Then I derped. My bad!

As a wise man once said, "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't after you." Oh wait, that was Kurt Cobain, not a wise man.

Jokes aside, don't assume that a piece of info about someone else is fine to share, because it is for you. OP likely has their reasons and that's to be respected. (NB: this is coming from someone who doesn't mind even sharing their city online.)

The way that I interpret it, OP's girlfriend was simply being hyperbolic. I don't think that she's genuinely asking OP to kill her hypothetical kidnappers; specially given that, as OP mentioned, they live in a safe place.

Instead I think that she simply wants to be reassured that OP cares about her and her security. And then started playing around with the "but what about our cat?" thing because come on, if you're thinking on outrageous scenarios, might as well think on them properly!

I get that you're trying to get more info to help OP out better, but I think that it's better to drop this "where are you from?" talk. Privacy-wise it's rather problematic, you know? [Sorry for the uncalled advice.]

You're probably better off trusting your guts, and the guts of people around you, than what anyone in the internet says about this matter. Including me.

That said: I don't think that she's either gaslighting or guilt tripping you. I think that she's simply feeling insecure.

Those are used with urine, not blood. Urine is yellow-ish, but since it's just a drop, it doesn't stain the strip; instead, the blue tip changes colour as it reacts with the glucose in the urine. Then you compare that coloured tip with a chart, and you get an idea of the concentration of glucose in your body. Picture related:

I remember seeing those bottles in my bathroom all the time as a kid (my sister is diabetic).

These almost look more like ph or ketone test strips…

It is roughly the same idea as the one behind the litmus test for pH, indeed. The difference is which substance you're putting there (Benedict's reagent vs. pH indicators) and which substance you're testing for (glucose vs. H₃O⁺ / OH⁻).

If you're talking about strips that look like this:

I believe that most brands use Benedict's reagent: copper sulphate, sodium citrate, sodium carbonate. It interacts with reducing sugars (like glucose) and the colour goes from blue to light green to green to brown-green to brown-red, depending on concentration.

This screams FAITH (Filthy Assumptions Instead of THinking) from a distance, on multiple levels:

1. Assuming that the current machine learning development will lead to artificial general intelligence. Will it?
2. Assuming that said AGI would appear in time to reduce power consumption. Will it?
3. Assuming that lowering the future power consumption will be enough to address issues caused by the current power consumption. Will it?
4. Assuming that addressing issues from a distant future means that the whole process won't cause harm for people in a nearer future. Will it?

Furthermore, Gates in the quote is being disingenuous:

"Let's not go overboard on this," he said. "Datacenters are, in the most extreme case, a 6 percent addition [to the energy load] but probably only 2 to 2.5 percent. The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 percent reduction? And the answer is: certainly," Gates said.

The answer addresses something far, far more specific than the main issue.

If I may, here's my alternative solution for the problem, in the same style as Gates':

Kill everyone between the North Pole and the Equator.

What do you mean, it would kill 85% people in the world? Well, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, right? Nobody that I know personally lives there, so Not My Problem®. (Just keep Japan, I need my anime to watch.)

...I'm being clearly sarcastic to deliver a point here - it's trivially easy to underestimate issues affecting humankind, and problems associated with their solutions, if you are not directly affected by either. Gates is some billionaire bubbled around rich people; this sort of problem will affect the poor first, as the rich can simply throw enough money into their problems to make them go away.

I know that this expression desensitises people to something serious, but it describes Microsoft - the "it"/corporation - perfectly: rapist mentality. It shows how eager Microsoft is to disregard consent, users saying "no, I don't want it", and to force itself over the users as long as it gets some benefit out of it.

Including new obnoxious advertisement slots into an already released product - one that you paid for - is only a result of that mentality.

I thought about this a while ago. My conclusion was that the simplest way to handle this would be to copy multireddits, and expand upon them.

Here's how I see it working.

Users can create ~~multireddits~~ ~~multicommunities~~ multis as they want. What goes within a multi is up to the user; for example if you want to create a "myfavs" multi with !potatoism, !illegallysmolcats and !anime_art, you do you.

The multi owner can:

1. edit it - change name, add/remove comms to/from the multi
2. make the multi public or private
3. use the multi as their feed, instead of Subscribed/Local/All
4. use the multi to bulk subscribe, unsub, or block comms

By default a multi would be private, and available only for the user creating it. However, you can make it public if you want; this would create a link for that multi, available for everyone checking your profile. (Or you could share it directly.)

You can use someone else's public multi as your feed or to bulk subscribe/unsub/block comms. You can also "fork" = copy it; that would create an identical multi associated with your profile, that then you can edit.

All languages are the result of the collective brainfarts of lazy people. English is not special in this regard.

What you're noticing is two different sources of new words: making at home and borrowing it from elsewhere.

For a Germanic language like English, "making at home" often involves two things:

• compounding - pick old word, add a new root, the meaning is combined. Like "firetruck" - a "truck" to deal with "fire". You can do it recursively, and talk for example about the "firetruck tire" (the space is simply an orthographic convention). Or even the "firetruck tire rubber quality".
• affixation - you get some old word and add another non-root morpheme. Like "home" → "homeless" (no home) → "homelessness" (the state of not having a home).

The other source of vocabulary would be borrowings. Those words aren't analysable as the above because they're typically borrowed as a single chunk (there are some exceptions though).

Now, answering your question on "why": Norman conquest gave English a tendency to borrow words for "posh" concepts from Norman, then French. And in Europe in general there's also a tendency to borrow posh words from Latin and Greek.