Let me blow this wide open. I don’t think anything went wrong with it, there was just too much Star Wars and I stopped caring. The same with Marvel stuff , I watched it all and then bam I couldn’t be bothered to watch Endgame and I haven’t watched any since. And I’ve always been more of a Trekkie. I watched every single episode of every season of every Star Trek but I just can’t be arsed to watch the last seasons of New Worlds, it is fine but I have had my fill. Or maybe I got old and it just doesn’t do it for me any more?

I’ve been boycotting all US products and services online and offline since Trump 2.0. Now I’m working on avoiding the most stubborn things like Mastercard and visa, but I’m getting there.

The time is coming we need to isolate and sanction the USA in the same way we have Russia. Cut off the internet links with them, ban travel and trade with them. Block as much of their cultural pollution and political cancer as we can. Similar in all the bad ways those two supposed superpowers are have caused more of the worlds problems than anything else.

Just use Ghostery with never consent? I hardly ever see those things. Other extensions are available.

Fluffychat (matrix), Deltachat seem really good but good luck getting anyone to change. Let us know if you figure out a way to persuade people they should make any effort or try something new.

To be fair that does sound better?

Yeah sue me I like China and the stuff they produce, I don’t like the USA, their foreign policy or the products they make. It’s not a lot in the great scheme of things but over the last couple of months I’ve spent 10s of thousands of pounds and avoided virtually any of it going to USA linked companies, that gives me great satisfaction. I’ve even managed to quit using Visa and Mastercard. I’m still using an old iPhone but just looking at buying a pinephone running Linux to complete my personal purge.

I’m in the UK

Seems like a waste of time and money. Drones, AI, special forces, asymmetric warfare and tactical nukes are the wave of the future. As is civilian resistance and societal resilience. Next gen fighters seems like a boondoggle for the legacy military/industrial complex.

Physically destroy oil and gas production and storage facilities. Seems like the most straightforward method. If Ukraine can reduce Russian oil production 20% in a matter of months then people who care about the planet should be easily capable of doing the same… I have been looking into producing a google maps style overlay of global infrastructure that anyone who wants to contribute could use as a target list… but there might be others out there more au fait with mapping technology who could do it better. I’ve been inspired by the book How to Blow up an oil pipeline by Andreas Malm.

I haven’t bought anything from a USA company since Trump being his second term. I canceled Amazon prime. I sought out UK and EU suppliers for all my products and services. Installed Linux (German based distro, sorry fedora) closed my social media apart from lemmy and migrated my emails to an EU service. Oh and bought a Chinese made electric Dacia. You can do it, it wasn’t even hard.

It isn’t rocket science, people become uneasy when they see or at least perceive there to be an influx of newcomers, they don’t even need necessarily to be from a different race or culture. It’s simply a fact that isn’t going to change any time soon. And more and more people globally are going to be on the move as the climate breakdown and more wars break out. If you don’t want to see populists thriving then you need to put in the leg work to slow the pace of change that people see and reassure them.

I use Mistral Ai instead because I don’t touch and US products or services. The most common thing I ask is: check and tidy up these notes add formatting for readability, present as a markdown code block, add some nerd fonts.

Well the answer is obviously the UK plug some of those others are just plain bad. The question is are they all made largely obsolete by USB C ? and is that the closest we are likely to get to a universal plug and socket?

I use iPhones for myself and the family because they just work. I don’t shell out for the latest models, this as-new iPhone 12 I’m on now works just fine. I use Linux for everything else but my requirements for a phone are totally different to what I need from a PC. I don’t need freedom or the ability to tinker or hack it. I need my phone to operate as a reliable appliance and a mobile wallet, so I appreciate features like Apple wallet and Face ID. Other people’s requirements might differ but I think it is just a case of horses for courses. But don’t get me started on all the advanced features of the iPhone that are hidden so well behind the pretty ui most people will never ever realise they exist…

Just a step on the inevitable road to one world polity. We should really be working out a roadmap to a world where everyone is a citizen of a worldstate with freedom to move, travel and trade freely regardless of where they were born. Basic rights should be protected everywhere by global enforcement, Borders should be administrative niceties and people should be free to migrate to areas which reflect their social and religious preferences in a global freemarket of societies where the most beneficial policies result in people voting with their feet.

Does no one else wake up at 0300 and read a book for a bit before going back to sleep for a couple of hours?

My wishlist is an app which is not linked to a phone number, is multi platform and has a web app. It should be none US and open source. That isn’t too many requirements and yet nothing seems to full fit the bill? Anyway good luck trying to get school parent’s groups to use something other than WhatsApp.

I can’t seem to find any evidence online but there did used to be a supermarket in the UK in the 80s/90s called ‘No Frills’ and all their products were also just black and white packaging.

New season of the handmaiden’s tale just dropped?