I got my mind set on juice. I got my mind set on tools. I got my mind set on shoes. I got my mind set on fuel.

I’m gonna spend money.

A whole lotta spending money.

I’m gonna spend plenty of money.

To shop at Walmart.

I’m gonna take time.

A whole lot of precious time.

I’m gonna take patience and time, ummm.

To shop at, to shop at, to shop at, to shop at, to shop at, to shop at Walmart.

My credit card offers virtual credit card numbers AND the ability to auto-lock the virtual numbers so you can set a date and after that the number will not accept new charges.

I make sure to use a virtual card number for everything subscription based, then I immediately set the auto-lock feature to expire in a few days (give the initial charge time to clear but still plenty of time before the subscription would otherwise renew).

Some subscription services make it super tough to cancel. This method fixes that issue for the most part. Some subscription services terminate immediately once you cancel the subscription, even if you still have “time left” otherwise. This way you don’t really have to formally unsubscribe. It’s easy peasy pumpkin breezy as the common folk like to say.

When someone asks a thing like this on Lemmy, look up the same thread on Reddit (guaranteed to find it was recently also posted there) and copy-pasta some of the top posts. Guaranteed worthless internet up arrows.

Earlier this year one of my relatives came for an extended visit. We were discussing what we might have for dinner that week and both of us were on board for the same ingredients, such as asparagus. My relative was also happy with the video services I’m currently subscribed to because I have a couple options they don’t have at home, so they were telling me about how they were rewatching some older Harrison Ford movies. And then there’s the age-old (or old age) conversations about our current health issues.

In the following days, my relative kept bringing up the fact that their phone and tablet are listening to our conversations. Proof? After we had the food conversation, their news feed was suddenly filled with asparagus recipes. They were also getting ads for more Harrison Ford content on the service that they don’t subscribe to. And to top it off, they were seeing ads for a prescription my dog takes but that they had never even heard of before our conversation the day or two before. Isn’t it obvious? They’re listening to our conversations.

To me this was easily explainable by Occam’s Razor. All our devices are on the same IP address. After we discussed the asparagus I went online that night and did a search for asparagus recipes. And when we were talking about my dog’s health condition, I used my phone to look up the active ingredient because I couldn’t recall off the top of my head. Plus, when Hulu or whatever random service sees you’re watching a lot of Harrison Ford movies, it makes sense they’d advertise others you might like.

That makes a lot more sense and is a lot less complicated of an explanation than “our devices are always recording our conversations and uploading them to the internet as a basis to send us advertisements”.

Sure it’s technically feasible, but if it were happening, surely they would be a lot more incontrovertible proof than a questionable and likely misinterpreted news source that seems to be more of a “sly” advertisement for a tech solution that the big players aren’t actually using.

I recently joined WTF and based on the list of the instances this place is federated with, my assumption is that’s the basis for the WTF name. So, maybe something like this could be useful for choosing an instance that’s not 1/2 filled with bat shit insane posts by default rather than requiring significant and immediate curation (i.e. blocking stupid shit like hexbear and ml).

Encryption.

The local species of squash bugs. They’re a lot like stink bugs, when you disturb them they emit what’s commonly described as “a foul odor”. Except that foul odor in this species smells like a super concentrated artificial tutti-frutti bubble gum scent to me. It’s overpowering to the point that it almost burns your nostrils at first, but it fades super quickly and doesn’t linger like regular awful stink bug smell.

Sorry, I can’t read all that, so if some of this is already covered, at least you know why.

The answer to this question is “your mileage may vary”, as we sometimes say in my part of the world. There is 0% chance of any kind of consensus on this, because it all comes down to personal considerations and circumstances. If you want an answer that’s applicable to yourself, you’ll need to examine your priorities, circumstances, and considerations.

What makes me feel lonely is a lack of connection with nature and a lack of close relationships.

For people like me, city life is practically the definition of loneliness. Life in a large city was a special kind of hell. Life in a small city was bearable (but awful for other reasons besides loneliness but I won’t dive into that because it’s not what you’re asking about). Life in a rural area with lots of nature, good neighbors, and a small set of very close friends is what I prefer.