Those are all great reasons, but unfortunately the use cases I get lately are:

Can I use OBS with multiple monitors with different screen refresh rates to stream games to Twitch? What about Discord?
Will it play Steam games without screen tearing using the latest Proton, Linux Kernel, and Nvidia game-ready drivers and Wayland?

Things that even Ubuntu LTS can't do - at least not until 26.04 LTS is released

Debian is my recommendation for servers, Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio for average users (LTS for non-gamers, latest for gamers), and then I tell complete newbies that just want to play games to try Bazzite since it's immutable and can roll back if it breaks. I'm just sad Mint's missing the boat for all this linux gaming and streaming enthusiasm as people are finally jumping ship from Windows 11.

Glad to hear there's still users that support Mint, though. They're a great team and do a lot of work on little things that improve the UI so much. (Cinnamon had colored folders long before many others did and other tweaks like easy driver and kernel selection/roll-backs)

  I've just moved on to KDE Plasma as it's similar enough and supports what I need, but you never know. Could always come back if I find a solid use-case in the future.

Mint has a small team, and right now, Linux is in a time of rapid development for gaming on PCs with Steam, Wayland, enhanced gaming drivers, and such. I think it makes sense for them to pull back and maybe even just release based on Ubuntu LTS releases every 2 years.

I was a big fan of Mint for a long time because Cinnamon was such a nice alternative to Gnome and Unity. I eventually left for Kubuntu because the Mint devs had ZERO plans to work on Wayland. They wouldn't even entertain a discussion about a plan to make a plan to even think about working on Wayland while every other DE was in active development and even pushing for its release as default over X11 in upcoming releases. Now, they're busy playing catch-up bolting support for Wayland onto Cinnamon.

Maintaining a distro is a lot of work, especially for a small team, and they've got a LOT to improve on before I could recommend them to any of my gamer friends that are interested in trying out Linux - They're playing with Bazzite, Kubuntu, CatchyOS, and others.

Long term, I really think Mint should just fold itself into being an official Cinnamon Ubuntu flavor and work on just improving Cinnamon... or they could rebase on a different flavor entirely, like they did with the Debian version. I mean, they can and will do whatever they want, but my experience with them was that they couldn't see the writing on the wall that Wayland was super important for the future of Linux DEs, and I can't recommend them right now to anyone as other distros have caught up and gotten so much better. What's the point of maintaining Mint these days? Who's the target market that wouldn't do better on another option? I dunno.

Have you tried monk fruit?

It's available as a liquid or as a highly refined powder. Tastes a lot like honey to me.

I'm phasing out my other sweeteners other than sucralose and monkfruit where I can. Only keeping the sucralose to use in very limited amounts because it tastes the most like sugar, and I can add 1 packet to the monkfruit and shift the taste from the honey-like taste to a more pure sugar sweetness.

It makes sense when you realize they're using off-the-shelf walkie talkies instead of encrypted radio in many areas and other older, less useful equipment everywhere. The funding for upgrading and maintaining their forces was diverted to the oligarchy, and they're making do with whatever they can find. The drones made with off-the-shelf components are a good example as well. I mean, does it make sense for the Russian military to all be using open radio bands to discuss battle plans when the Ukrainians can listen in?!?!? Heck no. Of course they have encrypted radio - but not enough, and the ones they have are of different, incompatible types. So for the units of one type in one area to talk to units of a different type that's incoming, they use the open air radio b/c it's the only thing they can do to communicate. Better equipment exists, but they don't have it. Same is likely with this GPS. It was cheap and it worked, so they used it.

Troops are leaving behind expired rations, expired med kits, paper maps from the 90s, and other archaic things. We're not talking expired by a few months, either - expired by decades. Much of the heavy equipment is decades old - some dating back to WWII.

But, their biggest problem is that their supply lines are heavily debilitated. That coupled with the fact that their equipment was designed for nuclear warfare tactics and their generals have no experience with this type of warfare is crippling. They first thought Ukraine would fold under intimidation, then thought the fight would be similar to Syria. It's just been mistake after mistake & they're now lobbing cluster bombs and lots of older, terribly imprecise missiles at the region.

