Without any crime to suspect you of, they might detain you and question you. It’s not uncommon for people to turn themselves in for crimes, and there are legitimate reasons to do so especially with a lawyer, namely to get out on bail easier, avoid having the police raid your home or place of work, and perhaps used to sway the prosecution for a more favorable sentencing, but if the police have no clue what to even charge you for and they can’t figure one out, they’ll just be confused and frustrated, which is a dangerous combination for police

Western doctrine is also largely based on the US’ needs. Artillery just isn’t practical for the US, who needs to be prepared to fight all over the world oceans away from home. Artillery is much more stationary compared to air power due to the size of the guns and the difficulty moving them, while the US can easily fly planes anywhere we need them. As such, Western doctrine became heavily reliant on having air supremacy and massive amounts of air support and our equipment was designed for that battlefield. Ukraine just doesn’t have nearly the same arial capabilities as NATO, relying much more on artillery which NATO weapons and doctrine weren’t designed around, and they’re having to figure out how to make them work without air power

I was going to use Fedora, but there’s no way I can ever look someone in the eye and say “yeah I use an operating system called Fedora” so I went with Debian instead. It’s pretty great

I pirate ebooks, especially textbooks, when I can’t get something through my library. I don’t watch enough television to bother pirating shows and movies. With video games, the circumstances that would make pirating a game worth it rarely come up for me; pirating games means losing out on updates and bug fixes, multiplayer, Steam cloud saves, and more. For new games, not getting bug fixes and updates makes my experience worse, and older games usually go on sale for cheap enough that I might as well buy it

The dependence they had on Western technology was a key motivator against war precisely because the US can unilaterally restrict access to their tech. Going to war means losing US tech, and Russia decided that war was worth losing US tech

The only thing better than good in the world of business is standard. Windows may be bad, but it’s the industry standard for a ton of commercial applications. A lot of software that companies use are designed for Windows, from antivirus software to Microsoft’s office suite to audio and video editing software and more. Every copy of Windows is also a lot more standard than Linux distros; the customizability of Linux makes it a lot harder to provide support compared to every single Windows user being locked into certain things. As far as the IT team being “lazy” or having “a lack of knowledge” on supporting Linux, they’re working on the company’s dollar, and unless there’s a strong, justifiable reason to increase their workload by supporting another operating system, it’s an unnecessary expense for the company. There certainly are cases where there are strong, justifiable reasons such as with Google, who maintains two Linux based operating systems and needs their staff to know how to work with them, or in situations where Linux substantially outperforms Windows for the tasks employees are doing to the point that supporting Linux is worth it, but “it can do most of what Windows can alongside features that don’t matter to the companies’ operation” isn’t the best selling point

Seniority plays a major role in committee appointments. Sure, you could replace the senile 95 year old who doesn’t know the cold war is over with a younger candidate, but that senile 95 year old has been in Congress for longer than the other guy has been alive, and he’s on some important committees because of it that the younger candidate wouldn’t be able to be in

Depends on the game’s anticheat. ProtonDB is a site that tracks Steam Deck (and Linux in general) support for games. You can check what you play to see if it would run on Linux with Proton, the tool Steam uses to run Windows games on Linux. If you want a desktop similar to SteamOS, any distro that supports KDE Plasma will have the same desktop as SteamOS’ desktop mode, with the new Big Picture Mode on Steam being the Steam Deck’s game mode

A pretty important point is that Linux doesn’t come installed on many devices. For most people, they buy a computer with Windows or Mac already installed and they’re satisfied with their experience. They don’t feel the need to find a distro, mount a USB stick, navigate through the BIOS, run an installer that wipes their hard drive, and relearn another operating system when Windows and Mac does everything that they want. When Linux comes pre installed on devices such as the Steam Deck or Chromebooks, Linux usage soars, though these devices have to use Linux because they need a heavily customized OS for their specific purpose. Laptops and desktops intended for casual use that come pre installed with Linux are far less common, so for the overwhelming majority of users, Windows or Mac is what they get and what they end up using. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft switches from charging for Windows to paying manufacturers to put Windows on their computers to get users into the Microsoft eco system if Linux became an actual competitor one day

Make sure the file system is ext4 and make sure the drive is mounted when you go to add the library on the external drive. A lot of games won’t launch on Linux if the file system isn’t ext4

China is facing a massive traffic issue with cars that makes becoming a car-dependent society difficult. As their middle class becomes larger and wealthier, the amount of cars on the road has increased exponentially, far more than their road and highway systems were designed to handle. While the US has had over a century to build society around car ownership, China has to scramble in order to build enough infrastructure to accommodate all their new cars, a task much more difficult than building public transportation. Add in China’s heavy dependence on foreign oil imports compared to the US, and being a car centered society just doesn’t make sense for them

