horse

Serious question: How do you tell someone suicidal that opens up to you, that you can't handle the topic without making them feel worse?

Sure, the FDP is mostly irrelevant at the moment, but the AfD got the 2nd most votes in the recent EU elections, right behind the CDU/CSU which are also very much pro car and anti bike infrastructure. In the east the AfD often got more votes than any other party in most places. The upcoming state elections won't go any better either. None of the current ruling parties are going to be in the next government when Germany has its federal elections next year. It's going to be a right wing government and I have zero faith in the CDU/CSU not to form a coalition with the AfD when the time comes. Things are really fucked here at the moment and they are going to get much worse before they get better (if they get better at all).

As others have said, Germany is not as bad as the US (at least as far as I can tell looking at the US from the outside), but it's still fucking terrible and will likely get worse under future governments, which are all but guaranteed to be right-wing, quite possibly including the outright fascists of the AfD.

Public transport is useless, especially the train network, which is horribly outdated technically and has been gutted by quasi-privatisation. Trains are frequently late or cancelled (which counts as on time for German Rail's statistics). If you don't live in a city you basically have to own a car because of this, especially in smaller towns where there might only be like two busses a day (or none at all). There are some small improvements being made in cities, but they are hugely lacking and slow. They will also likely not survive future governments, which are promising car-centric policies and trying to import the anti-cyclist culture war from the US.

So yeah, it's bleak and the future looks even bleaker. With how things are going politically at the moment urbanism will be the least of our worries though.

The 840 uses different firmware to the 520 and you can't disable the VP at all. You can however access the file system as you described, so my workaround was to edit the XML files for the map themes and make the arrow for the virtual partner 100% transparent. The VP is still running of course, but that does fix most of my gripes with it.

I'll have to check if I can do something similar for the sounds, but I'm not sure it will be possible since it's just a beeper and I don't imagine there are ordinary sound files that can be edited.

I have a Garmin Edge 840 bike computer and I do like it (more than the Wahoo ELMNT Bolt v2 I had before), but man some of the design decisions are just baffling to me.

Like why can't I have tones for my notifications (for refuelling), without also having them for navigation? And why do notifications close themselves after 5 seconds? I always miss them because I either have the tones silenced and happen to be looking where I'm going instead of my head unit when they pop up, or I have the tones on I miss them because the navigation tones are so obnoxious I just learn to ignore all the sounds.

And why can't I disable the virtual partner, and why the hell is the arrow on the map for the virtual partner bigger than the one that represents the actual rider?

/rant

All you've said is that it's fine because you can run Windows 10 on old hardware, but somehow being able to run a fully supported version of macOS isn't good enough.

The point was that Windows is the same.

Apple supports current macOS plus the previous two. If he's on one of those ( which it sounds like) everything will work just fine.

Only until he gets a keylogger on his computer

There are videos on youtube that can help. Tom Scott did one where he learns to ride a bike as an adult. He seemed to get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Do it. I took up cycling last year (although I learned as a kid) and now it's literally my favourite thing to do ever. I'm also the fittest I've ever been.

Drugs are honestly pretty meh. I'm not saying they can't be fun and or that they are evil or anything, but I feel like you are seriously overhyping them.

I used to a lot of drugs and lots of different kinds too. Sure I had fun and I don't massively regret it. But since I quit all drugs (including alcohol) several years ago I really have to say there are plenty of other things in life that are just as fun as drugs, if not much more so. There's only so much you can experience with drugs and it gets old fast.