I’ll tell you the strategy that worked for me last time (quit for ~2 years), and that I’m using this time.

• Switch to a vape. Lung capacity increases immediately, and you get rid of the bad smell. If you haven’t vaped, give yourself some time to get used to the different habit (no cigarette packing ritual anymore etc)
• Buy a 0 nicotine vape or two, or find a local place you can get them easily. This is your “inside” vape.
• Buy a refillable vape and get nicotine liquid roughly equivalent to the full-nic vape you switched to from cigarettes. This is your “outside” vape.
• Start restricting the locations you use the full-nic vape. I work from home, so I don’t vape full-nic at my desk, I walk outside to do it. You want to break the absent-minded vaping+work or vaping+tv habit.
• Step your nicotine intake down over as long a period as you like, but don’t ever step it back up. First time I quit, I did it over about a year. That’s a little extreme. You could probably do it over a few months.
• Once you’re on 0 nic all the time, either stay with that, or gradually wean yourself off the habit as well. This is much easier without the chemical addiction.

Good luck.

I was home schooled from childhood through highschool. I got a GED before I joined the military, then used the GI bill to go to university and took placement tests for everything, which put me at the same level as everyone else except for trigonometry, which I had to take a remedial class in.

Yeah, the US grade system up to highschool. I haven’t done those grades at all.

Never have I ever gone to school in grades K-12.

Fair

Assuming that creatives can be replaced by AI (meaning there isn’t some soft cap on how good it can get for technical reasons) then creatives will be replaced with AI. The only difference striking makes is whether it happens in 5-10 years or 10-20.

You pasted the last paragraph twice.

I’m probably going to get some hate for this one, but Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse. The story wasn’t as tight as the first movie, they introduced too many new characters to keep up with, and it ended with a setup for the next movie.

Fucking hell.

Sweet, we need more non-English programming languages. I’m surprised that existing programming languages haven’t been translated yet.

Went to a doctor for a twisted ankle, who told me that my feet had exaggerated arches. When asked what that meant (as in- medically, what problems could that cause) he laughed and replied that it meant I had “ugly fucking feet”.

Rust, hands down.

I’ve watched Year One exactly once. In a tent in rural Afghanistan lol.

Quote where I said that.

You said you wanted a say when you advocated for that policy in the first place

What policy? Go find the thing that I said that you think is me advocating for overriding the will of kids and their parents, and just quote it at me.

Where did I say that I wanted a say? We were talking about whether kids should be free to make all of their own decisions. I’m using bad decisions with food as an example, and you’re accusing me of trying to tell other people what to do, then calling me an authoritarian.

I’m not fighting, I’m just checking out of the conversation. Go fuck yourself.

You’re asserting that they have a right to make all of their own decisions, then asserting that I don’t believe in a free society unless I agree. Neither of these things is obviously true- it’s possible to support children having some decisions made for them without supporting totalitarianism.

See my other reply for examples of kids making their own decisions. Do you support all of those?

I would bet that the obesity rate among children if they didn’t have parents deliberately trying to get them into sports and making them meals at home would be almost 100%. You’re saying “this affects everyone” which is technically correct but ignores that it almost certainly affects one group much more.

I probably come down more in the side of coops and unions than government, but yeah, that’s probably more doable than an attempt at a ban.

Yeah, fair. My parents were painfully religious and harassed me unmercifully because I wasn’t, so I’m not saying it’s all sunshine and roses. But leaving kids free to do whatever they want seems like it would have an attrition rate similar to turtles running for the ocean.