Do y’all know how Fastmail measures up in regards to privacy?

I’m happy with the service, but I don’t know how it compares in this particular domain, compared to the likes of Proton, Tuta, et al.

Pretty much.

I keep an ever-growing “shit list” now of companies with whom I no longer do any business (e.g., Amazon; but lots of brick ’n mortar businesses, too).

It sucks. It makes me feel like a crazy person. But here we are.

I’d always been a centrist shitlib normie (I liked watching The West Wing back in the day and found it inspiring, for example). But the Overton Window has been so thoroughly shitfucked lately, now I’m allying myself with the Socialists because they’re the only ones offering any real resistance to this Fascist oligarchy bullshit.

I don’t know how things got here so fast, and why the Democrats are just rolling over for it all (actually, I do, their big corporate donors). The Democratic Party is effectively complicit in all this. If we ever manage to wrest our Republic back from The Fascists somehow, we need to then focus on punishing the Democratic Party as well.

The Nuke Reddit History Chrome extension is great for this.

Ugh, that really sucks. I didn’t realize AWS was their bread and butter now.

Even so.

Y’all, stop buying shit from Amazon, completely. That’s where you start.

Bezos has money because we continue to give it to him. So, the first order of business is to simply stop spending money with him.

As in, forever.

Find an alternative vendor, or even schlep on down to a physical store if you need to.

Well, they need to harden the fuck up and embrace a little bit of inconvenience, if they wish to keep our Republic.

In France, they set shit on fire. In America, we wring our hands about using a retailer other than Amazon.

Dan Bongino, sadly, is right: we really are a bunch of pussies.

Just buy shit elsewhere, Jesus Christ.

Where did you buy stuff before Amazon? Just do that.

Really, that’s still weak. Why go back to Amazon at all after a week or two? Anything you can find on Amazon, you can purchase elsewhere.

I say, delete your goddamned Amazon account already. Don’t give them one more penny. You certainly don’t have to. They’re not the only retailer in town for fuck’s sake.

It’s the very least we can do.

A boycott will be more effective if we laser-focus our efforts:

1. Focus on Amazon, Tesla (anything Musky), & Meta
2. Make the boycott permanent

As for me, I’ve done my part. I will never shop Amazon again, or purchase from any online store that uses Amazon for shipping, and all my Meta accounts have been permanently deleted. Done.

Why restrict it to a few days or a week “blackout” or whatever? That’s weak sauce. Everything you can find on Amazon, you can find elsewhere. Stop giving them money.

100%. I wish we could go back to being algorithm-less (whereby we simply have to seek out what we’re into).

That’s how we got the Nazis to stop the first time around: we sat down with them over a cup of tea and expressed our unity with them.

Oh no, wait, that’s not how we defeated Fascism, at all.

We didn’t defeat the Nazis the first time with amnesty, conversation, and kindness.

We defeated them by stabbing them, shooting them, and fire bombing their cities.

We will have to do it again.

How does Boox compare to Kobo?

Man, I’m torn on this one.

We have two grocery stores in our exurban area.

Kroger, as a corporation, contributes to politicians of both US parties in roughly equal measure. Less than ideal (zero contributions), but not too bad I guess. But, they do have an obnoxious customer loyalty card program. Boo!

Publix, on the other hand, doesn’t have a customer loyalty card program at all. Yay! But, the corporation and their leadership contribute HEAVILY to the new Trumpy GOP, Matt Gaetz in particular. So, fuck them.

I’m boycotting Publix. Lesser of two evils I guess.

I really wish we had a locally-owned mom ’n pop grocery. I’d pay a premium for that.

You can, on certain devices, install /e/os/ and deGoogle everything.

There’s a new market for preinstalled devices popping up, too: https://cybernews.com/gadgets/murena-degoogled-pixel-tablet-launch

It is the rural areas.

I’m in rural TN, and the Trump cult is embedded deep here.

I get to look out my bedroom window and see Trump flags every morning.

Venice.ai is great

Perplexity also has a DeepSeek option and voice

Good.

Y’all still using paper money and coins?

I haven’t used physical bills in twenty years.

Dear god, as an American, I really hope Europe does the right thing and tells the US, with Trump at the help, to fuck all the way off.

They have experience with Fascism. They should know better.

If Europe goes under, the West is done.