I love it so much!

Maybe we should just run with it and get the anti-vaxxers on board with opposing data centers too. Just tell them after they chip us they're going to use the data centers to control us all.

tldr: exercise, learn to cook, and start saving some money (keep your expenses low as long as you can)

I know a lot has changed since I was 18 but if I could give myself some advice to get a better start in life on a second try, here are a the first things that I would share.

1. Learn to take care of your body, it's the only one you get and it is much easier to work on your fitness and health when you are 18 than when you are 30 or 40 or whatever. While you have free time, this is a great time to learn and practice some good habits that you can carry with you for the rest of your life.

Two main ideas here:

• Find some kind of movement exercises that you enjoy doing and can make a routine of. You don't need to be an athlete or anything. It could be a daily walk, yoga, jogging, weight training, climbing, cycling, sports. For sports, I would look at things that are easy to keep up with as you get older, typically things with less structure or equipment requirements. For example, American football or volleyball might be harder to manage than tennis/pickle ball or indoor soccer/football. Don't make it a chore; you don't have to be great (or even good) at any of it, just find something that you want to keep up with. I know a lot of people also make connections with other people in some of these places (like climbing, cross fit, and sports gyms) but those also tend to be more expensive options.

• Learn to cook (if you don't already know how) and try to build a short list of reasonably healthy recipes that you enjoy and could live on every day, if needed. Try to focus on simple things to start, like eggs or oatmeal for breakfast, healthy sandwiches or wraps for lunch (try to minimize processed meats or peanut butter), for dinner maybe pastas, casseroles, salads, roasted vegetables & potatoes.

Try to come up with things that are quick and easy to make and especially things that can be made from staples that last a long time in the pantry or fridge. For a lot of people, planning, shopping for, and preparing food every day is a major challenge once when added to a job, school, or family. However, if you have a reliable list of foods that you can repeat without much effort, that takes away a major point of stress in your future life.

2. If you have a good relationship with your family, take advantage of this time to minimize your expenses and get some savings started. A lot of people are in a rush to move out and "start" their adulthood. If you are in a bad family situation, that may be the right move. If things are good, maybe get a low stress part-time job to earn a little income and get some experience.

For me, a big part of "low stress" is know that you can walk away at any time because you have a safety net. In my case, I can't quit my job because my family needs the income, which makes stupid things stress me out more than they should. However, when I was a teenager working low wage retail and fast food jobs, they did not stress me out because I knew I could walk out the door at any time without caring. From the outside looking in, my current job pays much better and is much more chill than working retail but I was way less stressed flipping burgers while living at home as a teenager.

The biggest "mistakes" I made after I graduated high school were eating a ton of fast food while going to college, dropping my gym routine when my parents canceled our membership when I was 20, and rushing to move out with my friends about the same time. The result of those things caused me to get fat and deeply in debt in my 20s and it took me all of my 30s to get back to even. I was probably around 35 when I got back to anything close to my high school graduation body weight and around 40 before my net worth went positive and I started any meaningful retirement savings.

Same here. If a game has combos or special attacks that require remembering button combinations, that's a hard no for me. Also, anything with special timing that requires practice and remembering different enemy types. I much prefer simple combat like Gears of War or Skyrim that I can pick up after a year wherever I left off.

In some states "Independent" is a party, in others it mean unaffiliated.

That's horrifying...and entirely unsurprising. :(

All of the comments about loss leader and factory scale vs. hobby farming are huge factors. Another is the predatory nature of poultry farming in the US. I don't know about Costco, but the other major producers, like Tyson and Perdue, have an extremely abusive relationship with contract farmers.

https://sentientmedia.org/contract-farming-makes-corporations-rich-and-family-farmers-broke/

I assume the answer is no, but do you have access to a more powerful desktop? If so, you could potentially work remotely on the desktop to have the benefit of portability with your laptop and more capability with the desktop. That's how I play more demanding games on my laptop.

