My theory is the following, i think what saved the US from being stuck on cold war propaganda was the internet. For a long time the US was truly great. It was a steadfast ally, a reliable trade partner and it helped rebuild the EU post WW2. It had railroads everywhere, cable cars everywhere, struggled and won against prohibition and oligarchs, treading ground on worker’s rights and rights of minorities.

Then the cold war came and things went seriously downhill. Because of the cold war a lot of things were done in secret and a lot was invested in propaganda. Corporations were allowed to do many things in secret. People in the US were told they were the best at everything and everyone else sucked. They never heard what the world really did think of them, only here and there by immigrants, who were seen as an inferior class anyway.

Then the internet came and finally the US heard what the world thinks of them and boy, it wasn’t pretty. Took a while too, many places didn’t have the infrastructure ready. The world wasn’t happy, the US had been doing very bad things in secret and so, US people finally saw what their country leaders had been doing.

The US isn’t a hopeless case but the US is at war with itself. A war that started in the 1800s and still rages on against an oligarch class that managed to inflitrate itself within the higher echelons of the government. Who took their railways away and their cable cars. Who took their days off and their workers rights and in some cases, even took away their right to strike (like the railroad workers).

They can’t vote their way out of this, both parties are deeply corrupt. The ones that could stop it, the regulatory agencies, are currently being gutted out. Now is a critical time for the US to change and make regulatory organs apolitical and independent from the executive branch. What is done now will define if the US will become an oligarchic dystopia or will return to its roots. I believe the destruction caused by Trump will invariably lead to the demise of the oligarchy, for oligarchy persists in denial and secret and what Trump is doing is reckless and obvious. But a time of shame has come to the US for what has been done.

Once people in the US realize that the bipartisan struggle is an artificial struggle and that no president is coming to save them, republican or democrat, hopefully protests will spring up everywhere and when they start, real meaninful change can appear. Every American knows the establishment is everywhere. Every American knows they’re in a class war.

Every American wants to fight it, but the Republicans say Democrats are the establishment and the Democrats say Republicans are the establishment. To overcome this both Republicans and Democrats must recognize they are fighting the same enemy and it’s not each other. The republican party and the democrat party are both artificial constructs of many political views that don’t translate to anything in the real world of politics. They’re amalgamations of parties that have differing political views who might win elections but won’t effect meaningful change on account of that. It serves the interest of the oligarchs that no matter which party wins, they win.

I was at a bar a while back and the talk stuck with me. He was a Israeli who moved to America about twenty years ago and still visits Israel to see his family.

He said, “Americans have to stop seeing America as being #1 at anything.” We talked about Israel and Palestine, we talked about the current White House bs, and afterwards, I finally understood what he was saying, especially with the lens of him being an Israeli.

America is America. It’s a place that exists. The rest of the world has a lot better everything. It’s like living in a small backwater town: You know it’s shit, and it wont magically become something it’s not, especially if the Mayor and the Sheriff are inbred hicks who bang each other’s sister wives. Maybe you grow your nestegg until you can move. Or maybe you carve out a piece of the shit hole. But know that it’s a shit hole.

That’s America. Just keep milking because the lunatics are out of their cage.

The US have always been the bad guys. Even independence was about being able to do more genocide and land stealing without the British getting in the way.

Canada also has a brutal history of both slavery and genocide.

Accepting that is the first step to overcoming systemic racism and building communities that we can all thrive in.

Yes, we’ve always been the bad guys. People are noticing now because the chickens have come home to roost.

It might not cover everything, but here’s a nice list:
https://european-alternatives.eu/

https://cryptpad.fr as an alternative to Googles online office suite.

end-to-end encrypted and open-source collaboration suite.

still really early in development but if you primarily work from the browser on a desktop/laptop, it works well enough. I’ve struggled with getting sheets working on a mobile browser but I really like that you could completely self host if you want or just pay them to do it for you.

Yeah that’s the thing that stands out so much. That almost everything mainstream is either US or China. Come on rest of the world step up.

I quit using Google photos and Google drive recently. I’ve moved to Filen, which is a cloud storage provider based in Germany that offers strong end-to-end encryption. So far it seems pretty great!

Just an example

Le livre des visages

There are already many out there

Tell me what you need?

Cloud, Calender Sync, Contact Sync and Document Collaboration? I use a Nextcloud Instance provided and managed by my university (who have a contract with Nextcloud, a German Company)

Hetzner and many others sell managed Nextcloud Instances

For the Pictures I use a Photoprism Instance running on a VPS, but for Drop-In solutions you can also use a Plug-in for Nextcloud, or buy a managed instance, like on PikaPods

Real American question

Haha I don’t actually have any to cancel.

Not trying to yuck someone’s yum, but what are the perks for youtube premium?

I did know about the 51st state thing but wanted to know more about the boycott. thanks.

Are people really buying into this 51st state nonsense? It’s never going to happen. Orange man is a legit professional shit talker. Damn near everything he states shouldn’t be taken seriously. I’ve easily learned to ignore his words and simply focus on his actions.

hello fellow clonecluber <3

My wife loved orphan black! I didn’t know it was Canadian. We both loved Kim’s convenience. And Kenny vs Spenny is an all time great.

Not sure yet, I’m looking into it! I’ll report back if I find a good one though

Safeway had them on sale for like $3.50 so we loaded up lol

There’s a little bit in this Wikipedia article but I can’t find much either.

IIRC it mostly stemmed from a lot of US tv channels not being available in Canada at the time. So to make them available, they started hacking satellite descramblers and Direct TV cards. Then they found a giant market in the US willing to buy these boxes and cards to get free tv.

There were people in the US making them too, but the Canadian stuff was more reliable and updated quicker when Direct TV changed codes.

ha?!