Mostly, I enjoy target shooting as a hobby. Hunting is big in my area as both deer and feral hogs need to be culled.

I also feel there’s a greater chance of widespread civil unrest than most people understand, and that folks in my area will likely have to defend themselves to some extent if it breaks out. For various reasons, the people who are most important to me aren’t likely to be prepared for that, so I figure I should be ready to some extent.

That’s an absolutely crushing schedule.

When I think of “middle aged family man”, I think of a salaried employee or tradesman working a 40 hour work week, and supporting kids with the help of a spouse who’s either a homemaker or earns additional income. Which mostly describes me.

You’re comparing apples to oranges when it comes to lifestyles. I work occasional overtime and it always knocks my dick in the dirt for a week or so. All things considered, just surviving what you’re describing is an achievement.

You’re doing an amazing job and I hope you can find a situation that gives you more time off soon. You deserve it.

Why can’t we win the AI race and still not have a surveillance state? Those don’t seem like they have to be linked…

You can still get onions at my Costco, you just have to ask at the counter. Never seen the polish though, and now I feel nostalgic for something I’ve never had…

We have the $120 annual membership.

What we save on dog food in the first four months of the year pays for that membership. And the store brand dog food is manufactured for Costco by Diamond, so it’s better quality than anything available at Walmart for less.

Household goods, TP, laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, etc, etc are a significant savings if you have space to store them.

Some of the deals on groceries, meat, frozen goods and so forth are significant if you have a deep freeze or extra fridge in the garage to keep everything in.

It’s more than a grocery store though. Appliances, furnishings, electronics, gas, tires, and more can be had at decent prices. For instance, I can get a name brand car battery from Costco at the same cost as Auto Zone’s no name special.

As others have said, the annual cash back reward is at least $120.

But…

You have to set a budget, have extra space, and be disciplined about shopping there. Stay out of the central impulse zone in the store unless there’s something you need there, and comparison shop on major purchases. It’s great for people stuck in the suburbs. For everyone else, YMMV.

As far as the hot dog goes… It’s just a meme, man. Relax.

Yeah, journalistic integrity is important, and they shouldn’t slander Google, due diligence and what not.

But there wouldn’t even be a need for an article or any investigation if Google and other tech companies weren’t treating user data as something they have a god given right to.

That’s my point. It doesn’t matter what Google does or doesn’t do with the data. They shouldn’t collect it unless I tell them they can. It’s MY data. It’s MY right to keep it private or destroy it as I please. That’s the baseline all tech companies should adhere to.

Play Services does collect data it shouldn’t collect, by sending it back to Google.

Right. And my argument is that this shouldn’t happen without users opting in.

But the difference between “I am collecting your data” and “I wrote software you are running” is important and needs defending,

I don’t disagree. Not am I arguing the content of the article. I just disagree with your notion that we have to prove negligence or malfeasance to deserve privacy.

Your original post placed the burden on users to prove that Google mismanages the data they collect. That’s not how this should work. I should own that data, just as I own the text I write with a text editor. I shouldn’t have to prove that Google is mismanaging it in order to keep that data private. I shouldn’t need any other reason than “it’s my data and I don’t want to share it beyond what is necessary for this technology to operate.”

If you don’t collect the data in the first place, there’s nothing to mismanage.

Rather than users having to prove that Google is mismanaging OUR data, Google should prove it has a need to collect, aggregate, and sell access to that data beyond surveillance capitalism.

The default option should be that only fully anonymized data that is essential to device functions should be collected, and this should be validated through an independent audit. Everything else should be opt-in.

Have to agree. And this is pervasive enough that lazy articles about tweets are now a major percentage of online “news”. So-and-so destroys x-and-such on Twitter!" So what? It doesn’t change anything or anyone’s mind.

So… US History, I’ve got you:

Okay, in 1607 we started a colony in a place that would later be famous for having a lot of racists. For about a hundred years we were happy fucking over Native Americans, then people wanted to stop paying taxes, so we had a war with England. We won, with a lot of help from the French, but we don’t give them much credit. We spent another 3/4 of a century fucking over Native Americans, building shit, and importing slaves, mostly from Africa. Then we had a Civil War about the slaves, killed each other a bunch, and in a huge surprise that no one saw coming, the part of the country that had all the industry won. We set the slaves free, so we could continue to treat them like crap. Then we went back to fucking over Native Americans, built a bunch of stuff (some of it was pretty cool), and started fucking around with the rest of the world. We started bringing in immigrants when things got shitty in other parts of the world, because we needed people to expand and someone else to be prejudiced against. We had some economic issues because some people wanted to be really rich, I’m sure taxes factored in there somewhere, but we pulled ourselves out of that with a couple of big wars and then we sorta took over half the world. We went to the moon, and appointed ourselves as “all around cool guys”, although there were still a lot of issues with minorities and a big fracas about civil rights that some folks still haven’t gotten over. But we thought we had to be tough guys to keep the USSR from making communism a thing, so we kinda ignored all that and started spending money on nukes and proxy wars instead of going to the moon. Rich people decided they didn’t want to pay taxes again, and Reganomics mindfucked a generation of people into thinking you can run a country anywhere other than right into the fucking ground that way. After the Soviets made a mess of their half of the world and fucked off, we decided that things were too quiet and really started fucking stuff up in earnest. We pissed off a fresh batch of people in the middle east, because oil, and just kinda stirred the shit pot everywhere else because we were the biggest kid on the block. We also started the habit of surveilling everyone after some terrorists attacked us. Some of what we did might have been helpful, but there’s so much chaos and so many pissed off people now it’s hard to tell. Fast forward and some of us have figured out that we’re causing problems, but we’re neck deep in the sunk cost fallacy and busy letting people continue to promise us they can run the country better if rich folks pay less taxes.

TL;DR: It’s taxes all the way down.

It kinda looks like tennis for the unathletic, which means I should fit right in, but I have zero interest.