Ukraine has pushed Russia back to the disputed areas, but the war will go on until Russia has had enough. The borderlands are much easier for Russia to resupply and control what land they hold. Barring a nuclear launch, I don't see Russia taking an inch of Ukraine, and quite possibly losing Crimea as well. The Ukrainians are in no mood to negotiate after what Russia has done to their people.

Does Android force streaming apps to offer subscriptions through the Play Store the same way that iOS forces apps to use the iOS App Store to process in-app subscriptions?

It was even easier to figure out then that, there's a photo of the nose cone section from one of the missiles lying on the ground next to the wreckage.

Same to be said of The New York Times

Revolutionary Guard (terrorist organization) already admitted they shot the plane down themselves, no outside involvement.

"So whoever shot the missile..." that would be the Revolutionary Guard who were declared a terrorist organization last year, and rightly so as this event shows.

Old-growth trees do not sequester as much carbon as young-growth. Getting rid of the old growth also frees up more room for new-growth to take hold, the older the tree is the larger its root structure and canopy cover is which block out other plant life from taking hold.

California's Solar Panel Roof Mandate went into effect Jan.1st this year. All new homes and low-rise apartments are required to include solar panels as well as better insulation/HVAC. Will be interesting to see if it has any positive effect. Doubtful, considering all the traffic jams from denser housing.

Sadly, this does not include Domain Joined PC's. No word yet on if it will show up as an "Optional" update the way 1909 did.

These aren't even the largest wildfires in Australia's history, the largest occurred in 1975, they are all the result of European's clear-cutting old growth forests and replanting with grases that more easily burn in the Summer. Similar problem with Calfiornia using legislation to prevent forestry practices from being carried out that would reduce the risk to homes from naturally occurring fires.

The ice sheet is a flook, the result of an ice age caused by the impact of an large meteor striking the Earth. The melting of the ice sheet is a natural process and the result of Earth repairing itself from the unnatural ice age it had been forced into.

The "higher quality digital masters" are almost always 2K - because that's the output resolution of the preferred digital camera used in most productions. It's also the preferred master for 35mm film to digital master transfer. Special effects that are added later are in 720p - because that's the default for rendering them for every major Hollywood blockbuster due to the time it takes to render them. Later, they're up-scaled by a very advanced method, but it's still nowhere near 4K when completed.

Even the blockbusters that used actual film are almost always converted to a 2K digital master that is up-scaled to 4K.

For instance, Iron Man 2 was filmed using 35 mm. It was transferred to a 2K digital master, then 720p special effects were added and the entire thing was up-scaled to 4K with HDR 10 bit, then compressed and sold as a 4K UHD (ultra HD) Bluray.
You'll find Blu-ray after Blu-ray is the same story.
https://thedigitalbits.com/ite...

Now imagine how much CGI was in the Avengers: Endgame movie - and remember all of that CGI was rendered at 720p. If you get a 4K Bluray of that, you're watching mostly 720p animations enhanced (mostly interpolated) to 4K, then compressed for release (which creates artifacts).

Cloverfield Lane was filmed in 6K which is really 4K because of the area of the sensors, but it was converted to 2K as a digital intermediary to have its 720p CGI added to it... which was then up-scaled and color corrected for 4K, then compressed for 4K UHD Blu-ray. So, even though it was filmed in 4K, it's really an up-scaled 2K as well.
https://thedigitalbits.com/ite...

Alien's 40th anniversary release is one of the very few actual 35mm to 4K transfers for the theatrical release (the Director's cut portion is likely 2K up-sampled and the release includes both)
https://thedigitalbits.com/ite...

There just isn't very much actual 4K content out there for movies and TV. You an sometimes find it, but it's very much true that nearly everything you see that says it's 4K has been up-scaled from 2K at best.