What little things do you do each day that are your small ways of sticking it to the man?
6mon 17d ago by sh.itjust.works/u/gigastasio in asklemmy
Don’t know if it counts as sticking it to the man, but I adblock everything. Seriously, Ive got adblockers on my adblockers. Ive been adblocking for so long I don’t know what to buy anymore.
I’m sitting here in my empty house surrounded by my bags of money I don’t know what to spend on. Send help.
Same. I also treat cookies like a virus....no, no, and no again. Though I think my days are limited with that, a lot of websites now saying accept cookies or pay. I'll give up the interwebs before I accept trackers.
For articles which won't let you disable cookies there's usually an archived version somewhere. Or you use some current alternative to 12ft. Or you ask an LLM to summarize the URL.
12ft ladder has never worked for me, unfortunately. :/
Check the Firefox plug-in called Web archives. It helps you archive web pages and it helps you find access to archive web pages. It's pretty useful.
Instead of manually denying cookies, you can deny all cookies and whitelist the sites you trust.
Edit: also note - websites that give you the 'option' to opt in or out may not have the same opinion on what cookies are 'optional' or 'mandatory'. Several don't even do anything and are just there to look compliant.
Absolutely agree. Site owners only get fined if someone reports them. The regulators aren't actively scanning sites to ensure compliance.
And how do I do that?
To be blunt (but not to be mean), RTFM or google it. There are lots of ways to do it, and it all depends on the capabilities of your devices, OS, browsers and whether or not you want to use apps to manage it. And again, I'm not trying to be mean, it's just that the question has the same effort as "how do I make food?". I could give you the most gourmet answer and it may not help.
But to answer as simply as possible: Most browsers can do cookie whitelisting out of the box. Just be aware that it doesn't prevent cookies outside the browser or outside the device - so if you have (for instance) a smart tv, you'll need other solutions. And the solutions snowball from there, so I will leave it at that.
I don’t know what to buy anymore.
I have a problem where because I'm so hard to advertise to between adblock and premium subscriptions, that I am usually very out of the loop on what movies and TV shows are coming out
The biggest ones usually make their way into the news or Lemmy somehow, but there's definitely a lot I'm clueless about until I see them pop up streaming somewhere a couple years later
Just visit Rotten Tomatoes once a week or so
At least, by then, you know how many seasons you're getting into, eh?
cries in Firefly
I have this same problem! Friends will mention a film they're about to see and I've literally never heard of it, and they very much act like I should have 😂 I do feel like I'm missing out on important information, but I'm still not turning ad blockers off.
Send money to me. I will dispose of.
In addition to this every device I use has an always on vpn
After pushback, I switched over to ad nauseam (which still blocks via UBO). Not sure how effective it actually is for the click part (considering it also catches related things, some YT recommends, share buttons, definite non-ad things in search etc) but it says $1.8K (I have it set between 'sometimes' and 'always').
You should try picking up some
I joined a union and organized the election of a workers council at my workplace.
Union dues are 1% of my salary.
In the past 5 years, we managed to enforce:
- the right to work from home
- 20% pay for the time spent on call after hours, plus 1 day paid vacation for each week you're on call (so I now have 42 days + unlimited sick days)
- a company car for on call duty, which you're allowed to use privately, too
- work phones for every employee (instead of having to install the company MDM on your private phone)
- convertible desks for everyone
- and a substantial pay raise
This post was about little things, no need to show your gigantic balls here.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
It began with a little thing, simply writing an e-mail to the union, and kind of grew from there.
All good man, I just wanted to point out how impressive what you did was. You didn't just stick it to the man, you went Vlad the Impaler on his ass.
When I buy from a small business that I want to support, I will use cash. When I'm buying anything from a large company, I will always use the fanciest credit cards in my wallet.
In the United States, credit card processing fees are more expensive for fancy rewards credit cards and obviously there's no fee for cash.
That's why nobody takes Discover or Amex. Their fees are higher than Visa and Mastercard.
amex is taken in 9 out of 10 places when I use it. it's usually small places that don't take it
I literally cannot think of any places that don't take Discover.
Hmm go figure your mom gives me a hard time about it every time.
It's the most-commonly rejected card. It has high fees without the clout of Amex. Amex customers are typically pretty wealthy and places will accept them because of their high-roller status. But Discover doesn't have that going for them, so there's less reason to accept the card.
Where you'll find it rejected most often is small shops and government agencies.
For instance, my career has been in government, and no organization I've worked for has ever accepted Discover. We aren't allowed to "profit" from our fees, so we have to include credit card processing in the adopted fee schedule. But since we can't profit, we have to set the fee at whatever Visa and Mastercard charge. That extra 1 or 2 percent Discover charges can be millions for a large government (large city, statewide agency, etc). So, agencies simply don't take Discover (and frequently AmEx, though they'll sometimes negotiate).
Large retailers are able to negotiate better deals with Amex and Discover, but for smaller shops it just isn't gonna happen. And that 1-2% (of the total charge) extra taken by the card processor is huge when your margins are small.
Heck - even the Visa and Mastercard fees are a huge deal. When I worked in retail management, those fees were secretly the big reason we pushed our store-brand credit cards. It wasn't the 80 dollar commission for the account the store got - it was that if someone used our card in our store, we didn't pay the processing fee.
We'd give 2% in points back for using the card in the store, which was a great deal for us since we didn't have to pay the 3-4% fee to the processor.
It is definitely not true that Discover interchange rates are significantly higher than Visa or Mastercard.
