Now they get $0 a month from me. They keep begging me back with $5/mo offers. Nope. That bridge has been burned.

The problem is that the backend analytics they're collecting are worth so much that they would either have to lose a ton of money with subscriptions, or admit just how much they're making from your "free" eyeballs.

I do recall the non-fresh milk in Germany. Shelf stable ultra pasteurized milk tastes terrible. In the US you can still get even raw milk.

https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/nonpasteurized-outbre...

Here I am thankful that Montana recently reduced regulations and made it so small dairies can supply raw milk directly to customers without any inspection from a state or federal agency, so now my family drinks local, fresh, raw milk for the same price as organic UHT crap.

Germans can't get anything but this UHT stuff?

What has become a lot more common (and is often not clearly labeled) are stronger pasteurization levels that make unopened milk stable for a few weeks refrigerated (it's also sometimes micro-filtrated).

Before, softer pasteurization was the more common variant, which then has unopened ~1 week of refrigerated stability. Less offered now, although a good supermarket has it.

(These two categories are not fixed standards, so within them there's also variations in how processing is done exactly)

Raw milk (i.e. never heated >40°C, unfiltered) is also available, but with stronger requirements on how it's handled before sale and thus often hard to get, especially if you're not local to a farm producing it - obviously transport has to be quick.

That was the point where you lost me. Even ALDI doesn't just have non-refrigerated milk.

I find the shift annoying too, but it's not as bad as that.