red_rising

Equally important to remember that this has nothing to do with the ‘quality’ of the Texas electric grid because Texas it’s superior to all other states in every possible way.

Using the term ‘handicap’ implies limitations out of their control, which I don’t think is true. For most of them the more accurate term would be ‘willfully ignorant.’

What is a better alternative, aside from just buying the media directly?

Courtesy of the local tax payers….

I feel the same. I don’t do ads. If a product doesn’t have an ad-free product that I’m willing to pay for, then that product doesn’t exist for me. Similarly, if a paid product decides to introduce ads (I’m looking at you Amazon) I’m immediately cancelling.

Half the point of ads these days isn’t to advertise to you, it’s to piss you off enough to upgrade to a paid plan. If they happen to also make money from the adverts, then that’s just an added bonus.

What a disgusting, selfish viewpoint of something so tragic

I just bought a Roku smart TV and the first time I powered it on, it asked if I wanted to enable smart features by connecting to the Internet. I said no and it functions like a dumb TV now. There are a couple brands that still make dumb TVs but they are all fairly small and not great quality. Much better off researching which smart TVs can be easily disabled.

Protip: one of the buttons around the screen is usually a mute. In my experience, its usually second from the top on the right side.

A lot of higher end credit cards also include protection against this kind of thing as well.