Been on the road for a year, google mail decided to throw me out of my email login, and was never able to get back in. Luckily I have an old dying phone which was logged in and allowed me to set up an alternate for credit cards etc.

And I almost couldnt pay for a ticket rental to fly out from Japan, since the service only uses paypal and paypal needs a working phone number I didnt have.

For most things I always prepare well in advance and try to have back ups whenever possible. But all these “services” are becoming increasingly complex and fragile, and often there are no back ups available.

If I had stayed put in one place and made a living in cash, I’m sure things would be easier, but even there, the resilient ways of living are disappearing.

What begins as voluntary becomes mandatory, and its never in the favor of the individual.

But your citizen license has been suspended because of your low algorithmic social score
please report to your nearest prison for voluntary re-education to get that score back up!

Tho in all seriousness, the worst is yet to come, it’s just a matter of time when most mainstream devices will be just dumb terminals, when it will all reside in the cloud, everything will be like Chrome OS.

btw. this article made me think of your rants:
Pirate Sites and the Dying Art of Customer Service