I worked at one of these places in the US, they absolutely do exist. It was a free “market” stocked daily with produce, meat and a huge assortment of food products and our “shoppers” pushed carts around our market and picked whatever they wanted off the shelves.

I agree with your main point though, shit is fucked and things aren’t getting better and our political system is broken beyond repair.

Not really, my car was a mess! At least nothing was missing though.

So this isn’t a VPN service, but having read your comments it might work…

When I was in Sweden recently I needed to do something online with the appearance that I was in the US. First I tried using a couple of VPN services but they were detected by the website I was trying to use and I got an “access denied” message. So my travel partner activated their Verizon TravelPass and let me hotspot off it. TravelPass gave us a regular Verizon wireless address out of California and I was able to complete my task. Unfortunately though it’s $12/day.

I do the exact same thing, except instead of paying monthly for hosting, I pay $12/year for addy.io. Super reliable service and I can easily manage my email aliases with their phone app.

Haha, they just told me in a normal voice, but obviously I had to play along if I wanted to get back into the country. The experience was a bit dramatic, like something from TV, but it wasn’t actually scary because I had nothing to hide. They also asked if I had anything in my car they should know about, so I said I had a stash of liquor and explained that I was moving and wanted to bring my booze – but they didn’t care and didn’t touch my alcohol.

I was moving from Alaska to Boston, so I had to pass through Canada. Everything I owned was crammed into my Honda Element and I was driving it solo across North America.

I re-entered the US at a border crossing in North Dakota. I pulled up to the window and without saying anything else the officer pointed at a detached garage and told me to pull into it. As I slowly pulled into the garage, there was only enough light to see the outlines of the walls. When I turned off my car, super bright lights were switched on and I saw 6-8 heavily armed border officers with bulletproof vests on either side of the car. One of them instructed me to get out of the car and give him my keys. He also took my passport and took me into a small room in the garage that had 1-way mirrors (so they could observe me and I couldn’t see out) and then he locked me inside. There was nothing inside the room except a few folding plastic chairs – nothing to read and nothing to look at, nothing aesthetically pleasing at all. I could hear them going through my car, removing my plastic totes full of shit and searching through them. After what was probably 20 minutes, they opened the door, handed me my keys and passport and told me, “You’re free to go, welcome home.”

Done! Wouldn’t have bothered voting if I hadn’t read your comment, so thanks for sharing. Voting was really easy, just had to enter my member number and zip code.

Excellent service, highly recommend! I pay for the “Lite” plan which is dirt cheap and allows me to create aliases under my own domain. So my accounts all have unique email addresses and I know when a company sells my contact info because I start receiving unsolicited spam to that alias. I use aliases for temporary needs too, like RSVPing to events, and I deactivate them afterward if I never want to hear from the organizers again.

It also recommends a Chinese browser which IMO is a lot worse than using an American browser.

Doubtful the UK will be first choice for many Americans after it neutered itself with Brexit.

Qobuz is French, not Canadian.

Recently bought a giant bag of Yupik pumpkin seeds and they were from China which wasn’t stated online or I wouldn’t have bothered. Very disappointing, had to return them.

Good question, but we pay close attention to the news and hopefully we’ll get out before that’s a problem. If we’re unable to leave the country then I guess I’d contact the Swedish embassy to see if they can help.

Chile. Maybe it’s because I’m American but nobody there was interested in talking to me, sharing their culture or learning anything about me. I tried multiple times but all my interactions with Chileans were purely transactional and most of them seemed annoyed to have to deal with me. I’ve been to ~25 countries and wouldn’t bother returning to Chile.

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I’ve never understood the appeal of Target. There’s a huge Target 60 seconds down the street from me and I never shop there except to get one or two items. It’s expensive, has a ridiculously small grocery section while clothing takes up half the store, and they’re so worried about shoplifters that they have multiple security staff standing at the door giving everyone leaving the stink eye.

Not preparing at all, just living my life like normal. When things get really bad here I’ll sell my car and move to Europe with my girlfriend (I have dual citizenship and can sponsor her).

Haha yeah, maybe Qobuz was hinting that my taste in music is trash! I do appreciate the occasional Johnny Cash though, just not mixed in with my deep house!

As for the recommendations algorithms… You no longer have to read artist bios/interviews or suffer through radio programs, instead you effortlessly get a list of recommended tracks based on whatever song or playlist you specify. It works so well that I don’t really follow any artists these days and currently all my top 30 tracks are by artists I didn’t know existed two months ago. It also allows you to deep dive into new and obscure subgenres with basically no effort.

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I really wanted to like Qobuz but the recommendations are terrible. Like I’d be listening to deep house and it would suggest Johnny Cash.