I've put below a list of the actual interchange rates for various personal Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cards types.
Debit:
- Visa Debit Regulated: 0.05% + 22¢
- Discover Debit Regulated: 0.05% + 22¢
- Mastercard Debit Regulated: 0.05% + 22¢
- Visa Debit: 0.8% + 15¢
- Mastercard Debit: 1.05% + 15¢
- Discover Debit: 1.1% + 16¢
- Visa Debit Prepaid: 1.15% + 15¢
- Mastercard Debit Prepaid: 1.15% + 15¢
Base credit tiers:
- Visa CPS Retail: 1.51% + 10¢
- Discover Consumer: 1.56% +10¢
- Mastercard Consumer: 1.65% + 10¢
- Mastercard Enhanced: 1.8% + 10¢
Rewards cards:
- Visa Rewards Traditional: 1.65% + 10¢
- Visa Rewards Signature: 1.65% + 10¢
- Discover Rewards: 1.71% + 10¢
- Discover Rewards Premium: 1.71% + 10¢
- Mastercard World: 1.9% + 10¢
Premium cards:
- Visa Rewards Signature Preferred: 2.1% + 10¢
- Discover Rewards Premium Plus: 2.15% + 10¢
- Mastercard World Elite: 2.3% + 10¢
You can plainly see that Discover tends to be more expensive than Visa but is cheaper than Mastercard. The only reason I could see that someone might refuse Discover is because Discover cards are all rewards credit cards that go into the higher tiers, whereas many Visa and Mastercard cards are debit cards which go into the lowest tier.
What is a regulated debit card?
A card which is subject to central bank regulations regarding the interchange fees which they are allowed to charge. According to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act 2011, the Federal Reserve has the power to limit debit card interchange fees for debit cards issued by large banks with over $10 billion in assets. A "regulated debit card" issued by a bank subject to the regulation is therefore tariffed at the maximum rate allowed by the regulation, which is 0.05% plus 22 cents.
Thanks, curious about this too.
The small retailer I worked for didn't take Discover. We took Amex though, because it was high-end and wealthy people love their Amex.
Editing to clarify, had to dash off before: wealthy people love their extra-thick Amex Black Card made of titanium or whatever, that we used to have to type in by hand because it would damage the old slide readers. So as long as we were taking those we took regular Amex cards too.
Amex is such a douchebag rich person flex. The credit card equivalent of a Laboubou collection.
Amex isn't exclusive at all. Anyone can go apply for one and get one. It's not special at all
It costs more for the merchant and cardholder. That's why rich people flex with it. Because they can afford to pay more and cost others more for no reason.
Maybe more for the seller, I don't know but the cost to me is... Nothing. Well the benefit to me is about 3% back on anything I buy. No fees. Just another cheap card.
The seller isn't eating the loss. It's all passed to us poors.
You both are so very close to the real selling point those fucknuts are frothy over their Amex black card: they get to cosplay as royalty, oppressing the poors with a simple gesture. 🤌🏼
There's a queue at the guillotine for these people. It's not as popular as the ones for "elected officials", warmongers, fascists, or even longtime tyrants, to be sure —but it's there. 🖕🏼
The Amex Black Card is the one I was starting to refer to, I got interrupted and decided to hit the button rather than elucidate further. Sorry. You can look up the requirements and benefits, it wouldn't be good for me but for someone who travels a lot and throws big expensive parties it might. Or if they're basically a corporation
anyone can get an amex. unless you're talking about a platinum or black card? those have minimum spending requirements per year to keep them.
Yeah the black one
Lol what? It's just another generic credit card.
It's actually a charge card. You're expected to pay it off every month.
No, mine is a credit card, not a charge card. They would love for me not to pay it off every month.
Got mine when I when I was living in a trailer park. What are you on about?
I use discover everywhere, pay 90% of my bills with it. No one uses amex anymore. Pay off all of my cc at end of month, that's how I stick it to the man. Use their money for a month or so and get money for it.
What you get out of it is generally less than the processing fees. That's how reward cards work. The seller has to pay the processor to process the payment, and you get a portion of that as a reward.
It may feel like free money to you, but that processing fee is built into the price of anything you purchase.
You aren't sticking it to anybody.
The things or services I pay with my cc don't have cash discounts, so no reason to use cash, if you pay them off every month and never carry a balance the cc company doesn't make money off of my use and pay me to use their money. I'm sticking it to the cc company. Also as you have pointed out that all sellers build the processing fee into their prices I wouldn't save anything by paying cash.
The CC company makes a killing off your purchases. They charge a fee to the merchant for every transaction. Between that fee and a separate fee for processing the fee, they end up charging between 3.5 and 6 percent more on the transaction, while handing out 2-3 percent in rewards if you're lucky.
The reason there isn't a cash discount most places is because it's actually against the terms of service with the CC company/processors for the merchant to charge more for their customers. The CC company essentially requires that everything be more expensive for everyone whether or not they actually use the cards.
The card companies make absolutely stupid money off those fees.
over here, the extra cost that comes from handling cash is enough that small businesses don't want to take it. counting till every day adds up.
Surprisingly not in the US. If you make 100 sales a day of $20 each, then over a six-day week, you'd pay roughly $360 in credit card transaction fees (assuming 2.5% + 10¢ per transaction which is average). If you instead spent half an hour a day counting cash in the till and then half an hour at the end of the week to go to the bank, that's about $98 in labour cost (assuming a labour cost of $28 per hour, which is roughly $25 per hour in wages and $3 per hour in tax), so the savings are $262 per week, which is not insignificant.
yeah that 10¢ is 10x our transaction cost.
