lattrommi

I trained my cat to flip the breakers.

Lock the screen? Pshh... I set mine up where after 15 minutes of inactivity the screen shuts off. that's it. i'll restart if the update tells me to.

This helped me quite a lot. You don't have to use arcolinux either, it's simply a guide.

https://www.arcolinux.info/learning-path/

edit i haven't used that link in awhile and i'm not sure it's the same experience anymore, some things appear to be missing. if unsure about any step, you can skip it usually. it's more of a list of things to learn.

also cicada. i learned this after a local pizza place made the news for having a pizza topped with them during the last brood x emergence.

fountain soda machines do the same in a way if not cleaned regularly. i've had a few jobs in the food industry where i would break down the soda fountain and other employees, even managers, had no idea the nozzles would come off and once they did at those places, it was obvious they hadn't been cleaned in years and would be full of crusty sugar, bugs, mold, it's horrifying.

I'm not understanding the risk, are you downloading at work or on a school network? is the book content illegal where you live? worried about malware maybe?

safe from whom/what is what i'm asking

Compared to most people, at least in the U.S., I am very much without means. So if you are in the U.S. I might be able to offer advice on things you can do, if interested.

I haven't worked since pre-covid.

I worked approximately 40 jobs over a 30 year period. Now that I have been able to view them through the lens of time, I can see which ones I truly loved and which ones were gaslighting me into thinking i loved them and which ones were critically bad for my mental and/or physical health.

Younger me thought working in a library was the dream job and settled for working in a few bookstores, all chain stores, not local. I for one am glad that many brick and mortar book store chains are shuttering. Being forced to upsell predatory magazine subscriptions to the elderly, ripping covers off overstock returns, daily mobs of Karens sharing their opinions on romance novel lasciviousness and countless other things, made me not even want to read for a few years after the place closed.

One of the best, most fun and least paying jobs was a Taco Bell. Note I say 'a' Taco Bell, meaning a specific flocation. I have worked at 3 total but that one particular location was just a blast. I had fun with coworkers, got free food, made my own hours mostly, could walk to work, it was just the best. Not the most glamorous and I mentioned low pay but that's to be expected from TB.

At my last job I trained new employees for a call center. It was a very toxic workplace, high stress, low pay to the point it broke minimum wage laws multiple times, a 'we are like family here' company but also management extorted sex from employees, mandatory christmas and thanksgiving parties actually on the holiday, coupons for customers that we couldn't use which were better than our lauughably small employee discount, that kind of nightmare kind of place. By this point, I stopped caring about what any company wanted from me and did what I wanted and naturally that led to my repeated promotions into the trainer role. I said the same thing to every trainee, about 250 people overall:

"Never let a company decide if you can have fun. If you hate your job, leave and don't look back. If you make plans with friends but your job refuses to give you the day off, which would you rather remember doing? If your life flashes before your eyes when you die, what will you see?" I've run into some of those trainees since. Two of them said it was the best job advice they ever got. Another told me it saved them from going through with a planned suicide.

I hope these stories help your perspective. I should add that I have never made a lot of money, don't have a degree and by societies standards, most would consider me an absolute failure, which makes me find it hilariously ironic that I'm pretty happy with my life so far. Not working for 5+ years will do that.

I worked a Taco Bell where they let employees get any combo meal before or after any shift that was at least 4 hours.

The owner took that away once because profits were hurting from employee mistakes. The new rule implemented was only mistakes could be eaten for free. As one can imagine, this did not improve employee accuracy and mistakes became much more frequent for items that coworkers liked the most.

Ther owner realize their mistake quickly and implemented a new hybrid rule. Mistakes were saved and piled up in the break room. They were thrown out during the main shift changes: after lunch rush, after dinner rush and after drunk rush. Employees could get a free combo meal only if there were no mistakes on the break room table. Accuracy improved significantly.

It was one of my favorite jobs to work honestly, and I've done every aspect of food service, from fine dining to catering to factory mass production, back of house to front.

I agree with you. I had a drinking problem. I tried AA and other methods to stop drinking and they never even came close to helping. One day I discovered that for me, alcohol and opiates did not mix and made me violently ill without fail.

Using that to my advantage, I became addicted to opiates, knowing I couldn't drink while on them. It broke my mental addiction to alcohol a few months after the physical addiction was gone. Breaking the mental addiction was the critical part. Once I knew I no longer wanted to drink, I knew it no longer had control over me.

Breaking the opiate addiction afterwards was easy because I never really wanted to do it in the first place. I never had the mental addiction. I just drank until the opiate physical addiction was gone, then stopped drinking because I already didn't want to, it was only a tool being used.

I don't recommend anyone try this method though. It very likely will kill anyone who attempts it. I wanted to share because for me, it confirms what you said, forcing an addict to get 'clean' will only make it harder for them to do so. In my opinion.

I know a lot of 'meth heads'. Most of them were prescribed Adderall as kids but as adults it became harder and harder to obtain prescriptions and they eventually turned to alternative solutions to get their medication.

Correction, "knew", I knew a lot of meth heads. Most of them died from opiates added to their medication they didn't know about. Fun fact: no one has ever died from a meth overdose. It's always meth in combination with something else, usually opiates.

I mention this because there's a stigma with meth prevalent in society and it is very unfair in my opinion. There are meth users and meth heads. A meth user is capable of living a very normal life. A meth head is created by society, mental illness, malnutrition and poverty. Just my opinion.

If you give them money and they spend it on drugs, maybe it's because they still did not have enough money to believe they could live a normal life.

If they destroy an apartment given to them, maybe that apartment was cheaply made and not fit for humans in the first place. Maybe if it were worth caring about, they would care about it.

Mental health treatment ≠ addiction treatment

An addict is more likely to stop being an addict once their normal human needs are fulfilled.

A mentally ill person does not stop being mentally ill, unless a cure exists. Their symptoms can be mitigated or reduced at best.

Pay attention to my use of the words "maybe" and "more likely", these are not absolutes and that's most of my issue with your comment. If you give SOME of them money, they'll spend it on drugs. If you give Some of them an apartment, they will destroy it. Others however, might spend that money on an apartment and nice clothes to interview for jobs with.

These are all just my opinions. I am someone who has destroyed apartments, spent money inappropriately on drugs and alcohol, and did not care about anything for a decade unless it modified my state of consciousness. It took love and patience from a couple people and it wasn't easy for them. It took a couple years and wasn't cheap, but I think it worked and I am lucky to have those people make the effort. I believe it's a solution that should be attempted more. Giving someone money or an apartment is a short term fix that ignores the problems. Giving someone love and patience is a long term solution that difficult but has better odds the longer it is done. There's always exceptions though, some people are just fucked.