The smartass in me wants to ask if I can answer your question. More helpfully, I sometimes answer questions on here (Lemmy in general) because I think I can contribute to a discussion, and the more people that contribute, the better the experience for everyone (within reason).

As to your specific question, I’m not from the US but I guess there’s probably not very many republican voters on here - did you expect there to be?

Hey, sorry for the slow reply. I like doing the dishes too so this post resonated with me. At the moment our boiler (US: furnace?) is playing up though so I have to repressurise it every time. Cheers for posting!

Well yes - I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that legislation is our best hope here. Not in my country, mind you, where I guarantee you that all we will get is lip-service to privacy, data protection, etc.

Hey it looks like some other guy didn’t help you much. I’m not going to help much either but I’d imagine that if your model has any kind of smart infotainment type of thing then it’s probably being tracked. I mean, from a business perspective, why wouldn’t you? It’d be lovely to have systems that allow you to navigate, take photos, listen to music, contact friends…without spying on you. Sadly, I don’t think companies see such things as being in their interests.

If you do find a list anywhere, I’d be interested to know. I don’t have a VW - just a petrol ford focus, but I imagine that my data is being collected in much the same way as this.

Could you elaborate on this comment? Seems like the person before you went to a mostly black school/college and so has experienced being part of a segregated society/community. Are there areas that are less segregated or not at all? For context I am from the UK, where we have some integration but still quite high levels of segregation; I live in the southeast, in an area which is over 95pc white British, but there are other areas with much higher populations of other races/nationalities (Bradford, in the north midlands, is around 25pc Pakistani, and only a little over 50pc white British).

Did you/do you live in an area that isn’t or doesn’t feel segregated?

No idea.

Pretty sure it is actually just the longest international border in the world. I guess Chile and Argentina might be close, maybe Russia and somewhere, but USA Canada I reckon is the longest.

Not sure this comment deserves downvoting. As a teacher (UK) I get 13 weeks off a year, which is pretty much all time off (no expectation to prep/mark). Private sector friends tend to get around 4-5 weeks max. Similarly, the pension is far better than private sector pensions.

Whilst I might be able to change career for more money, I’m not sure it would be a net benefit, even for 50% more.

That said, the “work time” as a teacher is fairly full on, at around 55-60 hours a week for me, so that’s some form of trade-off. You do have to like doing it!