I like to avoid dentists with flashy “STATE OF THE ART WHITENING/IMPLANTS” advertising and gleaming new expensive equipment. They need to make payments on all that stuff, so they’ll go looking for problems that aren’t there.
My erstwhile dentist had a quite unassuming office that seemed to be a quite low-rent neighborhood, and all his equipment was rather ordinary and well-aged. Although he had invested in a modern 3D full-head scanning system, that's not unusual. And the front office tended to do everything on paper, had no patient portal, etc. But they were very good at what they did.
However, he was always pressuring me for more work and more profitable work. And here's the thing: all of the art in every room of the office was his own photography. These were large painting-size photo prints, and they were all taken on holiday, every single one in an exotic location. Ancient ruins, sheep in pasture in Ireland. He and his entire family were inveterate tourists and loved the outdoors. He also had at least 3 children, so not just a DINK household!
Also, and I learned this on the first visit: his mother was also a dentist, and her name/patroness was that of the Hindu goddess of wealth and money. The signs were there all along, just really subtle!
> For good or bad, a lot of studies have confirmed that cards have overwhelmingly increased consumer spending.
There is a lot of psychological awareness created when you have to pull a couple singles vs. a Benjamin out of your wallet vs tap card for all amounts.
Easy, the social contract around streaming has become enshittified. The agreement used to be, “pay us every month and we give you access to a vast catalogue that you could never hope to accumulate yourself.” Sounds great, sign me up. Now people have a dozen streaming subscriptions and a search engine to locate content among them. The joke is, that one specific movie is often not on any of them. Or if it is, it’s on the one you have to watch a bunch of ads for.
> I personally believe at the very least the water usage is heavily overblown compared to the agriculture industry.
Apples and oranges comparison. We eat the direct products of water usage in the agriculture industry. It keeps people alive. It’s fallacious to compare that with water usage that goes to serving ads.
“Your honor, it is impossible to say why the sentient D20 chose to roll <5 for this patient. It is omniscient, and has been weighted carefully by our alchemists to produce decisions as cold and impersonally as the best of our insurance drones.”
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