In the USA the big cities are fully paid, the suburban areas are a combination, and the rural areas are fully volunteer. I’m in a combination department, where the paid staff handle most of the medical calls and both respond to fire calls. The biggest issue with growing income inequality is folks just don’t have as much free time to volunteer so it’s hard to get enough members to fully staff an apparatus. That means paid staff but those are expensive and require a lot of logistics to maintain.

I started out thinking firefighters should all just be paid and it’s unreasonable to expect folks to volunteer. I’ve come back around and think it should be “volunteer or pay”. We obviously need the money for expensive gear and apparatus maintenance. Also it’s helpful to not have to get out of bed in the middle of the night when tomorrow is a work night

On the other hand, I think it’s extremely beneficial to have the resilience of a lot of skilled firefighters in the community. When there’s a big call you want as many people as quickly as possible. I also think it helps with PTSD to be able to just take time off from calls without losing your job. So I think there should be a lot more volunteers and an easier path to getting enough skills to become a volunteer.

I consider doom scrolling to be an unhealthy way to consume news and an ineffective tool for political change. Protests, strikes, and voting change politics. There is little to be gained by algorithmically filling my body with cortisol and adrenaline.

My head is not in the sand because I read apnews and reuters periodically.

I prefer for lemmy to be an enjoyable place to visit. If it was an endless feed of doom I would uninstall and read a book instead.

Every time I see a politics news or comic or meme I block that community. It’s great my entire feed is fun stuff and cool art

From one chaotic to another, may you be blessed with a peaceful soul and find a deep and healing rest

Maybe Attack Pack?

https://hotwheels.fandom.com/wiki/Attack_Pack

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266660026443

At my volunteer station, we all just go to work like normal and respond if there’s a call.

We do have some part time staff who remain at the station for EMS calls. When there’s down time they are:

• cleaning the station
• filling out charts from earlier calls
• checking all the apparatus equipment
• training skills
• homework from advanced classes (paramedic, rescue technician, officer, etc)
• napping to catch up on sleep from calls in the middle of the night
• doing station laundry

It’s enough to keep them lightly busy but not enough to be strenuous, as they typically do 12-24 hour shifts. Being “at work” for 24 hours is pretty rough, so I don’t begrudge them a mid-day nap.

I believe you mean dump into drinking watersheds

Just look for a job and make sure you’ve got a visa. Third world countries have a lot more “informal economy” that isn’t taxed or handled with paperwork so it’s possible sometimes to just find a job without paperwork or anything, but that won’t help you get a permanent visa.

Ideally, you get a visa that allows work, show you’re working, and then the visa gets upgraded to a permanent resident visa. This varies a lot from country to country. If you’ve got a job, some countries are pretty happy to have you adding to their local economy and will extend you a visa. If you’ve got a remote job that might go even faster.

Alternatively if you’re not skilled in any way, you apply to a super cheap college and apply for a student visa, that’ll buy you a few years while you’re getting skilled in something that country needs. Studying to become a doctor, lawyer, or STEM goes a long way. One of these probably is in demand there, figure out which one and take a crack at it. Hard, for sure, but a pretty solid way to build something long term. Of course if you don’t know the language that will be harder, but colleges generally have language classes too, so that could be the first classes you take.

There’s also teaching English, it’s generally not too hard to find work as a tutor or English teacher, I saw the other day like there’s only one English teacher for every 500 open positions. So that’s a possibility too.

Just generally try to participate in their economy. Try to make local friends and assimilate. Think about what first generation immigrants do: find a steady job or bust ass studying tech or medicine.

Here here, I’ve eaten better after going veg than ever before, and I was a damn good cook as carnivore. I can still pull off some of the best braised short rib or 24 hour smoked brisket, but my veg ramen is so much better and I feel better after eating it.

But sometimes the tides come in and leave fun treasures and mollusks

The generation that is most aware of climate change and social justice, that wants a more free and equitable society for all? The generation that’s had to watch the decline of Western powers through unrelated capitalism? That generation lacks foresight?

Truly one of the takes of all time

Also generational strife is horseshit propaganda to keep us distracted from the class war so maybe keep the pro-billionaire propaganda to yourself

wow a Unison comment on the wild! What kind of stuff have you done with it?

I don’t think society across the whole planet will collapse, short of a nuclear war in which case gold won’t help one bit

Much more likely that certain areas will experience famine, war, disease, and reduced access to medicine.

Really the best bet is to be able to be mobile if an area has a significant decline you can move to where it’s better

I think this one happened rapidly because of conquistadors and plague. A rapid empire collapse making the elite location untenable and unaffordable.

I recently read 1491 and it was excellent. It describes how these immense civilizations were in the New World, and how rapidly they collapsed as hogs infected with diseases accidentally escaped the explorer’s camps and killed of 90% of the populations.

It talks about De Soto seeing the banks of rivers filled with dozens of cities of thousands of people, and then two or three years later explorers coming by and finding nothing but ruins.

That seems much more of the type of collapse that would just leave entire buildings empty and abandoned.

friendzone potion, you give it to someone crushing on you or hates you to turn them around. Some might argue showing up with beer / weed is a friendzone potion.

Same, I’ve blocked every single news and politics and it’s bustling

It all started with that smile… that damned smile

I’m very curious what the details are. A Linux Vision Pro sounds very enticing. It could be a lot of fun for inventing new user interaction modalities.

That’s fantastic! Sounds like you’re very well adjusted!