I’ll toss in as I have two, a set at home and at work.

For music, they’re honestly kinda meh. They’ll get the job done if you want some music but lets be frank you’ll find better sound quality headphones out there.

The reason I absolutely find them game changers is they allow me to wear them when I’m at work. I work on mechanical equipment in hospitals, so I need to hear what’s going on around me, one earbud can block up a side but this means I can hear when someone is talking to me. Also I found that earbuds didn’t fit me well so would potentially fall out, these wrap around the back of the head and stay in place, even when I’m working in some strange positions. And when I’m pulling out the power tools and things are going to be loud, I stick in earplugs, and I can hear what I’m listening to better even.

Phone work, I was shocked because my last job I was in a cargo van with minimal insulation so A LOT of road noise, but I’d hear the person I’m talking to with little issue and they could hear me well. Makes hands free phones a lot better.

I listen to podcasts, audiobooks, and the like. I mean chew through so many of them it’s not even funny. Because of that sometimes I found with the single earbud one you’d have something in stereo, well that single earbud messes it up and you gotta set it to a mono sound. These you’ve got that dynamic sound going.

So in short, if you’re going for audiophile level stuff, pass on these, but for daily drivers in day to day life they’re on the top ten things I’ve ever bought.

Pen, pocket journal, wallet, phone, and whichever pocket knife I grab that day.

I’m really a simple person, but I"m going to go into my favorite pocket knife and I’m angry that it’s not made anymore. The SOG Q2. It’s a “baton” shape" IE, slightly longer than a standard pen. Has a flashlight, bottle opener (with flatehead screwdriver, in other words beveled the bottle opener) and knife. The opening mechanism is such I’ve never had it accidentally come open on me, can be opened one handed, and to keep it from closing you’re literally holding the body that goes over the knife.

I’m going to assume this isn’t “lottery” ultra-wealthy where you can spend it all and suddenly be back to destitute. So you say you wouldn’t live that differently, and immediately begin with “quitting work.” That’s the first step, because being wildly wealthy does change you incrementally because in this situation you’ve just bought yourself a commodity that once spent can’t be bought back, time.

You now have 40 hours a week that you were giving to someone else. Add on 5-10 hours for commute time (.5 to hour commute) that can get up to 50 hours for whatever the hell you want to do.

Buying a new car just a quick glance at Carmax and you’re looking at around $13,000 for a standard sedan. Not many have that pocket change going around, much less to buy the house that at low end houses cost $100,000 so you’re done, no worries, no muss, no fuss and you didn’t give some company your money in interest because you bought for cash. And on buying houses, as competitive as the market is, buying with cash right now at least in my region is about the only way to do it.

So lets assume you’re working from home right now, you gained back 40 hours. Hey, I want to have a party/trip/etc! Well, your buddies are all working, possibly can’t afford to go on trip, night out to eat. Offer to pay, but it’s still the getting the time off. They’ve got bills to worry about, the ones you’re not even thinking about. Sometimes they’ll show up, other times, not so much. So either you’re out fishing and working on your hobbies during that 40, or working to a new project job wise which really by this point is how the wealthy keep getting more and more money because build up a new thing, hire someone else to run it, passive income. But you don’t have your friends to hang out with, travel and the like, you’ll run into the others that don’t have those concerns because you can buy your way around inconveniences (airport seats are uncomfortable, but those lounges are nice. Why have to take connecting flights? etc) those are also going to be the ultra wealthy. And they have a standard of living that will look more and more “normal” to you. Little bit of peer pressure, little bit of “take a ride in my Lambo” and finding it fun, it’s a frog in the pot situation, you’ll go back to your roots and go “How did I live like this?”

That’s not cool man…

They said medieval, that is way too late.

Gee… wonder if this ever could have been predicted when Patriot Act was brought out.

Bentonville AR is being turned into a bicyclists haven. To the tune of Arkansas laws are making it that bicyclists don’t have to pay attention to traffic laws. That’s neat, wonder why… Ah. And while bicycling is one of the better things I guess billionaires can do, in the region buying bicycles are far beyond affordable anymore to a walmart wage because it’s gotten so over the top fancy, and the Waltons literally have a helicopter with a bike rack to fly out to the trails. My dad is irritated because of how often it shakes his house as it goes over.

Same city, Alice Walton had a really nice museum built in the area that was surely out of the good of her heart… Ah. Unless really local, one might not know of her nickname “Drunken Alice” where she has a history of dwi’s and wrecks, including one where someone was killed, yet somehow nothing seems to stick.

Yea… I’ve got a bit of an axe to grind with the Waltons having grown up in their personal playground, I agree with you to think this is a problem with just Amazon is ludicrous, and despite only living a state away it’s amazing to hear how people bitch about Amazon, it’s chokeholds, it’s problems, its wrecking of the country, and gives a full pass to Walmart. We live in an oligarchy.

