Not April fools.
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Not April fools.
Here's a screw a tech bro for a week challenge
1) don't make online purchases. Walk into a store or call /email a small business owner.
2) no using any food delivery apps, call a local restaurant and pick it up. The tech companies take a huge cut and you'd be doing the local small biz a huge favour by doing this.
3) no using Uber or Lyft. Call a cab if you need it
4) don't use AI tools. If your employer threatens your job, give them the slop they deserve, but nothing outside of that.
5) add in the comments anything else you think of.
I honestly wonder how painful this list is for many people. Is a week doable or have they fundamentally taken control of us so hard we already lost our old systems of living?
@chu
I still have an Amazon account, but I don't buy anything from it.
I just use the wishlist as a way of keeping track of stuff I want to buy. -
Usually, these are the channels I receive in my area of Montréal (7 of them, 2 USian, 1 Japanese):
- CBC
- Télé-Québec (Québec's TVontario)
- NHK World
- Noovo (French CTV)
- PBS
- PBS Kids
- Ici Radio-Canada TéléAnd I'm not well placed to receive them
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That's a better selection than this old Hollywood western ONE channel.
Gunsmoke and Bonanza...I saw more than enough in my younger days thank you. -
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I don’t know where you are, but you might be able to get CBC?
You can have a look here:
https://www.rabbitears.info/searchmap.phpI get my top 4 good ones, plus PBS that’s not listed.
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Not April fools.
Here's a screw a tech bro for a week challenge
1) don't make online purchases. Walk into a store or call /email a small business owner.
2) no using any food delivery apps, call a local restaurant and pick it up. The tech companies take a huge cut and you'd be doing the local small biz a huge favour by doing this.
3) no using Uber or Lyft. Call a cab if you need it
4) don't use AI tools. If your employer threatens your job, give them the slop they deserve, but nothing outside of that.
5) add in the comments anything else you think of.
I honestly wonder how painful this list is for many people. Is a week doable or have they fundamentally taken control of us so hard we already lost our old systems of living?
@chu I do all of this every day of my life. My current challenge is divesting my life of all American tech companies…which means dumping the MacOs in favour of Linux. It’s a work in progress.
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Not April fools.
Here's a screw a tech bro for a week challenge
1) don't make online purchases. Walk into a store or call /email a small business owner.
2) no using any food delivery apps, call a local restaurant and pick it up. The tech companies take a huge cut and you'd be doing the local small biz a huge favour by doing this.
3) no using Uber or Lyft. Call a cab if you need it
4) don't use AI tools. If your employer threatens your job, give them the slop they deserve, but nothing outside of that.
5) add in the comments anything else you think of.
I honestly wonder how painful this list is for many people. Is a week doable or have they fundamentally taken control of us so hard we already lost our old systems of living?
@chu This is our default: we don't use the food order apps and call the restaurant instead for pickup/delivery, and try to pay cash if possible. Rarely ever order anything online as a general rule.
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@johnhenrythe3rd @chu do you supply the difference in price?
@LeoBistmans @johnhenrythe3rd @chu That comment tells me everything I need to know about you.
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@chu Which is also why tech bros are terrified of the 15 minute city concept: I live in one and I can buy from local stores, go to local restaurants and never need a car because everything I need is at most a 15 minute walk, cycle or public transport ride away.
@brunogirin @chu Which is why conservatives keep whipping up their idiot base by claiming that the 15-minute city is on the level of the Berlin Wall. Seriously, there’s nothing more gullible than a right-wing American (or Canadian or Brit)…they’ll believe ANYTHING that confirms their preconceived beliefs and prejudices.
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I don’t know where you are, but you might be able to get CBC?
You can have a look here:
https://www.rabbitears.info/searchmap.phpI get my top 4 good ones, plus PBS that’s not listed.
<sad face> nope.
however, this is a helpful tool that I might be able to pass on to someone who needs it. So thanks.
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@chu One of the Best Typical Dutch/Chinese restaurants *) in our town closed this week.
Quite a few closed recently except the other Best One : Still there and good.
The only one left taking telephone -orders by themselves, not through ubbereat-apps.
They do not need to. Typical Dutch/Chinese means Chinese entering Holland just before WW2, and could not go back because of China-Japan Boxer War. They adopted and mixed Indonesian styles , better know because of Colonial past.@hanktank61 @chu totally off-topic tangent: i love the differences between all the different <country>-Chinese cuisines around the world. every place is a little different. see e. g. Canadian Chinese or Hakka cuisine (which around these parts specifically means South Asian/trans-Himalayan-style Chinese food). So many different historical contingencies.
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@hanktank61 @chu totally off-topic tangent: i love the differences between all the different <country>-Chinese cuisines around the world. every place is a little different. see e. g. Canadian Chinese or Hakka cuisine (which around these parts specifically means South Asian/trans-Himalayan-style Chinese food). So many different historical contingencies.