Banks also charge for cash services, many business accounts may just include it in the price, but someone has to physically count, collate and move around the cash, often with security. There are costs for running a computer system, and costs for using cash that businesses have always paid. Some small businesses definitely do not understand that, but cashless can be cheaper and safer depending on your country and quality of banking services.
I can't comment on the situation in other countries, but in the US, in the majority of cases, it's cheaper for businesses to take cash. In the US, the first few thousand dollars of cash deposits are typically free every month. Beyond that, pricing varies. My bank charges 0.35% on cash deposits, which is considered quite high, though it works out to only $42 per week in my example above. The credit union I have my personal accounts with charges 0.15%, which would be $18 a week.
The cost of labour has already been factored in and it still results in savings. The cost of security is comparatively negligible. A $300 safe is a one-off purchase that pays for itself in a fortnight.
I used to do that, but here (Australia) passing on surcharges has sadly been normalised, and during covid heaps of businesses went cashless.
The salt in the wound is that there's not really any reason for businesses to push payment gateways for a better deal. They don't give a shit any more as they just pass it into the customer.
Some American states (not mine) have banned surcharging for credit cards in response to consumer backlash. But what's not banned is marking up everything by 3% and then offering a 3% cash discount.
I'm nice to others.
"The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy." - Elon Musk
That's how you know empathy is important. It apparently affects the rich's bottom line. Plus, you know, if you have a brain, empathy is just a given...
That is godlike, not small!
This is my favorite comment so far.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, thats why I poop on company time.
I'm doing this right now!
That's a rule that every citizen should follow.
Never take a bathroom break on your break. Always always always on the clock. At the very least, it's not a break, otherwise. ✊🏼
I don't remember the last time I saw an advert.
Like, genuinely, I get politely confused when people talk about them. What do you MEAN you're not adblocking everything? What do you MEAN you still use a service if you can't adblock it? WHAT DO YOU MEAN you paid for YouTube?
My wife is a software developer who doesn't use Ublock or Revanced and I'm so confused.
Has she ever given a reason?
I second this
I aggressively block ads, but being a server admin, I still have to see ads frequently when in a customer server and I have to browse for anything. I hate it so much.
I mute commercials.
My kids an I make farting noises over them.
Also fuck liberty mutual for their vast ad campaign
Living Spaces is the one that drives me nuts with the woman singing at the end. Plenty others are horrible, but that one in particular just hits a nerve for me.
I see, you must not have heard the Kars 4 Kids commercials before. 10x more annoying than the little Living Spaces jingle. :)
I love doing this.
I mute live sports, mainly American football.
I'll pay the extra football package price, but you couldn't pay me to listen to the play by play.
And I might pay a bit more to hear the crowd noises isolated, with ref announcements, if it was offered.
I distinctly remember that the NFL tried that out once, where they broadcast a game with no announcers. My Dad and I thought it was amazing, but evidently we were far and few between as I recall they only did it the one time.
What I really don't understand is how they end a football game and then have to sit around for 20 mins rehashing the game they JUST SAW...
"Remember that time the guy caught the ball and then ran?"
"Oh yeah, that was like 10 whole mins ago."
"That was so good."
"Yeah."
Now, imagine that last bit but in attention-span-segments of random "highlights" during the game ...with several different instances of this bullshit grouped every 10ft or so within a ~500sq ft area, along with several TVs pointed inward at largely arbitrary angles and each set to combative volumes...
I fucking hate "sports" bars. 🤬🤮🤬
My wife and I have recently started muting the tv and streaming local radio announcers for the team. SOOO much more enjoyable.
I’ve been saying this forever! I HATE the pointless idiotic commentary. I would gladly pay a premium to nuke that shit.
I investigated writing a plugin (maybe for plex or jelly fin?) that would filter out the commentary audio, did a little proof of concept on a recorded clip that worked, but then realized that fleshing it out and doing it for a live stream would be a ton of work. Which means I wouldn’t have time to watch football on mute.
Y’all are seeing commercials? 🏴☠️
this just takes more active attention though...why not just watch stuff without ads?
I ride my bike everywhere. Don’t buy gas, need no license or insurance, can’t be tracked easily, no parking passes, and I can go where the fuck I want.
Bike is the ultimate freedom vehicle
can’t be tracked easily
...um. 😅😶
no insurance
heh. 🫣 not your fault, mostly.
I can go where the fuck I want.
For now...
You mean you don't want to give the fascist David Ellison any money?!? Me either :)
Where do you start?
piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com (inaccessible from lemmy.world due to the instance's anti-piracy policy)
Is that community blocked on .world? Can't find any certain info on that, only the list of blocked instances — but Voyager doesn't show anything in that community.
Oh lmao, I forgot about the fact that they blocked it. Should've mentioned it.
We're here, and .world can get fucked anyhow. 🥰
We buy almost nothing new except consumables. I could spend an hour, probably two, showing you around our house and pointing out all the things I made, found on the road, bought used or was given, etc. Our vehicles are 2002, 2004 and 2014.
Not sure we've ever bought Christmas stuff. Our house is lit up like none other on the block this year. Wife toted home a milk crate packed with lights the other day, free. The nice tree in the living room? No idea where it came from, sure didn't buy it at Walmart.
