John Derbyshire proffers a bit of useful advice:
Here’s this week’s precept:
Avoid fucked-up people.Most citizens of a functioning society live in a bourgeois style. They obey the law, keep regular hours, and brush their teeth. They get as much education as they can tolerate, acquire a marketable skill, work, marry, raise kids, and keep their debts under control.
The people I’m advising you to avoid, the fucked-up people — hereinafter FUPs — are the others. You’ve met them, or will: the drunks and moochers, the losers and dropouts, the profligates and unemployables. They will at best waste your time, at worst drag you down (?) into fucked-uppery.
I’ve known more than my share of FUPs across the decades. At least 20 come easily to mind. Expat life is particularly rich with them. FUPs must have cost me hundreds in current U.S. dollars, though most of it in my younger, more empathetic and gullible years.
And I’ve gotten off lightly. A friend of mine inherited a modest fortune from his father. His FUP brother co-inherited but soon frittered away his share and came to my friend for help, arguing that blood is thicker than water. My friend estimates the cost of testing those relative viscosities at $2 million over several years.
