Boredom is a lot more dangerous and potentially disastrous than most people realize, but it’s definitely not my only problem. I struggle with some mental health issues that make most things a lot harder for me than many other people.

I was tested as a child and had an iq of 164 at 10 years old. For my entire childhood every adult treated me like I was smarter than them and in most cases I was. I was in gifted and accelerated classes and excelled.

I know I’m not smart because from the headstart in life I got I went on to barely graduate from high school, drop out of community college twice, never hold a job for longer than 18 months, and have more gaps on my resume than experience.

New Zealand I’ve never been and know little about the day to day life of a new zealander, but it looks so beautiful and quiet there.

I set my mom (62) up an old laptop running Ubuntu last year when her laptop was stolen out of my sister’s car. She’s adjusted fairly well to it. She needed a lot of hands on support at first and any time she uses her printer, but she has figured out how to do a lot of things on it on her own.

She makes papercraft activities in inkscape for a weekly storytime she hosts at a bookstore and has gotten very proficient, but still needs some hand holding when printing errors crop up.

This is probably one of the more tragic results of the mess we’re in right now and there is no good solution. Not killing anyone would be ideal, but not enough people feel that way or we wouldn’t be killing each other as much as we do.

You can’t change a bigots heart unless they want to change. You could kill them, but what difference would there be between you and a bigot at that point? These kinds of problems take generations to sort out, which is unfortunate for all the dead southern queer people who will be murdered legally in the years to come.

For some women that would be a turn off for a romantic partner, yes. You don’t have to plan a future with everyone you have sex with. There are plenty of women who want something casual and low attachment and would not be bothered at all by anything you mentioned.

Women are not a monolith. Each one of us is different and have different wants, needs, and desires. Don’t let the bullsh!t about you not being desirable stop you from trying. Rejection sucks, but never trying is much worse.

I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s not true. All you’re missing is self-confidence and self-worth. It may not feel like it, but you are worthy of love and validation. Love yourself because you are alive and trying.

It’s not easy, especially if you’ve built up a lot of myths about how you’re broken or unlovable. Find the things you like about yourself and go from there. All you have to do is keep trying.

The sensations of sex vary significantly between individuals. I could tell you what my experience of sex is like, but depending on your specific body, it might feel wholly different. The only way you’re going to be able to satisfy that curiosity is to engage in the activity yourself.

Don’t give up on finding out for yourself if it’s important to you. I didn’t have sex with someone else until I was 29 and then spent my early 30’s making up for lost time.

For me, I was my own worst enemy. I believe that I was unlovable and unattractive (and also had some queer identify related complicating factors). I thought that sex and intimacy were transactional and that in order to find someone interested in having sex with me required me to be a person I was not. The error in my thinking was that sex was a goal, rather than a side effect of building meaningful connections with other humans.

Your mileage may vary though.

Enlightenment: calling meetings yourself because nothing you do matters and getting paid to listen to assholes talk isn’t the worst way to pay rent.

Protonmail is great, it comes with cloud storage, a really good password manager, and a very fast VPN. The linux experience is mid for their apps, but great on MacOS or Windows.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

They did it on purpose and ended up conning me out of a few hundred bucks I didn’t have to lose.

My spouse became my ex.

Pet supplies for animals you don’t have. Things that don’t exist but sound like things you might find at a grocery store, like pot slippers from the kitchen utensils, vegan mangos, aged vermhölsterdoif cheese, or barkley salt. Rare spices the stores your partner shops at do not sell. I get a kick out of being macabre so long pork, stray child. Ingredients your partner hates. Confusing typos.

Aw half the fun of linux is all the weird janky software some nerds felt strongly enough about to release.

Npp can be replaced by several different linux tools. You just have to like using the terminal a bit. Personally I get it. I know awk and sed and all those crunchy tools the olds made exist, but it’s not a crime to have it all in one place in a gui. That said it npp 1000% works under wine. Sublime Text has a linux version and all the plugins you could ever want if you’re willing to learn new ways of doing stuff you’ve already figured out. Vscodium is also a decent npp replacement. It’s fast, has a cli, and a great plugin ecosystem.

