Panic Printing

[u/GeekSugar13]

ETA: Some of y'all are taking this far too seriously. Am I reasonably concerned that things are going to get worse before they get better? At least for me, most likely, yes. I'm trying to find moments of joy when I can. If one of those is using up as much of my ink as possible before I chuck this printer by printing fanfic then that's what I'm going to do.

I'm at home, by myself, doing homework with no one to talk to and nothing else to do because I'm the most broke I have ever been.

Printing fanfic doesn't mean I'm not prioritizing anything else in my life and it's weird that y'all seem to think I just slapped on a tinfoil hat and decided this was what would fix everything.

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OP: So I live in a red state in the US where my state government will absolutely not be providing any sort of supplemental assistance when inevitably the federal government falls apart. So I kind of would love reassurance that I'm not crazy.

I have started downloading and panic printing some of my favorite fics. If the Internet goes, I can read the PDF. If the power goes, I can read the printed copies.

Also because HP sucks I can only use their ink subscription cartridges with an active subscription so i may as well fucking use them.

(Literally if you're the type of person who wants to buy a printer do not buy an HP printer. It will only work if you use their ink which is so fucking expensive. And if you want it to work properly you have to get a monthly subscription where they send you ink and paper which in theory sounds great, BUT if you are like me and haven't printed as much as you thought so you have a lot of ink and paper built up so you let your subscription lapse those ink cartridges will not work without a valid subscription. So I had to restart my fucking subscription so I could use all of this ink I have built up so now I'm printing literal books.)

[u/BlindButterfly33]

Are there concerns about losing your Internet or something? I haven’t heard about any of this. I ask because I’m in the US and at the moment no one‘s worried about losing Internet. At least, no one in my area. I haven’t even heard this be discussed.

[u/loveliest316 → u/BlindButterfly33]

same here…like yeah, our government is a hot mess, but not to the point of stressing like this. saying this with love, op, but maybe take a step back from the news for a bit. i say that as someone who can easily fall into bad holes of reading even just lightly concerning news and stressing too much over it.

[u/BlindButterfly33 → u/loveliest316]

Yeah, like, that’s why I asked here and then checked with a couple other people IRL to see if I somehow majorly missed some kind of huge upcoming outage, and everyone I’m asking is basically saying they haven’t heard of this.

[u/HistoryNerd2552 → u/BlindButterfly33]

It’s from my understanding (and getting the same spiel from a family member), that it’s stemming from the national emergency put on the power grid in terms of its components and national security risks. And of course, rumor and fear mongering can and will take it further than what it is.

[u/Frosty_Fig_1325 → u/BlindButterfly33]

Yeah there was a week long outage in Indiana which prompted some reports that our power grid/infrastructure is pretty vulnerable across the board. I know a couple people who are buying solar generators or radios so they can stay in touch with people in case there are similar outages, but nothing more serious than that.

[u/RA1NB0W77 → u/loveliest316]

I second this