Strange that politics who call for deregulation never deregulate useful things.

Funny that right? Those that call for deregulation would probably call for deregulating the legal time frame that a company has to support their devices.

And as to what we did with ours, effectively trash. We have a medical junk guy who comes through yearly and picks up the stuff thats getting thrown out, he parts pieces out he can sell, sells scrap otherwise, etc. Also sells a lot of equipment to smaller hospitals out in rural that will make do, and a lot of stuff we have goes to Project Cure which sends medical devices out of country to places in need. The funny part about the rural hospitals and Project Cure is… neither of those can happen because, as I said earlier, can’t verify their accuracy anymore so for my hospital, about 30 units of trash in one day.

I work as a biomed, our hospital had to buy completely new sets of a type of ultrasound machine we have. Why?

Because in order to do the yearly preventative maintenance you have to go through the manufacturers program to test calibration. They stopped supporting it this year and shut it down. Legit these machines were working just fine, but now in order to keep up with verifying accuracy they’re essentially bricked. They did it on the exact day they hit the year mark that they legally were required to support in order to sell medical grade equipment passed.

This is only going to get worse, not better.

How to fix: Bloody revolution, that’s about it.

I disagree with this. It’ll take some revolution, but can be avoided bloody.

On revolution I do say vote. The 2022 election was a turnout of 52% of the voting age population. Just barely over half, and that’s the second highest turnout to a nonpresidential election year since 2000. All the oxygen always goes to the Presidency but what OP is dealing with comes up in local elections, and the local and state shit deals far more with your day to day than the national. Hell, when national laws even come up, weed is still schedule 1 “more dangerous than cocaine” to the federal government but just about every state has legalized it.

It’s not a quick solution, and it’s not as simple anymore as “go out and vote” but gotta kick everyone up who hasn’t given a shit (if they’re not voting, think they’ll back you in a revolution?). It’s a fucking slow ass slog that takes daily fighting, like I’ve got a group that I’m the one who posts the ballots, the dates, the links, honestly do everything but bang on their doors and drag them to the polls but it’s a little bit that helps. As I saw “A vote is not a valentine. You’re not professing your love for the candidate. It’s a chess move for the world you want to live in.”

The Republicans have been doing that for years, they’ve never let a single dem run even for superintendent across the country uncontested. They worked slow and methodically to get the supreme court. Their revolution can be argued to have started as far back as Nixon. We’re arguably at their end game, but it seems like they’ve overreached this time, it’s time to start clawing back territory.

The reason though I’m against a bloody revolution is, yes it’s useful as a last resort, but it honestly is at that in the chess analogy above picking up the table, throwing it in the room and starting a riot. You hope you come out okay but at that point it’s really up in the air who comes out on top. Guillotines come up a lot, and France is doing pretty well right now. But remember between modern France and the guillotines was a messy time post revolution that was stabilized by someone who declared himself Emperor and attempted to conquer all of Europe.

Remember 2016 when the media gave Trump an absurd amount of free publicity by covering every stupid thing he said and did then he won? It wasn’t the only reason, but it clearly didn’t help.

2016? Shit the press gave him all the free press when he was doing the birther shit with Obama.

He can live out his remaining time in Russia as a wanna-be oligarch, and Putin will treat him like a leader-in-exile.

Honestly think he’d be safer in North Korea. Kim Jong Un could at least see him as an ally of “the world is against us.”

Putin already views Trump as a puppy that makes messes on the carpet… while running a dog fighting ring.

Personally I hope so. They’re burning the world, it’ll at least be fun to watch them flounder in the process.

Hell, I think my biggest problem is I can’t think of anything dumb enough before they’ve already got it

I used to think I was a pessimist. But now after multiple “There’s no way people are that dumb” and being wrong I must be an absolute optimist.

Or how about the part where all their chicken’s bland as shit. “Spicy” my ass.

Popeyes is the superior chicken fast food. I’ll fight anyone on this hill.

I’ve had practice eating at Popeyes.

Boy howdy I’m just imagining HIPAA with this.

I have one for those that worked at Disney World. “What time is the 3 o’clock parade?”

I’m going to assume this isn’t “lottery” ultra-wealthy where you can spend it all and suddenly be back to destitute. So you say you wouldn’t live that differently, and immediately begin with “quitting work.” That’s the first step, because being wildly wealthy does change you incrementally because in this situation you’ve just bought yourself a commodity that once spent can’t be bought back, time.

You now have 40 hours a week that you were giving to someone else. Add on 5-10 hours for commute time (.5 to hour commute) that can get up to 50 hours for whatever the hell you want to do.