Since you don't need a powerful GPU, if you have a little cash available, you could potentially get a more powerful refurbished desktop for that purpose for $300-500 (in the US). The low end of that range would get you 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage; the high end would potentially get you 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. If you don't have a monitor, you could potentially plug it into a TV for setup and then just remote into it the rest of the time. (or grab a cheap refurb monitor)

I definitely agree with that.

This week at work, my team reported a major system outage. There was a lengthy conference call to solve the outage and afterwards someone (not from my team) ran a transcript of the call through copilot to generate an executive summary and sent it up to top level leadership.

Copilot misunderstood the relevance of various comments (surprise!) and effectively reported that my team reported the outage almost an hour after we became aware of it. This caused us to get yelled at by senior leadership for failing to report a major issue in a timely manner. We then had to waste time proving that we had escalated the issue appropriately within minutes and listen to the call recording again to figure out where the incorrect reference came from and provide quotes from the transcript to explain why the summary was wrong.

So far there have been some very small use cases where I have found LLMs slightly useful but mostly they cause me more work than they save (by a lot). And yet, I keep hearing more and more from my company that they want "AI" to analyze things for us.

When I moved into my house last year, the garage entry door handles were reversed so the key hole was inside the house and the little bit you twist to lock and unlock the door was in the garage.

I agree with you on both points there. Skyrim NPCs are definitely a weak point and there was some good content in the side quests of the Witcher series.

Depends on what you like. I love Skyrim and hate the Witcher games. The thing that I hate the most about the Witcher games is that using a main character from books locks you into certain parts of the canon that kills my vibe from an RPG perspective. In particular, I don't care about Yennefer even a little bit but any time she shows up in the story, the main character throws away all prior decisions and chases after her. I prefer RPGs that let me imagine who my character is as much as possible.

I would say not all birds sing, mainly just song birds sing. Lots of other birds don't sing either like crows, woodpeckers, jays, pelicans, eagles, hawks, owls, etc.

Note: I'm not any kind of bird expert, so it is possible some of the birds that I listed have a song-like call that I'm unfamiliar with or am forgetting about.

Everywhere I've ever lived in the US you tell the electric and gas company what date you'll be moving in or out. The power and gas are normally already turned on and they just switch billing to whoever the new responsible party is.

In Georgia (USA) you have the illusion of choice in a "deregulated" market. In reality, there is a single gas provider and you get to pick which company provides billing service to you. Each company advertises a rate to "compete" with each other, this rate is added on top of the base rate that the actual gas provider charges and then they charge you a service charge on top of the that ($5-6 per month) that is not advertised.

The base rate is the same no matter who you choose. And the base rate plus admin fee make up most of your bill, so the advertised "competitive" rate is basically meaningless. Also, you have to sign a contract or you pay a variable rate instead of the advertised rate, which is MUCH higher. Also, there are big discounts for "new" customers (lower rate, monthly bill credit, cash back visa, etc.), so after the first contract period your price goes up quite a bit.

So you need to change providers every 6-24 months (depending on contract length) in the month before your contract expires. Otherwise your bill goes up because you either switched to the much higher variable price or lost your new customer discount. Or if you switch early, you pay an early cancellation charge.

Also, if you ever have any issues with your gas lines, you have to call the actual gas company to get assistance. The company that you pay doesn't actually have any technicians or anything and provides no other service than billing you and paying the real gas company their share of the bill.

I'm so glad I don't live in Georgia anymore for lots of reasons, including this.

Yes, this is the answer!

I make this for my wife's birthday most years. I've never made the cheesecake part alone, I always make it with the truffle cake base. It's really good, but if you try it, be sure to start with a very small serving because it is very rich.

https://highaltitudebakes.com/cakes/2012/03/05/stacked-chocolate-truffle-cheesecake/

I would check to see what the process is for requesting workplace accommodations at your company and then see if you can get your doctor to provide the appropriate paperwork saying that you cannot participate in large group activities or that you need to be 100% remote.

I've been married to someone with severe depression for a very long time. It isn't necessarily a 24x7 experience. During the good times, she is an incredibly happy and fun person to be with. During the bad times, it is really hard on both of us. Medicine has helped, but isn't perfect. We do our best to get through the hard times and enjoy the rest.