Sunsofold

And then one day you have kids, and they innocently put on Disney's Robin Hood...

At least there's a chance to warranty it. If you buy the knockoff stuff, you can go back a month later and that manufacturer no longer exists under that name so they have no responsibility to service a warranty.

Hmm... I am a fan of this aesthetic so...

Hard to beat Darkher for dark and witchy. Incredible music in its own right as well.

But also...

Eivor Pålsdottir

Nyghtegale from the Green Knight

Amira Elfeky

Jolene via Joliet

Halfsleeper

Bulgarian choral music

Rïcïnn

Hetane

Linea Aspera

Lindy Fay Hella is hella fey. (Sorry)

Lamb has something to them that feels right too.

Kati Ran of course.

Noeta

The Negative Harmony cover of Maneater though lots of negative harmony covers could angle toward that uncanny valley feeling of illusionists.

Something in the Dark

Cloak of Feathers for something more metalic

Alice Francis if she's a bit cocky

Kovacs has a touch of spooky in her jazzy

The big problem with cheap Chinese knockoff crap isn't that it's crap, but that it's that it's highly variable. With some things, who cares? Getting a spatula for half price that will, even at the worst quality, do basically the same job and last years, won't be a problem. Getting a badly made computer component that fries some other component, or a storage drive that craps out after 6 months and takes your data with it, is a different matter. You won't have any recourse. Same with cheap batteries that either ruin the experience by needing constant charging or by being actually unsafe. QA is expensive, but it's worth it when the object is also innately expensive.

Then I can't get in, much less sit at a table.

Peanuts are a commonly lethal allergy to something that, while not unavoidable, is surprisingly prevalent. I have heard it's awful.

I think of them like food content warnings for non-lethal allergies, like lactose intolerance. It's a kindness to have a warning that helps people avoid shitting their pants. However, we all need to recognize that it is just that, a kindness. There is an inherent risk when someone says 'hey, taste this.' If you have a high sensitivity, you have a responsibility for self-care through self-denial. If you were uncertain if a food contained something to which you had an extreme sensitivity, you'd say 'no, thank you.' Same holds true for the whole world of media. You can hope for kindness, and put in the effort give it to others where you will, but don't trust that it will always be given to you because it is an extra effort.

Haven't used it but I've heard of cryptomator.

It might be harder to navigate. Looking past your own glowing eye sockets could make your eyes adjust to the closer, brighter light and leave you night blind

Do you mean 'life feels scripted' in the sense of you feel like there is a narrative structure to life, like your actions and words are decided by an external writer? Or do you mean in the sense of life has a narrative economy, like someone could have 'plot armor?' Or is it the sense that life should have more structure, like it goes against some unwritten law of writing that some things could happen at all?

Depends a bit on how much depth and which topics you want to hit. Scratch is easy to grasp and won't require any real effort to set up, but may make adults feel like they're being condescended to with its cartoony aesthetic, and might be a bit limited in how impressive you can make your demo. Python would require a bit of 'teacher's planning time' to set up an easy workspace in Google's collab tools and design a lesson, but could be used to show more depth if the students are the type to want/accept that depth, but don't mistake interest for readiness.

Time might also be important to consider as well. If you have only the one session to cram things into, it might not be a great idea to go deep, and definitely would be asking for trouble to try to install anything on all those machines. Non-technical people have a knack for finding the holes in your plan or taking far longer to do something that requires them to act individually, which leaves you scrambling to try to play remote tech support for the 5-50% who need it while the people who 'did it in one' get bored.

And first things last, Murphy's Law always applies to presentations. Just ask anyone at defcon. Even for people who are so tech-y they are teaching other tech people about tech, the demo might work 37 times the morning before your presentation, but it will fail on the 38th because that's when you're in front of the audience. Minimize your attack surface. When you are limited to one session, leaving them with a good, inspiring message that makes them want to keep learning is better than trying to info dump.

Good luck.

Pick something that interests you but is made by a small, indie, maybe even solo dev. Check out some of the stuff made by people on lemmy in the Godot community maybe. Lots of cool projects to consider.