There didn’t even need to be a deliberate cartel for this to happen either.

Amazon realized it could make money and grow the company by offering cloud services and now AWS runs something like 30% of the internet.

Google turned their leading search algorithms into an extensive tracking and advertising platform that integrates with most of the internet.

Apple decided that people don’t need to be allowed to tinker with and repair their own devices so that hardware can be locked into a four-year cycle of planned obsolescence.

A whole bunch of profit-maximizing firms did the hard job of controlling everything for the governments.

Yeah this is an example of “lying with graphs 101”.

The data probably didn’t fit the narrative when they separate “always” and “sometimes”

The rawest

Eh, I learned it primarily by word of mouth from gardening enthusiasts who are buying homes. But here’s one article about the phenomenon: https://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/gardens/planting-and-maintenance/when-to-test-garden-soil-for-lead-contamination-and-how-to-garde

I don’t have a lot of statistics to back it up except that it seems worse on the East Coast and Rust Belt

I went into a startup job. It’s not a con because everyone knows that your job is less secure, and employers have to figure out how to incentivize their employees to be willing to stick around. Absolutely zero people were under the impression a startup job would be secure in the long run.

If you’re in a good startup, it can be a great way to take some of that venture capital funding as your wages. If you’re in a bad one, at least job hopping isn’t that rare so you can just move on to your next job and it’s a normal thing.

Our world is shaped by those capitalists, but that doesn’t mean these jobs are a con.

Electricity costs money unfortunately

As far as lawns go, thanks to lead paint and leaded gasoline from the mid-20th century, that land isn’t even one you’d consider suitable for growing food unless your house was built after the 1980s. At least, as long as you’re trying to avoid getting lead in your produce.

Really feels like our grandparents’ generation did a lot to fuck over our current generation. So many of these issues trace back to when even the Boomers were children.

Comparable? Not really. The i3, Leaf, and Bolt didn’t have the same fast charging capability or range as the Model 3, and luxury brands are out of reach for the average consumer.

The vehicles that are actually putting out comparable specs had their first model years in 2021 (Ford, VW) or 2022 (Hyundai and Kia).

Android was never the only player in the cell phone OS market. Tesla was the only player in the EV market until last year more or less

“Nobody uses Whatsapp here in the states”

Man I wish I had your friends. The only non-iMessage app I can get everyone to use is WhatsApp. And I don’t have an iPhone.