Welp, there's your problem. I have an NVIDIA card as well and it's been the source of at least 95% of my Linux headaches.
I've tried a few distros and Linux Mint was definitely the most "just works" for me. Make sure you're using the proprietary NVIDIA drivers, regardless of what option you choose. Currently I use SpiralLinux (Debian with a few tweaks) because I really like the BTRFS snapshots and fell in love with KDE during my distro-hopping, but Mint is what I would recommend to the vast majority of people.
Wow, the 200m freestyle, the 500m freestyle, and the 1650m freestyle, huh? Did she ever compete in anything else, or were those numbers perhaps cherry-picked to make the situation look more dramatic than it actually is? Because if you look at her results holistically, she's a very good swimmer, but she's clearly not dominating 100% of the time the way she's been portrayed.
At the NCAA competition where Thomas won one (1) race that conservatives cried and shit their pants over, a cis woman named Kate Douglass set 18 new records. Lia Thomas set zero new records. And crunching the rest of the numbers bears this out: she was a good swimmer before and after transition, but she's not some unbeatable powerhouse that cis women have no chance at winning against.
Also: you might like Caitlin Doughty/Ask A Mortician's videos and/or books. A lot of discussion about different cultures' approaches to death and how people's attitudes have evolved over time.
I've been pondering this myself. We had to have one of my cats (the one in my profile pic) put down last month, and we got a fur clipping, as well as her ashes. I'd like a piece of memorial jewelry or glass and I'm finding I'm OK with stuff that includes the fur, but not OK with cremation jewelry/cremation glass, and I don't really know how to articulate why. I think part of it is that fur and hair are shed throughout a lifetime anyway, but dividing up someone's bones or ashes almost feels like commodification to me.
(To be clear: I'm not judging other people who do this with their loved ones' remains, be they human or animal; this is just, like, my opinion, man.)
Like others have said, you didn't do anything wrong. Maybe say a prayer or light a candle for the person and their family if you're the praying type, but otherwise, don't worry about it too much.
"Should you" as in "is it morally/ethically wrong?" No, it's not. "Should you" as in "is it a good idea?" No, it's a terrible idea. And I think you know that on some level.
I've been to at least one distillery and a hydroelectric dam. These days, your best bet is probably to just check the website of wherever it is you wanna go to.
Mint is a pretty solid choice for like 95% of people. If you're already using LibreOffice then you're halfway there, and I've been able to run all the games I want through Steam or Lutris (the Flatpak versions are better for compatibility IME). A lot of people use Bottles for games as well, but I've never been able to get it to work properly. I think I started using Linux full-time at about the level you seem to be at, and I didn't run into any major issues.
Check Caitlin Doughty's "Ask A Mortician" videos, in addition to some of the other suggestions.