Then I derped. My bad!

As a wise man once said, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t after you.” Oh wait, that was Kurt Cobain, not a wise man.

Jokes aside, don’t assume that a piece of info about someone else is fine to share, because it is for you. OP likely has their reasons and that’s to be respected. (NB: this is coming from someone who doesn’t mind even sharing their city online.)

The way that I interpret it, OP’s girlfriend was simply being hyperbolic. I don’t think that she’s genuinely asking OP to kill her hypothetical kidnappers; specially given that, as OP mentioned, they live in a safe place.

Instead I think that she simply wants to be reassured that OP cares about her and her security. And then started playing around with the “but what about our cat?” thing because come on, if you’re thinking on outrageous scenarios, might as well think on them properly!

I get that you’re trying to get more info to help OP out better, but I think that it’s better to drop this “where are you from?” talk. Privacy-wise it’s rather problematic, you know? [Sorry for the uncalled advice.]

You’re probably better off trusting your guts, and the guts of people around you, than what anyone in the internet says about this matter. Including me.

That said: I don’t think that she’s either gaslighting or guilt tripping you. I think that she’s simply feeling insecure.

For reference, it’s roughly the same size as Kyūshū, 2/3 of Tasmania, or 1/2 of Ireland. That might not sound like a big deal until you remember that it’s a fluvial island, unlike those three.

Fun fact: from December to May, most of the island gets flooded. (It’s “wet season” there.)

[Reader, beware: take what I say with a grain of salt. I’m not trans, I just happen to have a few trans friends here and there.]

I think that people in general confuse the symbols too much with what they represent. Third person pronouns in English might symbolise your gender identity, but they aren’t the identity itself; first and foremost, you’re still you, regardless of those words. Just pick whatever you feel more comfortable with - be it “he/him”, “any”, or any other choice.

And remember that your choice of pronouns doesn’t dictate who you are. Even if you see yourself as effeminate, and even if you have an unclear identity, and go for he/him, there’s no contradiction. Same deal if you pick “any” and see yourself as a man.

And I feel like a lot of trans people have the same identity struggles as you do, or at least know someone in the same situation. Based on that I don’t think that the ones in good faith would bat an eye towards something like “he/him/any”.

Plenty anime fans hate him. Because he’s weak, indecisive, broken. He craves affection but once people offer “here’s some affection”, he turns them down. That rubs plenty people the wrong way.

Fuck, this is hilarious!

Those are used with urine, not blood. Urine is yellow-ish, but since it’s just a drop, it doesn’t stain the strip; instead, the blue tip changes colour as it reacts with the glucose in the urine. Then you compare that coloured tip with a chart, and you get an idea of the concentration of glucose in your body. Picture related:

I remember seeing those bottles in my bathroom all the time as a kid (my sister is diabetic).

These almost look more like ph or ketone test strips…

It is roughly the same idea as the one behind the litmus test for pH, indeed. The difference is which substance you’re putting there (Benedict’s reagent vs. pH indicators) and which substance you’re testing for (glucose vs. H₃O⁺ / OH⁻).

If you’re talking about strips that look like this:

I believe that most brands use Benedict’s reagent: copper sulphate, sodium citrate, sodium carbonate. It interacts with reducing sugars (like glucose) and the colour goes from blue to light green to green to brown-green to brown-red, depending on concentration.

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The only time that I remember dreaming with my phone, I was trying to turn it off, while its real life counterpart rung furiously.

I’ve dreamt some times with my desktop though. Such as:

• my cat pulling out the mouse from my computer, sitting in its place on the mousepad, and then meowing loudly (she does this a lot when she’s play-hunting)
• throwing potatoes on the screen, so I could get some French fries in return
• keyboard gardening: the keys were subbed with small pots full of dirt, some with small versions of plants. A lot of them were pepper plants and I was trying to cross-breed them.

Shinji, from Evangelion.

He’s 14. His mum is dead. His dad is a piece of shit and a manipulative bastard, who sees him as nothing but a pawn. “Emotionally traumatised” doesn’t even start to describe him. He’s pressured to pilot a mecha and if he fucks things up people will die, he knows that they will die, and that it’ll be his fault.

And yet people expect him to be assertive or to not have meltdowns? Come the fucking on.

If this is your first time installing Linux, keep it simple.

what partitions do linux distros need to function ?

One is enough for Linux alone. Two if you want to dual boot (one for Windows, another for Linux). Everything else is optional.

what linux distros support secure boot with nvidia drivers ?

I don’t have a full list, but I’m reasonably certain that Linux Mint supports secure boot UEFI, and I’m sure that it supports NVidia drivers.

Note that you can disable secure boot to run other distros if necessary/desired.

is it bad idea to install linux on a single drive in its own partition ?

As in, single boot? It’s only a bad idea if you need Windows for some reason. But then you could run Windows from a virtual machine, as the other poster said.

I have heard some linux distros like linux mint and ubuntu have a habit of touching other efi partitions when being told not to, are there any other distros that do that ?

I’m really unsure if this actually happens; I’ve dual booted Windows with Ubuntu for years, and to my knowledge Ubuntu never touched the Windows partition without my permission.

Plus if this happened I bet that a lot of people would be raging.

Is there anything else I should be aware about ?

Don’t look for exact copies of the software that you typically use with Windows. Instead, look for software that fills the same purpose.

When possible, let your distribution install software for you, through its own package manager. Downloading and running random executables from the internet is a last resort.

The Arch wiki is a godsend even if you don’t use Arch. (I don’t use Arch BTW.)

When asking people for help, make sure to include which distro you’re running, and which version.

I’m almost 40. More than a decade ago I used to live on my own, then decided to move back with my mum. It was better for both - splitting expenses, keeping her company, splitting tasks, so goes on.

Kind of. I live with my mother so the house expenses are shared - sometimes I’m short on money and she covers it for me, sometimes it’s the opposite.

Sometimes either of us cover my sister’s financial arse too, even if she doesn’t live with us.

This screams FAITH (Filthy Assumptions Instead of THinking) from a distance, on multiple levels:

1. Assuming that the current machine learning development will lead to artificial general intelligence. Will it?
2. Assuming that said AGI would appear in time to reduce power consumption. Will it?
3. Assuming that lowering the future power consumption will be enough to address issues caused by the current power consumption. Will it?
4. Assuming that addressing issues from a distant future means that the whole process won’t cause harm for people in a nearer future. Will it?

Furthermore, Gates in the quote is being disingenuous:

“Let’s not go overboard on this,” he said. “Datacenters are, in the most extreme case, a 6 percent addition [to the energy load] but probably only 2 to 2.5 percent. The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 percent reduction? And the answer is: certainly,” Gates said.

The answer addresses something far, far more specific than the main issue.

If I may, here’s my alternative solution for the problem, in the same style as Gates’:

Kill everyone between the North Pole and the Equator.

What do you mean, it would kill 85% people in the world? Well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, right? Nobody that I know personally lives there, so Not My Problem®. (Just keep Japan, I need my anime to watch.)

…I’m being clearly sarcastic to deliver a point here - it’s trivially easy to underestimate issues affecting humankind, and problems associated with their solutions, if you are not directly affected by either. Gates is some billionaire bubbled around rich people; this sort of problem will affect the poor first, as the rich can simply throw enough money into their problems to make them go away.

Jet lag is the hell of a drug. And not a fun one.

More like the straw that broke the camel’s back. And a sign that Microsoft’s behaviour is still the same as it was in IE times.