Andrew @andrew907@librem.one

High of 25°?! This is insane. I want my teens back!

As evil as I can intellectually see that copyright is, losing copyrighted music still stings. Thankfully there is an exciting world of public domain and cc0 music for me to discover. But it still feels like a sacrifice sometimes till I get acclimated to the free world.

cool website - how many North American locations have you been to? https://www.gasfoodnolodging.com/visitedstates/us-canada/

Friendshoring is so necessary in our time. China and Putin's Russia are not our friends and have no conscience. Sourcing the highest percentage of the goods and services we buy from the Anglosphere and Europe (and perhaps another couple countries like Japan) builds independence for the inevitable day when we can no longer rely on the cheap stream of lackluster products from the Sinosphere. Switching to Purism's American made Librem 5 phone is an awesome first step.

a start:
* huel.com - vegan foods
* https://ethical.net/technology/amazon-alternatives-guide-how-and-why-to-avoid-amazon/
* https://www.joeyoungblood.com/technology/alternatives-to-big-tech-companies-that-are-smaller-more-independent-or-less-monopolistic/
* beginning list of local small businesses: https://www.shop49th.com/previous-businesses.html
* another beginning list of local small businesses: https://www.907bookkeeping.com/resources/local-alaskan-businesses-you-should-support-during-covid-19

Buying only from nonprofits or government, or at least social benefit companies like Purism is ideal, but (preferably local) small businesses are a lesser evil compared to international chains.

Socialism is a challenging ethical conviction to practice in a world where a handful of large, greedy corporations monopolize every life area. Digital assets are the easiest but already steep challenge. Purism, the ecosystem it ties into of GNU/Linux apps, and Brave Search free me from Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook. The public domain and cc0 creators provide the music. Amazon is way harder to replace because I rely on them for physical goods that can't be infinitely copied.

The time of year's coming when I can only go out at night and dream of Yuletide. More accurately, go out at civil twilight because there's no night till August. 20 degrees is my upper limit, and we are well above 20 degrees already. It's not even June yet. But I still feel grateful when I see the weather in most other places in the world. How are people staying alive in Phoenix, where highs in the 30s stretch endlessly into the future, let alone Jacobabad, Pakistan with high of 49° today?

The Ellen Brooke Project (ellenbrooke.org) curates public domain and cc0 alternatives to loosen the grip of Big Music and give people back their freedoms to share and remix. As a bonus point, it declutters superfluous ornamentation, provides independence from human musicians, and harnesses the power of free and open-source software to turn the page on the 300-year-old tuning scam called equal temperament.

You can enthuse all day about the advantages of GNU/Linux: privacy, open-source, lack of ads, a community alternative to state-sponsored monopolies mislabeled "intellectual property", security, ecofriendly, and the list goes on. But I'm afraid my number one reason is going to be convenience. I'm tired of fighting with Apple, Android and Windows devices to make them do basic tasks. I want a tool to support me, not a digital wall to bang my head against.

But we are still free to celebrate the work of the good folks at Purism even if we still have a lot more to do to spread the good news.

I find it a bizarre headscratcher that PureOS gets fewer daily hits on Distrowatch than Linuxfx, a distribution designed to relieve Windows-homesickness. People are weird.