For context, this is a completely fresh install on a new M2 mac mini.
I left my project open after using Premiere Pro to chop together a simple gif, no big deal, until I noticed my cpu graph was sitting at about 50% usage. Look in activity monitor, and premiere pro is using 250% CPU. This was a project with one clip in the bin and no effects. I closed the project and now it's sitting there with nothing open using between 10% and 12%, using all that computation just to show the "Welcome to premiere pro" screen. It seems like some process (or processes) must have run loose under the hood, or something to that effect. It would be nice if Adobe management committed more resources to software quality than endlessly pushing out trendy new stuff (maybe the photoshop NFT team is free?)