Use an alias service like addy.io or Proton’s SimpleLogin (I think DDG has a service too, or did) to create an email address to forward emails to your actual address, and then just don’t use the alias for anything else. I believe both of those take anonymous payment methods.

Rural areas tend to require 4-wheel drive more often, which tends to be offered more often on SUVs and the like (the added clearance doesn’t hurt). But cars across the board in the US have been getting larger for the last 30 years, to the point it’s even causing problems with road maintenance. The more compact vehicles common in Asian and European cities are often not even sold in the US anymore.

You can import the repo into F-Droid.

Rural areas also have less well-maintained roads, poorer lighting, and more wildlife that may run into the road, in addition to requiring more driving because everything is further apart.

PieFed is really testing that old adage never to assume malice when incompetence suffices.

I think it’s a self-reinforcing cycle - isolation leads to anxiety, which leads to further isolation. The anxiety that drives people into cars is the same one that dries them to live in the suburbs: the idea that no one can be trusted, and that the unknown masses of humanity are dangerous. From that perspective, public transit is risky, and a car is a fortress. That anxiety may be even further heightened if you already feel at risk for one reason or another (like being a racialized or sexualized individual).

space-based missile warning and tracking system

So we’re doing Star Wars again? What does that make this, The Empire Strikes Back?

You can use various things to obscure a license plate from Flock cameras, but it’s illegal to varying degrees in several states, no doubt with more on the way.

If public utilities were truly public, instead of investor-owned, I don’t think they’d be in this predicament.

She’s not even the oldest US representative.

Indeed. It’s all a shell game to crush the power of labor (particularly in the tech industry) and pump up stock prices. It’s definitely enshittifying work for a lot of people, but an apocalypse it is not. All the nigh-eschatological talk comes from the mouths of specious tech CEOs trying to keep the scam going.

The USA was built over the past century for the profit of oil companies. Most USians probably don’t realize that it’s possible to do things differently, and at this point it’s probably not possible to change without land reform, given how much of US farmland has been consolidated under corporate ownership.

Like I said, things will get worse before they get better. There will have to be the political will to build the needed infrastructure, and that won’t come about without immense suffering. I never claimed it would be an easy or even peaceful transition.

Imagine being such a bitter old biddy that you have to personally respond to a kid’s letter like that. How hard is it to literally just send a form letter “thank you for your input” response instead?

It’s almost like austerity is a choice or something.

I think that USians live in a state of constant, subconscious anxiety due to how incredibly atomized they are. There will need to be major cultural shifts before we’ll ever have the wherewithal to build needed public transportation infrastructure.

Things will have to get a lot worse before they get better. I am hoping that gas prices will rise enough to provoke some changes; the next six months will be telling.

Posteo markets itself on being green, if that’s important to you.

Consumer confidence at 49.8 is higher than I would have thought. You’d have to be wealthy and live in a bubble not to think things are trending worse.

I think that’s more or less correct. A law is the what, something that can be directly observed and calculated, while a theory is the why. I honestly think if it weren’t so counter to the interests of capital, that we’d hold Marx up there with Newton or Darwin.

If their website doesn’t work, start calling and sending letters, too. When it starts affecting more than the IT staff, things might change.