Last trip to the grocery store I couldn’t find any non-US salad kits, and Silk NextMilk is made down there now, because I guess our plants were the listeria ones. Chip dip was surprisingly hard to find too, although I did it.
I’m very pleased with how many vegetables actually come from Mexico (definitely via the US though), and there’s even a few things you can get from greenhouses, so that situation is less dire than I’d expected.
It’s impossible to do a full boycott. There’s gonna be some stuff you end up getting.
Yes, I’ve bought two items to date from the US, due to lack of alternatives.
Considering how much stuff I’ve bought, though, that’s pretty damn close, and it wasn’t even hard.
You canceled your Netflix etc? Not playing games in steam?
You’re right, I guess that’s 3 direct purchases to date. Software platforms are definitively the hardest to replace.
That and there’s probably a lot of other ways you have made purchases without even knowing. My point is that don’t beat yourself up over not doing a full boycott. The fact that you’re doing what you’re doing will have an impact pretty big already. If enough people are like you, even if they aren’t perfect, will have a huge impact.
Finding a cloud service provider that’s reliable and has good terraform support has been impossible. Best we could do there was switch to another American firm that didn’t seem to be a Trump-supporting sell-out.
Otherwise it’s been pretty easy. But mostly because we already had everything.
As a baseline my focus hasn’t been so much not buying American at all but buying from Canadian owned and operated stores as the primary entry point. So no more Amazon, etc.
That’s the next frontier for me. AliExpress looks very promising, and I’m going to bug other people I know about degoogling as well now. Streaming is a bigger question, because I’m not sure I can sell piracy, I never really watch TV alone, and while we do a lot of CBC we still need to supplement with Netflix, as of now.
I’m not sure if I should care about the ownership of brick and morter stores, except Walmart, because they’re all personally (edit: majority) owned by the Walton family. Even if like Costco the profits go to the US, they have shareholders all over the world, and obviously the store itself is in Canada.
Considering how much stuff isn’t made in the US anymore, this should be easy. For a real challenge, try avoiding items made in China.
That’ll go about as well as reading the TOS on everything before clicking agree
sorry to butt in but that’s a hobby of mine 😀
for example going full renewables: solar panels made in south korea (qcells), battery german (sonnen), ev south korea (hyundai ioniq), heat pump australia/japan (reclaim energy)
I’m now looking at computer parts made exclusively in taiwan (looks like gigabyte mainly) because europe appears to have 0 competitive chip makers
it seems you can still buy bigger items that are local or non-china made but you will be punished for it, prices are anywhere from 10% to 100% higher
I went to buy a pair of scissors this week. I could not find a pair that wasn’t made in China.
I went to buy a greeting card, 75% of them were made in China. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s a freaking happy birthday card. There is no way it’s cheaper to cut down the tree, mill the paper, send it to China on a boat, have it printed, then have it sent back to North America on another boat. WTF?
yep small items i’ve pretty much given up on, nobody seems to care that $2 worth of stickers are made in China
It just keeps going though, weirdest one for me was those little marshmallows you put on cakes:
Coles Bake and Create Pink and White Mallows, 100g. Great for creating a delicious rocky road or topping hot drinks.
Made in China
https://www.coles.com.au/product/coles-mallows-pink-and-white-100g-2441652
Really???
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Staples has online card building, you can customize all of it if you want, and it was about $2.50. Just have to plan ahead because they often print it at another facility and use the interstore shipping to get it to your pickup store.
I’ve never heard of Reclaim… How is that heat pump treating you? We got a Bryant (I believe it’s a Midea rebadged) and our solar is a Sol-Ark inverter (I still need to figure out how to get it off WiFi and just local using CANbus…) and LONGi panels.
