Cool, thanks! I never really gave it a chance, since Gadgetbridge exists, but it seems to have some cool features

Won’t work, until we talk about a full blown emp here.

Instead, how about the social angle: pull out a camera, and point it at their face. Then when they get angry, you can claim self defense.

As far as I know, my brain content is not analysed, recorded and sold to the highest bidder.

Wow, nice. I wish I had the determination and social skills to complain to the right people effectively.

Nice bait, dude. I hope you get something from the answers here.

Did you talk about it? I could imagine the subconscious mind takes some inspiration from stories it has heard recently… I knownmine does

A microsd card with the plans for a fusion reactor, a step by step manual of how to achieve world peace and utopia, and enough shitcoins and dubious patent claims to overthrow the economy if needed. Plus all the Epstein files, the truth about JFK and all the dirty laundry of all world leaders. Throw in some nuclear access codes of various countries for good measure. Covered in Epoxy. Oh, and I want my whole body to be delivered to my family, stomach contents included.

Tbh, it has been a while and maybe I am confusing it with another city. But it just felt… like nothing special. No reason to be there. Mediocre at best, lame at worst. Big ugly cities usually have a thriving subculture, or surviving there is an experience by itself at least. But it just felt like the city equivalent of the word “meh”

Cheap Chinese Amazfit Neo. Basically a fitness tracker with a Casio-like look.

The one advice is, use gadgetbridge (https://gadgetbridge.org/). Replaces the shitty bloated spyware vendor app with something that does not sell your sleep pattern to the highest bidder. Downside, of course, is that you lose features and not every watch is compatible (or in different states of compatibility)

Ohh, how do you do that? That sounds cool!

The best decision in my life was to get a trade/industrial degree after school. I met some great people, I met some horrible people, and most importantly, it taught me to show up every morning with a clean T-shirt and an appropriate greeting. Sounds banal, but isn’t.

Then I went to college, out of a mix of “I don’t want to do this for 40 years” and no good offers in my region. But I still wonder how I would have ended up if I didn’t go. I was happiest in tech support, believe it or not. We were pretty free in what we did as long as the tickets were solved. If the queue was zero, nobody asked where you were on a Friday afternoon. Good times.

Paris is shitty for tourists who follow the main path. It certainly has many cool places and things if you care to look. You just won’t see any camera wielding Japanese tourists there. And of course it has all the crime and poverty problems you expect from a city that attracts anything and anyone of note from the whole country.

Now Lille, that felt off. Or any place on the Mediterranean in winter.

My two cents as an outsider: there are two parties in the US, the conservatives and then the Republicans.

If you are desperate, you vote for change. Any change. That includes the candidate that promises to spit in your face personally.

Do they really? What the fuck. What happened to proper heat pump AC systems?

Yup. Water cooling is a closed circuit (unless you shit money or have a near unlimited supply, like with a river nearby). We’ve been water-cooling all kinds of shit in data centers and production plants forever. In fact, direct water cooling is more efficient than traditional AC, because you don’t need to blow a bunch of air around, you just apply cold water to the hot parts, and cool the water back down afterwards. Sensitive stuff uses deionised water anyway, but I don’t know if they care enough for DCs. That is kind of expensive to produce and maintain, you really try to avoid larger leaks and spills.

There are plenty of issues with the datacenters, from the bullshit on-site gas turbines to noise pollution to using up the world’s RAM supply to the whole replacing humans with “AI” issue. But all of those could be solved with proper regulation.

Don’t confuse “intelligence” with conformity. There are lots of farmers’ kids who are intelligent by common standards, but either got conditioned into pretending, or deliberately pretend to fit in. I’ve met someone in college who was very intelligent, had a well-paid job doing ML stuff, and decided to go back to the countryside with their partner because they simply enjoyed life and the people there. As you said, conformity equals comfort and safety. I’ve met at least one guy who could turn the “redneck” on and off at will. One moment, he would enjoy doing complicated engineering shit or talking about politics and philosophy, the other he would enjoy bragging about the dumbest shit while drinking the local liquor.

I have been Kevin. I arrived at work, half asleep, went to the drip coffee maker, put in the grounds, poured in the water, and went to the morning briefing. Five minutes into the briefing, I realise that I never put the pot back under the thing. Now, it had a valve, but the valve does not prevent the filter from overflowing… yeah. Made me wake up really fast.

I’d rather be the dumbest in the room than the smartest :)

I sincerely believe that one should make an effort to at least sometimes go out and meet different people. Sure, there are people who you don’t want to meet, cruel, uncaring, hateful, and so on. But that is not based on intelligence.

I’ve met my share of not-so-bright people. No funny stories, I don’t want to make fun of people for being “stupid” either.

But I’ve been in a sports club with some very intelligent and not-so-intelligent people, I’d argue that you can find a good cross section of society in there.

One guy seemed to have some kind of mental disability, and also quite a fan of alcohol, which didn’t help either. He was being “mentored” by one of the older guys in the club, and he was, generally, doing an ok job at “life”, given the cards he was dealt.

Another guy just wasn’t that smart, in the traditional sense. Nice, friendly, hard-working, well organised, with a strong sense of right and wrong, with a wife and a child and all that. Thinking of it, he has a (presumably) happy family, while I have a college degree and am shit-posting on the internet in my underwear by myself. One of us is winning at life, and I feel it isn’t me…

Then, I’ve specteted a class for a rather low-skill job in a not-so-nice city once. Not special ed, regular class for people who want to get a certain (rather low) post-high-school certificate. I’ve sat with some people, and they were on a visit to the town electricity provider, who was trying to teach them (on a high level) how a power plant works. With one guy I was sitting with, there was just no chance. The concept of how burning gas turns a turbine, which turns a generator, which makes the lights go on just didn’t fit into his brain. Super nice guy, but that was just out of his reach.

I have met a fair share of people at college as well. There are some people who are kind of unable to think for themselves, regardless of “intelligence” (whatever that is). College is likely the first time they have to figure out things on their own, with nobody telling them how to do it. I remember deliberately giving people tasks that seemed trivial to me in some kind of TA role, like “we used this device $X in the past, but it is too heavy, can you google for something like $X but maybe only 100g max?” and they were completely lost. All they had to do was type things into the search bar, click links, and look for “specs” and “weight”. I can only guess they had parents do everything for them.

Out of pocket cost of treatments internationally should be available with a bit of digging. I believe that compulsory insurance also can make things cheaper, because the insurance company can negotiate with the weight of their customers.

Of course, US health care is a corrupt scam from what I hahave heard.

But for example, for a 3h joint surgery, general anaesthesia, related lab work, an MRI and CT scan plus various bullshit like normal xrays and a couple of days of stay I paid (or would have paid, if arguing insurances didn’t agree on the blame somehow) a bit less than 10k€, maybe around 7k? Western Europe, a couple of years ago. Similar figures are probably available for standard procedures, I’m just too lazy to look them up right now