Tried a new coat today my wife got for $1, had to cut the tags off. Damn it's soft and warm! Had to make myself stop buying shoes and clothes at the thrift, have way too many.
Just got done making my own soap. Still not curing for some reason. :( Got some borax and will try making my own laundry soap next.
This year I grew loofa sponges. Got at least a year's supply of scrub pads, kitchen and shower, won't spend a dime on that shit. I'd have a 3-year supply, but made mistakes learning. I'll grow next year and probably skip a few years after that harvest. Also, the seeds sell for $5/20 on eBay. I have hundreds, if not 1000+.
That's super cool, respect.
Hey got any ideas for vinegar? I haven't searched it online but thought I would ask because its my ultimate cleaning solution
I make kombucha vinegar, it's basically get a vinegar mother and feed it.
Apple vinegar is super easy to make https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bupAhuvnb0
If my early homebrewing days taught me anything, it's that vinegar is so easy to make you can do it by accident.
I feel like you should probably know where the tree in your living room came from? Did you steal someone's tree?
Don't be an ass.
Torrenting and seeding, if i had more storage i would seed for the Anna's Archive
I work in ads and I use ad blockers.
I couldn't stomach working in marketing. Hats off to you. I took a marketing class in college, just felt icky.
I do my best to only promote to keywords with high intent. So people who search for words with the sole purpose to purchase. I avoid doing ads to people who wasn't looking for someone.
This help me sleep at night.
Gross…
You literally couldn't pay me enough money to do what you do, and you should feel bad for doing it.
I literally hate ads. I have a adguad at my house that blocks everything and I use a VPN. Because I'm in the industry, I know what they do. Its awful what they are capable of.
I do the same as jaschen306.
Probably not the same life story, but I started as a Neuroscience PhD escapee (I was pressed by my supervisor to p-hack our results) and at the time, around 2012, this was an easy career to shift to from a scientific background.
I work more specifically in tracking implementation, and you should all become aware that for one year the ToS for the Google Marketing Platform have now allowed the use of browser/device fingerprinting for user identification aimed at remarketing, etc.
I am trying hard to go in-house at a company to work in BI, which is something I would be able to do, but not at the level of other people, since the marketing industry has accepted rejects like me setting the bar very low in order to have an army of people feeding Google and the others people's data.
But the alternative for me is to be jobless AND careerless.
I suggest companies to evaluate Plausible and Piwik Pro as a solution, but the people they are as marketers have stopped being marketers more than a decade ago, they are just inside jobs planted by Google et al., and they regularly disregard the alternatives.
What's "BI"?
Business Intelligence
Fair
I have never paid rent or utilities or electricity.
Currently live off grid on land I own using solar power. We have all electric appliances. Generator uses propane but only use it 1-2 times a year so it’s rare to refill the tank.
The dump is only a few dollar when we take our trash (under $10) every few months.
Self host on a NAS, have home assistant that helps a ton with power monitoring and control.
My goal in a few years is to provide almost all my needs from my own land. Food, water, shelter, power, etc.
Thats crazy!
Don't you still pay land tax though?
Yes there is a land tax, but it’s quite low.
I am deeply jealous
It truly is a ton of work every day.
How does one own land? I want
Land can be bought everywhere in all price ranges. The real hurdle is whether you can legally live there or what requirements there are, due to zoning and building codes.
I think the easiest way to get a self sustaining home with as little legal issues as possible is to buy an already legal home with the grid connection, but then just don't use it.
If I were young and single again, I would look into auctions of derelict farms. Tear down the old building and instead build a small totally legal connected up to code cabin with water, waste and electricity connection. Then use the rest of land to do whatever actually interest me, while complying to the bare minimum of legal requirements for that land.
There are a few counties around the US that have zoning laws that let you live in an RV or build alternative houses such as adobe, earth bags, shipping container homes, earth ships, or even shed to homes.
I did tons of research and picked a county. Then I drove around and talked with realtors until I found the right one that understood what I plan To do. this guy was awesome and directly took my to my dream land. It was 6 times more land than I expected to buy, and the price was amazing. We bought it immediately.
After buying the land, I bought a $3,000 RV (needed a ton of work) but it’s home until I build my adobe home. Spent the last year collecting supplies for the house, even found 5 new windows for just over $100. Always looking for deals. Also found solar panels super cheap $45 each for 250W panels. Bought a ton of those for the house later.
It takes a lot of determination to push yourself to go outside and work for yourself, but also a way to have an income in the middle of nowhere. We do ok. But I know things will only get better as we settle more here.
...but also a way to have an income in the middle of nowhere.
Wait. What? Did I miss where you described said "way"?
There’s many ways, I have multiple income streams from several places.
Here are a few examples of income ideas:
Sell online
YouTube or twitch, only fans?
Do odd jobs for neighbors and the community
Sell at local swap meets, fairs, art shows
Air BNB
Sell eggs, meat, animals
Sell homestead tutorials, courses, online or in person
Remote teaching
Remote work, telemarketing
There’s tons of ways to make money from a homestead in the middle of nowhere.
I'm not asking for an ELI5 conceptual summary, friend. 🙄🤦🏼♂️
I do half of these and my neighbors do several of these too. What do you want? Want me to explain every dollar I make? Thats too personal.
Nope, thanks. I was paying attention, and excited to see that efforts similar to those in my own life were seemingly yielding fruit for others, but the summary statement of "the way" caught me off-guard as there had been none defined. Just a minor curiosity, sorry to ruffle feathers. 🤷🏼♂️
You can buy 40 acres in Wyoming for like 30k...
