I’ve only felt the need to change distros once, from Linux Mint to EndeavourOS, because I wanted Wayland support. I realize there were ways to get Wayland working on Mint in the past, but I’ve already made the switch and have already gotten used to my current setup. I personally don’t feel like I’m missing out by sticking to one distro, tbh. If you’re enjoying Mint, I’d suggest to stick with it, unless another distro fulfills a specific need you can’t get on Mint.

To add further context–I’d like to emphasize that an understanding of written Chinese would help with Kanji, but like you said, to a limited extent. When reading Kanji, there are cases where you’d have to be cognizant of Onyomi and Kunyomi (Basically pronunciations rooted in Chinese vs. Japanese). Not as important if you are strictly “reading”, I suppose. However, this would also not provide insight when reading Hiragana nor Katakana, how particles are used, rules for conjugation (polite vs. casual, past vs. non-past tense, etc.), further reducing mutual intelligibility. In some cases, Chinese characters may be visually identical to Japanese Kanji, yet have different meanings or applications. Traditional Chinese vs. Simplified Chinese is also a whole other topic.

Examples where there is some similarity:
JP: 走る
EN: Run (verb)

CN: 走路
EN: Walk (verb)

Matching characters, unrelated meaning and application:
JP: 勉強
EN: Study (noun)

CN: 勉強
EN: Reluctantly (adverb)

Furthermore, Chinese uses Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order, whereas Japanese uses Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order. Japanese also regularly uses subject omission, so it’s important to consider these things if you’re moving from one language to the other. Missing an understanding of these differences could lead to pretty different interpretations of a sentence.

That being said, having a background in Chinese would be more beneficial when picking up Japanese than the other way around, IMO.

Yeah, several platforms heavily incentivize and reward engagement. Unfortunately, as threads, videos, platforms, etc. get bigger, they make it easier to rage bait. It’s a pretty unhealthy behavior, imo. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone who believes in an idea, belongs on a platform, negatively posts, etc. is intentionally acting out of malice. Some are doing so without awareness. Others on a given platform may also be genuinely acting in good faith. It’s a pretty complex topic, with a lot of things to consider. That said, becoming aware of this cycle is important, IMO. It may also prove beneficial to find ways to distance one’s self from this cycle of negativity either by diverting it from your attention via breaks, or steadily replacing unhealthy behaviors over time. I hope you find something that helps yourself, OP.

A lot of social engagement through social media is driven by impressions such as up votes, favorites, likes, etc. Unfortunately, an easy way to promote engagement and such lies in rage bait. This is likely due to the visceral emotional response generated by rage baiting. I would also extend this issue to how ubiquitous instant gratification is to the internet and social media. People tend to acquire clout through reacting to something quickly, which isn’t always well-thought out. Add in the notion of mob mentality, and you have a recipe for the rapid exponential propagation of negative words, thoughts, and emotions. People also tend to not have productive ways of channeling their frustrations and issues, so they often see other entities on the Internet as just a name, sometimes less than that.

There’s also a heavy amount of tribalism across a variety of domains which allows one to take refuge from this rage baiting by finding other like-minded individuals to identify with. In some cases, the stress of everyday life or what have you removes a sense of agency or power in one’s life and sometimes people cope with this by developing a sense of superiority through whichever group or ideal that they identify with. This cycle repeats itself until there is a constant battle between any given groups where people attempt to elevate their self-worth by putting those that they dont agree with down, while emphasizing the superiority of their own ideal, IMO. I could be totally wrong ofc. I’m hardly perfect.

It’s been a pretty exhausting experience. I’m tired of it as well; my fondness for engaging with people has diminished greatly.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an ad on YouTube

AMD has served me well since I’ve started actively using Linux.

I will be cancelling my Proton Plus subscription due to the lack of feature parity on their Linux apps. For a privacy-respecting service provider, it’s a shame Linux is so low on their priorities and so far behind in development. If you’re on Linux, I would advise to steer clear until they actually focus on the quality of their services they have established instead of pushing out half-baked products.

Cheers, I got my own lab up and running earlier this year as well.

Greetings from kbin :)