The owner of the platform blatantly and openly supporting one side is new. We used to call that election interference

I have one that takes d cell batteries and works great. Have used others that barely function, though

Fair enough. Every service I run depends on encrypted data, so starting the machine without decrypting isn’t worthwhile in my case. I have to decrypt to get everything back up after power loss anyway.

Main advantages I’m aware of for full disc encryption are encrypted swap and system config. Overkill for some use cases so YMMV, but wanting to point out that decrypting at boot can be done.

I may be missing something in your use case. As long as you have the port forwarded you can decrypt from anywhere. Use pub key auth and you’re good to go

You can decrypt via ssh at boot. I used dropbear to accomplish that on my machine

not reading all that…tldr?

\s

No one is saying simply “don’t stress”. Recognizing when stress is centered around something outside your influence can be a step toward dealing with it. That may not work for some, but it does for others - as I said, different strokes. Making a broad generalization about what is and isn’t good advice is reductive and only shuts down advice that may help OP

Dismissing advice that doesn’t work for you personally isn’t helpful - different strokes and all. I’ve dealt with anxiety and have found that rationalizing emotional responses to events outside my control normally works well for me. Ultimately, there’s no one-size solution, so people need to try different approaches to find what works for them. A variety of perspectives is always best

Ironically, these are the sorts of questions you should be asking a therapist. More general advice is to only allow yourself to stress about things in your control. There’s a lot of shittiness in the world, and stressing over it is poison to your mental well-being. Focus on what you can change and let go of anything beyond that. It helps me to try giving people the benefit of the doubt, e.g. imagine a scenario where your therapist ghosting you is justifiable - maybe a close family member of theirs was in an accident - and choose to believe that. While it may not always be correct, this is a much better way to live for your part.

“That’s my purse!!!”

Same. Maybe I’m just old, but this isn’t even slightly funny. Wish the repetitive, low-effort memes were left back on reddit

I used it for a bit. For a supposedly privacy focused search engine, they sure dislike when users connect through a VPN. I’m met with constant identity checks and, with certain queries, straight up access denied pages. Selling the company to an ad agency is another massive red flag. It’s unfortunate since we’re starved for decent, free search options these days, but skip them.

Mind if I check it out as well? I’m considering switching to NixOS

Certainly fair - Mint is a great distro. Enjoy the journey

If you’re interested in learning, I’d recommend installing Arch and going with a more minimal WM such as i3 (my personal favorite). This’ll require a fair bit of time and research filling in functionality that your current setup handles for you, but you’ll learn a ton and end up with a fully customized system you know the ins and outs of. Such is the beauty of GNU/Linux :]