Sigh, one more thing for the list …
“Didn’t you have ads in the 21st century?”
“Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written on the sky. Oh, and in our operating systems. But not in dreams. No siree!”
Already going “hybrid” when it comes to content and Netflix only survived the last round because family members voted “stay”. Not sure about the next time, especially since their little fabricated “crackdown” on sth. that was once not only tolerated, but actively encouraged definitely rubbed me the wrong way.
Throwing my hat in the ring for dev-mode (you’ll need a free developer account), which doesn’t interfere / get removed with updates and has a gracious timeout of 999 hours these days, at least on the newer models, but likely in general. I’m using Kodi and the ad-free Youtube + sponsorblock client uploaded via dev-mode-manager, which accesses the WebOS homebrew project that also offers some other useful apps (e.g. a Moonlight client).
Can only speak for newer models, but LG has changed the devmode timeout to 999 hours, which is plenty of time to hit the refresh button in the meantime. It can be automated as well.
Since you mentioned it: Debrid has been serving this old pirate (used pretty much everything from IRC dl bots and the original Napster) well. Torrenting is much too dangerous … and has been for a long time where I live. Maintaining a large library feels a bit like “been there, done that” and is cumbersome (even if well automated) with what little I’m watching these days. Streaming cached torrents from the debrid service of your choice via Kodi and the relevant addons is as painless (everything up to 4K works flawlessly, usually many sources available) as it gets while still having most content ready at my fingertips.
Cancelled Prime a couple of years ago so that Amazon wasn’t the default for ordering things anymore and wouldn’t watch anything even via the free 30-day trial that they offer from time to time if commercials are shown. I’m still subscribed to Netflix as the family uses it extensively, but if something is not on there, Kodi has proven to be a good matey.
I wonder if UBI is more unsustainable, or unsustainable at all - imagine a future where most things can be produced so efficiently without the involvement of humans that the idea of not doing so is simply preposterous, akin to insist on using horses after motorization became widely available. Employing humans might incur a higher lost opportunity cost than simply paying everybody to do “nothing”. I’m using “” since all those people would of course do something, just not grind for bare survival or “the economy”, which is arguably isn’t necessary anymore, or at least not as necessary as it once was.
In a way, overcoming work (as in “unwanted compensated grind”) is a way to truly live up to our potential as humans because it asks the very basic question of “how to be?” outside of what for millennia was basic necessity or narrowly defined by society.