People gotta start working the hours they’re paid for. If I’m working my shift well then it’s not my fault that the company is understaffed and I am not gunna bust my ass to cover for someone’s poor leadership.

There actually are things that one just cannot find elsewhere easily, and most of the places that reliably carry them locally are places like Walmart which aren’t better. That said, it’s always the very last place I look.

With all this nonsense I’m going to start asking local stores if they can order stuff for me, though, and just be extra patient. For example, it’s wild how little there is for mandolins at local music stores but at least the British strings I’m going to try switching to are there so that’s something.

Like the other person said, you can at least control what you interact with directly. So you cancel your Prime subscription and turn your lights with your hand instead of an Echo but you don’t worry so much about trying to figure out if any of the several companies involved in making [product] have some form of attachment to AWS.

And there will be some level of consumption in this horrible system that’s not gunna be good in order for you to not be horribly depressed but people can shed more than they think and alternatives do exist for many of the ones you might put at lower priority.