“Its in the game!”… Ads, that is.

Awesome! Isn’t that always the way. People, agencies and governments love to put their name on new and shiny projects, but never want to fund labor or upkeep. I work for a non-profit and a big part of my job is begging for money to help us maintain the amazing infrastructure we have, but get very little support to upkeep.

I’ve spent a lot of time visiting Roseau and Warroad in my life, so it’s always nice to meet an American neighbor in the wilds of the internet. Manitoba is actually a cool place to visit, and your dollar goes a lot further. Come up to Winnipeg for a weekend and you’d be surprised how much more there is to do now than even a decade a go. It’s food and music scene is awesome.

Howdy Neighbor, you could always move a little further north. We’ve got lots of people driving EVs up here in Winnipeg! I’m kidding, but there is at least some charging infrastructure coming rurally here in Manitoba, and you are starting to see a lot of commuters using them for 100+ km (one-way) commutes. That being said, we have similar issues if you need to drive long distances between rural centers, but the government subsidies to help install L2 chargers seem to be making a difference as more and more municipalities are installing at least one charger somewhere. I can understand how people are still hesitant about winter, with -20C (-5f) to -30C(-30f) being not uncommon (for now…).

Why even show content? It’s the ads that people are actually here for! Can you imagine the audacity of people, wanting a little creative content amongst our cloud of vapid, capitalistic hawking.

The majority of fairy tales (as told throughout human history) do not have happy endings. They were typically told to teach or reinforce hard social truths to prepare young people for the world. The “fairy-tale ending” is really an anachronism of modern, capitalistic story telling. Happy fantasy sells, and reinforces myths that benefit the elite, such as upward social and financial mobility (see Jane Austin, or every Disney movie), and the opportunity to become part of the landed gentry. The belief that everything always works out is itself a major piece of the capitalists propaganda machine, and because we fall for this, we keep making decisions against out best interests - We are all just one fateful encounter away from becoming rich or famous after all.

Old phone? I’m still running a Mi A1 as my daily. I’m on LineageOS 19.1. There have been rumblings of Lineage 20 coming to it, but the Dev community has largely dropped off.

I’d check if there are any local high-schools or support services that are looking to get phones intot he hands of underprivileged teens/adults. A Mi A3 is likely still better than the low end Samsung garbage, or even an old iPhone (below X).

Better to have it be reused than become a paperweight in a cupboard.