My people left and went everywhere. It's amazing for me to see the various Chinatown's in countries whose languages I don't speak and see how similar yet different our cuisines and culture ended up.
Once upon a time in Lisboa, I got lost. I walked past a Chinese resto thinking "I may as well try". I walked in using my very half assed broken mandarin (this was before I started to learn it). The woman apologized and said she didn't speak it in my paternal grandparents dialect, the first language I ever spoke in my life. The woman was nearly in tears speaking to a younger generation tai Shan descendant who could speak her language. She walked my butt back to the subway.
We all left and call different places home but our language remains. This is why I insist on my kids speaking Chinese. Sadly, this particular dialect isn't getting passed on but they can cross communicate.
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For the majority of the population, meaning folks with mobility impairments, much of this means just going back to doing without
Yes, we have gotten used to having groceries, more than the once a month delivery we can get from a local charity. We have gotten used to being able to go places and not just stay on lockdown all the time
The fucked up thing is that these harmful technological innovations met large existing needs in our society
The alternative would be to meet these needs with governmental programs, but we have had 50 years of propaganda against that
(Or to meet them with mutual aid, but in addition to the propaganda problem, that has the vast history, and current practice, of discrimination. Only the 'deserving' poor get help, by whatever definition of 'deserving' the person providing help chooses)
@chu @NilaJones I have found that some of these options are a privilege. As someone living on the edge of poverty, I need to buy the cheapest I can find even if that company disagrees with my values.
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@chu I do all of this every day of my life. My current challenge is divesting my life of all American tech companies…which means dumping the MacOs in favour of Linux. It’s a work in progress.
@cjmoorehead @chu. can't tell you how much using Linux has reduced my anxiety about what may be secretly running on my devices. For now.
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@chu @NilaJones I have found that some of these options are a privilege. As someone living on the edge of poverty, I need to buy the cheapest I can find even if that company disagrees with my values.
I don't deny that. It's not a morality test. This is more an exercise in understanding how much our society is dependent on the people cheering our enslavement.
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Not April fools.
Here's a screw a tech bro for a week challenge
1) don't make online purchases. Walk into a store or call /email a small business owner.
2) no using any food delivery apps, call a local restaurant and pick it up. The tech companies take a huge cut and you'd be doing the local small biz a huge favour by doing this.
3) no using Uber or Lyft. Call a cab if you need it
4) don't use AI tools. If your employer threatens your job, give them the slop they deserve, but nothing outside of that.
5) add in the comments anything else you think of.
I honestly wonder how painful this list is for many people. Is a week doable or have they fundamentally taken control of us so hard we already lost our old systems of living?
@chu For buying books: order from the publisher directly rather than Amazon.
My local independent book store (Another Story) has an option to specially order in books that aren't normally in stock! That may be another option people can look into.
I am also a huge fan of Standard Ebooks, which produces really nice, polished e-book versions of public domain works. A bunch of Harlem Renaissance novels have recently entered the public domain. Always worth catching up on the classics imo.
I'm not on Facebook, I get my unhinged, often incomprehensible political screeds from local graffiti, stickers, and printed-out blog posts tacked onto telephone poles. I also find out about many events from local notice boards, wheatpasted flyers, etc.
Instead of Spotify: public/community radio streams! Shout-out to @somafm which has a bunch of great "chill wordless background-music-to-work-to"-type streams.
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My people left and went everywhere. It's amazing for me to see the various Chinatown's in countries whose languages I don't speak and see how similar yet different our cuisines and culture ended up.
Once upon a time in Lisboa, I got lost. I walked past a Chinese resto thinking "I may as well try". I walked in using my very half assed broken mandarin (this was before I started to learn it). The woman apologized and said she didn't speak it in my paternal grandparents dialect, the first language I ever spoke in my life. The woman was nearly in tears speaking to a younger generation tai Shan descendant who could speak her language. She walked my butt back to the subway.
We all left and call different places home but our language remains. This is why I insist on my kids speaking Chinese. Sadly, this particular dialect isn't getting passed on but they can cross communicate.
@chu @hanktank61 My sister and I never learned Chinese, or Malay (that side of the family is Malaysian Chinese) because my father was insistent we would be "all Canadian," blah blah blah. Even if I learned it now, AFAIK the relevant <snip long discussion over whether it's a language or a dialect1> would be Cantonese which is currently being, erm, de-emphasized. This is all to say that it is a pity so many different varieties and dialects are being subsumed by Mandarin, even though it is so valuable.
obligatory "אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיִאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמײ און אַ פֿלאָט" (a language is a dialect with an army and a navy), a quip from the great Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich
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interesting.
