Help, I'm 5 years in and still have no clue

Depending on your country, that is the norm. Engineers here have at least 2 national unions to choose from, finance have a couple of unions, same with teachers, admin staff, etc. etc.

As usual, this is probably just US being victim of 'merican exceptionlism.

I love me a good piece of pedantry. Technically correct, the best kind of correct.

That would be a nice legal loophole for a corporation. Bribe someone to lose a court case without council, and then use that case as legal precedent for future cases.

I only ever think about the Holy Roman Empire, so I'm not in the in-group sadly :-(

I run Debian at home because "Microsoft evil", but I kinda think the Windows 10 image we use at work is alright. I work at a Forbes 500 company with a huuuge IT department, so I'm guessing they've done well at setting up group policies or something to make a de-cluttered experience for us. At least I never see any ads or Bing bullshit, and the Start menu works like I expect from ye old days. I could never make W10 work just as sleek at home, so I gave up and moved to Linux.

That said, most developers here still use a local Linux VM for actual developing lol.

I get that. In my city there are at least 2 makerspaces and 1 communal workshop where you can use all their tools at any time, for a monthly membership fee. I would totally use that option if I didn't have my own house. Not sure how common that is around the world though.

Sounds awesome (except the stealing part)!

My local government is pushing for people to bike more instead of driving, but if you have a decent-looking bike it will be stolen. Bike theft is so bad that there is a satirical movement to oppose biking until the bike theft situation has been dealt with.

What are you doing, step-grandmom?

Woodworking! Yes, you can obviously spend lots of money on equipment, but you'd be surprised by how nice furniture you can build with just a track saw and a trim router.

A little bit of shit is good for your immune system. I'm microdosing on feces to stay strong and healthy.

...and not checking if you need to use the brush? I would be divorced in a heartbeat. Or do you advise closing, flushing, and opening again to check if you have tainted the bottom of the toilet bowl?

I frequently dream about having an upcoming quantum physics exam which I have not studied for. It's 12 years since I handed in my master's thesis and got my engineering degree.

Am I normal?

I sign papers with customers from all over the world, and if I get to sign first and need to add a date, I invariably go for YYYY-MM-DD from ISO-8601. If they go first it's most often illegible to readers without any cultural context.

Me agrees.

Yeah, in those cases I sometimes just put "she" instead. If they are the type of person to get upset by that (presumably because it's a he that doesn't want to be mistaken for a she), it's precisely the person I want to offend. Reasonable people don't care.

Never go back to front.

Yeah, let's call it a self defence cable instead. Like a corded taser.

Nah, industrial communication protocols in the IT industry uses lots of master/slave terminology. E.g. Modbus and Profibus DP comes to mind.

That's really clever, I'm stealing that.