The more concerning part is the bootloader that keeps being made more and more cumbersome to unlock. Not as easy to install one's system of choice when you need to beg the device maker to allow access to the part of the system required for that. =/

So untrustworthy company is even more centralizing now?

I saw a post earlier today suggesting quite a lot of those political posts may be coming from bots or paid actors. And considering those post more often than not also carry stigmatization and faith-like views, even if it's made by actual users, I think it's still a good call to at least keep a lower tolerance, maybe avoiding the rage-click posts and communities and sticking to more informative posts instead.

Short version I wrote for another news piece but that, to my understanding, should apply for this too:

The text is obtuse and the article’s title and cover are pretty clickbaity, so here’s a tl;dr:
In the US, according to the article, it’s possible to lend multiple forms of digital medias and software as you’d do with physical medias. But when requested to extend this understanding to games too, the US Copyright Office denied the change.

Blocking everyone and every community you see from Facebook's new parasite social media could be good, me thinks.

Having disciplined myself to break such downward spiral cycles helped. That is, if I feel stagnant, I force myself to do something, anything else. Maybe it could help you too?

Unfamiliar with it, but in the regard of instances going down, specially after my previous main instance died with no signs of returning (again), if you find any interesting posts even on instances seemingly stable, I think it is a good idea to back up those pages. Personally, I would propose methods like Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and its alternatives like Archive Today, the print to PDF option from browsers, and/or saving a given page as a MHTML bundle.

If I understand correctly, you're struggling with isolation? If so, and if you have the time and resources for it, maybe finding a hobby, sports club, etc. in your area could help?

Afaik most such Reddit alternatives support RSS feeds, so a RSS reader could be an option.

Any service requires investment, though. What pays Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.?

Other than GOG's withering "movies" section, I only remember of two that aren't overly niche, DLsite and Fakku (both mainly porn stores). Maybe Itunes' videos are DRM free, but I haven't tested and still it would break the "no app" condition since it's required for payment and download. Also maybe Itchio and Gumroad have something on videos too, since they don't limit the types of media allowed there, but I have yet to confirm.

Not familiar with LG's site so I don't have any links quickly available. But if it helps, and if you know the link or roughly where in the site the file was, maybe you could try checking Internet Archive, Archive Today, or, if the site has an Australian equivalent, the Australian Web Archive / Trove? Don't know other page-archiving alternatives, but if you do, I would also suggest checking on them.

Regarding gaming support, Heroic Launcher also help a bunch, since you can easily set up multiple versions of forks of Wine (Valve's Proton being one), or even to use the system ones.

About the wifi issue, maybe it is some oddly specific hardware that the devs tackled only in Mint 22. And in a bit of a humorous tone, what's learning without a bit of struggle? 😅

And lastly, besides dual boot, you could also set up a VM with the secondary system(s) you want. Just worth noting hardware-dependent games, e.g. many from the Windows 9x time, will struggle on VMs.

[Copypasta of the other repost] While I know the situation described in the article can set a precedent, the title feels misleading at best, given the article describes a single case, and not (yet) a widespread practice.

It has native screenshot functions, yes, but they are highly compressed. Iirc, there's a tool for taking uncompressed screenshots, but given the watermark in the screenshot, it's most likely the native function.

Unsure if it's a viable option for you, but using KDE's Dolphin file browser, it's rather straight forward for me to set default applications through GUI. Also maybe worth noting I use Mint Xfce, even though Dolphin is a QT program ported.

On a hopeful line of thought, I think it could help remind people that they may have unfinished projects that could be picked back up. *-*

Maybe rule 3 could be expanded to forbid low effort posts, or something in those lines?

Linguistics, data hoarding, and when I'm in the mood or have time, gaming and reading.

If you are indeed autistic and it is a problem in your daily life, knowing what is the problem is the first step to dealing with it, I think. You could even find strategies to turn hindering aspects of the condition into strengths, by knowing where your issues may stem from. And on the bureaucratic part of diagnosis, sadly I can't comment as I don't have much experience with that part.