They only care about their shareholders and investors. They haven’t given a shit about their customers in a long long time.

Just a disclaimer about Ecosia: Due the fact they source their search results from Bing and Google, as per their agreement with them they do share some of your information with Google and Microslop. If privacy is a concern or if you just want to avoid those companies then I would give Ecosia a miss.

These will be destroyed in microseconds, and rightfully so.

Toilet stalls are one of the most frequently vandalised things.

Whenever something like this happens where women speak out or something is done to benefit their safety, men just love showing up to give opinions that nobody asked for.

You could paste this article link in the most progressive-minded group you can think of and, like clockwork, a significant amount of men will be like “Ok great, but…” and drop some turd of a comment that beautifully highlights just how ignorant they are as to how unsafe women actually feel.

Hannah Gadsby did a fantastic show called Nannette which heavily goes into these topics and her own personal experiences. I can’t remember the exact quote but she said something like “If this is all surprising to you then you’re not talking with the women in your life.”

Only 205? I would’ve thought we’d be in the thousands by now.

The issue I’ve had with the “Just shop somewhere else. Don’t use Amazon” is that it’s very US-specific response. Amazon has absolutely dominated the online shopping space in Canada for years because they are one of the few companies that dealt with the biggest reason why shopping online in Canada has been difficult: Shipping. $20-$40+ domestic shipping fees are normal in Canada for most other retailers which means you could be paying double the cost of your order (or more) just on shipping alone, so as soon as Amazon came in and offered free coast-to-coast shipping they had basically won the market instantly. There were teething issues, of course, and their earlier shipping contractors were horrendous but they did smooth most of that out.

Nowadays they still have very little competition that can beat them on shipping, but there are more and more options popping up. There are some Canadian online stores that offer free shipping or free if over a certain reasonable amount. The COVID pandemic really pushed a lot of local retailers to set up affordable online ordering and delivery systems for local customers, so that has also become an option. Aliexpress has also greatly improved their free shipping process to Canada and considering most of what Amazon sells is just rebranded Aliexpress stuff, it’s a great way of getting the same items for cheaper if you’re ok waiting a few extra days. So most of my online purchases these days have been a mixture of Canadian retailers and Aliexpress.

Sometimes I use my phone so little that I only need to charge it every 2-3 days. Nearly everything that it does my PC can do better and not try to lock me in to a dozen different monthly weekly subscriptions.

It is wild to me that Brave still maintains such a highly regarded position amongst privacy “enthusiasts” and websites. The godawful news about the browser, its company, and the CEO has been constant since the day it was first announced and it’s clear as water that the browser is not private nor even remotely ethical. Far as I am concerned, it should have faded from the public conscious back when they were injecting their crypto referrals to skim money without you knowing. Or all the times the CEO opened his mouth and revealed that he is a supreme piece of shit.

And even if it was private, just the fact that it’s yet another Chromium browser is a total non-starter for me. I am so sick and tired of the ocean of alternative browsers that directly or indirectly support Google’s browser monopoly, often while proclaiming they are a great Chrome alternative.

I’m lightly active in the headphone enthusiast space. Even in the more light-hearted circles there is still an elevated amount of placebo bullshit and stubborn belief in things that verifiably make zero difference.

It’s rather fascinating in a way. I’ve been in and out of various hobbies over the course of my life but there is just something about audio that attracts an atmosphere of wilful ignorance and bad actors that prey on it.

Now is a great time to invest some time and effort into offline hobbies, whether they be on your computer or otherwise. Limiting or eliminating your time online these days is just a straight net gain for your mental health, especially if you can fill that gap with some other fulfilling activity.

I am open to the idea of paying for quality services that put the customer first. Hell, I pay for my email and have done so for years.

But Kagi has always squicked me out a bit. Some of their business practices over the years have been rather questionable, especially their push into AI which is exactly the sort of thing someone looking at Kagi would probably want to avoid. They are also very expensive. They’re one of those services that just assumes everyone is American so they just give a $ cost and don’t specify beyond that, so I’m going to assume their prices are in USD which means a plan for my dad and myself is $21CAD a month. That absurdly overpriced for a search engine subscription.

To put that into perspective: A YouTube premium family plan covers up to 6 accounts and is the same price and includes unlimited video and music streaming. Thoughts about YouTube aside and looking at this from a pure value perspective, paying that same price just for a search engine is a godawful shit deal. Do you know what my email costs per month? $1.25CAD