I’ve got a small volcanic rock from Mt Vesuvius, a Polaroid Land camera 95A from the late 40s or 50s, and I built a magic mirror (which isn’t that obscure, but lots of people find it fascinating).

Sweet! Do you have a special audio interface for your PC? I’ve got a mixer as well, though only one audio output from my PC (I use it to mix my two PCs, instruments, and the baby monitor).

Stepped on a rake, smacked me right on the forehead. More plausible than you might think.

For tasks that don’t require much mental attention: daydream. Let your mind wander, or create stories in your head. I’ve been “working” on an idea for a novel for years–it’s mostly something I think about to occupy myself when I’d otherwise be bored.

Related:

There’s a saying in this line of reasoning: “eat the frog first.” The idea is that if you have to do something unpleasant (e.g., consuming a slimy amphibian), do it first thing, otherwise you’ll be dreading it all day and it’ll make your entire day worse. Get it done and out of the way, then you can enjoy your day (and the other tasks won’t feel as bad in comparison).

It’s bad in the same way cigarettes are bad. It’s not good for you, but it’s tasty on the way down (though this varies by location and one’s taste). At the end of the day, it’s wildly popular for a reason.

Personally, I prefer Rally’s or Culver’s. Neither are much better for you, but they’re better than McD’s.

What DE are you using? I noticed that under XFCE, I have to use the display-managed suspend option, rather than the “system-managed” one (not sure why there’s a distinction).

I’ve had similar strong reactions to other things. In my case, I had some unresolved trauma that I wasn’t even consciously aware of until I worked through it with a therapist. Not necessarily the case with you, but it might be worth talking to a professional if you have the means.

That being said, every office seems to have obnoxious coworkers (that’s pretty much the premise of The Office, and why it did so well). And that can be annoying for sure. For me, I try to not take my work overly seriously, and I try to remember that others might find me obnoxious at times too.

I work in the automotive sector. Most OEMs are only getting more aggressive and invasive with respect to your privacy, and there are regular discussions about how to monetize your data. I’ve been in discussions where people proposed to analyze your driving style to track you better, and integrate that with targeted ads in your vehicle.

Also, full-autonomous (level 5) is still a long way off from general use on (non-modified) public roads. Most of what you see on the road today that advertises being “fully autonomous driving” is monitored and controlled by underpaid workers.

Unfortunately, I don’t think anything like this really exists, because it violates good programming principles. Not to say you’re bad for considering it, but there probably aren’t a lot of people working toward the same end. You’ll probably have to resort to personal discipline and/or scathing code comments to remind yourself to refactor things before using them. I may or may not have left comments in my own code calling myself an idiot for not refactoring, or apologizing to my future self. Welcome to the club.

In my experience, the typical solution to this problem is the opposite of what you suggest–making your short-term projects of a sufficient quality to be extensible if needed. So I’d be surprised if you find much on this (intentionally, at least).

That being said, if you’re set on locking down a project, I would run the source through some sort of obfuscator and delete the original. This could be converting it to an intermediate format, or just converting all the entity names to random strings.

Not as far as I’m aware. The Linux community is largely cooperative, the idea is that everyone can choose the DE they like best. I don’t remember seeing anything about Cinnamon trying to bring back an older GNOME version - you might be thinking of MATE (though I’m not aware of ANY friction there either) considering MATE is a fork of GNOME 2.

Ah, gotcha. I kinda figured that was out there, but didn’t have names to associate with them.

I guess I’m wondering how a VoIP number would differ significantly from a burner phone. Obviously the burner is more private (assuming you pay cash, there’d be zero way to trace it anywhere). Signing up for a VoIP number with an alias seems almost as untraceable, assuming the VoIP company isn’t selling your data?

I’ve worked in corporate America for a while now, and if there’s one lesson I’ve learned…

When the decisions from execs don’t make any sense to you, it probably means they’re trying to increase short-term shareholder value. Those decisions start making sense when you look through the lens of an MBA, but no sense to anyone who thinks beyond next quarter’s numbers.

Through data profiling? Not sure what you mean.

Honestly, if you don’t want a separate device, I’d sign up for a VoIP number. I use voip.ms, it’s a dollar or two a month for the number, and you pay per minute and per text (about a penny each, IIRC). You can forward calls to your primary number, or set up a SIP app (I’m using one called ZoiPer). I usually load it up with $20 per year or so.

Or an s.

Not a shower thought