Authoritarian regimes select for loyalty over competence. Nazi Germany was a complete shit show and all the leaders were dangerously incompetent (with the possible exception of Goebbels).
It ends with a chop and the protagonist cashes out and walks away. Not exciting from a poker perspective but the protagonist develops as a person between the last bet and the reveal.
My wife decided the climax of her book would be a poker game and I was like "If you do this, DO NOT use the royal flush takes all trope. It is a tired cliché."
She did something a little different and I'm very pleased with how she subverted that trope.
Some friends moved to Canada from abroad and their first Christmas here, we did every Christmas tradition we could think of with them, even ones we didn't normally partake in ourselves. Introducing them to Christmas really brought back the joy of it for me.
As someone whose first "real" programming language was C, I recommend against writing anything new in C.
There are plenty of C projects you could consider contributing to as a way to learn the language (and if you want a long and prosperous career, knowing C can only help you) but language design has come a long way since the 70s and something like Golang or Zig or Rust would get you many of the advantages of C with many fewer pitfalls.
Here are things I sometimes add to my instant ramen:
While cooking:
Frozen peas or frozen corn
Fresh seasonal veggies
Dried mushrooms (rinse them first)
Before serving:
Deli meat
Sliced fish cake. Our local Asian store sells fresh and frozen and they both last a long time unopened.
Chili crisp
Nori
I also make pork belly specifically for ramen. I rub it with salt and sugar, roast it, slice it into strips and freeze it in small packs so I have it handy. It cooks up pretty quickly in a frying pan. You can put it in while cooking the noodles if you don't want to get a pan dirty but it's not quite as tasty.
Being able to control the salt level independent of the spice blend can be useful if you sometimes use the blend in dishes with salty ingredients like capers or anchovies.
Authoritarian regimes select for loyalty over competence. Nazi Germany was a complete shit show and all the leaders were dangerously incompetent (with the possible exception of Goebbels).