he's like a sort of reverse spiderman. to me.

Thanks for any advice you may have!

Hi, great question!

One of the best things you can do in this kind of situation is to check with reliable sources, and I'm a moderately reliable source! I see the same post circulate periodically and I don't reblog it because it does have a lot of advice that I don't think is great to encourage for nontechnical people; if you get comfortable following registry editing instructions from tumblr you might not question it when you get registry editing instructions from another untrustworthy source.

What I would say is to look for this kind of information online by referencing known, trustworthy tech help sites. The links below are information that I would consider reliable sources, and I'll explain why for each source (and why you should be cautious on each source).

Windows Central "How to disable copilot on Windows 11" - this is a Windows-specific online publication that is independent from Microsoft and employs people who have a lot of experience administering windows. The site has existed for a long time and has a large audience of users who find it trustworthy. It is not aimed at an audience of extremely technical users, so is likely to have approachable information but may not be as comprehensive as other sources, and is moderately likely to be more favorable toward Microsoft than other sources. This guide is very simple and most users will be able to implement it, but it may not remove all the Copilot features you want to disable.

Tom's Guide "How to disable copilot in Windows 11" - Tom's Guide is a longstanding tech review and how-to site, it is independent from Microsoft, has an audience of highly technical readers, and has a long history of providing good information. This article in particular is a bit superficial, and at this point is about six months old so may be slightly out of date given how quickly this sort of thing changes. This guide is easy-to-follow and will do more to disable Copilot permanently than the previous guide, but requires navigating parts of the system that day-to-day users may not be familiar with.

ZDnet "How to remove Copilot AI from Windows 11 Today" - ZDnet is a business technology site that has been around since the 90s; sometimes it is deeply technical, sometimes it's a bit more of a news site. This particular guide provides multiple methods for disabling copilot (including the two methods in the previous guides) that allows the user to select how aggressive they want to get with the process. Because this article is so technical, it's worthwhile for nontechnical people to approach with caution. It does recommend running a script from github and reports the results that the writer had from running that script; I'll just say that any time that a set of instructions includes a warning to set a restore point, people who are not good with computers should probably stop before that point and ask a friend who is good with computers to supervise.

BEYOND simply checking to make sure that your instructions are coming from a reliable source, you can:

Look up the power shell script or instructions online to see other people talking about their experience with it

Look up information about the systems impacted by the script or instructions and see if you know how to fix any of the things that might break

Create a virtual machine and test on the virtual machine before you try the instructions on your real machine

Get comfortable with reinstalling - make sure you've got a recent image backup of your system and you know how to install from the image, then go to town and see what happens. If it breaks, reinstall and you know not to do that again.

But the very first thing you should do if you're looking at an unfamiliar command or registry edit instructions or program is search "what does [THING] do?" on your search engine of choice and see what other people are saying. Usually if it's bullshit you'll see it right away, and you can save yourself the trouble of digging into it deeper if there's a reddit thread called "[THING] Broke my Computer, What Now?"

However, a lot of getting better at computers is doing shit that might break things and knowing how to recover when you do break things. Basically once you get to the point that you know how to restore from an image there's very little you can accidentally do that will fuck your computer up so hard that you can't restore.

Here is what the backside looks like. OP notes this takes more fabric than paper piecing, but that excess fabric makes it already triple-layered. Besides not needing backing fabric, I don't think you'd need batting for this quilt at all. It's already thick and soft just from folding all that fabric into a hexagon.

Each hexagon begins as a 6" circle. camelscrafts does this by creating a paper template using a compass. According to the video, a 6" circle will create a hexagon that is 2.5 inches tall.

These hexagons are hand-sewn. Thread the needle.

With the fabric right side facing, find the center of the circle by folding it in half right sides together, then folding it in half again (wrong sides are facing). The top of the triangle shape is the center of the fabric circle.

Make a small stitch into the center of the fabric. The wrong side is still facing.

Unfold the circle. There will be a small stitch in the center.

Now the hexagon is created by folding the circle into itself: Take the needle to one of the edges of the fabric (it doesn't matter which one). Pull the needle through and pull the thread tight. This will fold down the fabric and create an edge of the hexagon. Crease the fold with your finger.

This fold has two corners, one at the top and one at the bottom. Put the needle into one of the corners and pull the thread taut. This will create another fold.

Continue this going around the circle until all of it is folded down, creating the hexagon. camelscrafts notes that the last corner pulled in may be a little bit "wonky" (no precise point in the corner) if the corners were not done precisely. However, that corner is pulled into the back, so is not visible from the front.

The hexagon is now formed. Sew around the folds in the middle of the circle to hold the folds in place. Tie off and cut the thread.

it would benefit me to learn about southern food other than collards, but why bother, when collards are so good?