Yes please! More of this sort of thing!

I would buy the shit out of this

Best case scenario frankly is minority govt with greens holding balance of power. Much more chance of getting better legislation passed when greens have to be listened to.

I’m encouraging every little one of us to stop sending money to US companies wherever possible. People here already are likely to be less dependent on US digital services, but pay attention. Support Fedi servers in AU or EU. Kick big tech to the curb. Think about where stuff comes from. There’s some things very hard to give up but people can live quite fine without Bezos Musk and Zuckerberg. Fuck all of them.

While it’s not the mainstream, it’s not everyone that constantly wants more. There are many religious orders that practise asceticism, voluntary simplicity, and other behaviours which are not growth focused. Minimalism as a movement in western society is genuine. People do sometimes reach a point where they stop being seduced by consumerism, realising it doesn’t bring the happiness it falsely promises.

I tried to do EC (elimination communication) but wasn’t super successful, but it did mean my daughter was very used to sitting on a mini potty regularly well before we did “proper” potty training with big potty. About a month before 2nd birthday got a book about potty training from the library, and then spent a weekend pants free, and she got it very quickly. Got poops a lot faster than pee though, she only had maybe 2 poops in a nappy after her 2nd birthday, but I had to keep putting nappies on for longer drives or trips because she just wouldn’t tell me she needed to pee. She was pretty much fully toilet trained by 3, but has had a couple of accidents, 2 bed wetting one end of day at childcare. Not sure about those but not too worried about it.

I took two international trips with my now 3yo, one to Thailand and one to Bali, when she was one 1/4 and one 3/4. She was pretty happy both trips except some of the longer flights. I decided not to do longer flights while she is toddler age, so we have only done domestic trips this past year, and fortunately she has been pretty good, but I do centre everything around her, and I’m a single parent. I’m waiting till she is probably or 5 for anything longer now, and can recommend the book Hunt Gather Parent for general parenting advice, though the style is a bit annoying I think a lot of the advice is sound.

Christopher Alexander is brilliant. Regularly return to A Pattern Language, so much inspiration.

It might be small biccies compared to iron ore to China, but the optics are really bad, and when Australia is included in the tariffs, then psychologically we are siding with Everyone Else in this new US vs Democracy fight. Because that’s what the US (tech bros, who are now in charge) are orchestrating: a direct attack on democracy.

So yes, the numbers are small compared to other countries, but the attack is ideological, and real.

I’m sorry for the good ones, but the current actions are a huge threat to democracy worldwide, and while I think the puppet masters expect this response and globalisation is already in the process of collapsing (read The End of the World Is just the Beginning - Mapping the Collapse of Globalisation by Peter Zeihan) we can try and avoid this fate elsewhere. It is NOT inevitable that the tech bros rule us all as serfs, but getting away from Big Tech, means cutting off the US out of our digital lives as much as we can.

Everyone here is ahead of the game 👍

I think we can all do something. I know our economy is tiny, but Australia buys way more from the US than they buy from us… and you know what a big chunk of that is? Services. Some of those are hard to shift but others are easier.

I’ve hosted all my websites and registered all my domains in the US for over 20 years.

That changed yesterday and I’m transferring everything over to Australia.

For Fedi, look at Australian servers where you can. Subscriptions? Fuck off Netflix et al. Get out of Google as much as you can. If you’re here you are probably already out of FB and Reddit, but leave anything else you can that is US based and try to support AU or EU.

Don’t buy US foods, cars, or technology where possible (let’s face it, most of those are crap anyway).

And you know what, most of the US based internet is shit now too. It was fun 20 years ago, but consistent enshittification has been the worst in the US. At least the EU is trying to fight it.

Yes our economy is tiny, but we can change more than you might think, and as the rest of the world probably will do similar, the US won’t be quite as well off as it thinks it is.