Their bit over the end credits with Tom trying to pitch a Finale Sacrifice series absolutely cracks me up every time.

It could take a century

Maybe we should chip in and buy a second robot.

Basically none at this point. Unless it’s recognized as coming from one of the handful of people in my address book, or occasionally if I’m expecting a call (like from a doctor or the mechanic or something). But otherwise there’s no point. No one that would contact me or that I would want to contact me would use the phone - they would text, IM, email, etc. The odds of a phone call being junk or a scam is far too high to bother with.

As with most things in life, it’s probably a combination of factors. But please don’t beat yourself up over it.

There’s a lot of good advice already in this thread; no reason to repeat it. One thing you might look at the Proton Github issues list. Occasionally, when a game otherwise has a gold rating but I have problems with it, I can find some interesting corner-case details here. Here’s a link that you could use to find Anno 1404 issue, as an example: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+“anno+1404”

The other thing I would suggest is that you be more verbose when describing problems. You did a great job sharing the high-level issue and your system’s details, but what do you mean by “didn’t work”? Does it fail to launch? Does it launch but not do X? Those details can go a long way towards troubleshooting (though I do understand that your post was meant to not be game-specific).

Oh, and stay away from Cracks. Unless you’re VERY sure about what you’re doing, it’s just inviting trouble.

Something to consider when we talk about disconnecting and “touching grass”… it’s not an immediate thing. You need to be vacation for several days before you can genuinely begin to relax and feel and positive effects. So this idea that we can just nip out for 20 minutes and leave our phone behind for serious benefit is pretty much worthless.

So if you’re “disconnecting” and you spend the first few days just sleeping or staring at the TV, that’s pretty understandable. You’re paying off a fair bit of “rest debt”.

WRT your update: That’s great that you’re getting professional help. Make sure (if you aren’t already) that the feels you’re sharing here are being thoroughly conveyed to your doctor. Medication can be fantastic, but you may benefit more from a different medication. All good things to bring up with your professional.

Good luck!

This statement, from the company that looked at Recall and collectively said “yeah, this is a good idea”.

That, as others have mentioned, is a moderately difficult question for us without knowing what you like or what the specs on your laptop are.

If you install Steam, they have a pretty generous return policy. You just need to act within 2 weeks of the purchase OR before you hit a total of two hours played in that game - whichever comes first. I like Steam because the Proton compatibility layer built in makes gaming on Linux so incredibly easy.

I’m hesitant to do so because you undoubtedly like different things, but here is a short list of some of the games I’ve played that I really enjoyed based on total time played.

Sid Meier’s Civilization (the whole series is good, but 5 is my favorite)
Stellaris
Battletech
Satisfactory
Valheim
Football Manager (think of this title as the complex strategy game to FIFA’s action game)

Another vote being cast here for a both Brother and laser. The nice thing about laser is that you can go without printing for weeks, or even, months, and just pick up right where you left off. My old ink jets, if you left them that long, would have completely dried out and need to be replaced.

They’re not subs, but you may be looking for something like The Onion or Hard Times

Generally speaking, whiskys are Scottish in origin, while whiskeys may come from any country. But there is no hard-and-fast rule about it.

If it helps any, you’re not the first to have feelings like this toward the end of your undergraduate life. You’re not alone.

My advice for the moment would be to focus on making a strong finish in school. Yes, you need/want to start thinking about your future, but you don’t want to get this far only to stumble at the finish line. Don’t tack on a full-time or demanding job unless it’s absolutely necessary. June is going to show up a lot faster than you think it will and you have a lot of research, writing, and revision to go.

It might not be exactly what you’re looking for, and it’s no where as good a movie as Chinatown, but “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065462) definitely ends on a very “down” note. I saw it for the first time a few weeks ago and was kind of blown away by the ending.

The one I bumped into recently: the Coastline Paradox

“The coastline paradox is the counterintuitive observation that the coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined length. This results from the fractal curve–like properties of coastlines; i.e., the fact that a coastline typically has a fractal dimension.”

“continuing to push the boundaries of consent.”

If by “push the boundaries” you meant “completely ignore them”, then yes. This kind of behavior from MS, or any vendor, should always be considered strictly unacceptable.