I think this supports his argument. Having to research desktop environments to decide which is optimized for the potential problems a new user may face, then finding a distro that packages that DE is quite frankly too much for the average user.

I’d argue between 3% and 5% of PC users are willing to research and experiment to find the flavor of Linux that truly works for them.

Linux has come a long way, I still remember using Gentoo as a daily driver and seeing Linux cross 1% of desktop share, but the average desktop user doesn’t know the difference between a kernel and a colonel, and they don’t want to.

Just piling on at this point, but we made 2 changes last spring that made summer so much more tolerable in our house.

1. More insulation. I bought a cheap thermal camera on Amazon and found entire closets and a bathroom with no insulation. Those rooms are a solid 10+ degrees cooler now.
2. More ventilation. Half my house didn’t have any soffit vents, but had attic vents. Adding soffit vents made that half the house 5 degrees cooler all on its own.

And we haven’t found ourselves needing it, but a mini split has popped up a lot here already and is a great idea.

I used to be in credit risk for a very large stock market company.

Calling the bottom of the market is the same as betting big and getting 21 in blackjack.

Super cool when it happens, but not skill. The number of grown men I had to hear crying because they were dollar cost averaging down to the bottom until they went broke still disturbs me.

I’m happy this worked for you, but it was not skill.

Yep, we’re looking at that exact option right now. 6 free to see if it’s going to work then it’s time to max that deductible!

Been looking at therapists for my teenage daughter, she’s been debating therapy for a couple of years and has recently fully committed.

We have good insurance and are financially secure, and holy shit it’s still going to cost an extraordinary amount. I don’t understand how anyone struggling with financial insecurity could even consider having access to therapy as an option.

What a fundamentally broken system, there is not a single type of care that exists that is accessible to the people who need it.

Your friend is paying it today in insurance premiums. Same money, just a different line on the paycheck.

And then if he gets sick, he’ll pay again.

Our willingness in America to pay money to a company that is incentivized by profits, just to not pay taxes is astonishing.

Prefer closed, but like many others here, the cat doesn’t allow for that without making her opinion VERY well known.