The youtube algorithm determined the following: people who watch the kind of videos in your history, are also interested in recording netflix shows. And it was right, because you are in fact interested in that (general) topic. This is another possible explanation.

The last time I bought a Mac was like 10 years ago, at an independent computer shop that specialized in them. The person at the register insisted on getting my personal info “because Apple needed it” but I didn’t want to give it. The person at the register very slowly sauntered up to their manager, had a long discussion, and eventually they figured something out because I suddenly didn’t need to give my info. It was kind of nervewracking because I was paying cash and I was like: what if I hand it over, and they change their mind? It’s not like I could call the cops, I’m the wrong demographic.

Anyway, whenever I thought about getting an Apple system, I remembered that experience and went with something else.

Excel is the one good piece of software in MS Office.

Last time I used MS Office was 10 months ago, and it had a bunch of annoying “features” related to sharing, etc. But PowerPoint has always had some great authoring tools. Sometimes if I was writing an article in LaTeX, I’d still do the figures in PowerPoint.

LibreOffice is a solid substitute, though.

I’ve been using Gimp for simple things, and it’s been OK once I realized that whatever I want to do, I should look it up first instead of just trying to figure it out through trial and error.

They’re both part of the nanobility.

Waifus don’t count to normies.

You can usually find an invidious instance if you look through redirect.invidious.io. For example, if I try the servers for https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=aQsWzL7_RiI the 6th one down currently works.

“Part of Reach”

In this image you could just put cardboard over all the ads to have an ad-free experience.

a sunscreen or moisturiser that shields you from face recognition

Hey fam, I don’t fully share your perspective, but I respect it. Here are some thoughts:

• as a student: if you want to be a leader in your field, you really should publish, and get your name out there, and talk to people, etc. However, if that’s not important to you, then (usually) you only really need to “publish” your dissertation. This may vary by field and university, and will greatly depend on your advisor. In the US, a younger faculty member will want their students to publish a lot (to increase their own prestige), though a more senior faculty member may not care as much.
• I haven’t heard of people publishing under pseudonymns. But you could do something like: if your name is “John Paul Jones”, and you’re usually known as “John Jones”, then maybe you could publish as “Paulie Jones” and then go back to “John Jones” again after graduation.
• in security they say “define your threat model”; what threat is it you’re defending against? Is there a threat that can take advantage of the fact that you are currently a student at XYZ university? I decided that risk was minimal. Is there a threat that can take advantage of an email that you published in a paper? I decided the risk of phishing attacks was real, so I used an email address that I only accessed on a “non-work” computer. etc.
• once you graduate: a lot of people here are talking about “academics” and it sounds like they basically mean university-based researchers. But universities aren’t the only places where research is done. There are many industry labs that don’t publish, or only publish internal documents. Likewise in the US there are government-funded labs that conduct research that is not circulated; if you’re from .nl there may be the same in Europe.
• similarly, you can use your PhD to get a good non-research job in industry or the government. A lot of times this involves understanding cutting-edge research well enough to apply it or analyze it, and keeping up with the state of the art. (i.e. you have to be able to understand research, though you’re not doing the research yourself.) These usually do not involve publishing.

Anyway good luck with the PhD!

Yeah but then google will tell you to microwave your glue and eat it.