Completely unrelated to my bitching about Walmart, but a perfect example of execs doing this nonsense and how I got in trouble because I can’t stop snarking: Worked for a medical testing facility, ran by a doctor. Said doctor buys himself a brand new shiny Lamborghini, then through the whole email has an announcement that for one day for 4 hours where any of the staff can get a picture with the Lambo and share on the company page. Now I met said doc once during training, but otherwise worked 3rd shift with two other people, he certainly never showed up when we had issues.

So when the day happened, it was one of those I commented it’s the first time I think I’m glad that 3rd shift gets ignored on any staff events. Think about it for a second, then ask the others “Who has the newest car?”, turns out was a Nissan Juke. So each of us go out and get a picture with the Juke, then sent the pictures in to where people were supposed to send in the pics with the Lambo. Turns out they got 4 pictures, the 3 with the Juke, and 1 with the Lambo. Got told by our manager said doc was pissed and to keep our heads down.

I remember an old reddit post about what it’s like to not like football by replacing it with archeology. I felt that in my soul.

Personally, I enjoy the drinks I’m drinking. And no, I’m not saying where it tastes like candy but I drink in the manner of responding “I don’t understand the question.” when I’m asked “What would you like with your gin?”

Part of what I drink helps because slamming it hurts, but I like that slight burn when sipping (Why yes I like spicy food too but I digress), that burn is a nice speed limiter so it takes a while to even get a buzz. There at the slight the term “social lubricant” shines. I’m not deep in my head, all the worries, anxieties, etc I can actually set aside and enjoy my time rather than going through the list of shit I need to get done a thirtieth time.

If you don’t like it, it’s perfectly fine, getting drunk is not something necessary to live life.

Start?

IMO the “getting scarier” is the swinging back part. Grew up in the same time, my parents were big on “No identifying information to anyone on the internet!” I joke with them now that their generation, the ones that told us to stay off post all their business on facebook and the like.

But that’s the thing, you have a small segment of society that was the internet nerds that didn’t trust anything on the internet, hid themselves and the like, but now like you say it’s the corporate walled garden that’s sanitized and happy, which makes that veneer of trust. And boy do people trust it, posting anything and everything.

Odds are lower in percentages of being genuinely victimized as a child, but the lack of paying attention what’s posted has lead to a lot of effects, so people are getting worried again.

hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars ********* see!

I mean, public trust is dropping. Which meant it went from “Ugh, this will be useless” to “Fuck, this will break everything!”

I use the shockz (another open ear headset) daily with my job. Work on equipment, a lot of tedious opening up a machine and fixing it. I don’t have a singular place but move around a lot. Going from earbuds that I have to take out just to have a conversation if someone comes up and asks questions vs the open ear allows me to be able to know what’s happening around me, keeps from annoying those around me with whatever I’m listening to, and I’ve chewed through so many audiobooks which has kept me from losing my mind.

Same here!

Well sure. Only an optimist goes “Wow, this is as bad as it can get.”

The pessimistic crowd is of the opinion it can ALWAYS get worse. We may not know how, but it can get worse.

I think it is obvious where I am on the spectrum when I say I don’t think we’ve begun to see how bad it can get.

While… I agree with you on companies like Intuit pulling this is bullshit, depending on the region you’re in the trash example used is… not great.

Speaking in the Kansas City region where City of Kansas City trash pickup is literally two bags allowed, no cans used, often late, the bags tear easily, and with this whole freeze thing they’re still behind two weeks out. I live outside in one of those 5 (I’m not kidding, one literally started up last year) overlapping truck routes and it is insanely better. That said, previous town I lived in the town did the trash pickup and they did a good job, got the cans that could be auto lifted and even regularly had large item pickup days for free so even better than where I’m at now.

Turbotax, H&R Block, and the other tax companies are massively wealthy companies that actively lobby to push laws to keep them from being simple. There are states that they have managed to bar the same thing from happening in.

There was a lot of build up before, depression got bad. Honestly can’t go through absolutely everything that was going on. The final straw was locking myself out of my house and car in a town where everyone I knew was about 100 miles away, and I had a box cutter on me. I had the medical knowledge of how to cut to make sure it’d work. However I knew my dad, a paramedic who would walk away from horrible fatalities without a reaction was deeply bothered when a kid committed suicide, and I am an only child. Called the police on myself, took me to the hospital where the stress literally made it where any light whatsoever was a painful headache. Still comes back on high stress times.

Dad made me promise I wouldn’t take my life. The depression hasn’t left, it’s not as desperately bad as it was then but it’s still there. But been alive for about 15 years since.

Here’s something tangentially related that makes it difficult to find older options, the support. In the US a piece of medical device has to be supported for 7 years. My hospital has these bladder scanners that are in quite a few departments, regular fixture in hospitals (ultrasounds). Jan 1 2024 was when our came up on the 7 year mark. To do preventative maintenance calibration required logging on their server, guess what’s no longer accessible? So to stay in compliance all of us in the biomed department has to figure out how to get new ones to replace the 10 $11k each paperweights we have now.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaa…