Among other reasons you’ve been given:

• The figured MN folks would be peaceable and lay down.
• No open carry of weapons.
• Didn’t think they’d show out in deep winter. (HAH!)

I bought one! Not that brand, forget what I have, but I can’t afford to replace the carpet so I need it.

What do you get when your search “terminal”? My home rig defaults to PowerShell, but I likely changed something years ago.

I’m a Windows sysadmin, this is the exact explanation. The only other thing, and this is going way out on a limb, is that terminal was installed through the Windows Store and something related is busted. I’ve never even heard of a company utilizing the Store for installations.

Could not have written my exact take as closely as yours.

Only thing I’d add is using it to screw around with personal photos. ChatGPT is cleaning up some 80s pics of my wife that were atrocious. I have rudimentary PhotoShop skills, but we’d never have these clean pics without AI. OTOH, I’d gladly drop that ability to reclaim all the negatives.

Very few laymen have noticed or give a shit about RAM prices. My young friend across the street and I are likely the only people on the block who know what RAM does, let alone are able to build a PC.

Business purchasing is where we might see some backlash soon. I’ve bought all the IT goods, hardware and software, for my last two companies, and I’d be screaming.

Boss: What the hell? Weren’t we getting these laptops for $1,200 last year?!

Skill in Excel is wholly different than skills in other Office products. But if Excel is on your resume, your better expand and show what real use you’ve made of it. Otherwise it comes off just as you said.

I do. Got a free license from my last job and Excel blows the doors off Calc, or anything else. For business, Excel is moat of the reason they’re so tied into Office.

Wife and I got COVID last fall, despite being vaxxed. But god knows how bad it could have been without. I have mild emphysema, that shit can kill me.

And no, neither one of us kept up with the vax schedule. That’s on us.

Same with evolution. “The eyeball is too complex to evolve as a whole unit!” Well, that’s absolutely correct. First, start with a patch of light sensitive cells, iterate.

Fevers always work out great for me. I’ll be all shivery and crash under a pile of blankets. Wake up a few hours later, soaking wet, I mean really, truly gross, and it’s over, all better.

Everyone reads books? Over half of Americans read at a 6th-grade level, at best.

If ICE comes, I have no plans to escape alive. Take that as you will.

In America, in most cases, they can’t cross the door frame and can’t touch you unless you cross outside. ’

And if masked men kick the door down? I got that covered best I know how.

What are the population densities and technology levels among these magical indigenous peoples? This is the Magical Negro trope all over again.

You will love this:

“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there weren’t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”

― Peter Watts, Echopraxia

I’ve seen 100 shitty job postings for rating AI results. It’s rather complicated and pays pennies.

That’s on the university admins for poor setup. SOURCE: I’ve setup such machines.

Imgur bans my IP from a Digital Ocean droplet of my own build. Just sayin’, they’re not only operating from known IP ranges.

Edge of town in a poor(ish), redneck, American suburb. Like I said, people don’t usually bike unless they have to, just no demand I guess.

I should note, not talking about the nice sorts of bikes like you probably have. Anyone with a truly nice bike is parking it in their garage. But I can’t imagine someone trying to break a lock for anything short of an e-bike.

If you need a pair of wheels that goes? They’re everywhere. Bet I could find one on the curb (as trash) right now, nothing wrong but a busted tube, if that. We’ve hauled home loads of kid’s bikes, had people come out and ask us to take them when we stop and look.

My wife and I are continually astonished at the things people toss, even in this lower-middleclass hood. I could show you our house and all the things we found/repurposed/recycled, for an hour straight without repeating myself.