Yeah. Because it's Wyoming. 🤢
🤣 it is basically just desert.
I peer pressure many of my friends into using adblockers and other tech stuff that gives them more agency.
Something that I'm especially chuffed with is that a I actually caused a friend to switch to open source software for scientific research. She's doing a psychology PhD was getting frustrated with the online experiment setup on the no-code experiment builder she had been advised to use. The platform didn't allow her to input the experiment parameters she needed and she was complaining to me, and so I had a gander at it, out of curiosity.
I expected there'd be some documentation showing how to use the experiment builder, but there was nothing I could find. Everywhere I looked, there were just more sales pitches. It seems that my friend was only using it because the university had a license for it.
I exclaimed that the lack of documentation and features was ridiculous, given that there's almost certainly an open source equivalent that does more, is free, and almost certainly better documented. I said that flippantly, but then went and researched that. I showed her a few different options and she ended up going for one called PsychoPy.
As one might be able to gather from the name, that's not a no-code experiment builder, but rather one that uses Python. However, for my friend, this was a feature, not a bug; although she didn't already know Python, she was keen to learn — "what's a PhD for if not to learn how to do actual science?".
I found it quite affirming because I don't know if she would have had this thought if not for me. I'm very much a jack of all trades, master of none, due to having many different interests and being spread relatively thin between them. I'm a better programmer than the majority of scientists in my field that I've known, but probably worse than most people who actually write code for their jobs. However, gaining expertise in the more computery (and in some cases, philosophical) side of science makes me feel like I've "diluted" my scientific expertise compared to my peers. It's nice that this problem was one at the intersection of my knowledge areas.
NGL, that's sexy AF justice. 🥰✊🏼
Sail the high seas
Ahoy mate!
AAAARRRRRRRR!!
Not everyday but every time I go shopping
Enter in cheaper fruits/vegetables at the self checkout if someone is watching and you can’t shoplift
Cosmic crisp apples at 3.50 a pound? I’ll just pretend they’re shitty 1.50 a pound apples instead (:
This is how I got my PS4 for $3.50/pound
Self checkout just confuses me so much, I'm prone to mistakes. If only there was a trained/paid employee to do it for me
As far as I’m concerned I should be paid for checking my own stuff out
I’ll just take it off the total
Truth. And, morally, there's no such thing as "stealing" food. ✊🏼
Good thought but it has a tiny flaw called "Human mistake". This flaw is the reason why my wife always reads checkout bills right after leaving cash register.
I'd say they average one mistake per $150 in my experience. Double scanning stuff happens. They don't seem to be trained in which fruits and vegetables are which, so they can easily hit the wrong thing and charge you double.
At my Lidl they put the cheap pink salmon cans on the same shelf intermixed with the more expensive red salmon, so if you just grab a few without looking closely you'll accidentally get some of the expensive ones. So scan the cheap one repeatedly while putting the others in the bag.
Everything is 4011. If I'm feeling generous, it might even be 94011!
What is 4011? Like potatoes or something?
Code for bananas. Then 94011 is organic bananas
Thanks!
“A trans person peed here” stickers in gas station bathrooms/other public bathrooms.
That is delightful. A smile for allies and discomfort for assholes.
I used to travel a lot in eastern Oklahoma, and left a lot of stickers at gas stations in the middle of bumble fuck nowhere towns. Probably less smiles and more anger honestly, but fuck them. Also did some on a trip to Missouri, where I’m pretty sure it was illegal for me to piss.
I have sex with my husband. He's a man. I stick it to him. Does that count?
Counts!
I buy single purpose devices that are fully offline, durable, user serviceable, and useful... and then I go for a long time without buying anything but food. It's almost like setting a new personal record: how many days in a row I can go without buying a single thing?
Support right to repair.
Edit and add to the Consumer Rights Wiki
Buy things I can actually own (not modern cars / smart fridges which can have features remotely removed at any time.)
Use solar power + house battery + V2G.
Automate everything with Home Assistant.
Provide free source code for all of my projects.
Our community library is hosting a free repair clinic to residents, where volunteers like me make ourselves available for a few hours to fix things for no cost. Bicycles, toasters, lamps, clothing, pretty much anything that doesn't have hazardous chemicals or weighs too much to bring in. The residents are expected to stay with us as we fix things so that maybe we can teach them what we do.
It's my first time volunteering for an event like this so I can't wait to see how it goes.
When watching over-the-air television, I mute the TV and look away when ads come on.
You can show me all the ads in the world but you sure as fuck can't force me to engage.
Tap for spoiler
God help those fuckers when I finally fall down the TV Tuner + Jellyfin + TVHeadend rabbithole. I'm gonna "Live Pause" that shit or I'm gonna straight up DVR everything I wanna watch and skip the ads.
And my parents watch much more OTA TV than me so you bet your ass I'm setting up every TV in their house with a cheap trustable Android TV stick and teaching them how to Pause, Rewind and Fast Forward. Fuck ads foreverrrrrr.
Perceiving advertisements is unethical. Good job!
Start saving for a small pc and some large hard drives. It's worth it. Or pay for a VPN and use stremio and just stream torrents.
You can also buy access to other people's Plex servers, watch anything
Fuck advertisements. I've got pihole setup as my local DNS, ublock origin on all computers. Being bombarded every minute of every day to buy shit is getting real old really fast.
