This is horrifying and impressive in equal measure. Thanks for sharing, OP

I share your frustration. I went nuts about this the other day. It was in the context of searching on a discord server, rather than Google, but it was so aggravating because of the how the “I know better than you” is everywhere nowadays in tech. The discord server was a reading group, and I was searching for discussion regarding a recent book they’d studied, by someone named “Copi”. At first, I didn’t use quotation marks, and I found my results were swamped with messages that included the word “copy”. At this point I was fairly chill and just added quotation marks to my query to emphasise that it definitely was “Copi” I wanted. I still was swamped with messages with “copy”, and it drove me mad because there is literally no way to say “fucking use the terms I give you and not the ones you think I want”. The software example you give is a great example of when it would be real great to be able to have this ability.

TL;DR: Solidarity in rage

Nice. How long did it take you to write this comment? Whenever I attempt stuff like this, it takes far longer than expected because I overcomplicate things

No. I’m pretty burnt out.

Everything I read on burnout says that the best (only?) way to treat it is to reduce or remove whatever is causing such chronic, disproportionate stress. Unfortunately, much of my burnout is caused by the most basic aspects of living (partly because I have disabilities that make it hard to reliably fulfill my basic needs, even with support).

Given that cutting out the bad stuff isn’t an option, I’ve been trying to instead add more good stuff to my life, in hopes that it will increase my capacity and thus reduce my relative level of burnout. I’m so tremendously tired though. I’m trying so hard because I do want to live, and there are things I feel I can offer the world. However, sometimes, in my exhaustion, I find myself thinking wistfully about the depression I felt as a young adult — it was simpler when I genuinely and wholeheartedly wanted to die. In some ways, it was easier to be hopeless and merely staying alive for other people.

I’m just tired.

Yeah, it’s the consistency of it that’s so impressive.

Proton is so good that even when a game has a native Linux version, I often opt for the Proton version (so my games are all in one place). I was even able to install mods for games like Baldur’s Gate 3 (albeit with a bit of tinkering)