From a scientific perspective, the world as you experience it is unambiguously made up by your brain. There's no directly experiencing the world. Only taking the electrical and chemical inputs from your sensory organs and interpreting them to create a model of what the world most likely is. It is a flawed and imperfect guess at reality based on the best available data. That is why illusions exist.

Big solid wooden ones. Get something second-hand and out of fashion cheaply (because if it's for life, who cares if it's currently in vogue, it'll drift in and out over the years.)

This is a great value for money option for oneself. But for a gift I'd probably steer towards a forged knife.

If you know it won't be legal to continue using Lightning in the US why did you say you hope they do?

The US is implementing similar laws as any sensible company follows the EU regulations globally to keep costs and complexity down so it's a free-throw for the US politicians to claim credit for doing something that would happen anyway.

Don't forget that the most power hungry gaming laptops shipped with two power adapters that you'd connect at the same time. No reason they couldn't do the same with two USB-C PD adapters for 480W.

"the government" you mean the EU?

AFAIK the models with the new adjustment collar are all like that but the ones without are still just as good as ever.

There's always people trying to use their washing machine as a dishwasher 5 years after their warranty ended, screaming abuse at the customer support people then complaining online that they didn't get the outcome they wanted. Miele is generally a good brand.