Above all, because it's kind

Every single dad packed into the car:

Your husband and all his coworkers:

Rogue by Sam Johnstone

For everything we do here, please be sure to be careful with what you edit, and restart your computer to lock things in. If you don't have access to the Group editor, (likely to happen if you're on base windows) you can do this as well by opening your Registry Editor app, then inputting this after your 'computer' or whatever the initial segment is. (Mine is computer. If I just try and paste the below string it gets SO mad at me)

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot

Navigating to your "turnoffwindowscopilot", hit modify, and set the value data to 1.

If done correctly, it'll look like this.

While we're at it, you can also get rid of the integrated search, (or that thing where it searches the web when you search anything, whether or not you want it to) and such through regedit as well.

Integrated search will have you going to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

Navigate to your "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions" bit, if you don't see it, you can make it by right clicking and creating a new registry D-Word key of that exact name. Edit the key, set it to 1. It'll look like this if you do it right!

To get rid of Windows Spotlight, (The thing where it pulls up ten billion pages on windows start page, shoving ads in your face and cluttering everything) we go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DesktopSpotlight\Settings

And set "Enabled State" To 0. If you do it right, it'll look like this!

Disabling edge on startup will also help a fair deal with processing speed and the like. This you can do in all sorts of ways, the easiest being turning it off entirely on startup through settings in the like.

If you want to kill it *entirely*, though? :)

In regedit, run along to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft

Navigate to your MicrosoftEdge key subcategory. If you don't see it, you can make one! Note, this is a KEY, not a d-word. *inside* that subcategory, we want to either make or find the D-Word key of PreventLaunchEdge and set that to 1 in the same way as all the others. It'll look like this.

Aaaand while we're here, I'd HIGHLY recommend shanking Killer Networking Services. It's just bloatware. (Ostensibly it's supposed to monitor your network bandwidth and even things out, but that really means it's constantly monitoring and pinging things, which eats up the bandwidth you DO get, and also chunks your computer's processing power.) Getting rid of it entirely is borderline impossible, since it's set to redownload on regular updates and intel is very pushy with its updates.

This you can do by opening your Services.msc, which basically shows you all the background stuff that Windows does. Find Anything with Killer in the name, right click it, go to properties, and disable startup. It should look like this, if done successfully. It will probably reenable itself in time/in later updates for windows, but it's a quick fix. I'd also check your TaskScheduler app to make sure that nothing's scheduled to open up there, either.

If you CAN completely kill Killer services through uninstalling and the like, I would warn that at very least for my computer, the only ethernet/lan support applications that are available ARE Killer's. When you download updates, you really do have to do it manually and ONLY download the ethernet services, or just be cool with not having Lan functionality.

One last thing, not a shit application but is a shit service. If your computer's constantly overheating or just warm, you likely have Turboboost enabled. (Default setting that you can't change) If you want to be able to turn it off and drop your temps by like 40 degrees, in Regedit go to

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\be337238-0d82-4146-a960-4f3749d470c7

(Note- This isn't the string copy paste from the reddit thread, this is mine that does the same thing. If my string doesn't work for you, check the reddit thread string. If that doesn't work either, you can follow the path and find it pretty easily. Probably has like, one letter of difference somewhere. The bits all start the same, though, so it's easy to find.)

and go to "attributes". Set the value from 1 to 2, and now in your advanced Power Plan settings in control panel, you'll be able to *see* turbo boost and turn it off.

It'll look like this, and in power options, a successful disabling of boost should look like this.

Turning off quick startup's also a good call, since that basically stops your restarts from actually shutting things down properly.

They've currently got two campaigns active, one for the PA Supreme Court and one for the CA special redistricting election. For the latter one, I can tell you that this is a weird proposition historically and many Californians don't really know what to make of it; it might be one where messages sent to voters could really help make up voters' minds.

The elections this November aren't for the U.S. House, or the Senate, or any other branch of the federal government.

The elections this November are actually more important than the elections for the federal government.

They are a mix of state and local elections.

To break it down further: we have statewide elections in the following states:

New Jersey: Governor, State House.

Virginia: Governor, Attorney General, State House.

Pennsylvania: a retention election for the State Supreme Court. Three incumbent Democratic justices are up for retention votes, where a "yes" vote means they stay on the court, and "no" means they must be replaced (potentially with a Republican). Republicans are attempting to take back control of the court by unseating two or more Democratic justices, which could compromise the fairness of elections in this state in 2026 and 2028. There are also retention votes for several lower courts.

California: Prop. 50 aims to counter Republican gerrymandering in Texas by gerrymandering an equal number of U.S. House seats in CA, contingent on the TX map staying standing in court. If passed, the new CA map would last from 2026 to 2030 (inclusive).

Colorado: Funding free meals for kids in schools, including mechanisms to help counteract the federal SNAP cuts! (Essentially, a recent change to the ballot measure made it so any leftover money from the meal program could go to SNAP.) This is via Proposition LL and Proposition MM.

Maine: Two propositions. The first is a dangerous voter disenfranchisement proposal, which would decimate access to absentee voting and require photo ID to be shown at polls. Proponents of the measure tried to sue to stop the summary on the ballot from actually saying what it would do to absentee voting (they lost their case, luckily), so you know it's bad.

The second Maine proposition asks whether to implement extreme risk protection orders (red flag laws). For context, Maine currently has a weaker "yellow flag law."

Washington State: Proposition to allow the state to fund its upcoming, public long-term care insurance program, WA Cares, with stock market investments reminiscent of how the state can already handle pensions. This would arguably/ideally keep premiums lower; I won't claim to be an expert on this one but it's definitely worth reading more about.

Texas: Too many propositions to list. (Literally, there's 17). Luckily, Ballotpedia has already listed them for us.

There are also too many municipal (a.k.a. town-wide, city-wide, or county-wide) elections to list! These elections affect your community the most directly!

Most people know NYC is voting for mayor (don't let Cuomo make a comeback!), but don't let him distract you from city council elections, either. Wikipedia has a long list of the largest cities with municipal elections in 2025 (Atlanta, Minneapolis, and New Orleans are some examples), but if you live in a smaller town, be sure to google "[your town name] elections" to see if you have anything this November.

Lastly, there is a special election in Tennessee's 7th Congressional district that's happening after election day, on December 2nd. This district is Republican leaning, but a large enough Democratic over-performance could flip it — and constitute one of the only chances to whittle down the Republican House majority before 2026.