See, I’ll drive for the most part, because to add on to my bitching about public transportation.

One time had to go to a place for work training. It was 12 hours away. I wanted to drive, company says no, they have me tickets.

It took me 14 hours to get back home from what was a 12 hour car drive. And flying always ends with me pissed off.

So it’s all just absolute shite.

Once Kansas City had apparently a fantastic streetcar. Then the car companies bought it up and tore out the rails. Now we’re getting a streetcar being built again but it’s just doing downtown on one street. I’m not near the streetcar.

So I drive to work. It’s 12 miles, about 30 minutes (or 20 miles, 30 minutes if I take interstate around the city… honestly this city is weird, EVERYTHING is 30 minutes away.) If I wanted to take the bus, the shortest time frame would be 1 hr 35 minutes… not including that I’d have to get halfway there to get to the first bus stop.

Cities… if I wanted to take the train, I can go to Chicago for relatively cheap using Amtrak… but gotta plan that 3 months in advance, and the 8 hour ride we HOPE doesn’t get extended because Amtrak doesn’t own the rails it’s on. Flipside, driving is 8 hours. Other cities, St. Louis, Wichita, basically I have two train lines, one in state, and one cross country. If I want to go to Denver… it’s not happening.

So to answer your question, I want you to try to imagine how bad you think our public transportation is. Then lower your expectations.

When you hear a loud noise just think to yourself “Please be haunted and not something expensive…” it’s what I do.

I’ll preface with I’ll agree that for the most part, it’s men being whiny about “woke” and other nonsense. They’re assholes. I really don’t have anything to add to that front.

So I’ll add a perspective of the small other crowd in situations friends of mine and I have found ourselves in, that having criticisms of women led stories gets us lumped in with the above group when the same criticism of a male led roles/stories are fine and dandy. And we’re not exactly a group that hates women led stories despite our love of scifi action. Sarah Conner, Ripley, Jesse Faden if anyone has played the game Control.

Some of it I get as a female led cast movie/show will get hate before the first previews even launch so legitimate discussions can happen. However, I can go on absolute rants about how terrible movies can be: Tom Cruise remaking The Mummy was, attempting to do Hellboy without Ron Perlman and Guillermo Del Toro, whatever the Conan the Barbarian attempt Jason Mamoa had, and no one bats an eye. (Lets be honest, those were all terrible movies) However I’ve been called a misogynist when I talk about in the list with those above ones how absolutely terrible the all women cast remake of Ghostbusters was. Again, I knew there was a lot of undue hate, but if I ever discuss it, I’ve had to outright asterisk it every time that none of my complaints were to the actresses themselves but the movie from worldbuilding to some of the concept of it being made itself (As in: It’s Ghostbusters, an IP that’s been around for decades, did we need to dedicate screentime to remaking it from scratch? A complaint I’ll have at every reboot of a popular IP.)

And there’s legitimacy to the why. As you point out, there’s very few women led movies/stories which (I assume) means that with some representation there’s the want to nicer to it, especially as there are people who are outright assholes about it. Vs Another White Guy Does Things is easy to deride a movie because… speaking as a white guy, I’m going to be there mocking that movie too. But that’s why I put the “(I assume)” earlier, because it’s not like I’m lacking in some form of representation, so it’s easy to mock it.

I will wrap up this though with again, it’s a small extra outside perspective for a different viewpoint. If people just complain “There are too many women in x”, no, they’ve stopped having legitimate complaints and are just being jackasses.

Okay, I had trouble getting off of sodas, and everyone suggested fizzy water instead, and they all tasted nasty, like maybe the water sat in the room with the fruit maybe.

But this is the only time I’ll ever say good about Walmart, their walmart branded carbonated waters are 99 cents a liter and taste amazing. The Fuji Apple one is the one I usually get and it tastes like a fizzy apple soda but doesn’t have sugar.

Since I avoid walmart like the plague, I’ve learned to just drink water now. Tap water is my go to. But these things are like my guilty pleasure, which is a far cry better than the sugar drinks imo.

That’s fair. I’m less interested in the swasticar and more I find it’s the only thing out right now that I can’t find an appreciable workaround.

It’s why I like hybrids. I have a tendency to sometimes end up at least an hour away from an electric plug for a few days or so.

Nah, I don’t need diesel. Lets be honest at hybrid it’ll do the job just fine as is.

Basically I want the kind of pickup truck that I can toss a few 2x4s in the back and go, doesn’t have to be big, doesn’t need a lot of hauling power. Which is the opposite of the way trucks are going nowadays, which are big as fuck and made to tow the fucking world with the shortest damn truck bed that I’ve watched people struggle to get a tv into because the bed is too short.

Is a truck tech? Fuck it I’m calling a pickup truck tech.

I just want a pickup the size of a 90s ford ranger that’s a hybrid. Since I’m making it a unicorn, lets go 4wd

Don’t worry, the aliens will come, and they’ll be oligarchs in their society too.

I’ll admit, my disbelief in afterlife really doesn’t make me fear death because while it’s boring, it’s only boring for everyone else. For the person dead it’s nothing. Boring is a sensation, and death has none of that either. It’s neither good nor bad, just nothing.

Descent. Gabba Gabba Hey

Work in medical too, but work in the lower sections with the blue collar workers while living in the bible belt. They’re all Trump fans and think this is all great.

The best advice I have is find your people, the ones you know who’ve been against this (not the non-voters, they folded to apathy, and will fold when the going gets tough) and start working on survival plans. Gardens, mutual aid, mutual defense, how to hide those in danger ESPECIALLY if you’re the cishet white guy. Build the community as best you can.

This is not some big overall “Fight the bastions to overthrow” but right now as a regular schmuck in the middle of nowhere, right now this is what we have.

Screw it. If I had limitless wealth time to see if ending homelessness is possible with every bit of it I can.

What I want for me is a stable living situation, fun times on a motorcycle, and time to do hobbies without killing myself at work and to travel. My secondaries are those things for the people I care about. Other than the killing myself at work, that sort of thing is obtainable without being a millionaire.

So after that, throwing billions into building affordable housing seems like the plan, combat these scalpers that overdo rent and see if I could beat the countries, then the worlds goal of “stable living situation”. After that… figure out what’s next.

I can’t think of a smaller city in the US that fits “so many have heard of it”

You included London but didn’t include London? Shameful.

Good lord this makes me happy I’ve not worked in corporate and stayed in blue collar work.

Someone steals food in a shop, that someone’s gonna have a bad day and the boss yells at anyone “whining”, including the guy who got his ass kicked.

At this point there’s a con happening all over the country all throughout the year. Dunno where “south” is for you but the big one I know about is Texas Furry Fiesta in Dallas in March.

Granted Texas has like 4 of them going nowadays by itself lol.

I have the aftershockz Air. Aftershockz as a company apparently changed and went to Shockz when I got my second set so there I got the openrun. I still find my using the Air for my work time which is my more used one, but I think I got used to the fit of it (ran with those for like 3 years) but the openrun works pretty well IMO.

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.