nosuchanon

How dare they! /s

Set up a pihole on your network and add a few block lists. If your IoT appliances phone home at least you can block the traffic and monitor what things phone home.

As for buying appliances that are not smart, It takes extra effort and a trade-off in features.

For example, my toothbrush has Bluetooth in it. if I want a non-Bluetooth toothbrush I’d have to get a lower quality model because they simply don’t make one without it.

Most people buy whatever’s on sale, And considering how expensive home appliances are they usually put the expensive featured models on sale since there’s a bigger margin.

So if I wanted to get a basic one with less features, that’s not smart it would actually be more expensive because it will never go on sale.

I’m pretty sure there’s a Rite Aid near where I am and it’s almost always closed. The only other option is the CVS that’s in Hannaford. Another 35 minute drive in the opposite direction to Walmart. 45 minute drive in the other direction to a CVS.

And horses apparently.

So a gas station with a pharmacy and minus the gas station? That’s the business model?

Private Equity?

In 2025, Rite Aid emerged from its Chapter 11 restructuring with a significantly leaner operation and a new owner: a consortium led by Cigna’s Evernorth health services division and the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R).

Evernorth, Cigna’s health services arm, had long been eyeing Rite Aid’s Elixir PBM. Elixir, while facing challenges, possessed a significant book of business and a valuable infrastructure.

This wasn’t simply about a larger company swallowing a smaller one; it was about strategically dismantling and repurposing Rite Aid’s assets to maximize value and ensure the survival of its core pharmacy business.

So yeah, they bought the part of the business they give a shit about and are systematically closing the rest of the business, a.k.a. brick and mortar stores.

Private equity don’t really give a shit about that fixing any lthing. So they print a bunch of corporate word salad mumbo-jumbo about how they’re gonna fix shit and when it doesn’t work out, they’re like yep we got the money that we want and the business part that is valuable. Fuck the rest of it. Who cares if there’s another food desert, or whatever the medical equivalent is, and all the rural towns at the rely on these pharmacies for medication.

I guess Walmart pharmacy wins by default.

So, Fiat currency is going to shit the bed and be quickly replaced by the digital dollar Which will of course destabilize the world banking system.

The US will probably try to pay off its existing trillions in debts using the USD and causing massive inflation before replacing it with the digital dollar.

America clearly thinks it won’t matter, and it can be self-sufficient until it drives enough people into a digital currency, while ignoring the massive inflation caused on the USD.

Yeah, that only worked on small contractors when he was building his casinos because they didn’t have the infinite Russian money for lawyers.

Turns out that doesn’t work so well on sovereign nations and international corporations.

The problem with the Democratic Party, as it’s mentioned elsewhere in this thread is the Democrats run an issues based campaign. When those don’t line up with their voter base voters abandon them and don’t show up to vote.

As I see it, a lot of these progressive policies are unpopular with the corporate controlled portion of the government. Since corporation control a sizable portion of both parties via their “free speech” monetary donations to campaigns, They’re not interested in supporting any types of progressive initiatives because it eats into their bottom line, their shareholder profits, and they certainly don’t wanna pay more taxes or higher wages. Not when they can spend the money they have on massive stock buybacks, make more money, tax-free, and figure out how to pay even less taxes on those profits.

There is no significant government works projects that can be paid for or completed on time because the powers it be would rather have the money sitting in their pockets were going towards their third luxury yacht. And they’re willing to spend the money to get politicians and judiciary do what they want.

Add to that that the US government is $37 trillion in debt and any money that is collected from taxes and whatever other sources goes towards paying the interest payments. The central banks have tamed America and the corporate elites are sucking what’s left dry.

There are hardly any left leaning congressmen left. The Overton window has been shoved so far to the right for decades that most Democrats are right of center, neo-liberal corporatists.

Even if you got rid of most of the Democratic Party, there’s only a handful that are not right of center. There is no such thing as a progressive part of the Democratic Party.

The stark reality is that the government has been so corrupted and under funded for so long there isn’t money for big public works projects or to overhaul the medical system or really innovate or build new things because it just going into corporate shareholders pockets.

The American people have been duped and the wealth of the nation has been transferred to Wall Street over the course of the last several decades. The corporations are flush with cash, and the country is falling apart. Since corporations and the wealthy elite don’t pay their fair share taxes, and keep taking all the cookies out of the jar, everybody’s fucked and fighting with each other instead of uniting to get these corrupt assholes out of politics.

The very fact that all these tech bro, billionaires have seized control of the government along with white nationalist crysto-fascist think tanks, like the heritage foundation, shows the weakness of the American style government.