself that you found other (less stressful) work. Win-win, either way? Either way, you're working, they're happy with (or at least getting) their hoped-for result, and nobody's stuck with something they didn't really want (other than perhaps your inflated rate for blithely altering the scope of your task).
Fact is that they're paying you for your expertise, and if they choose to ignore that expertise when it really matters, it should cost them to access more valuable expertise when it comes time.
> "Getting your gmail account hacked does not reflect on you as a professional."
Doesn't it though? Especially when your profession involves the security of a nation and you can't even secure your own personal email account successfully?
> ... "and it is by far my favorite music player form factor."
I really liked the old original iPod Nano myself. Had one for years that I was triple-booting RockBox (for extended media formats support and fancier interface), iPodLinux (for playing Doom and other toys), and the original iPod OS (just in case). Still haven't yet owned another device in that size / form factor that can do as much as that little thing did. Apple really did make some sweet devices back in the day... :)
> I feel like I'm going insane and living in some kind of weird bizzaro world.
You're (probably) not going insane. Much of humanity's leadership is going insane, and their cult-like worshippers are right there with them. You're just bein' the "odd man out" tryin' to stay sane in a crazy world ruled by crazy people with way too much money and power.
> "it is cranking the complexity and expenses up."
> "Some part of the story are clear failures of the system."
I think in some sense, this is a bit of a "failure of the system" if one considers that healthy foods (regardless of vegan or not) ought to be just as readily available as the ultra-cheap (ultra-processed) unhealthy stuff, and should maybe be at a similar enough price point as to not deny even the poorest in a properly civilized society at least the option to eat healthy if that's what they want, but somehow we've decided that maximizing for profit above all other things (including health) is the way to go for everything in society, including our food system. Fail.
Indeed, the compose key is how I've always handled easy access to additional (proper? complete?) punctuation (and several other useful characters) capabilities on desktop Linux for many years now. I usually set the Caps-Lock key to my compose key because I literally never use Caps-Lock anyhow, so it's nice to turn it into a useful key. :)
Hence why traditionally farmers either had large families, hired outside workers, or most often did both.
(Source: I grew up in rancher/farmer territory and earned some of my earliest "spending money" working for local farmers or ranchers during harvest season.)
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