I do structural and systems level engineering for heavy industrial equipment. My work is very involved and difficult, but also very rewarding. I went to a small community college for a year and, and then transfered those credits over to a big public land grant university, which helped a lot financially. Graduated into the great recession, and so I spent a year working as a technician, before getting laid off and working as a roofer for my uncle, before his company went under and tried selling thrift store items on eBay for about a year before landing a "real" engineering job. Then got laid off again a few years later when Covid hit, then worked a company for a few years before the factory got closed down and moved overseas, and now working my current gig.

My point being: even when you have a very clear idea of what you want to do for work (like I did), you're likely to find yourself on a long and windy road.

We've got em, we use em. A couple of Trek Verve 2+'s that we picked up used a few years back. One of them basically brand new, and I've put about a thousand miles on it over the course of two years. I like that they're mid-drive and use torque sensors, they feel very natural to use. I never did figure out how to adapt the proprietary rear rack to work with a kid's car seat, but we ended up getting a two seat trailer.

The chad Abraham Lincoln: sucessfully blockades an entire continental coastline

The virgin USS Abraham Lincoln: fails to blockade a 21 mile wide geographic chokepoint

I haven't read any of Arday's academic work, I don't know if it's good, and I don't know if it would have grown into something good or great. But unstated in all this is that all of these assholes would be similarly vulnerable if the Eye Of Sauron turned it's gaze on them and laid bare their life for everyone to Judge.

I can imagine all of these posh assholes at these Elite Institutions just malding every time they interact with this guy. In their minds, his greatest crime was not any supposed academic misconduct, and it was certainly not the exaggerations or lies about his life story. No, it was that he was as savvy as they were and understood how and play all their stupid fucking games, and had the gumption to Fucking Go For it when he saw an opportunity for advancement. And the prize he so unfairly stole from them was... the opportunity to do sociology research. How dare he!

Libertarians as they sit dying on the toilet, shitting their guts out:

Wait till you find out that he also spits on his awful boomer fans!

perception that something would make their already miserable commute/workday even slightly longer.

Literally the worst part of the day for a lot of people.

The kind perspective is that drivers don't really have a vision for how much calmer and nicer things would be on their neighborhood streets if everyone drove 30km/h (20mp/h). They also don't really have a good perspective on how little the lower speed limit would affect their commute, and the safety upsides. And so without some more effective communication, they're going to perceive this as a straightforward degradation of their own quality of like (which is tied to their daily driving experience).

My unkind perspective is that drivers are maniacs who have lost the ability to cooperate and compromise with other people in a civilized setting. You can see this if you ever go to a town planning meeting about any road renovations that would add any amenities for non-drivers. It will be filled with surly car drivers who will at minimum disrupt the business of the meeting with angry outbursts, and at worse be on the edge of actual physical violence. The town meeting where we discussed adding a bike lane on the bridge that goes over the train tracks (to the literal "other side of the train tracks") was a very enlightening moment for me, as I had never seen my fellow citizens so political activated by something that I thought was obviously good. They were basically saying the quiet part out loud: that the type of people that would use a bike to cross that bridge are not the kind of people that they want coming over to their side of the community.

I've brought up the idea of a city-wide 20mph limit when talking to town officials after one of these meetings, and their response was basically "yes, that's a good idea, but it's completely politically infeasible because of the backlash we would get, so we choose to not even bring it up as an idea in these meetings so that they don't get too sidetracked".

I would definately prioritizing playing something you've never tried before, as you'll have time to settle in and really get to know it. Some good options that I think have aged well:

NES:

Kirby's Adventure

Zelda 1

GB:

Link's Awakening

Super Mario Land 2 (try the DX version)

GBA:

Advance Wars (any of them)

Metroid Zero Mission

SNES:

A Link to the Past

Super Mario All-Stars (the remastered version of Super Mario 3 is in here)

You might get pretty far through Super Metroid. A plane ride without distractions might be the right frame of mind to do some of the required exploration.

If you like RPGs, there are a gazillion great ones

Don't disregard Sega console stuff. The Genesis had some frantic gameplay and spritework:

Gunstar Heroes

Thunder Force IV

Sonic 3 & Knuckles (best to play the Sonic 3 Complete romhack)

Castlevania - Bloodlines

I gotta try this one out, it looks way more ambitious than I was expecting.

If you play Super Mario Land 2, try the DX version. It's a super good color romhack.