You get to keep anything mailed to you, in America at least. A century ago, scammers would mail goods and then invoice the target. Congress said fuck all that noise, if a business ships you a thing, it’s yours, no questions asked.

In the 90s and early 2000s I had to reboot my PC multiple times a day and reinstall the OS at least once a month. I remember freaking out when Windows 2000 went 30 days without a reboot. Computer’s been a bit slow and wonky lately. Realized I had no idea how long it’s been up, rebooted, fixed. No idea when I last rebooted my network stack.

Dead and dying hard drives were a constant hassle. My SSD has been through three PCs, without even reinstalling Windows. I just moved it, and it just worked. No idea how long I’ve been on this install, 8 years at least. I’ve got external USB drives in a faux-RAID array that have been cooking for 5 years, no problem. Everything burned electricity, got stupid hot, burned everything else out.

I was one of the original installers of cable internet. Couple of years later found me doing tech support. People were mystified at the concept of a website being down, yet their internet worked. Sites went down daily, even major ones.

We were constantly bombarded with viruses and malware. It was a nonstop fight to keep your machine clean. Now, I’ve only installed AV on company computers as a CYA thing since Windows Defender works great. (Also, as another security layer.)

I can pick up my phone and call anywhere in the US, free. Ever heard the words interlec or intralec? You needed a math degree to calculate long distance charges, so you’d just dial and pray it wasn’t too bad. And pray the call went through. “We got a bad line! Call me back!”

A car with 100,000 miles was considered garbage. Power train warranties were 36K and that was astounding. Now they’re 100K and more. My wife’s car is a 2014 and my truck is a 2004. No one had 10-20 year old vehicles unless they were collectors or gear heads.

Shall I go on? :)

Some stuff is more, most is less, at least in my town.

Same! I also reuse bread bags and the like. Plastic grocery bags work for most things.

No idea when I last bought kitchen bags, but it’s been at least a decade.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTTASUq6isfvyOXnYzM8Jgc28tET8PMc4

Oh I believe it! But how did you find both products? I doubt they’re sold on the same page.

You have got to me fucking me. How did you find this?!

Been beat up on here, twice, for suggesting people just roll their own. Took me a couple of hours of carefully following directions, never touched it again, been 6 years. LOL, don’t think I can even log into it anymore, key’s lost.

Verizon was always the best for me. Moved to T-Mobile because Verizon wouldn’t activate my funky new phone. Promptly lost the phone and wish I had never changed. T-Mobile isn’t awful, but they are compared to Verizon.

So why didn’t Conservapedia take off? If it’s unbiased truth, no liberal agenda, it should have blown Wikipedia out of the water a decade ago. Funny that.

That site is bugfuck nuts, and not just because I disagree with most conservative positions. Bug. Fuck. Nuts.

I do not sense a wrongness in your post so I will not disappear you. :)

You got the original explanation, but grok was taken up by computer nerds way back in the day. It’s not merely understanding a thing, in the book or the slang. To grok means to completely wrap your head around the subject, not merely surface level understanding, really feel it down deep.

As to Musk’s obsession? He wants to be seen as the cool kid, the smart hacker, the guy who groks what’s really going on.

Honestly it’s a great name for a search engine or AI. And now he’s actively ruining it like everything else he touches.

BTW, Stranger in a Strange Land is an excellent book. I laugh when people call Heinlein a fascist for writing Starship Troopers. “So, how about that hippie book?” Heinlein’s books examine various government and economic systems, “What if it worked this way?”

Have you never voted before? That’s a perfectly typical form. Of course the candidates have no text description, there is nothing non-partisan one could put there. Of course the propositions have text descriptions, they always do.

we willingly handed over the keys to the city

I’ve been screaming that the power and water and cost issues are failures of our local governments. No, it’s not capitalism, socialists can be bought and paid for as well. No, the feds need do nothing, city and state governments should handle their unique issues. Yes, we need to vote out or city and county councilmen who allow this horseshit.

OK, I could easily argue for the state taxing the snot out of these data centers. Seems a no-brainer.

People can’t figure risk any longer. It’s a big world! We can’t fault anyone for not understanding it.

Risk: .0001% chance a bad thing happens.

We’re not talking about your cousin’s sketchy moonshine here.

Are you afraid to get out of bed? Falling 2.5’ imparts more energy to your body than getting shot with a .45ACP bullet.

Seriously, how does one navigate the world calculating every bad thing that could occur? Scooping a speck of mold out of my jam doesn’t move the needle on my risk meter. I cannot live in a “zero risk” world.

Walked a 2-mile round trip to the store today, orders of magnitude more risky than flicking a bit of mold out my jam. And BTW, I have “emphysema light”, doctor’s words. I’m not exactly a tough guy.

How will you react when faced with real risk? I’ve saved my own life twice, arguably three times. Will you curl into a ball? “NOAWW! The jam might blind me!”

Having some science education, I choose not to live in fear.

I’m learning! Define “milt”. New one on me.

I could step out to check my mailbox and get smeared by an inattentive driver. In all seriousness, I’m more afraid of slipping in my shower and breaking my neck. Instant death or living out my life having a nurse dig shit out of my ass? (My niece did that for a living.) Not too worried about a little mold in my jam.

Some y’all’s “risk vs. reward” mechanisms are utterly broken. Can’t blame ya! We didn’t evolve to calculate risk in the modern world.

tl;dr: Take risks. Life is not worth living in fear, not worth calculating infinitesimal odds.

Yes! I might complain and return it, but it’s not the death hazard these comments make it out to be. :)