There were multiple medical emergencies on-campus that paramedics couldn't respond to because the protesters blocked their entrance. If you were a "good cop" you'd be damn proud to get this rabble out of the street.
The prevailing attitude on Lemmy seems to be that Israel should be wiped from the face of the earth. Comments that don't support the protesters are quite rare.
original battery in good working condition for 8 years
Batteries are consumables, and they cannot last that long thanks to a little thing called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I estimate that you have at best 25% of the original capacity of that battery.
That said, the whole "leaving your laptop plugged in kills batteries" is just about thirty years out of date. Plugging in your laptop doesn't do anything to the battery if the battery doesn't need to be charged. You could rip the battery out of a laptop (I know yours can't be because stupid Apple) and it would run just fine right off the power cord.
Honestly, I suspect that most people who refuse to update to Windows 11 are already Linux desktop users. Most of us have more than one computer and use Linux on several of them.