Admittedly it’s worked fine for me, and this is my only use for it, but they were bought out by a company with history if malware based ad injection. PIA still maintains no logging and since they can’t really feed ads to my torrents, it probably doesn’t matter. I’ve known this for years and still haven’t switched, but it wouldn’t be my first choice for a VPN I use for web browsing or other online activities.

I have qbittorrent and PIA VPN. I need to switch VPN providers but that’s a separate topic. Qbt is on a kill switch so if the VPN goes down, no torrents flow. I’ve never received a letter when running VPN but have a few times in the past when not.

I have a Plex library over 40TB in size, and the vast majority has been torrents. I love in the US for geographical context. If you also are in the States, a simple VPN will be enough.

Yea, I try to not go down that path if available, but just tonight for example we were talking about an athlete who I lost respect for due to their not getting the covid vaccine when it was mandatory. I expressed that given the timing, I can empathize to an extent, but at a certain point, this person just ignored any procedure and didn’t work for an alternative, which there were paths for. In reality, it shouldn’t be a political opinion, but vaccines have become political.

I generally try not to engage in political discussion in person otherwise, but if I get pulled into it, I’m not in the habit of letting bigots speak without pushback, regardless of my relationship (boss, subordinate for example) to that person or persons. Silence is complacency. I try not to stir the pot, I’m not going to keep quiet just to not insult someone’s opinions, but I do try to speak in a respectful manner for the sake of conversation rather than debate.

90+% of the time it’s a non issue because I try to take steps to not be belligerent, and often times that leads to some level of constructive conversation or it just pivots to something else and we all move on amicably.

Usually it’s because the topic i want to discuss is politically motivated. I always preface with, not to get political but… And try to make it a neutral conversation.

For a basic setup to learn hello world and basic if/then logic, it’s extremely simple to setup Python on Windows or Linux. For Windows, which I’m guessing every non technical viewer will be using, download the installer and hit next taking the default values. Open idle, type the very human readable, print(“hello world”). Save and press f5. That’s it no complicated setup.

OP isn’t talking about teaching a lesson where any confusing syntax will come into play. They are giving an intro to programming class. That’s all about learning basic programming concepts which is done very easily in Python. You wouldn’t teach a non technical first time programmer a ternary operator or a list comprehension. You’d teach them:

if a == 10: 
    print("a = 10")
else: 
    print("a is not 10")

and simple for loops

for x in range(10):
    print(x)

I don’t know about you, but to me that’s about as human readable as it gets. No imports required. No extra packages. Just default python install and copy paste and this will work.

There are other languages with minimal setup that can be used. OP could go as far as basic JavaScript in JS fiddle so no setup would be required. The basics of JavaScript are also very easy to read compared to a language like C where explicit typing is required. That can be a difficult concept for people that have never even seen code before. Python and JavaScript soften that blow. Once the concepts of if/then, loops, and functions are grasped it’s much easier to pivot to other languages with more verbose syntax.

I’m not here suggesting that Python is by any means the superior language of the universe, just that it’s a very good option to learn with for it’s entry level simplicity and syntax readability, which I’ve demonstrated.

Python 100%. It’s the most human readable and easiest to pick up, especially for a non tech person. It’s easy to setup contrary to what I’ve read in the comments. Go to python.org install the latest version and that’s it. The downloader includes Idle so no other ide is required, but I’d consider vscode as well. Either watch an install video or better yet do it yourself before going to class.

I think you need to highlight the differences between OSs when it comes to setup if you plan on having a mixed environment of systems. It will also affect the code you write, so to be thorough, you’ll need to cover those differences as well.

Don’t go low level like C. These people will die the first time they have to compile in terminal.

America isn’t the only place with sponsored stadiums. Emirates stadium (Arsenal FC) and Etihad stadium (Man City) are both sponsor names for example. It’s more common in lower leagues for the financial bump.

Sometimes time is enough. I’m the 3rd of 4 with my eldest sibling being 10 years older. The other 3 of us are close in age, so through middle school and early highschool, we were shits to each other. Nothing crazy but we were all teens. Once we were all in high school, we all got along a lot better and that’s only got better over the past couple decades.

We were raised to respect people and be generally not shitty. We were all treated equally and nobody was spoiled or favored. I think those are the most important facets plus the friends we hung out with. Shitty friends will bring anyone down, speaking anecdotally. A strong foundation of understanding how to be respectful and what’s right and wrong has certainly saved my younger brother and I from going down really bad paths.

Yea these people have been all Dvorak for years, so switching back is difficult.

I know of two people that switched to Dvorak and both have regrets. Mostly because it’s a pain to switch to any other machine and not look like you’re just learning to type.

Others have said it, but the quality of a person’s morals doesn’t have any direct correlation with their intelligence. Look at the majority of Congress. Most of them are intelligent people that are just the worst.

