9 years without a car for me and I’m sadly over it. I’m hoping to move somewhere where I can still do most things on foot/transit, because I still really do love it, but it’s such a pain when I have heavy/bulky things to transport, and makes certain parts of town practically inaccessible. My current residence apparently has a 99 walk score and a 100 transit score, but there’s so many parts of town with terrible transit access that would be a 15-20 minute drive, but are an hour or more via transit.

I tried the VPN route many moons ago, but for a combination of reasons that are probably mostly just rambling, I switched to a seedbox. It also helps if you set up the *aars since that can get you fully downloaded, and able to seed to a modest ratio so quickly that the copyright holders haven’t always discovered it yet before your client automatically stops seeding.

I think it’s okay to have different levels of quality at different price points so people can have options that fit their budget. A personal anecdote is measuring spoons. When I was young and just starting out, I just bought the cheapest set that would get the job done for a while. They were simply rounded plastic and the markings quickly started to wear off. Years later, when I was a bit more settled down, I decided to splurge on some nice stainless steel spoons in a rectangular shape that lets them fit inside spice jars better.

Mean Girls, the 2004 one.