I am big into old obscure media, love ubuweb, but I would still hesitate to join a kind of unknown person for an activity like that. It’s just a big plunge.

I thought maybe I was misremembering the numlock thing so I looked it up and found a mention in someone’s user manual! See top of page 8here

Maybe a bit niche, but the Scanco software for computed tomography analysis. Cant remember what it’s called off the top of my head. It’s horribly dated and unintuitive. It does work though! My favorite was when we stopped being able to use it for several weeks, we thought it was busted. We contacted the company for help and they informed us that with a new update the numlock key toggled a “feature” that prevented editing files. No visual representation that editing was locked. Wild

Sas is awful but I will say doing mixed linear models and doing contrasts was pretty easy compared to r.

Policy on prescribing opiates had gotten a lot tighter in the last 7ish years. It’s unlikely to get prescribed those drugs for small pains. People got addicted before this tightening, weren’t allowed to wean off them, and now turn to street drugs instead of pharmaceuticals. Also they cutoff people with chronic pain. OD deaths actually have steadily increased despite an enormous drop in prescriptions and it’s mostly fentanyl. Fentanyl is also much cheaper than pharmaceutical opiates.

I think this is a major culture difference between your home country and US. What you describe is not how people in America socialize. The closest comparison would be college years, where you live in a small walkable town, typically with roommates, and don’t have too many responsibilities. If you want to recreate that then I’d recommend grad school. Or move to Chicago or ny city or small college town. The suburbs is generally where people move to focus on work and family, social lives change to be more around family, neighbors, and their kids school. It will be hard for a young person to make friends there. East coast has a bit more social culture than the rest of the US but it really depends city to city. West coast everyone is nice and relaxed but socially cliquey, it can be impossible to break into a friend group. Midwest everyone is nice but social events are more in the home over meals, more of a family vibe.