FWIW there are still loads of people/bands in the punk scene who loathe Green Day specifically for how commercial they went. No clue about the press or fans, but plenty of venues around here where I’d be laughed out of for mentioning Green Day in a serious punk context

Came here to mention industry plants, too. There’s no “selling out” for the most part because most major artists are controlled from day one by the industry, versus back in the day when they needed to scrape their knuckles on their own to appeal to a major label. Social media and The Algorithm lets the labels build careers out of nothing.

Knowing your state/municipality would probably help, but as someone whose family member was involved in a similar situation, there’s literally nothing you can do. And for that matter, if you do anything in developing that land that might impact the mining company’s access, you’re going to be paying for those damages, too.

Those comparison charts like the one you posted are unresearched/uncritical garbage made to sell affiliate links. They’ll never actually give a harsh review to anything listed because they want you to buy something

Your best bet is to ask owners’ groups for each phone you’re considering for reviews and buying advice and weighing that yourself.

You’re right, I was thinking of Alixpress and TaoBao being two front ends for Alibaba

Temu is literally just a front page for AliExpress (which is itself a public/consumer front end for Alibaba), so no difference there. You’ll probably find a lot of junk and some halfway decent products.

No clue how Aussie eBay is, but here in the states it’s done a lot to clean itself up over the past decade. A few years ago, I never even considered it when online shopping because of how many dropshipping SEO-manipulating accounts there were. It was hard to find quality items from real accounts. Now, I do almost 100% of my online shopping on eBay. Mostly books, which are usually dirt cheap used.

I sneeze when I walk outside on a sunny day

Ah, the Autosomal-dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst. AKA ACHOO Syndrome

Can you elaborate on your RSS setup? In 2025, I’m planning on switching entirely to text-based mobile browsing and RSS sounds like the best avenue for me

Yes. If anything, I avoid buying products that I see ads for, period. My ad blocking is pretty extensive, I’d say, so any ads that I do see must have a pretty huge marketing campaign behind them.

I can’t trust that a company can make good products when theyre spending so much conspicuous money just on advertising. Makes me feel like the company is 10% R&D, 90% marketing.

Word of mouth is pretty much the only way I learn about new products, and even then from trusted groups/people. Reddit posts pre-2016 or current, but niche interest communities, are the best for this.