At work, I have a very knowledgeable colleague who is quite the Linux nerd. I have been moved into their department and I feel like they never had the chance to share all of their accumulated knowledge with someone, so they kinda dump it onto me and every little question has the chance to become a lecture. I am very thankful for it though, because I get learn a ton but sometimes you just wanna get a bool, without learning kernel internals that are absolutely not related to the question

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 days ago

I feel this. I've found that a good response in those circumstances is to say "sorry, can we put a pin in this? I feel like I don't have the capacity to properly process what you're telling me right now, so I'd rather we resume this conversation at a later point. Thanks for helping me figure out [bool question] though."

It's a useful response if one genuinely is interested to learn, but not at that moment.