It is really powerful per watt, and has a built-in UPS. Any homelab type things you could do with that? macOS+homebrew will give you a nice *NIX feel, very familiar if you're a Linux user.
I'm a fan of having a remote homelab computer+disk for off-site storage. This would be a good candidate in that it wouldn't use excessive power at a friend/family's place, but may be overkill (I use a pi3 for that).
I hope I'm wrong! I'd definitely consider buying some --- hopefully you can report back with results. If they're slower than advertised but have the actual capacity that'd still be awesome!
The drive doesn't provide 4TB of storage either, considering the single NAND chip. That means if you were to attempt to write that much data to the SSD, at some point it would either fail or start overwriting existing data.
I think large planes "look" like they can't work because their "relative speed" is really low --- that is, their speed relative to their length. We're used to seeing birds cover tens of lengths per second, whereas a large airliner covers ~1ish per second at takeoff.
Or not, but this always seemed like a plausible explanation as to why planes look impossible. (Though given that hovering birds don't look funny, maybe this is a silly observation...).
I'd say it gets a little different with command line utilities --- maybe "utility" is the appropriate term here, but I'd call something like grep a program, not an application (again --- "utility" also works).
To be sure, grep is extremely powerful, but its scope is limited.
Note re: mustard. It is not just an "other flavor," it is also an emulsifier!
It took me a while before I learned this. Even if you're not going for a mustardy flavor, a little mustard goes a long way in keeping the oil and vinegar from separating. Definitely recommend using some with basically every dressing you make.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
--- Richard P. Feynman
I think the same is true for a lot of folks and self hosting. Sure, having data in our own hands is great, and yes avoiding vendor lock-in is nice. But at the end of the day, it's nice to have computers seem "fun" again.
In parts of California you are allowed to ride on the freeway shoulder. AFAIK it's only legal when there is no reasonable alternative.
I've done it a few times --- it's not ideal, but it's not horrible, mostly because you don't cross on/off ramps (it's just from one exit to the next). In my case I did it because the multi-use path I was planning on using was temporarily closed.
I have been on a different ride where I crossed on/off ramps (I should have taken a different route!), and that really sucked.
Only tangentially related, but it's often accepted that there is no Nobel prize in economics. There is a Nobel memorial prize in economics (link), but as it was set up after Nobel's death it is in a slightly different category.
Whatever you decide for your laptop, I'm a proponent of a barebones off-site setup if you're trying for 3-2-1 backup or similar.
I use a raspberry pi 3 with a single HD (ZFS) retaining some number of daily/weekly/monthly snapshots. Daily rsync, everything over WireGuard+VPS (TailScale would work too).
From our experience in the US, the birth is nothing compared to the financial drain of the other expenses. And at this age, childcare dwarfs all the other child-related expenses.
We have great insurance and don't rely on family for childcare though, so the math is very very different for someone with "free" familial childcare and no/lousy insurance...
Others mentioned virtualization --- I have had issues with COW filesystems (btrfs), as COW does not always play nicely with VM drives (extreme fragmentation and very poor performance).
I don't know how compensation works in academic administration, but if there's any vesting going on then you could "take a pay cut" but end up making more due to previous compensation vesting.
Certainly possible for public companies, but again, unsure if that could be the case for a university president...
My understanding is that this is precisely why they have lifetime appointments --- a judge can turn around and piss off those who appointed them and there's little recourse, because they'll never be up for election again (similar to the nominal purpose of academic tenure).
I think it's a pretty bad system and there are a million better ways of doing things, but in this one instance the system is maybe working as (I believe it was) intended (even if she holds pretty reprehensible views in other aspects).
Not a lawyer, not a history buff, so grain of salt and all that...
Bonus points: use non-qwerty keyboard for added obfuscation (but keep the qwerty key caps of course).