Oh I got a home server setup with Jellyfin and a bunch of media already, just need to figure out the Live TV stuff (for live news, some soap operas, stuff that doesn't get torrented much) for it to be 100% complete :)
Gotcha. I don't have the answer for that one unfortunately
Many news channels have free streaming options. You don't have to watch the channels with ads, you know.
Last time I actually watched the news they were basically shilling for ozembic under the guise of "OMG there's gonna be a shortage!"
I get this and I also don't engage with ads but at the end of the day they are what pays for the stuff you want to watch.
It's a shitty system and it's become amazingly predatory. Needless to say I used revanced on my phone.
It would be ok if we didn't have 5 ads on a 4 min video. They fucked their system and treated us like the bad guy. Fuck them for shooting themselves in the foot. There is a reason Google makes all their money from selling your personal data and advertising. Of course we're going to work around it.
Ads can't be permitted to pay for things, though. One has a moral obligation to make sure that that strategy does not work, because it degrades both whatever the advertisements are inserted around (which becomes optimized to get attention at the expense of anything actually useful, like entertaining or conveying information) and the people who perceive it (because it creates capital inside their minds, in the form of brands, artificially alters their culture, and deliberately creates fear, mistrust of loved ones, and feelings of inadequacy).
While I agree that ads are often necessary, I disagree with the predatory way they are presented. Google, and by extension YouTube, are the most egregious examples.
But there is no moral obligation to either engage with ads or avoid them. That notion is nonsensical
I get up.
Take that, bitches.
Reject cookies.
Embrace biscuits.
About 5 years ago our town centre introduced parking charges, so now one of us goes shopping while the other sits in the car looking out for parking enforcement so we can drive a loop around the carpark. We probably pay less than once per year, but we park there at least once per week. Saves us ~£100 a year.
Call me dull but unless spaces are egregiously hard to come by, I'd pay ~£2 to not babysit a car looking over my shoulder and instead have a few extra minutes with my better half.
We spend a lot of time together, this gives us 30ish minutes of alone time to browse Lemmy for me and Facebook for her, there are almost never parking wardens, but it makes it a bit exciting. Finally if we shop together we end up getting lots of things we shouldn’t buy, alone we tend to get what is on the list and get out.
I suppose there is something to be said for solitary moments. The clandestine excitement is funny.
It brings to mind Daniel Craig in a DB5, nonchalantly scrolling the web, catching a peripheral glimpse of a uniform and peeling out down a staircase.
In my imagination I’m Jonny English in a V8 Vantage, ducking into a space whenever the warden turns around…. In reality it’s more Mr Bean in an Austin Mini.
Buy four clamps and clamp yourself. Then just come back whenever and take them off and drive away
Sadly they just put a ticket on the car and post you a fine if you don’t pay it… I could however just swap number plates with for example a blue Reliant Regal nearby and truly embrace my inner Mr Bean.
Always pirate content from large corporations.
Run every reasonable possible method of ad-blocking. From whole-house PiHole with uBlock, Privacy Badger, anti-tracking, VPN, and more. F/OSS software when possible.
Hm. Not sure how I feel about giving them clicks for pay even if it muddies my profile. I’d rather they not know at all.
I reject fascist propoganda and I listen to antifascist music, I may not have conquered fascism from this world but I have conquered my mind from it. I also attempt to spread antifascism and class solidarity to every online space im in.
Uhhh what? I was thinking more this
I say anti-CCP stuff to trigger my parents lol.
They aren't even involved in the CCP in any way, like they're just originary people never been involed with the party in any way, but they have like some weird nationalistic glass heart that gets mad when I say anything anti-CCP.
Like... lmao what, are they afraid of the China's secret police? Why do we have to continue pretending to love CCP? We don't live in China anymore lol.
Like if they piss me off, I'm just gonna say anti-CCP shit to piss them off. I really wanna like make a WeChat account, add my parents, then spam their accounts and get them banned.
I remember a few years ago, my mom yelled at me so much and made me cry, so I just used a permanent marker and wrote (graffitied) "消滅中共，世界和平" on a wall inside our/their house [in the US], it's still there, I didn't know how to write the characters, so I just typed it in pinyinyin and used traditional characters for emphasis, they couldn't wipe it off the wall. That is a permanent mark of our relationship. That writing on the wall represents the scars of my traumatic childhood memories.
Like wtf, CCP literally tried to kill me (long story short: One Child Policy, I was the 2nd child), and they still like defend CCP as if there's a CCP secret police here in the US watching us. Fuck them, who cares.
(I just had an argument with parents so this comment might seem very angry and like a rant, whoops, I trauma dumped on the internet again)
On the topic of China's secret police, what are your thoughts on the Chinese government attempting to repatriate Chinese Americans and Europeans through covert operations, such as Operation Fox Hunt? I remember hearing about operations like this a few years ago, and it always seemed really freaky to me.
I haven't personally witnessed a "Chinese Overseas Secret Police" agent yet being in the US for like... about 15 years, so idk how serious the supposed "threat" really is. I never got any threats from PRC, yet. Then again, I don't have much followers and I don't really show my face and I never mentioned my real name. It would take a bit of effort to deanonymise me (not impossible, just takes effort)
I think Russia probably has a worse M.O. like... they just poison their dissidents, like Alexy Navalny
Not sure if there are any recorded instances of Chinese dissidents being poisoned like Russia does to their dissidents, so like...
if I get coerced to "go back" I'd just refuse...
what what are they gonna do, drive a van and grab me and then somehow get me across the ocean? (do they even have the logistics?)