Yep sorry I’m in Aus not Canada, they’re a local manufacturer (https://reclaimenergy.com.au/), expensive as hell but felt like showing my support to at least one of the few places this still does engineering in Australia
How is that heat pump treating you
Really good! the separate compressor from the tank makes it whisper quiet, can barely hear it even if you’re a foot away, co2 which is the most environment friendly refrigerant, and power usage is well, minimal, only a small 160L tank because I live by myself, can see example of what it uses here (it’s the light blue bit at around 8am in the morning):
That said it is summer here in Queensland, will have to see how it goes in Winter but under 1kw a day for hot water, that’s really not bad at all imo
Hmm, I’m actually curious. SE Asia and Bangladesh probably are a viable alternative for a lot of things. Obviously, if you have an unlimited budget you can find some bespoke artisanal item made nearer by as well.
I’m American and I’d rather buy Canadian too
Hopefully, one of these days they make it easier to emigrate from America, if that’s of any interest to you.
I’m joining the war on Canada… on the side of Canada. 🇨🇦
Then we shall turn this continent into an orgy of maple syrup!
I’m American and I’d rather be Canadian, too. Best I can do is Mexican and that’s looking better every day.
We should probably get out before they close the borders for us too
Most of my groceries accidentally end up being nearly all Canadian products.
I haven’t really needed to buy anything other than groceries this past week, but I have been looking for alternatives to other products I’ll eventually need, and I will make buying Canadian first a priority, followed by Not American™ as a close second. 😂
Yeah, same. Aside from the products I mentioned it wasn’t hard at all. I had to take a bit of extra care with canned fruit, I guess.
American software dominance is pretty out of control. If you don’t want to use American streaming, you pretty much have to go to piracy instead, and if you want to talk to IRL people online US social media is the main game in town. Not to mention the internet backbone itself being centered in the US.
For online shopping, you can go Chinese. I need to look into if there’s any non-US Western options.
Sailing the Seven Seas is definitely the best way to do streaming.
US social media is increasingly right-leaning and bot-dominated, so you’re not really missing out there.
Online shopping is awful.
At this point, I’m hoping for the Giant Meteor.
Depends how you online shop. I do it occasionally and for niche things that aren’t sold anywhere nearby, and for that I’m immensely grateful. Hopefully someone’s working on federated ecommerce.
I’m currently switching all my computing/cloud stuff over to Canadian and/or EU providers. I’m going to move my domains to Easy DNS and try out a VPS from LunaNode.
I was about to say there’s TunnelBear VPN, but, just found out they’ve been acquired by McAfee , so boo.
I use Mullvad, based in Sweden. Works great for me.
Private Internet Access is UK-owned, it looks like.
Would you recommend LunaNode? I’ve been looking for AWS, gcloud, Azure, and DigitalOcean alternatives and a lot are underwhelming.
I’m actually pretty pleased so far. I had to contact support to sort out a payment problem but they were incredibly quick to help me out. I think the price performance is pretty decent, but my needs are very minimal. The web ui is really straightforward as well, really no complaints.
Killed all social media outside the fediverse. Even for our small business. Dumped Amazon and looking into Linux to drop Microsoft too. Degoogling the phone. We’re pretty good at the grocery store because we grow a lot of our own and make what we can.
Even for our small business.
Damn, that’s next level commitment! I’ve gotten rid of everything personally, but giving up on my income source being easy to find would scare me.
Also, RIP DivestOS. Still sad about that.
Fuck em. We will manage. They can eat a bag of dicks. If I could eliminate all American influence from our lives I would.
If you have a pixel phone then GrapheneOS is a solid choice.
If you’re up for a challenge try Ubuntu Touch, Mobian, Sailfish and Postmarket OS!
I’m interested in moving off Android but afraid of bricking my phone. Years ago I had flashed roms onto my galaxy s4 but these days I worry about not being able to get work calls if something goes wrong. How risky is it these days, also is there anything I should know ahead of time if I try to move to a linux os. Do they work well on cheaper phones?
Years ago I had flashed roms onto my galaxy s4 but these days I worry about not being able to get work calls if something goes wrong.
There are still issues with calling however I would say Ubuntu Touch has the best support that front as it is the most stable. It should be fine installing when following an official guide from that distro.