Buying a new car just a quick glance at Carmax and you’re looking at around $13,000 for a standard sedan. Not many have that pocket change going around, much less to buy the house that at low end houses cost $100,000 so you’re done, no worries, no muss, no fuss and you didn’t give some company your money in interest because you bought for cash. And on buying houses, as competitive as the market is, buying with cash right now at least in my region is about the only way to do it.

So lets assume you’re working from home right now, you gained back 40 hours. Hey, I want to have a party/trip/etc! Well, your buddies are all working, possibly can’t afford to go on trip, night out to eat. Offer to pay, but it’s still the getting the time off. They’ve got bills to worry about, the ones you’re not even thinking about. Sometimes they’ll show up, other times, not so much. So either you’re out fishing and working on your hobbies during that 40, or working to a new project job wise which really by this point is how the wealthy keep getting more and more money because build up a new thing, hire someone else to run it, passive income. But you don’t have your friends to hang out with, travel and the like, you’ll run into the others that don’t have those concerns because you can buy your way around inconveniences (airport seats are uncomfortable, but those lounges are nice. Why have to take connecting flights? etc) those are also going to be the ultra wealthy. And they have a standard of living that will look more and more “normal” to you. Little bit of peer pressure, little bit of “take a ride in my Lambo” and finding it fun, it’s a frog in the pot situation, you’ll go back to your roots and go “How did I live like this?”

Gee… wonder if this ever could have been predicted when Patriot Act was brought out.

Bentonville AR is being turned into a bicyclists haven. To the tune of Arkansas laws are making it that bicyclists don’t have to pay attention to traffic laws. That’s neat, wonder why… Ah. And while bicycling is one of the better things I guess billionaires can do, in the region buying bicycles are far beyond affordable anymore to a walmart wage because it’s gotten so over the top fancy, and the Waltons literally have a helicopter with a bike rack to fly out to the trails. My dad is irritated because of how often it shakes his house as it goes over.

Same city, Alice Walton had a really nice museum built in the area that was surely out of the good of her heart… Ah. Unless really local, one might not know of her nickname “Drunken Alice” where she has a history of dwi’s and wrecks, including one where someone was killed, yet somehow nothing seems to stick.

Yea… I’ve got a bit of an axe to grind with the Waltons having grown up in their personal playground, I agree with you to think this is a problem with just Amazon is ludicrous, and despite only living a state away it’s amazing to hear how people bitch about Amazon, it’s chokeholds, it’s problems, its wrecking of the country, and gives a full pass to Walmart. We live in an oligarchy.

Completely unrelated to my bitching about Walmart, but a perfect example of execs doing this nonsense and how I got in trouble because I can’t stop snarking: Worked for a medical testing facility, ran by a doctor. Said doctor buys himself a brand new shiny Lamborghini, then through the whole email has an announcement that for one day for 4 hours where any of the staff can get a picture with the Lambo and share on the company page. Now I met said doc once during training, but otherwise worked 3rd shift with two other people, he certainly never showed up when we had issues.

So when the day happened, it was one of those I commented it’s the first time I think I’m glad that 3rd shift gets ignored on any staff events. Think about it for a second, then ask the others “Who has the newest car?”, turns out was a Nissan Juke. So each of us go out and get a picture with the Juke, then sent the pictures in to where people were supposed to send in the pics with the Lambo. Turns out they got 4 pictures, the 3 with the Juke, and 1 with the Lambo. Got told by our manager said doc was pissed and to keep our heads down.

Start?

hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars ********* see!

I mean, public trust is dropping. Which meant it went from “Ugh, this will be useless” to “Fuck, this will break everything!”

I use the shockz (another open ear headset) daily with my job. Work on equipment, a lot of tedious opening up a machine and fixing it. I don’t have a singular place but move around a lot. Going from earbuds that I have to take out just to have a conversation if someone comes up and asks questions vs the open ear allows me to be able to know what’s happening around me, keeps from annoying those around me with whatever I’m listening to, and I’ve chewed through so many audiobooks which has kept me from losing my mind.

Same here!

Well sure. Only an optimist goes “Wow, this is as bad as it can get.”

The pessimistic crowd is of the opinion it can ALWAYS get worse. We may not know how, but it can get worse.

I think it is obvious where I am on the spectrum when I say I don’t think we’ve begun to see how bad it can get.

While… I agree with you on companies like Intuit pulling this is bullshit, depending on the region you’re in the trash example used is… not great.

Speaking in the Kansas City region where City of Kansas City trash pickup is literally two bags allowed, no cans used, often late, the bags tear easily, and with this whole freeze thing they’re still behind two weeks out. I live outside in one of those 5 (I’m not kidding, one literally started up last year) overlapping truck routes and it is insanely better. That said, previous town I lived in the town did the trash pickup and they did a good job, got the cans that could be auto lifted and even regularly had large item pickup days for free so even better than where I’m at now.