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.

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.

Maybe, but it does feel as someone in the UK that Trump seems more like a new, clear and present danger to our way of life than the Chinese.

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 other out there more au fait with mapping technology who could do it better.

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 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…

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.

Abolish copper coins. Job done :-)

The funny thing is only the UK plug design is any good, all others are so much worse they should just give up and go home.

I stopped using Google at the same time I closed my accounts with Facebook, instagram, Reddit and Amazon. Currently I’m using Ecosia which I think is German. I’m dumping all the US companies I can based on all the Trump crap. It is taking time and effort but I should be able to actually close the Google account soon and I replaced windows with Linux on all but one of my PCs.

Guys if you haven’t already, I suggest doing what I did a few weeks ago and actually delete your Reddit account, not just stop using it. They need to see their registered account number plummet.

I’ve been closing all my US based accounts recently. I was looking for a non US based Password manager service a couple of days ago. I used european-alternatives.eu and looked at a couple of options before settling on “Heylogin” it is so good I thought I had better recommend it to others… oh and I dumped chat GPT for chat.mistral.ai a couple of weeks ago, I recommend giving it a go.