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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Perhaps people use Amazon differently than I do. I mostly buy niche items that you simply can’t buy at stores, or if you do find them at stores they are astronomically expensive.

    Which is not to say I don’t switch things up. I order from Best Buy, Walmart, a whole bunch of different places. But on balance, I’m happy with the Prime subscription and use it frequently.





  • The thing about Rossman is that yes, he echoes some right-wing talking points. Unlike most of us, he actually is a small business owner who was been repeatedly harassed and mishandled by regional authorities in New York city.

    He’s a soldier on the front lines of the over-regulation and regulatory capture crisis. And I think folks on the right and left can agree that big companies working hand-in-hand with government to suppress new business hurts poor people. Whether he’s talking about John Deere’s or Apple’s anti-repair stance, Amazon’s over-reach when banning accounts for frivolous reasons, or New York’s labyrinthine rules, he’s really talking about the same fundamental problem: big organizations using rules and regulations to hurt poor folks.

    With that said, I think his opinions on those matters are pretty narrowly confined to the details of running a business. I’ve watched quite a few of his YT videos and I never see him going “out of his lane” to express opinions on broader social trends. He’s not opining on abortion or trans people or any of the other cultural touchstones on the right. He’s no Qanon nutjob.

    With that said, he’s not a general interest tech presenter, and he probably doesn’t have much to offer the OP. He’s pretty narrowly focused on repair and government/corporate abuse.







  • It’s kinds of like a surface scrape of something very obvious. “I don’t like what these guys are producing. They’re scrambling & changing things up, people may stop buying it, and it will go away.”

    Err, OK. Big whoop. Maybe it’s because I’m old, and I’ve been through several cycles of seeing favorite media/hobbies reach a point where they declined and I didn’t want them any more, but this is a totally normal process. Every industry gets threatened, goes in some direction, and sometimes they get out-competed. c.f. radio, newspapers, TV documentaries, etc. ad infinitum.

    For example, we lost channels like Discovery, Bravo, History Channel, A&E to reality television… and it’s been replaced by independent creators on Youtube. Who knew, independent creators like The History Guy, CGP Grey, Crash Course, Smarter Every Day, LTT, Tech Ingredients could make more enjoyable content – and probably more accurate and complete – than big companies?