Wasn’t that search just cruelty to the horses?

And that’s why I never give companies my email address when they ask for it.

Even companies that promise never to sell your data or send you spam will ultimately let the honey pot of capitalism win over their morals.

Three years ago I bought a vacuum from a mom-and-pop shop in my town. They asked for email because they wanted to email me if any recalls got issued for the vacuum I bought.
Low and behold, 2 months ago I started getting ‘newsletters’ from them.

You cannot trust literally anyone with your information at this point.

I’m nearly at the point of replacing my email with a bunch of different accounts, so that data brokers and marketing companies have more difficulty establishing a comprehensive profile on me.

At my work we bid out a job several years ago. We’re a government org and we wanted a camera and audio system for our public meetings.

The folks in charge at the time selected the cheapest vendor, who cobbled together a bunch of random parts and called it good.

Ironically, the person who made the decision left and somewhere between contract approval and installation, I was hired in their role.

Within a year, the company folded and was bought by one of the vendors we passed over for being too expensive.

We have spent at least the value of the original contract to improve reliability of the original system. We’re also upgrading things and slowly working to more or less replace the system piecemeal - using components and designs from the vendor we originally passed over. Their stuff is reliable.

Yeah, it does seem stupid. But we have not just IC cars, but also generators, boats, diesel engines, and a whole industry that relies on petroleum distillates for plastics and other products.

We are in ‘peak oil’ - which is that petroleum is getting harder to find, and more expensive. If this technology takes off, it’s also likely that as economies of scale are developed to bring costs down.

I figure at some point they’ll meet in the middle in terms of price point.

I’m somewhat excited because airborne carbon capture on its own lacks economic incentive. But carbon capture to create resources has an economic incentive.
I hate to be all pro-capitalism, but I think that’s reassuring in terms of progress that won’t just dead-end as willpower drains away.