Idk, I'm probably a bit more worried about ICE at the moment.
I mean I say anti-CCP shit and I don't really feel fear as long as I never step foot in China again. But when it comes to... anti-trump speech, that's when I sort of self-censor a bit to make sure it isn't legally considered "threatening violence".
Kinda like Snowden, you know. He can criticize his former country, but isn't really in much of a position to criticize his current country.
I'm sort of in a Snowden-type of situation, I mean I do criticize the US, but I have to "tone-down" a lot of what I say about the US.
So, TLDR is: 没办法, I can't do anything about it, I'm not in a position of power to help other Chinese dissidents.
It sounds terrifying if they do decide to target you, that is; but there are a lot of dissidents around the world, they can't possible go after everyone, especially those outside the country.
Just noticed your name is a reference to Stein's Gate, nice one
By not participating in work's non-work activities.
There was this one time during a sprint retrospective that our PM said we were gonna do an ice breaker. This was a year and a half into my employment, and nobody else on the team had been there for less than 2 years.
I fucked off for a good 20 minutes on my phone while they were talking about each other's spirit animals.
Pirating except when the service/purchase is worth it
Gave up Spotify. Now i spent $15/mo on artists that i like and can actually use my support. The rest are freely sourced.
YouTube music revanced. Best music outlet there is.
Revance all the things!!
I cook most of my own food from cheap whole ingredients. I'm almost completely vegetarian.
I poo at work
Me too. Sometimes I hold it in through the weekend.
Get yourself food poisoning for maximum bang for the buck.
boss makes a dollar, i make a dime; that's why i shit... on company time 👍
If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing.
I'm actively working towards a passive income, and I am very low consumerist. I decided I don't need anymore devices (asides from solar panels/other forms of power generation).
Once I have mycrop, passive income, and elrctricity, "the man" is fucked without lube, because my plan is to rabidly "jailbreak" anyone who will listen by getting them to the same state.
Minimum bills, minimum subscriptions, own food, own power, anti-consumerism, mutual trade.
Do you see how this would affect an exploitative system once you have the option to just not participate in it?
The government would be forced to treat their people better, and so would the companies trading with them, because they are no longer as important.
Good luck, citizen. Genuinely. 🙇🏼♂️ You might not recall Waco, or similar, but trust that you're not as unseen as you'd like. 🥹
More to the woman. My girl once complained about me leaving the seat up.
For years, I always put the seat AND the lid down.
All of us leave the seat and lid down. The whole seat up/down argument is pretty ridiculous.
Can't leave the seat up around my cat
If you flush with the lid up you’re gross and I hate you
Literally! How about just putting the water on the floor in the first place
This, myth busters did an episode on this. We have family that always leave it up and I'll put it down afterwards, they never seem to get the message. If you leave the lid up when you flush it atomizes what ever is in the bowl and spreads it all over the bathroom, nasty.
I have a cat. Toilet lid is shut unless actively in use otherwise there will be the worst kind of wet cat loose in the house because she's dumb and clumsy.
It never even occurred to me that this would be relevant to my cats, but I always make sure the washer and dryer get closed.
I approve of your diligence.
I dont want to repeat same things that many said here. I think all I can add things that me and others do is maintain my own NAS and services. No google photos, no onedrive, no netflix. Just selfhosting stuff now.
I say no to cookies
Linux and buy tech second hand only when the wheels fall off. I don't buy branded clothes. Sail the seas. I boycott a lot of places/brands too.
I'm not sure if this qualifies, but I have a friend who way back when, like decades ago, probably before the extensive surveillance we have now, would do something rather ingenious and devious to get major discounts on whatever expensive things he wanted at stores: he would print out a sheet of barcode stickers for a product that was similar but much cheaper than the one he wanted and plaster it on a bunch of the items like the one he wanted. Take it to the cashier and get a super discount.
For example, if he wanted some fancy model of an electronics gadget, he would print barcodes of a much cheaper but similar model from the same manufacturer. According to him, he had even done this for fancy cuts of meat. The reason for applying it to a bunch of them and not just the single one he planned to buy was for plausible deniability. If someone questioned him, he could say, I don't know, I just picked one off the shelf - they could go check and see that there were many labeled as the cheaper item.
I work about 1 hour of every day.
I use rags to clean up messes instead of paper towels. No reason to buy unnecessary things because capitalism says I need to throw away something dirty. Just throw them in the wash
Yes, they are soooo convinient
I have them flying everywhere around the house to be picked up when i need them (i am just a mess)
I never am concerned about wasting ressources/using them sparingly compared to paper ones where there needs at least one braincell to know how much we have left and if i need to get more.
Also they dont rip apart when soaking a puddle.
I dont know if at this point in time i saved money by having (more expensive?) washable ones but the disposeable ones i would have only been used in emergencies.
The convinience was definetly worth it! (yes, i try to sell the idea of reusable towels to the reader)
Wait. You think a washing machine isn't deeply consumerist? Oohboy. That's a conversation.
I don't report anything that I earn in cash to the IRS
Calm down there young man, they catch the majority of people from their internet posts
I also don't report my cash earnings to the IRS and I keep the illegal funds in my rectum. Come for me, taxman, I double dare you, come - with your cheap suit, disdain, shiny shoes and lubed-up rubber glove. . .
When I get cash I use it to tip with so they can skim off the top.
