THEN, after calling them up and explaining the situation, they apologized and said they’d dismiss the charge–which they failed to do

That sounds about right. When I was in college I got a speeding ticket halfway in between the college town and the city my parents lived in. Couldn’t afford the fine due to being a poor college student, and called the court and asked if an extension was possible. They told me absolutely, how long do you need, and then I started saving up. Shortly before I had enough, I got a call from my Mom that she had received a letter saying there was a bench warrant for my arrest over the fine

For fully remote anywhere in the midwest is good as long as you don’t need the big city nightlife. You can buy a starter house in the rich parts of KC for 500k, or a nice house in the middle-class areas.

There has to be a small unused area at the start for the partition table. 2MB is far more than is needed for that, but leaving less would tank performance due to the fs blocks and disk blocks not being aligned.

I know Gentoo has it masked for testing with this note, which is probably the same reason why other distros without the same mechanism don’t have it at all:

Testing. An upgrade from 102 isn’t recommended due to downgrading most likely not being possible. Back up your profile before attempting. Fresh install should be fine. Bug #910229

I’ve seen the first chart in a lot of news stories, and it’s a scary graph, but that second one looks positively terrifying by comparison.