Didn’t have many subscriptions (all US are cancelled) and was mostly eating Canadian food already. Swapping now what else is left … what now? I am so mad at the USA I need something else to take my anger out on.
If you use a windows computer you could look into Linux. It’s a bit complicated to get ahold of if you’re not super tech savvy and are super used to Microsoft products but it is doable.
Look into what software, hardware, games, etc that you use your PC for and see if they’re Linux compatible. If not, find alternatives that could work for you. (Example, instead of Microsoft office you can try LibreOffice)
For me as an example, I primarily use my PC for gaming. The Proton compatibility layer allows me to play all my games on Linux (except for Garden warfare 2, which won’t run due to an incompatible anti-cheat software)
Overall, do your research, find how compatible your own setup is and what distribution is right for you.
For new users, Linux Mint is a popular choice.
Join us at !linux@programming.dev and !linuxphones@lemmy.ca
I’m in quite a good position as a decision maker for certain types of software used in our company. As soon as some of our u.s. based contracts expire, I am switching to an open source alternative. Already preparing the migration now actually.
👏
Most Canadians live within 160km of the border. If you have nothing made or marketed left, I recommend stepping 5-7m closer to the border and screaming. Maybe warn your neighbours first?
I don’t but I like the idea
We all do what we can
Sounds like you’ve basically got yourself covered. Beyond that, I’d recommend just trying to make sure your current methods are sustainable (IE, you won’t have to switch back in a year) and trying to find ways to help others.
Some other ways the can help reduce US influence off the top of my head, ordered roughly from least to most difficult:
- Do your research and vote
- Use networked platforms (like the Fediverse) more, to help them compete with big american tech
- Promote Canadian or non-US alternatives
- put together detailed resources to help others boycott US products (IE, blog posts about how you addressed specific issues or infographics explaining the alternatives to common american products.)
- Join local groups to become more connected with your community
- Volunteering
- Becoming involved in politics, be it helping campaign for important causes or running yourself.
Yes, a lot of these aren’t directly targeting the US, but the stronger Canada is, the less power the US has over us.
On it!
I’m seconding the part about sharing your knowledge. I’d love to do this but don’t know where to start.
The local community center is a good place to start. Offer to teach others what you know through the rec department where you live. They can help you find a suitable location and how to contact the community and help you advertise. They are always open to new programs starting up and would welcome you contacting them to speak about it.
Local community and youth groups as well. Offer to speak about your knowledge to them and what they can do themselves. Offer to set up clinics at community centers and drop ins where you can help people directly with any problems or questions they may have and make a contact for yourself so you can stay in touch. Ask young people you meet who are excited about learning to help teach older members of the community.
Impact your community and it will impact the entire country.
Tysm for bringing up this idea. Community building is so important and having a guild of people that can teach and repair things will be most beneficial. Building parallel power in our communities reduces our dependance on making other people rich and builds richness in community where it belongs.
I recently heard on the news as I was talking to my Grandmother that there are people who are boycotting shows that take place in the US. I am not there yet but I am not going to start watching new series that take place in the US.
It’s a hard one but next is to leave their platforms as much as possible.
I’m currently De-googling / de Microsoft-ing and it’s hard but feasible.
If you’re not ready to leave Facebook, follow the guide John Oliver’s team put out.
Otherwise, go see local comedians / bands or buy their stuff to support them, stuff like that
One that surprised me is how many apps etc are American. Even free apps usually profit by selling your data etc. So, worth taking the time to try and find non American digital substitutes.
A huge proportion of America’s economy is actually digital services.
Other stuff you can do is write to local grocers. If they’re labelling Canadian products, thank them and maybe ask if they can highlight all non American food. If they aren’t labelling, ask what their plans are
I went through my apps too. I am already careful with what I use and always check what data they collect. I even went so far and left shit reviews on uber, Netflix, Disney, anmazon, prime video, prime music etc. Apps. Anything that I could think of and had downloaded and subscribed to at some point. This gets me into a whole new level of petty. Yeah maybe I start writing politicians to get of Twitter (oh I should leave a shit review on that one too!) and grocery stores. I did send London Drugs a ton of suggestions for products already. 😬
Awesome!
Maybe it’s letter writing time? I bet there are a lot of stores in your area that could use the moral.support of a letter urging them to reduce their American goods, flag non American ones etc.
Or, if you don’t mins social media, joining bluesky (twitter alternative) or whatever that instagram alternative is? (More users => more growth => meaningful competitor.)
Yeah I am thinking letters but I am not a fan of writing. I am on Mastodon which is definitely not US. And here, Lemmy isn’t either.
Totally fair! As much as we hate AI, maybe you could use deepseek or somesuch to get the majority of the letter written and then edit and send as necessary? Honestly though, even a couple lines to a corporate contact email address etc works!
Ugh then I rather write myself haha. It doesn’t have to be much, you are right.
I realized last night, while not as anti US, watching stuff on CBC Gem probably helps Canadians in the television industry etc.
That’s right, watching TV as an act of resistance!
If you have any savings, investments, retirement funds, etc., make sure they’re not invested in US companies.
Did that too. I still have a global one but it’s only 9% US and performing well so I left it.
Hit up your MP about CPP for me would you. Disabled people and retirees are paid from a fund that is heavily invested in the American stock market. The federal government already hates disabled people and wants us dead, so any help we can get to get them to divest would be appreciated.
Someone already mentioned apps, but another one to look at is cloud storage and email services, and switching to local storage(ie, hard drives) and/or non-US services if possible.
