What was so bad about PoE2?
I really enjoyed it myself, especially with the turn-based addition. It felt like I could really use all those area spells and abilities the way they were intended.

My job title is data engineer, but the organization I work at is small enough that it basically ranges from business intelligence to cloud engineering to data architecture to data science to whatever other thing is even slightly related to data :)

It might not cover everything, but here’s a nice list:
https://european-alternatives.eu/

I’m a happy OpenSUSE user, but is there a mrs. Chad I can be instead? :)

I wouldn’t know about the hence part, but I always read it as “years from now”. A bit like the opposite from “years since”.
As for the other thing, it started out with deliberately engineered beings for specific tasks like the vacuumorph.
About a hundred years later the remaining people would create new humans with the specific goal of being able to survive the harsher environment of a ravaged earth. It was these that evolved further into different creatures.
It’s a pretty far fetched story either way, I just like it for the weird pictures :)
I posted a link in one of the other replies. You can read the whole thing there if you’re interested, there’s a timeline on page 20 if you just want a quick overview.

There’s a copy of it in the internet archive

It’s a speculative evolution book from 1990 about how mankind might evolve in the next 5 million years. Basically the premise is that due to climate change, new species of humans are engineered to survive in a more hostile world. And then it follows these new species and their further evolutions.
The creatures in the picture above are both descended from humans.
It’s weird, bleak and very far fetched.

A copy of Man after Man:

This is such a weird book. It has leech people, underwater people, blind psychic baby people, meat mountain people, etc.

First thing that came to my mind was this scene from Allo Allo :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1K8d9qXGnI

It’s a new one I made up when I joined Lemmy. Not sure how I exactly ended up with this but it’s the only one I made in over a decade. I like nicknames that sound like actual names but are still unique, and I wanted something that sounds nice and gender-neutral.
Anyway, my nicknames usually become part of my identity. So I’m as much Thelsim as I am <redacted> nowadays :)