In the Mojave? Mountain lions, coyotes, maybe a dog, and snakes (though that is more a matter of “avoid” than “defend”).

If the method does a long thing, the keep it long. I do a lot of data analysis and simulation, and so often people who came before had this urge to shorten methods, so we get:

def do_calculation(N, X, y, z, a, b, c):
    # Setup stuff
    for i in range(N):
        calclation(X[i], y, z, a, b, c)`

Sometimes there’s a place for that, like if calculation could be swapped for a different function, or if calculation is used all over the program. It’s a pretty good clue that something is up though when the signatures are almost identical. Of course, that has just led to people writing:

def do_calculation(big_struct):
    read_data(big_struct)
    calculate(big_struct)
    write_data(big_struct)

I’m not sure of your country, but are you tied to it? (For example, do you have family, or are trying to attain citizenship?)

Opening up your search might be helpful. Look at a variety of universities in many countries to see what options there are.

Yes and no. I would say for the field OP is in, a lot of jobs will have B.S. or M.S. as the “required” education, and then M.S. or Ph.D. as “preferred”. The U.S. just dumped $280B into the CHIPS act, so now is a pretty good time to be in semiconductor R&D. The folks I work with seems to have little trouble popping back and forth between industry, academia, and government.

Depends on the job, and how good your read is of the situation. My experience has been that managers guilt trip or do other emotional games when they’re out of other options. In that case, it may be a safe bet to stand up to them.

Other places you’re more replaceable, or the manager doesn’t care and has an axe to grind. Then it’s trickier.

Every (US) job description I’ve had save one had a line to the effect of “… and other duties as required by management.” Not to follow would be considered insubordination and could lead to termination with cause. Job description in this case is just a broad-stroke outline of what the job is supposed to entail.

The “save one” was a job with a strong union presence. In that case, going outside my job description could lead to me and my manager being in trouble.

The $1M salary is really typical of California tech job postings, and it is essentially meaningless. Under the new transparency law, employers have to list the salary range on job advertisements. For many of these speculative or open-application type roles, it’s common to list $90k-$900k as the range.

It makes great headlines, but nobody in that job is actually going to make 900k.

Not in Windows 10/11. You can still “eject” if it makes you feel better, but it’s basically redundant. They reworked the support for removable media so they are always ready to remove except during active read/write operations.

The 3 drug cocktail worked, but it was often a minimally-trained technician charged with placing the actual IV lines. I know most of us have had an IV sometime in our life with relatively little pain, but that seems not to be the case for some inmates. Anxiety, old age, obesity, dehydration, and myriad other reasons can make it more challenging to place a catheter.

No stores, markets, and services also translates to a low availability of jobs.

As a high schooler, you almost inevitably need some kind of “boost” to get out on your own. Maybe college, but at least a car or help signing for an apartment. Without at least some kind of help, it’s easy to get literally “stuck” at age 18 or 19. No money for a car or apartment, but no close access to employment without one of those tools.

I see parents moving to the suburbs to give a safe life for their kids away from “bad things” in the city. Meanwhile, parents may not be home until 6 or 7 pm due to leaving the city in traffic, and bored suburban teens can get into just as much trouble as their urban counterparts. Unless the parents are also able to commit some serious money to other involvement for their teenagers, the suburban life may not play out well for them.

Something that really struck me, particularly in Northern Europe, was that the young adults seemed to be a lot more self assured. There are probably a lot of reasons for this that I do not notice, but I wonder how much results from having a practical path to an independent and productive life. This in turn opens up so many other doors socially.

Putin took some steps to strategically wreck any semblance of politics in Russia. One of his advisors, Vladislav Surkov, secretly funded a variety of opposition parties, ranging from “green” environmental parties to openly Nazi groups. They let these groups grow in an organic way before “leaking” the information that they were all funded by the state/FSB.

This type of move, and similar actions, have made true political engagement very difficult. That march, protest, Facebook group, or underground newspaper? One has no idea whether it’s legitimate grassroots movement, or purely astroturfed campaign. Unless you have significant time and resources to study the issue, it is impossible to tell.

This was the exact objective: to basically make politics inaccessible for 99% of people. Sure there will be 1% who do have a good picture of what’s going on and who try to create movements, but their voices are drowned in the confusion. The average person may simply find that it’s too difficult to participate in a meaningful way. Even someone with full intentions to learn and participate may find themselves sidelined into a fake movement and essentially neutralized from a political perspective.

And then you use a generator and vault, but there’s some stupid caveat like “you can’t use the ^ character.”

Not just East Germany. If you dig enough, you will find mental health abuse in every country on earth, whether historical or ongoing. Of course in the USSR as you mentioned, also in China, the USA, and elsewhere.

“Abusive” in this case can mean abusive treatments, or treatments against things that are not diseases, such as homosexuality, promiscuity, or unfavorable political ideas.

In the US, read about the published papers of the mkultra project, and look as well into the ongoing existence of centers such as Elan school (now closed) and the Judge Rottenberg center (still in practice).

In my experience, having friends go through mental crises, the modern US system is hard enough to navigate even when one desperately needs and wants care. Try finding yourself a therapist when in such a depression that you can hardly get out of bed, much less search out who takes your insurance, has openings in their availability, and is a good match for your personality. Meanwhile true inpatient care seems reserved for either the fully disabled, or those who have already attempted suicide. Can you imagine if a profession like dentistry made care this difficult to access?

But for people who are either marginalized or truly mentally disabled, this is a harsh system that can make one suspicious, especially when the history of lobotomies, electroshocks, hydrotherapy, and other abuses are within living memory.

I’ve felt this way about twice in my life, and it’s when I had a really well crafted Jupyter notebook running in VSCode.

It’s definitely the kind of thing you want to pop open when boss is showing some new sponsors/customers around.

This really hit me hard once I had a kid.

The degree to which those small early lessons will stick in their mind, much less something that’s ingrained in their heads every single day.

I think I get it now - if kids are hearing this stuff day in and out from the moment they can talk - that they absolutely could be convinced that Trump or Putin or Xi are some kind of divinity. Even when they later learn otherwise, there will be some kernel of that propaganda remaining in their head.

Some people reach a phase where they’re really ready to question these things, but I met plenty of people in college for whom that dissonance was just too unexpected and painful. They simply retreated into what they already identified with.

Depends on your country and employer. In some situations, your job description could be a big deal. For example if you’re in a union, you are probably required to only do the specific tasks as described in the job description.

Some countries may also have laws about your work contract. If that applies to you, then it’s probably important on your employer’s part to have the right description for your job.

But in many places, it really doesn’t matter: your job description vs what you actually do, as long as you aren’t being asked to do something that needs licensure or other regulations. Many job descriptions will have a catch-all like “… And other duties as directed” to fill in the gap.

It’s especially noticable in cities where the storefronts close with rolling metal doors, and the windows close over with shutters. It is very apparent that the city is “closed.”

Of course these doors and shutters have very practical purposes. Just that if they’re not common in your home country, it can be jarring.