If it's a federal holiday, a lot of employers offer (or, in some cases are required) to give increased pay on holidays, usually time-and-a-half or double-time depending on overtime laws. The increased rate of pay could make up the difference for the list wages from the unpaid time off for voting.

I am of the opinion that police should be required to live in their own precincts. Same with all elected officials.

There have been a few problems recently with pharma factories failing inspections in regards to sterile production environments. The last one I heard about was a while ago, but I think I remember a pharma company deciding to close some factories and stop making those products because coming up to code would be too expensive and the products aren't that profitable.

It's important to note that the human populations of northern and southern states were fairly close to even, but the south decided that anyone with a bit too much melanin was property, not a human with rights and a vote....and they were very reluctant to give up that system.

Some states require businesses to give workers a minimum of a certain number of hours to vote, but there are no requirements for that time off to be paid. This means that, even if the workers are allowed to leave to go vote, it is unlikely that they will be paid for those hours, and for some people, missing a couple hours off of a paycheck can be a very big problem.

There are plenty of people in the West, especially in America, that are desperately impoverished. There are millions of people without access to any healthcare, let alone the fabulous new advancements in medicine. Education is also being torn down at the foundations by the GOP fucking with schools, and higher education is extremely expensive. You can only get a college degree with generational wealth or crushing, inescapable student loans.

I don't blame people who are not financially comfortable for being fatalistic.

There are plenty of people in the West, especially in America, that are desperately impoverished. There are millions of people without access to any healthcare, let alone the fabulous new advancements in medicine. Education is also being torn down at the foundations by the GOP fucking with schools, and higher education is extremely expensive. You can only get a college degree with generational wealth or crushing, inescapable student loans.

I don't blame people who are not financially comfortable for being fatalistic.

I bought one and I loved it. The only reason I stopped using it is because I dropped it at just the wrong angle, and it would have cost $750 to get it fixed by Microsoft, and no local repair shop would touch it. I didn't have the tools to fix it myself either, so I was forced to replace it. I was eventually able to fix it most of the way, but fucked up some parts on the process, so I just use it as a tablet type device now.

If they were going to continue supporting it, I would have coughed up to have it repaired, and if they had made a Surface Duo 3, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. It was so disappointing to see them drop this device line so quickly.

American businesses are not required to give employees paid time off to vote, and the required amount of time that they have to allow is just a couple hours. So if someone works far away from where they live and/or has 12 hour shifts or something, it becomes a choice of getting paid or getting to vote. And the Republicans have done a fabulous job of making sure that voting is as time-consuming as possible in poor and non-white districts by limiting the number of polling sites. Some people have to wait 8+ hours to vote, and the Republicans have made it illegal to give people who are waiting in line food or water.

Also, you have to vote in the precinct you live in/are registered in. You can't go to just any polling site on election day.

MRI sometimes uses a non-radioactive contrast depending on what you're trying to get images of. MRI is probably the safest imaging modality, but it's very expensive, kind of difficult sometimes due to how long it takes, and isn't useful for every kind of imaging that needs to be done.

A lot of states have places for early in-person voting. You might have to drive a bit of a distance, but it allows for in-person voting in a less chaotic environment.

I use Proton when I'm on my university's campus because they switched to using EDUroam for the campus wifi. I used to be a Sys Admin at a different university a while back, and from what I know, EDUroam allows the IT department to monitor basically all of the traffic over the network. I don't know exactly how deep that stuff goes, but if I was doing anything personal or sensitive like banking or whatever, I'd flip on the VPN on my personal computer. I also don't have any personal accounts logged in on the school issued laptop because they have it loaded with institutional spyware. Once I graduate, I'll blank the drive and reinstall the OS to have a decent Lenovo laptop on hand as a spare.

Edit to add: I use Proton because it was the least shady service that I could get for a reasonable price as a student. It is also helpful for finding textbooks. :)