I should know ahead of time if I try to move to a linux os.
The cellular connectivity has issues and the apps are limited.
Do they work well on cheaper phones?
It really depends on how well the phone model is supported by the contributors. They have lists of their most supported phones that you can look at.
Thanks for the info! Going to say cheap phone, possible cellular connectivity issues might not be a good idea for me right yet. I’ll put it on the to do with next phone list. I sometimes do Instacart deliveries to supplement income when I accidentally splurge to much. Not having cellular in remote areas would mean I couldn’t work directions/electronic signatures for alcohol.
Not having cellular in remote areas would mean I couldn’t work directions.
The open-source efficient Organic Maps can help with that.
Your job sounds really cool! Seeing all the beautiful countryside!
Yeah my normal job is in Nashville. Instacart is what I was talking about on the side. Basically it is just picking up stuff for people like groceries and hardware stores and dropping it off. Mostly it’s Kroger for me, grab 25 items, drop it off at their house and make a few extra dollars. Usually can make $100 on my day off doing that for 5 hours or so. You know how far the trips are before you take them so if you want further drives you can do them but you are paying for gas so usually I only take farther ones when they are for decent money amounts. I have taken some that are 30 miles into the middle of nowheresville. I’ve actually delivered to an Amish community as well.
Mastodon is free, might be better than going totally off grid for your business.
The audience is smaller than twitter was, but if you find a niche the people are quite nice
Anyone have suggestions for Canadian cat food that isn’t overpriced? I’ve got like 15 cats so I go through a lot in a month.
Most Purina products are at least produced and manufactured in Canada. I have been using the beyond line of products and my cats love it.
Sadly, it is a mega agro corp.
I guess it uses Canadian farms, but Purina is owned by Nestlé.
Dammit.
I knew there was a catch.
Huh TIL. I’ve mainly been feeding them that and the co-op stuff (Which they don’t care for so I usually blend them together.)
Acana is Canadian, though they are not super cheap but certainly not the most expensive either. My dogs like it, and one of them is a picky eater.
Most of my groceries are either already made in Canada or imported from Mexico. I didn’t have to change much.
It’s not a cheap way to shop, I will admit, but it can be done. Canada makes a lot of food, especially here in BC where I live. Beef, pork, sausages, honey, dairy, milk-alternatives, breads, and so much more.
For non-grocery items there are numerous retailers that are Canadian. London Drugs is a great one here in western Canada. Online shopping is a bit harder because Amazon is so hard to replicate, but honestly at that point I just buy from Aliexpress. If I’m going to order cheap crap online I’ll just get it from the source instead of sending money to the US.
Seconded. half the stuff on Amazon is legendary brands like FleySwui08 or Glai77Zalo or Blukogluko. All highly recommended, of course.
TBH I’m not even sure why they do that. We all know it’s from the same factory in Shenzhen as usual when we see that, right? And what comes tends to be basic but functional.
BC milk-alternatives
Yeah, I went with Earth’s Own in the end. Their attempt at copying Nextmilk has not hit the mark yet, unfortunately. Side thing - why are so many brands in Burnaby specifically?
Earth’s Own is great. I love their oat milk.
As for Burnaby - I’m not sure exactly. Probably cheaper and more available land for commercial businesses. Vancouver is notoriously expensive and cramped.
London Drugs is excellent! They even have an online filter for Canadian products.
It’s generally going well. I already did this boycott once before during Trump 1.0, so I know what do look for.
It’s a bit harder this time around because there are things we need where a Canadian (or at least non-American) alternative doesn’t exist. The big one is diapers, as we haven’t been able to find anything non-American that also works within our budget and time constraints.
It’s unfortunate, but also only temporary. My kids should be out of diapers in a few years, provided the world doesn’t end before then.
Contact your local store to order https://www.royale.ca/diapers Made in New Brunswick.
I’ll do some research today to see if they are available where I live, or if they can be made so. Thanks for the tip.
Oh, well that looks promising!
We did it, Lemmy?
