I am talking about the people, not their government.
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you donât have to give me money. there is a donate link in the upper right.
Also @patdavid handles paying all the things.
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Thatâs what I meant, that all the donate links go through paypal or amazon. I know that Pat manages this, been there, but sending money through paypal to Pat who then pays hosting in europe sounds inefficient and may be impacted by tariffs in the future. However, i was mainly asking because of the thread discussing alternatives to US big tech, which I think amazon and paypal would count in âŚ
The IBAN was a joke, itâs clear that it is not that simple due to tax laws etc.
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You can just log into hetzner and pay pur bills directly 
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Well there were more than 50 % who voted for this government. But yes you are right there are millions of people (and many companies) who are not responsible for all this crap which happens at the moment in the US. And boycotting US products will have an impact on them as well.
Thatâs why I will not boycott any company which stands for democracy, freedom and open mind. I know that this doesnât help a lot. But if we want to have some influence on the politics of the US from outside, I fear boycotting US products are the only means we have.
Iâm honestly sorry for all the people which are affected by this blamelessly.
On the other hand there a millions of people outside the US which are blameless ass well and have to suffer from the unresponsable acting of the US government.
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Definitely not 50%. Not even 50% of people voted total (which is part of the problem). More like 25% or so of the population voted for him, which still boggles my mind, but I digress.
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Sorry, you are right, It was wrongly formulated. Correct would have been:
There were less than 50% who voted against this government.
(On Wikipedia is said, that voter participation was around 64% )
Unfortunately we have similar problems here in Europe. Similar stupid or selfish politicians who are promising simple solutions for very complicated things. And of course there is always a scapegoat for every problem which might possibly occur. Unfortunately we have as well many people, who are willing to believe this nonsense.
I hope that sanity will return in near future. Even so I doubt.
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Obviously this thread is turning somewhat political, which is something we usually avoid on Pixls, thankfully. But whatâs happening right now is so far-reaching that it goes beyond left/right politics. So itâs understandable for us to be discussing it in the Lounge section, especially when it affects our hobbies and passions.
Every country and region has its own issues, and in Canada we are not just facing tariffs but actual threats of annexation. This is not funny or rational, and many Canadians are rightfully upset. I think the Buy Canadian movement is a rational response. Boycotting US products and especially Big Tech, the CEOs of which stood behind and are supporting Trump, is very legitimate in my opinion. Bezos owns the Washington Post and is deciding what news they can report. Zuck is controlling the algorithms of FB and Meta products⌠Musk has shown his true colours.
That said, I will still support US products and companies that stand up for the values I believe in, which arenât radical values. They are just common sense, decent values of mutual benefit and treating everyone as human beings.
I am well aware that less than half of the US voted for Trump, but what is going on south of the border right now has woken many of us up to the reality that a long-term friend and ally can just turn on us at any moment, even without the majority of the country agreeing or voting for it. Thatâs not something we can just hope will " blow over" .
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That is only being discussed (threatened?) at the moment. The treatment of people is another matter, here is a story about a British woman being arrested and sent to an immigration detention centre.
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Leviâs has been overpriced for a long time now. Two (French) alternatives, where youâll get a lot more for your money:
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One thing i learned in the last 2 months ⌠I am not doing this game anymore âoh they are just saying this and will never do itâ because guess what ⌠they actually did all those things where people said âoh they would never do that, it is just fear mongeringâ
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For the harsh times, that are coming, my baseball bat, that I donât have under my bed, will be replaced with a more versatile and aesthetic cricket bat, that I will not have under that bed.
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What you still could buy (even on Amazon)âŚ
âŚsearch for âtrump toilet brushââŚ
Make Your Toilet Great Again!
Sorry, but I just couldnât resist!
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Shoes. We are buying shoes. They are all imported, these days.
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there is no perfect knife holder: The Many Voices of Anne Ahlert: "@nonfedimemes@wetdry.world "The perfect kitchenâŚ" - Mastodon
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Yeah, that heavily depends on where you live. There is this app called mapy.cz that offers an alternative to Google Maps with reviews, photos, traffic and streetview, but is mostly limited to Czech republic. Reviews and photos work anywhere, but the availability may be much worse.
Like certain places have 2000+ reviews on Google Maps, but only like 5 on mapy.cz, if there are any reviews at all! Mostly they are not very relevant (they donât have text)
also for the public transportation information thing: Did you hear about Ăffi? If your region is missing you could work with the author to get it added?
also did you see bikerouter
I love mapy.cz! It is by far a better map than GMaps. But it doesnât have as comprehensive a coverage of public transport and local businesses and reviews. Those are the uses I still use GMaps for.
Mapy was developed in collaboration with windy.com, which is another fabulous service and app. These are two of my favorite apps! And, in keeping with this threadâs theme, they are developed in Europe. Czechia, to be precise.
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Yeah, if you zoom in hard enough on Windy, mapy.cz map is shown!
Not aiming this at you @europlatus but to the theme of this thread in general, yet you highlight a key assumption. That is that this will remain a bilateral trade dispute between the U.S., or the Trump administration specifically, and the rest of the world. Unfortunately this seems unlikely.
China is the worldâs preeminent manufacturing centre, followed by copycats in Asia like Vietnam, as well as Germany. It has relied on goods exports to escape poverty and propel, lately faltering, economic growth to keep its population âon sideâ.
The flipside of this is the large trade deficit in the U.S. â which has become the consumer of last resort for surplus countries such as China â and an eventual cross-party reaction in America. Yes, Trump is extreme and his policy unhelpful and likely self-defeating, but the Democrats are also now trade hawks (see Bidenâs industrial policy).
The U.S. tariffs mean that China will be looking for new buyers of last resort, but no one wants to try on those shoes. Europeans are already readying tariffs against Chinese dumping of vehicles into the important European auto markets. They and their voters are surely not going to be happy to be flooded with all kinds of other uber-competitive (ie dumped) merchandise just to help the Chinese communist party keep its economy afloat.
The logic of having nations with persistent large trade surpluses is there must be countries with correspondingly large deficits. We canât all be net exporters, it goes without saying. So as long as Americans are unwilling to continue to shoulder the burden of compensating for surplus countriesâ industrial strategy of suppressing domestic demand (in order to use the resulting excess savings to invest in export manufacturing), itâs unlikely this will remain a U.S. tariff aberration.
(Chinaâs growth strategy was already running out of steam as ever-expanding investment â in manufacturing for export, local property and infrastructure beyond domestic needs (people keep talking about the incredible build out of Chinese high speed trains as though itâs a good thing!), and loss-making projects overseas as part of the âBelt and Roadâ scheme â to keep growth going has led to returns that shrank or became negative. This is also how we have such cheap Chinese lenses, I guess.)
Iâm stealing this stuff largely from Carnegie Endowment senior fellow Michael Pettis. If youâre on Bluesky (or X) he has plenty of related posts:
Or pieces that explain how trade deficit nations like the U.S., (also UK and Canada) with reserve currency status have seen their manufacturing hollowed out as surplus countries recycle the dollars they earn from exports into foreign assets (mostly Treasuries). These are safe assets in highly liquid markets and the inflows of capital into them keep the dollar strong vs, say, the regulated Chinese yuan, and lower U.S. interest rates, encouraging consumer debt, so helping to spur American demand for cheap imports.
Pettis has a good book from 2020 with Matthew Klein (who has a related substack here How to Think About the Tariffs - by Matthew C. Klein) called Trade Wars Are Class Wars
AaaaanywayâŚ
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