Ukraine has been in war economy mode for over a year now, and it’s not sustainable long term while all of the sanctions on Russia haven’t crippled their economy to the point of being unable to continue fighting. Their ability to fight Russia is largely dependent on continued western aid, largely from the US, which has become increasingly controversial politically. The current counteroffensive has been a slow, long grind without much in the way of territorial gain so far, further decreasing popular support for Ukraine in the west. If Russian sympathizers in the US government manage to block aid to Ukraine before they are able to break Russia’s defenses, the Ukrainian Armed Forces will run out of funding and equipment and be forced to negotiate best case scenario, or be overrun by the Russians worst case scenario. It is still a long time until the next US election so they should still fight, but unless they’re able to make dramatic gains like they did previously, Ukraine may have to negotiate eventually

HFCS is a better alternative to sugar for the US. Not necessarily health wise (they both are about as equally terrible for you in the amounts Americans consume them), but in a logistical way. The other sources of sugar are sugarcane, which are only farmed in parts of 3 US states, and sugar beets, which are only farmed in 11 US states. Corn is farmed pretty much everywhere in the US, and we produce a lot more of it. This ensures that we have a much more stable supply of corn, which is important for a widespread staple ingredient in most US foods. This also means the US is not reliant on foreign imports for HFCS since it’s produced domestically, ensuring US food security if a major exporter of sugar has to halt exports. This also gives the US an excuse to farm even more corn, increasing the supply of corn and making our supply more stable in the process. Outside of HFCS, corn is used in everything from animal feed to gasoline and batteries, which means running low on corn one year due to an unstable supply would devastate the US; HFCS helps prevent that. Federal corn subsidies also help make HFCS a much cheaper option than conventional sugars, keeping food prices lower which helps people afford to eat. The main argument against HFCS is the serious health effects that it causes when eaten in high amounts, but regular sugar which would replace HFCS in most foods causes the same problems in the amounts they are consumed while being significantly more problematic logistically for the US

Barely anyone uses Linux, and among those who do, distros vary wildly enough between each other to the point of breaking viruses that it’s just not worth the effort to make viruses for them compared to Windows or Mac

I had 2 American style futons through most of my 20s. One had just a normal cheap futon mattress, and the other was basically just a normal mattress that has the ability to fold up. As a daily sleeper, it’s way too much effort to fold it up and down everyday, and after a few weeks I just accepted that I was only going to use it as a normal bed and rarely folded it up except for special occasions. The first mattress left my back sore everyday, but the second was very comfortable to the point that I used it as my mattress for a while after switching to a normal bedframe. All in all, I got a better sleep on a normal bed. I still have my old futon in my office that I use as a couch and a spare bed for guests, but I wouldn’t go back to it as my main bed

Disney is heavily unionized, they’re one of the better companies on that list to work for. From entertainment unions such as writers and actors guilds to their theme park workers being unionized, they can’t just walk over their workers like most US companies because they will fight back

Ironically, jobs that rely on tips are some of the most inflation resistant besides CEOs, since tips are usually a percentage of the price. It’s unreliable, but very well paying. Employers are also required by law to make up the difference in pay if the tipped worker does not make minimum wage with tips, though many times the employees won’t do this since its incredibly common for tipped workers to not declare tips for taxes

It’s bad management if they do that. That employee is going to file for unemployment and will probably get it, which companies have to pay a premium for. The company also has to hire and train a new employee to replace the one they sacked, costing the company even more. I know of times that sort of situation has happened, but in my experience working for various companies most managers aren’t that incompetent to take every Karen’s word at face value and immediately fire their staff over a random person’s word about petty BS, even if they humor said Karen on the phone pretending that they will to get them to shut up

We have quite a lot of employee protections (not as much as Europe but a lot more than people realize), it’s the enforcement that is the issue. While you can be fired without notice for any legal reason, if you are fired for an illegal reason or an illegal reason played a role in their decision to fire you, you can get quite a nice settlement from that. However, if you are fired without a good reason, the employer has to pay for your unemployment, so the majority of employers will only fire an employee if it falls under a reason that makes you ineligible for unemployment like poor performance or attendance (and labor attorneys can often sniff out when an employer is lying about it to screw you out of unemployment). Contrary to several other countries, employees can just quit without notice or even informing their employer, as at will employment goes both ways

It’s called Bell’s phenomenon, and it is real unfortunately