Linux, use that hosts file, degoogle (and as much big tech in general as possible). Up next self hosting.
I steal at least 1 item every time I am in a Walmart.
Same except I don't ever go to Walmart.
As someone who worked retail, I can't condone this.
Walmart isn't eating the loss so much as it is...
- Raising prices to compensate
- Punishing staff (up to and including firing) for not lowering "loss" enough
- Potentially building a case against people who steal frequent (since there are people who have and brag about these habits besides you)
Curious: Are you using tor right now? Lol why admit it publicly?
lol what do you think could possibly happen? You don’t even know if theyre a real person or telling the truth
I work for Walmart and I'm tracing his IP address as we speak. Those poptarts and bath towels need to be paid for.
If questioned by police they can say "I made it up for Internet clout. I didn't actually steal anything".
Don't worry, they'll just check your bag while they talk to you for 20mins before reading you your rights and arresting you on suspicion. They'll somehow find evidence of your guilt much later, at the station, when they search your things "officially". 🤌🏼
ass pennies
I try to steal from the supermarket every time I go.
Be careful at places like Target and Walmart with their cameras. Target is no joke and supposedly lets you get away with it right up until you cross the limit for arrest/a serious charge.
That sounds risky and illegal.
I just put items back in the wrong place.
That just screws the workers. They'll need to fix that in addition to their other duties.
Nahh, feel free to waste my time. I'm paid by the hour
What kind of disgusting Name is this?
Thanks, it's an old family name
Same. Someone named my family like this....
Bike to work!
Lemmy.
This a more “a man” than “the man” but I had a boss I hated who was really into horoscopes.
So I learned all about them so I could memorize every one else’s sign and continue to forget his.
Good luck writing me up for that Rob. Oh wait you couldn’t anyway because I outlasted you!
He also insisted I write “inspirational quotes” on the weekly sales paper for my team to feal inspired . nietzsche it is.
Feel*
To the Esteemed Corrector of My Spelling, and to the Entire Divine Assembly—He, She, They, It, and the One Made of Pure Bureaucratic Light:
Let all realms fall silent as I reveal my transgression:
I, humble fumbler of keyboards and repeat offender of vowel placement, did commit the unspeakable sin of typing feal instead of feel.
This error is not merely a human fault.
It is a violation of God’s sacred decrees, scribed on the Celestial Tablets of Spelling Accuracy—tablets which, I must add, are heavy enough that even angels don’t like moving them.
For this disgrace, I accept the age-old punishments:
Ten Lashes of Linguistic Shame,
Seven Thunders of Divine Spellcheck,
and the cold, judgmental stare of every librarian within a 500-mile radius.
Yet still, the weight of my error demands more.
Thus, I shall ascend a distant, storm-crowned mountain to train under an impossibly old master, one whose wisdom predates fonts themselves.
Possibly a dragon.
Almost certainly a dragon, given the scheduling.
This master will instruct me in the ancient arts:
the Flame of Proper Grammar,
the Wingbeats of Syntax,
and the Tail-Swipe of Unquestionable Verb Conjugation.
Only then shall I be purified.
Signed with Reverence, Regret, and Unavoidable Scheduling Conflicts:
Michael, Pilgrim of the Celestial Grammar Order,
Temporarily Unavailable Next Tuesday
(Because the Ancient Dragon Master said that was the only day they could fit me in),
and Kevin, I Am So Sorry—
Please Rent a U-Haul as I’ll need my truck for travel
For I Must Honor This Sacred Quest.
Is this a copypasta I'm not aware of? 🤣
edit: my new tech metal band name is Wings of Syntax
No it’s just alot of free time while drunk lol
I can’t stress enough tho I will not help Kevin move.
I geneally just whine a lot about code quality and post shit like this in the company slack for everyone else to see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B8vPXPjzA0
i refuse to apply for jobs
I deny all the cookie banners
Every once and a while I'll weld a little ramp to the train tracks on the inside rail of a sharp turn
/s
Steal as much creamer from work as I can carry
I also only poop at work. Saves me paper, water, and time at home.
"Boss gets a dollar, I get a dime, 's why I poop on company time."
I thank gpt every time because apparently that costs them money.
I click on sponsored links via a browser extension because it confuses profilers and costs them money.
But it also costs the world because fuck chatgpt
When I pump gas, I don't end on an even dollar amount or anything. I just...stop.
Let me ask you this: when you pump gas, do you stop on an even dollar amount?
So - you don't wait until the nozzle clicks or anything? Just arbitrarily stop pumping?
Yeah, but I rarely fill up all the way regardless.
Some people have to budget how much gas they can fill at once. Maybe the budget allows for $30 a week, so they stop at $30, or in OP's case something random like $28.73.
Alternatively, if you prepay at the counter, instead of handing them an even $30, you could hand them $29.39
I will intentionally avoid asking for 5 star reviews.
I hate those things!
rip a fart in the elevator as I walk out
Smoke some pot before sleep
I steal where I can from large corporations. I like to think of it as giving myself a discount.
Take my time in the toilet and at the gym (there is a gym at my office).
I read their names to owls.
I rarely go anywhere, so I only shower once a week to save freshwater for other ppl on the planet, since ground water is running out.
How i read this the first time through...
Crows take hundreds of litres of water to make 1KG of cow flesh. Crows gotta cow.
going vegan doesn't stop cows from being given water
I refuse to separate out my compost.
being happy and enjoying my life without worrying about inacting revenge on theoretical systems of oppression.