Honing in on the “recipes” par of your post. I’ve really enjoyed self hosting mealie for those.

Correct. Its just a mesh VPN

I think this may be a your milage may vary thing. I only personally use netbird for remote server management, as I barely consume anything other than streamed music remotely. I host netbird community edition on my server in a VM so the streaming quality isn’t dependent on any tier of service purchased from the company

I’ll recommend netbird as its entirely running on your server, is free, and I found it way easier to set up compared to Tailscale/Headscale

Valid. I just cannot play ARPGs absent a decent enough story. I’ve dropped a few due to uninteresting grinding, but I understand that is an appeal in and of itself to other gamers.

Not defending last epoch but Grim Dawn did not feel complete. The base game story ‘ends’ on a complete cliffhanger quest the way a TV show Season 1 ends.

I like Grim Dawn but it pisses me off that the base game is so cheap when the studio knows the experience is super incomplete without the 3x as expensive expansions.

Horizon Zero Dawn is to this day the only game I have ever taken the time to listen to/read all the optional little lore drops in the world as I encountered it. Really well done IMO, even if the game is not overall that good, best world building I’ve experienced

Breaks my fucking heart man…

An ex army friend of mine said he’d be expected to make that shot with iron sights at 300m if he had an M4 after a year of training.

Not to say every backyard marksman is army trained, but it doesn’t sound improbable.

Is the main appeal of prebuilt NAS cases the aesthetics and the reduction of DIY concerns?

Because they seem to me like overpriced and underpowered computers. Most tech-oriented folks I know have more powerful PCs in a closet somewhere that they could easily convert into a NAS

Edit: some very thoughtful responses thanks y’all! I definitely see the appeal for people who just need something that doesn’t need tinkering or care significantly about power draw and noise.