If your a software engineer, memorizing an ASCII table (particularly the hex numbers of each character code) is definitely helpful. If for no other reason than so that you can read things that are randomly written in binary without having to consult a table.

Something not really otherwise terribly useful that nonetheless helped me keep my sanity: learn how to convert to base64 in your head. At work, we had really boring 8-hours-a-day training for a couple of weeks. To pass the time, I came up with random strings to base64 encode in my head. “Hat is 48 61 7a. The first six bits are 010010 which in base64 is an S. The next six bits would be 000110 which in base64 is G.” Etc. I’d write down the base64 strings character by character as I derived them and then check my results for errors when I got back to my desk.

How to convert various units of measurement. (Including between imperial and metric.)

2.54 centimeters in an inch. Degrees Fahrenheit is nine fifths of degrees Celsius plus 32. Stuff like that.

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Star Trek: Voyager. I was raised on that shit. Not objectively the “best” Star Trek. (Far from the worst, though.) But it’s the one that’s most nostalgic and, indeed, “cozy” for me.

God that article is depressing. Where I work, it’s bad but not as bad as any of those stories.

Crocheting gloves for rancors.

5-MTHF.

Open Source that shit. (If you want to get it to a more “done” state first, that’s fine.) The world can always use more FOSS.

I can’t imagine you’re the only one in this situation. If I were in your shoes, I’d search for similar stories online and see if I could get a sense of how friendly the company is to swapping OSs. For some companies, changing the OS is a complete deal breaker. Other companies are pretty willing to assume the issue was indeed strictly hardware and had nothing to do with changing the OS, and thus will go ahead and do the repair.

If you find that company is more like the former, install Windows. If not, just start the warranty repair process.

“The country”. U.S.A.? The respondent’s country (whichever that might happen to be)?

Also, presidents mostly don’t have complete dictatorial power… the current president of the U.S. notwithstanding, but do you mean for respondents to give answers that a president could realistically make happen, or is the spirit of your question more about what respondents would like to see changed by someone with dictatorial power?

billionaires would suffer extreme depression and paranoia until they downgrade to millionaire status

I think that’s kindof already a thing. Like, do billionaires as a demographic come across as not depressed and paranoid to you?

Trump famously eats McDonalds so much largely due to paranoia about being poisoned. (Hitler had similar anxiety delusions about being poisoned.) Musk is so insecure about himself that he pays people to play video games good so he can trick everyone into thinking he’s a good gamer.

Anyone who mentions, acknowledges, or even doesn’t sufficiently attempt to ignore/deny my existence or influence in the world, anything they eat tastes and feels like eating raw, unseasoned egg whites for a month. And I’ll put knowledge of that fact in everyone’s minds.

Then I can do whatever I want to annoy the fuck out of people and they have to ignore me. Wet Willie Elon Musk in public while looking him right in the eye. Replace the audio at a Kid Rock concert with Baby Shark for the whole show and everyone has to pretend it was a typical Kid Rock concert. Draw dicks all over Trump’s face with a sharpie during a presidential address on live, national TV. Find every HOA president and kill grass in their front yard in the shape of Bevis and Butthead.

I wouldn’t be unreasonable. A wry, approving smile here. Stopping and reading an obscene message I planted before realizing it was me. Stuff like that gets a pass. I might even turn a blind eye to an involuntary case of the giggles brought on by my hijinks, particularly if it helps the vibe. Also, anyone under 15 is exempt from the whole egg whites thing and can laugh their asses off and point with impunity.

1. Is living a curse?
2. MUH.
3. I heard someone on NPR say that liberals misunderstand conservatives more than conservatives misunderstand liberals. Not sure who said it. Someone on a program I started in the middle of.

Also, “3 of the following (1 each)” is a weird way to say “one of each of the following.”

Silly OP. Humans don’t use em dashes.

At most, their word processor magically turns regular dashes into em dashes and they don’t care enough to change it back.

That’s not really less likely to happen if I choose 25 years old than if I choose 10¹⁰⁷ years old, right? the genie said “forever”, which I assumed meant immortality. And there was nothing in OP’s post that made it sound optional to become immortal.

The heat death of the universe is expected in at most, say, 10¹⁰⁶ years.

So, 10¹⁰⁷ years. I’ll be an ancient, godlike entity far beyond the understanding of any living thing. Like an aboleth.

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This is the way.

Regexes in bash commands are my nemesis.

Right? Who gets death threats?