I dropped the only frivolities I used to get during the pandemic, and never picked them up again, which were only eating out once a week, and movies occasionally. I also dropped red meat, and processed foods for health reasons around the same time.
I don't feel like I'm suffering because I never really engaged with the consumerist culture to begin with.
I know Wikimedia is getting deserved shit for what they're doing now, but allowing anyone to download the entire shebang means it's far less likely it will be lost in the future.
If PBS wasn't forced to make money they could have done the same with their content. The only reason they needed to control it was because they needed to sell it.
Traffic fatalities in the U.S. have been pegged at 40,000 per year for decades, in spite of the number of drivers going up every year. So, by that broad statistic, things have been improving.
I'm old, I never did more than one interview, and all but one place hired me on the spot when I got an interview. I didn't always make it to an interview, though. I'm not bragging, I'm nothing special, it's more about how things were much different 30+ years ago.
Does that not even happen at fast food, or Walmart anymore? Multiple interviews for them, too?
Together they're on the hook for over a trillion dollars in lease payments, so far, that haven't started yet. They're counting on turning a profit before they need to start paying that back. That's why they're shoving it down our throats, they either make this shit work or they go down in flames.
I'm betting they go down in flames, base on the absolute shit-show "AI" has turned out to be. They keep claiming they have fixed it, or they will fix it, and then it shits the bed again in some public, spectacular way.
Very strange when they dropped the slogan, like being honest about being evil got them brownie points.
"Yeah, we're evil, but we told you, so if we screw you over, that's on you. You were warned."