Yeah, I still have a gmail address 🙈 it’s hard to move. I’ll take my time with that one. So much work. Cloud storage I moved to sync. I only have some small stuff in iCloud. More like a download folder. Homepage was already hosted in Canada.
I have a gmail account only to watch YouTube, I wish there were real alternatives to youtube but there is not. It took me a long time to get off of gmail, I wanna say mor then a few months because something would come into the mail that I had forgotten to change so I changed it to a hide my email address. Now I am trying to take all of my hide my email addresses and move them over to proton.
You should check out some of the shady stuff Proton has been doing lately, and while you’re at it, you might wanna look into alternatives
Have a list of alternatives? Proton is end to end encrypted (so they say) which means regardless of what they are up to, at a minimum your e-mails are can’t be read or sold.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about Tuta, but I think you need your own domain. Which isn’t usually a huge hassle, but it can be under certain circumstances. I’m planning on self-hosting some email and password manager solutions, probably my calendar too. Bitwarden and some CalDAV situation
I’ve been using KeePass with a my kdbx in a webdav share, 10/10. Super simple, and with KeeWeb (also selfhosted) I always have access to my passwords.
I used to use KeePass, and then I bought into the Proton suite… Haven’t decided what I’ll move back to, but thanks for the reminder about how nice and easy KeePass is
I personally changed my web host and domain name in protest. Instead of reannlegge.com it is reannlegge.ca.
It is a simple blog for me to scream into the wind.
I feel ya…when capitalism is already such a cancer that I already participate as little as possible, boycotting becomes harder because I was already not giving the parasite class my money.
Right?! I am feeling like I don’t have much leverage because I am not subscribed to that much and have less to drop. Probably a good thing (I know it is) but feels a little lack luster right now in terms of action I can take.
There’s Crave I think? But the deal ain’t that great. There’s a LOT of ads and they’re extremely LOUD.
And the subscriptions are expensive. I’m not going to pay 22$/month just to stop having ads. I don’t need the 4k streaming because my TV doesn’t have that resolution. Besides I only have a 30mbps internet connection that’s already costing me almost 80$. (I should shop around now that I think about it. 80$ is hella expensive for 30mbps)
Yo ho yo ho 🏴☠️
Capitalism turned streaming into cable 2.0; they can pound sand
Yeah. I’ve been torrenting my movies lately and using pirate streaming websites. Or, going to my local library and borrowing movies to then rip and keep on my external HDD plugged into my NVidia Shield. I can watch them with VLC no problem, subtitles, language tracks and all.
I have only heard bad things about Crave, if you want you can go to a channels app and watch show the day after they air. If you do not have an ad blocker the ads get repetitive very fast.
The lineup isn’t great, but the worst part is the app experience.
Yeah, I was watching it from my NVidia Shield and there’s no adblock on there. It’s terrible.
I’m honestly thinking of getting some kind of small Linux box for the TV, but I need something that works with a remote preferably.
I have two pi-holes on my LAN as my DNS servers, I would never go back to not having them.
There are people who use something as simple as a pi 1, it is good enough. I personally have killed so many SD cards using pi 3’s and 4’s, as I use them for so much more than just pihole. I have given away my pi3, and my pi4 is now my CUPS server booting off of a USB NVME drive, yes the 250gb or whatever it is is a little much disk space for a CUPS server. I have two pi5’s with NVME hats, they are both bigger than the pi4 disk and I have been meaning to set them up as file servers on my LAN.
Have you tried using automotive rated SD cards? They’re intended to last in dashcams with tons of daily writes so they might hold up better if you were using normal SD cards.
No, and I have no plans on doing that, I have NVMe drives that are faster and have considerably more storage space than any SD card. In the two pi5’s they are attached via pci3 and with the pi4 it is connected via USB3.
We had crave for a bit over Christmas. Wasn’t overly impressed
This is a list of initial 3rd party scripts the cbc.ca website lists in Ublock. Akamiedge is Microsoft and google is well Alphabet and are both US corporations.
Maybe start complaining to your MP that tax dollars are funding US companies through CBC, and write to CBC to advise them to revamp their websites to not use US tech company infrastructure.
Popular Browser extension: NoScript
The CBC has me miffed right now too. What was that shit program about 51st state???
This is why I love independent media. As CBC too often tries to strike a middle point between facts and falsehoods.
How are you doing on personal hygiene items like toothpaste, mouthwash, soap, shampoo, et alia?
Yup covered that. Still finding the right shampoo but I have another brand ordered. Canadian of course.
Out of curiosity, which toothpaste and mouthwash have you found? I got a Canadian toothpaste, but am not thrilled with it, and am still looking for a mouthwash that does the job.
I don’t use mouth wash. I use a water flosser and brush my teeth. Right now I am trying green Beaver toothpaste and Tanit toothpaste tabs. Not a fan of either really but I am not tossing them out. I’ll try a couple more. Which one did you try?
At the moment, we are using Attitude. I miss the nuclear explosion mint in Sensodyne, but this protects the nerve endings well, which is critical, believe me. It’s also vegan, which I am not, but that might appeal to others.
At the moment, we are using Attitude. I miss the nuclear explosion mint in Sensodyne, but this protects the nerve endings well, which is critical, believe me. It’s also vegan, which I am not, but that might appeal to others.
I’m adding that to my list! Thanks!
I ordered shampoo and detangler from Attitude. I am using live clean shampoo right now and it’s ok but I wouldn’t mind trying another one. I’ll check out their toothpaste as well. I do want to find tabs too. I use lush and they are made in Canada but their quality control seems not the best. That doesn’t work for me but tabs are so handy for travel and on the go.
Have you considered a vacation to mar-a-lago?