My advice is first to assess your risk tolerance to decide where your line is and then pushback. I’m a white male, so we’re not talking apples to apples, but I have long hair, I’ll talk openly about supporting lgbtq+, abortion, and really any topic, and worked in a manufacturing facility surrounded by bigots. If I was in a situation where someone says something bigoted, I’d call them out or give counter points depending on the topic. Some people are just ignorant and willing to have a conversation, but most get defensive. I’ve been taught that silence is complacency, so I’m not in the habit of letting bigots spew shit without pushback. Many of those workers I had an amicable work relationship with and a few others a little bit outside of work. In a work environment, you have to maintain a level of professionalism when discussing topics like these, but you can be stern. I personally don’t care if I piss off everyone that thinks that way, but I’m also not out there trying to get fired.

Maybe if you pushback they’ll get the hint and at least not say shit when you’re around. Make sure that if you’re making an argument, you have the knowledge to defend it. For example, you said black people on average make less, which I believe to be true, but you need to be able to cite statements like that from reputable sources.

Lastly, and this will probably be a little controversial, but there are two things I wanted to address in your examples. First, I grew up in small town Iowa and there were no black people in my highschool, and 3 adopted black children in my town. I don’t know the context of why that was brought up around you, but that isn’t inherently a racist thing, just a fact. I mention that sometimes when I’m trying to express to people how my experiences growing up may have been culturally different from people in more diverse areas. The other thing is that some people do have different tolerances for those micro aggressions. I have gay friends that will call me gay, women friends that will call me a bitch, and know of many other situations where groups of people just have a a comfortable relationship that they’re comfortable making those jokes amongst each other. If the Mexican guy that was teased was not in with the joke, then that’s a problem, but if they also thought the situation was funny, then that’s just it and not something that you should be offended about. Working retail, a guest once forgot a bag on the counter so I ran out after them. Coming up behind them near their car I yelled, “ma’am you forgot this”, and a guy turned around. Was embarrassed, but his wife thought it was hilarious, so we all just chuckled and walked it off. If later his wife was teasing him for looking like a girl, I wouldn’t consider her being bigoted or sexist or anything like that, just making a joke of the situation.

So take all that as you will. Stand up for yourself to the extent that you’re comfortable doing so. Don’t correlate a person’s intelligence with their morals. Try not to be offended of the small things if you can, because there’s not enough time in life to fret over other’s actions. Take pride in the times that your smarter than then and all the time that your better than them. Finally for some professional advice, learn from those that may be smarter than you instead of being upset that they are.

You could have just not commented, but you woke up and decided that your gonna go out and just be a dick for no reason.

What a sad fucking life.

… Oh, .ml, that makes sense.

I have reinvented said wheel so many times.

Being in a band is like being on a sports team. Especially in orchestral or big band settings, it’s important that each individual plays their written part as written. A conductor is up front to give cues for when to enter, exit, or to change dynamics. They aren’t out there micro managing individuals but steering the entire group. In rehearsal, smaller groups may be called to play their part in solo, but this is just practice.

If you hire an instructor to teach you how to play an instrument, then that is literally paying someone to micro manage you. Their whole job is to give you a instructions, watch you practice, and critique your playing. In something like a guitar that will be physical aspects like hand position, finger position, how you holding your pick and music theory skills like rhythm, chords, and scales. During a lesson you’ll be micro managed but you should leave with exercises to practice. It’s on you if you put in the work, but an instructor will just get paid for you to make slow progress when you come back. It’s entirely possible to learn how to do all of this without human interaction.

If you join a band, like a rock band, the situation will be what you make it. There are no formal rules, you just have to work as a group to make music sound good. If you can do that as a cohesive group then no micromanaging is necessary.

My wife and I bought a house about 6 years ago. The previous tenants were going to do a lease to own situation that fell through. When they left the house, they cut all of the power and left it vacant for a couple of months. After we made our offer, I was walking through the house and opened the refrigerator and was presented with about 40 lbs of spoiled meat that was abandoned. The smell was awful and no matter what I did for cleaning, the fridge was never going to bounce back. Due to timing, we moved in before we could address the fridge, so it was still there when we brought our dogs in for the first time. Brutus walked up to the fridge, smelled it, and peed on it. We all just laughed because he was right. He has only had one accident in the house over the past 7 years, and this wasn’t it. We bought a new fridge the next night. Maybe not the funniest thing of all the things our dogs have done, but one of my favorites.

It’s the fear or apathy of the asshole to retaliate. I could be on a bus, and there could be an asshole playing music without headphones. Saying something could come with verbal abuse at the least and could end in a physical altercation with or without weapons at worst. As the annoyed passerby, is confronting the asshole worth the effort and risk for quiet?

I love calling people out when I can, but you gotta pick your battles.

I haven’t played a FF game in years, but grew up playing them. At least up through FF10, the stories were compelling. The turn based game play is slow, and I get not enjoying that, but I liked the writing the most.

Right. Too many commas makes for too many pauses in speech.

I can’t read things comfortably with too many commas. My internal monologue stops at each if them.

If there were a product remotely in the ballpark, I’d consider switching. Fortunately, this is pretty much the only time in the past ~decade I can think of them doing this.