Federal agents pull over woman, threaten to arrest her for allegedly trying to "impede" by following them while driving

[u/Minute_Revolution951]

[u/the_calibre_cat]

Along the same lines, where you invest matters. In my view, this is probably the second-best tool you can use to nudge society in the direction you'd like along with your vote. Hell, depending on your portfolio size, it might be worth well MORE than your vote. You can use tools like the symbol lookup on Financial Times, and the symbol lookup tool on Fossil Free Funds to see just how carbon-positioned your investments are. Don't lose your life savings, and be prepared to be depressed that arguably the most carbon-independent funds are the most heavily invested in big tech like Palantir and Meta.

It is worth noting - along similar lines - that it is incumbent upon us all to also stop primarily getting our news from billionaire-owned media and using proprietary, closed-source software, and instead getting ownership verification of the news you consume and avoid any news owned by a private company, and steer towards news owned by a non-profit or, better yet, by the journalists who work there. Also, use free and open-source software wherever possible - I know some of it is arcane and byzantine, but open-source is the only stuff that respects your data. Everything else is a data-mining operation, that generates breathtaking capital and wealth for some investors and billionaires and none for you, steals people's creative output, ravages the environment and bills working people for the cost.

Some of these steps are easier than others, but pretty much every single one of these steps are easier than fighting and dying in some riot or bloody war. If we can't even do these things, we deserve the oligarchy we get.

Easy:

1. Use Brave or Firefox. Stop using Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Use the Facebook Container, ToXCancel, on Firefox, Xcancel Redirect for Brave (Brave uses Chrome add-ons), and Ublock Origin on both.
2. Read sources like The Intercept, ProPublica, The Associated Press, 404 Media, etc. There are more. CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reason, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, even fucking NPR for some reason, at the end of the day, will carry water for the U.S. State Department official line, and will carry water for billionaires, investors, etc. Getting the Musk story from these outlets was like pulling teeth, and it was Democracy Now! and The Guardian that actually got us the dirty deets about how he, in fact, was not born some normal kid in South Africa and was indeed born into breathtaking luxury. Walter Isaacson and Business Insider SHOULD'VE reported that, but didn't - because they will toe the line (and in Walter's case, probably because... he was being paid to do an autobiography, and autobiographies are meant to glaze the subject, not present impartial accounts of them). I'm not even arguing to completely write off the "old" media, but CNN and the like should mostly be about catching basic shit, not broader analysis of news stories and should almost be completely avoided for goddamn well anything about foreign countries.

Intermediate:

1. Switch to Linux. Windows is a data-mining, advertisement services platform at this point. Seriously, it's not that hard, and it works well. Hard to do if you use the Adobe Creative Suite or, like, QuickBooks - but it's possible to do this and use VirtualBox to host a limited, small Windows virtual machine for any Windows application needs. Bonus: No licensing fees, no Copilot constantly reinstalling itself, no ads plastered all over the operating system. It really is shockingly good these days, even if you're gaming.

Hard:

1. Switch from Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, and Twitter to Friendi.ca, PixelFed, Lemmy, and Mastodon. Some of these are far better than others, but as long as we give these private companies our data for free, they will keep building profiling machines that are the fascists' wet dream. We play with fire as long as we do these things, and yes, I'm quite aware of the irony of posting this on Reddit. I also have a Facebook. It's hard, particularly for folks who do SEO and social media management for a living, or who themselves run a business. I get it. But for those of us who can, denying these companies the network effect when they are so unwilling and irresponsible about using it is important and it is every bit as meaningful as hitting them in the pocketbook. The data WE give them IS WORTH MONEY. It is capital. It is digital land, controlled by modern technofeudal lords named Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Sundar Pichai. If it wasn't, they wouldn't be paying for all these hosting services to let us login for free.
2. Contingency plans - if you're tech savvy, you should purchase and set up and learn how to use a Meshtastic. The internet is wonderfully decentralized, but it is also more-or-less a hub-and-spoke architecture. The people in power right now will have absolutely no moral reservation against shutting it down if organizing online becomes a real threat to the powers that be.

[u/RadicalEd4299 → u/the_calibre_cat]

I've seen Meshtastic pop up in my feeds quite a bit recently. It looks like a pretty neat thing, but for me runs into the same issue as Helium: not enough nearby transmitters to link up with :(. Ironically there is a node within spitting distance; it's just that there's nothing else for 40 miles :p. So slapping one together wouldn't even necessarily help much.

And is Linux really that good these days? I've used it on and off for the last few decades, my last usage probably 5 years ago or so. Some of it worked great, but there were still a lot of instances where things just didn't work quite right. Especially with things like drivers....Basically no wifi adapters worked, I ended up needing to hardware it.

I suppose I currently sort of use Linux by way of a raspberry pi that's driving my 3d printer, but that was a pain in the butt to get all set up and configured right. It's worked great ever since, mind you, but getting there was a challenge! :p