Left Reddit, Facebook and Xitter (the last two long ago), quit Disney+ and Netflix. Switched my email from gmail to proton. My work still uses Microsoft, I can’t change that. I’m not buying any US food or alcohol or physical US products.

Things to work on: the tax filing company I use is American, I need to change that. That’s a longer term project.

Not travelling to the USA this year anymore, cancelled disney+ and prime. I’m now actively looking for what is Canadian made and I’m buying what doesn’t exist as Canadian made from Canadian retailers instead of US owned megacorps.

These days when I’m shopping for anything: if it’s not a Canadian product, then it’s Mexico, Peru, etc. I’ve cancelled Netflix and Amazon. It’s just Crave and CBC gem atm.

I’m boosting CBC content over Murdoch slop and scrape-paste journalism wherever I can.

Some intentional behavioural changes too. Because I think boycotting America is also about deprogramming myself a bit.

Lifelong athiest, but I’ve started keeping a Sabbath. From sundown to sundown once a week, everything (except the fridge, stove, freezer and my alarm clock from the 1980s) gets turned off and unplugged. Including power cords. [Highly recommend - there’s less static in the house and the cats are pleased.]

In my own neighbourhood, I see some white supremacists and fundies getting louder and prouder since Trump’s second kick at the can. So, I make sure when I’m in public (I try) to stay calm and ready to step in. And I stay friendly. Nobody needs to be dealing with more bad vibes from random people in public.

[edit bc I wrote my diary on the internet for no good reason and need to take my own username advice for a bit]

I stopped drinking bourbon. There’s a couple of small european manufacturers who make bourbon or rye, but it really loses its appeal for me when you add the ‘craft tax’.

Also stopped buying from Amazon. Homegrown alternatives just aren’t as good and are much more fussy when you want to return something, which is why it has taken me so long.

Please don’t use Vivaldi. It’s based on Chromium, whose curator is Google. Chromium is open sourced, sure. But Google still has the keys to the repo and they do push whatever they want to push on there.

But can’t someone just open-source chromium if stuff goes out of hand? Technically, sure. But developing a browser takes a crazy amount of resources. Maintaining a fork like this would be expensive. No one really has the resources for this.

This is why you probably should use a Firefox based browser. Mozilla, the parent company behind Firefox is still American, though it’s a non profit. They kinda have the resources to maintain a browser. Granted, there are many problems with Mozilla. Regardless, it’s still much much better than Google.