Trucks (In the USA)

I'm in this FB group that does financial advice with a little sarcasm and jokes mixed in. Suggest that someone should downsize to a car or get rid of their gas guzzling truck they have no real utility for and it's like you've insulted their religion. Never seen such a group of grown adults throwing temper tantrums like that in my life.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

This is a sign of an upcoming recession if we aren't already in one. People are starting to run out of their savings due to stagflation and are looking for areas to cut. Buying a new phone every year or every other year and replacing laptops every 5 years are among the first things to go in anyone's budget.

So currently the only people refreshing their devices are the people who NEED new devices.

Capitalist economies always need spends out of desire and not just necessity.

Worst part is instead of reversing the gouging these companies will probably just go ham on the planned obsolescence.

One of the electricians in my town has a minivan and I've seen him use it to bring an entire 5x14 enclosed trailer full of gear to a jobsite a few times.

I agree that most craftsmen don't need the truck on the left, a few that I know need to tow a trailer with about 3,000 pounds of shingles for some roofing jobs. I'm pretty sure the one on the right might struggle with that kind of weight.

One of them I know do drive a Ranger which is somewhere between the two in size at least.

Heat kills more people especially these days. Only time cold seems to kill in winters where I live is if someone goes without power for a considerable amount of time, so their furnace or wood stove circulation fans don't run.

I think a while ago our county and later state passed laws to where power and gas companies can't shut customers off for non-payment during the winter. They have to wait until spring to shut off someone who hasn't been paying.

This reminds me of the days when our schools taught us to sit under our desks just in case Iran nuked us. Fun times. Even as a kid I was like "How is this particle board desk supposed to save us from a NUKE!?"

I haven't bought a triple A game brand new since like 2014 or something. I wait until they have some sort of sale on them first. Literally didn't buy Cyberpunk 2077 until very recently when they finally knocked it down to $30 a few weeks ago. It actually shocked me to walk by the games isle recently and see that triple A titles including yearly sports games are like $80 now. Crazy IMO. I might go back to reading books.

Yep. We need a law that says "a person owns any item or service they buy for a one time fee. No 'licensing' them out of ownership" or legalese for the same thing. Only loophole should be if it's outright advertised as a subscription service.

Then another law that guarantees access to schematics and repair parts for reasonable fees. No loopholes. Schematics or die, that's how I roll.

Now I'm even more glad to have ditched the streaming sub model to buy music instead. Of course new releases may follow and go up by $0.10 per song.

You can always count on the right winged politicians and voters to prepare for disasters instead of trying to prevent them.

Tbh, my upvote policy didn't really change when I moved to Lemmy.

Something has to be dangerously bad for me to downvote it.

I upvote anything that seems interesting or agreeable to me.

Despite your edit, from what I can tell of being born and raised in the USA, there isn't really a concept of non-sexual nudity, outside of locker rooms/campsite bathouses, some restrooms, and of course, nudist communities/beaches.

Even just taking a leak somewhere that is somewhat secluded if there are no restrooms can land someone a public urination and maybe an indecent exposure charge.