Excel is all hype. Unless you’re a data analyst or numbers nerd LibreOffice Calc has all the things. It’s not as performant as excel with large datasets, but it has formulas, pivot tables (though somewhat weird), and macros. It’s just ugly installed from the debian repo. Also if you’re paying for office you can probably still use excel in the browser.

OneDrive sucks, unless you are committed to the Microsoft ecosystem. If you find a suitable replacement for excel, you could always cancel your office subscription and setup a nextcloud instance. You can have it all hosted for you through nextcloud and they have web based office tools using LibreOffice. Their syncing app works on everything so you’ve got options. Or you can try to self-host it. I have a raspberry pi with an external hard drive attached running nextcloud, and a vpn. Reasonably stable, if slow.

I hope that outside of Visual Studio, you can completely free yourself of the windows ecosystem.

The only hard requirements I have for a partner are that they are attracted to me and have reasonable hygiene practices. It’s a bonus if they’re a degenerate kinkster or are willing and able to deal with a half-feral, half-crazy, cat lady for any real length of time. But I also am totally fine with that person bouncing because that’s a lot.

The most important skill for driving is learning to observe your surroundings calmly, but alertly. The things you mentioned as distractions are the things you need to be paying attention to because those are the things you must navigate around.

It’s easy to get worked up about all the things demanding your attention. A lot can go wrong while driving, from road hazards, to accidents, to traffic, to mechanical problems with your vehicle. My advice, take it at your own pace. It’s a speed limit, not a speed requirement. Highways and some types of special roads have minimum speeds, but the worst that happens if you drive slow enough to feel comfortable behind the wheel is some asshole who is in a hurry is grumpy.

It just takes time and practice, just relax and keep your eyes on the road.

Yes, but not in the way you mean.

The cybertruck is the most American truck because it was created by a narcissistic, political demagogue and built by underpaid, overworked, non-union workers in grueling conditions. The design is laughable and the functionality exists only in marketing material. The vehicle is manufactured as a single model and “optional” features are toggled on or off if the owner buys the upgrades or displeases Musk.

The cybertruck is the ultimate in performative, conspicuous consumption and reality-blind design. What’s more American than that?

If a dozen people I have encountered in my life remember me when they’re that age, I would be surprised. My parents and siblings probably will, maybe my ex-spouse, two or three people that have been close friends, and a few former coworkers.

I’m mostly a loner though because I have a very difficult time making and keeping social connections.

Nonviolence is a lofty, and unattainable ideal. Unless you can create something that prevents violence in an absolute, physical sense or can successfully breed out the sadistic elements of humanity it will forever be subject to the whims of charismatic violent people. World history, at least from the perspective of governing authority, is nothing but physical and psychological violence.

The Buddhists would tell you that life is duhkah (suffering). Trying to force any order onto only increases suffering. The french existentialists would tell them that the only thing you can do about it is to laugh in the face of the absurdity of existence. Then they’d go to a bar and the buddhists would watch the existentialists drink themselves to oblivion respectfully and with a detached interest.

Anarchism, nonviolence, and philosophy in general, rarely align with your subjective lived experience. The best way to deal with Nazis is not to punch them, but to live your life the best you can and try to have as much fun with other humans as is possible. If you engage with them on their terms, those of violence and hate, they’ve already won. Hug a nazi, especially if you’re part of a demographic they hate. Treat them like you would a slow child. Education, empathy, and kindness beat the nazi next door. Unfortunately though once they establish their fourth Reich like it seems they are close to, you have to wield collective hard power (tanks, predator drones, and boots on the ground).

You, the human reading this, will accomplish nothing by punching a nazi, hug them or ignore them until it’s time to fight them collectively.