It looks like AliExpress sells some diapers. I have no idea how they compare price-wise, though, and the quality is bound to be somewhat lower.
In China they culturally have an alternate solution, so maybe that’s why outsourcing has been slower in the diaper market.
No cloth diapers in Canada?
There are, but they aren’t feasible for us to use. We would love to, and even discussed it before our first kid was born, but the realities of our lives make them impractical.
We had a few in diapers at the same time, reusable ones with washable liners are the way to go. It means carrying a container till you get home to handle a dirty diaper, but the cost savings alone meant less working hours.
Ah. I used a diaper service for my kid and it was pretty handy. Then again, that was 30 years ago and everything was much more affordable.
As someone who isn’t a North American… What is a salad kit?
A mix of greens in a bag, often with a pouch of dressing and a bag of nuts tossed in as well.
Thank you… You know, that sounds mighty civilised.
they’re pretty handy if you only want one salad, instead of eating it every day
It’s not really cost effective versus buying separate but way cheaper than going to a salad place and it saves stocking space for different toppings and dressings. We started eating more salads because we dont have to eat the same kind daily.
Yes, I suspect I’ll just be eating less salad now, unfortunately.
On the bright side, I’ll save a bit of money that way. Hopefully I still get enough fresh stuff to dodge scurvy.
It is an expensive way to eat. But somewhat makes sense for a single person meal
Hmm, I find the full-size ones usually serve two.
If you ate it twice you could make it work, but it’s going to be soggy on day two.
I can eat a whole Five Guys Large order of Fries my self so…
Thank you, as OP I was getting ready to defend why I can’t just make my own salad against an angry European purist, haha.
Every salad I personally make is ass in comparison - if I even bother on a busy day and with the hand issues I have. The ratios of things included are just right, there is (well, there was) a good variety available, and you don’t have to cut, wash and potentially roast a bunch of stuff for it because a big machine somewhere already did.
I had to buy moisturizer. I saw two on the shelf. Flipped the labels, one was made in USA, the other made Canada. I picked the latter. That was it.
Get Cutibase if you can find it. Made in Quebec, works really well, scent-free.
I bought Cetaphil. Would look into Cutibase next time around.
Last year I moved from Ontario to Spain so avoiding American products has been pretty easy at the grocery store. The main thing has been cancelling online American services like Netflix, Amazon, Google one, Youtube Premium, etc.
What are you doing for streaming then? High seas, or is there something local available in Spain?
There is movistar plus which is a bit like crave, so its 100% not cutting off the US as you can watch some american content on it. But it also has a lot of Spanish content which is fresh for us. We’re also looking at some UK streaming services that are available in Spain like BBC ITVX but we haven’t subscribed yet.
Also looking at the high seas for content we couldn’t get at either of those 😅
Cancel them, but don’t stop watching American stuff you like. Just don’t pay for it.
This is the way 🏴☠️
https://www.simplehomelab.com/docker-media-server-2024/
It’s a little daunting but once you get it up and running with a VPN, you’ll never miss those enshitified streaming services.
I thought looking at the list online would be annoying until I realized you can just look at the food labels. So it’s easy. Had to buy cabbage instead of lettuce last time I was at the store. That’s about it.
What were you doing with it? Cabbage is great but it’s not exactly the same as lettuce.
Putting it in wraps and cooking it with soy.
Mmm, that sounds good. I guess the lettuce would have gone in raw instead, then?
Damn, I think it’s wraps for me too tonight. I managed to find local greenhouse lettuce, which somehow is economically viable.
Not much changed for me personally, I already mostly buy local.
Btw if you really want to hurt america see if you can modify your rrsp/resp/tfsa/<other 4 letter acronym> to exclude American companies (and O&G while your at it). It’s hard and probably not good from a purely financial perspective, but I think it has a lot more impact.
I’m disabled. Also petition your government leaders to divest CPP from American companies and investment firms.
Already did it! And boy, was I glad I had when Trump started doing things.
VEU is one example ETF on the TSX.
