4mo ago

This unAmerican life: can you really divest yourself of everything from the US?

www.theguardian.com

This un-American life: can you really divest yourself of everything from the US?

BuyFromEU @europe.pub

tfm @europe.pub

4mo ago

This unAmerican life: can you really divest yourself of everything from the US?

www.theguardian.com /lifeandstyle/2025/apr/19/this-unamerican-life-can-you-really-divest-yourself-of-everything-from-the-us

19 comments

In this exact moment? Probably not. But perfection is the enemy of good.
- This needs to be told to so many on Lemmy. The "all or nothing" mentality is pervasive.
  
  It's USAian, in fact. That mentality has been bred in the US and exported via media, policy, and products. Disconnecting from US media can do wonders for mental health.
  
  Flaw in our human design I'm afraid, either a or b thinking seems to sit very deep in our system also in other places
What a fucking wanker. The journo who wrote this an utter knob.
To address the headline, incremental improvements create pressure, doesn't have to be a purity test, just deliberate avoidance as much as practical.
You can't do it all in one day, but you can work on it bit by bit. Take it one step at a time, and every service you replace is one step closer to divesting fully.
My Google Pixel 8a Android phone is going to be swapped out with a Franco-Dutch Murena Fairphone 5 running the “deGoogled” /e/OS
CalyxOS is great on pixel devices, what waste of hardware.
- I can't afford a new Fairphone and my current Samsung is starting to get to the end of its lifecycle, would you recommend me getting a secondhand pixel to have better acces to alternative android os when this phone dies?
  
  I'd look into graphene or calyx, they're privacy oriented android roms. the websites have lists of supported devices. I usually get a refurbished pixel a few generations old and use it until it literally falls apart
  
  I would never recommend buying a used pixel for this purpose. They are very closed and unrepairable in terms of hardware so you will run into battery life issues. I have been degoogling phones for people for years and the pixels always get hardware issues.
  If you are okay with secondhand, get an FP4 or FP5 depending on your budget. Then you can just replace the battery if it starts getting bad. The FP4 is gonna stop getting security updates in 2 years tho. So if you want something more long term get an FP5, those will get updates until 2031. You can get them for like 400€ if you bid on them.
I’m shifting a lot of my investments to non-US things.
I’m also opening some foreign accounts that are denominated in local currency, and moving some chunks of my savings there.
Each step becomes easier.
So far I cancelled my YT Premium, deleted my Amazon account and switched browser. I'm in progress to get my stuff of Paypal and Google but it's proving to be difficult. And I'm still using Windows because that's a big step I'm not ready for yet.

19 comments