I worked for a state government agency that had a bunch of Americorps volunteers working in our office and I became friends with most of them. They were in the office with us every day and they made $1000/month IIRC, and they were all on food stamps. Really dumb indeed to cut these people who do important work for a fraction of the cost of a salaried employee.

My Sensodyne purchased in the US is made in the US. And apparently they’re shutting down their UK factory and moving European production to Slovakia.

I alternate between fluoride toothpaste and a Japanese hydroxyapatite toothpaste called Apagard M-Plus. There are other brands of hydroxyapatite toothpaste made in Europe, like Biorepair (Italy) and Bioniq (Germany).

Nextdoor is a cesspool of all your very worst neighbors and I’ve never used FB Marketplace either. I’ve sold a few things in recent years on OfferUp and Craigslist. Although Craigslist always feels a bit sketchy because of no reviews/ratings, like you have no idea if the person you’re dealing with will be an ax murderer. And people are flaky on every platform.

I prefer to give things away and not deal with the hassle of selling them, unless it’s a big item like a TV or an air conditioner.

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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.”

My older sister showed me the hand-in-blender pic when I was like 12 and I can still picture it in my mind. All these years later I still haven’t stuck my hand in a blender – thanks, sis!

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.

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).