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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • The US has a blend of public and private infrastructure. Cities like Chicago sold the rights to their parking to private companies. Red light and speeding cameras are also privatized. Some states have sold their turnpike system to non public entities. Busses are unreliable in most metro areas because bus systems don’t turn a profit.
    Amtrak, America’s only passenger train system, operates nearly entirely on private tracks. Its nearly always as expensive or more for a train ticket than it would be to just fly. At that the system is unreliable with trains constantly having to wait hours for freight trains to pass because they have the right of way on private tracks.
    Nearly all utilities (power, water, gas) are ran by for profit companies. Americas “social safety net” reads like a punishment most of the time. Seniors living on social security eat cat food to get by. Politicians want work requirements on food assistance. Homelessness is at epidemic levels, in a more liberal area there are some depression era hoovervilles built. Conservative areas just buy bus tickets to the liberal areas.




  • This was a decade ago, but when my mom signed up for Dish Network I asked the installer about getting the internet package. He laughed and said to avoid it like the plague. The guy claimed that at the time Direct Tv and Dish Network used the same satellites for internet, two of them to be exact. The rates for using the service went up with high server load and it was only really usable after midnight.

    I ended up building a Cantenna from two Bush’s Baked Beans cans and $15 worth of radio equipment from radio shack and “borrowing” free Wi-Fi from a mansion about a mile away.