My brain wanted to ask what Lego set that was…

Oh, how the true vermin emerge again…

Man, Rotten’ll have a renaissance if they plan on keeping the propellers like that…

Thanks so much!

No problem with the translation, can handle those myself, thankfully. Can even handle some minor editing if needed.

Funnily enough, my life is falling apart in just the right way to allow me to involve myself in stuff like this, so yes! If nothing else, I’ll stockpile and reach out to some old connections, spread them around.

Agreed, but I’m thinking of the people who aren’t fully digital, which make up a large portion of the population (at least here in Romania).

The nice Auntie next door who barely watches anything on TV beyond the evening news and folk music shows most likely won’t catch word of this unless I tell her about it (and if she will, she probably won’t really get it). And I am absolutely certain she’d love chatting about groceries for a while!

Just want to add that we shouldn’t neglect word of mouth as a useful transmission vector. Anecdotal, but I’ve started dropping the idea in conversations with the people I know (most conversations inevitably drift to the state of things, so it’s not that hard to squeeze it in), and most started focusing on that. A couple of explanations and memes later, and they started reconsidering their shopping habits.

I think we’re reaching the point where the level of degradation is high enough to be immediately noticeable, which means people are becoming receptive, if only through survival mechanisms. As you’ve said, most people are simply functioning based on incomplete data, and this particular boycot is like a lite variant, mildly irksome at best. Easier to switch from Coke to American Cola (I’m not kidding, this is an actual fizzy Coke clone made by European Drinks - now discontinued, I believe…), or whatever else there is.

I do completely agree that a public, official campaign for this would speed things along greatly. I’d second trying to see if Volt wouldn’t be interested in including this idea in some of their campaigns. Could also talk to local councils/whatever form of local government is available about this, maybe it could even merge with promoting local products in some areas (my home town has a lot of supermarkets which import apples, even though it’s actually pretty renown for its apple orchards and natural apple juice, it’s downright stupid…). This would imply creating some reading material at least, but wouldn’t need to do much more than explain the movement, then send the readers to an accessible (and mobile-friendly!) web page with more info (“buyeuropean.eu” has a nice vibe to it).

Edit: another long shot would be trying to talk to local businesses and see if they won’t carry some info material, like have a “Pop!” poster with the concept somewhere, or even carry pamphlets. Most local businesses are very good nodes for transmission because everyone knows the local shopkeep, and the local shopkeep knows everyone. Sure, it’s not in their immediate interest to have people refusing to buy their stock of American products, but the process should be slow enough to allow them to adjust their suppliers. A 1-2 month timeline, thereabouts. Unless they have longer-term contracts, but I don’t know how those stand now that Liberation Day has happened [Heh, remember Michael Bay’s Emmerich’s (my brain is melting…) Independence Day? Yeah, they called it Liberation Day, too. Better plot than IRL…]

Edit 2: I’m an idiot! These exist, apparently. Yeah, we need a campaign=)))

Oh, sod off, Liz…

It’s a Boomer joke, yes =))

It was a joke, an old running one, making light of people (frequently resurrected among Millenials) who have books on display. The jest is that people like to display books they’ll never read in order to look smarter. Like the old trope of wearing glasses achieving the same goal.

I manually remove the auto upvote:D

I wonder how people will show off all of the books they haven’t read, what with analogs going out of stye and all.

Fairphones are a solid bit of tech! I mean this both metaphorically and literally! The 4 I own feels like a Nokia built in their heyday.

You may be right. I was basing my initial hunch on the fact that he seems to be almost impressively vulnerable for a bona fide narcissist, “The Orange Man” would still highlight him as significant.

My past relationships make sense now, the Universe was Mr. Miyagi-ing me into a machine for punching Nazis!

I’m starting to be convinced this is one of the many intrinsic flaws to the way we’re governing ourselves. It’s an inevitable slippery slope, we’ll keep ending up having to deal with it periodically as long as we don’t change stuff in significant ways.

Edit: I think we need to approach them as our body would a splinter, or a zit. Just squeeze’em out. As I see it, Fascism is fundamentally inimical to life itself, could even compare it to a viral infection. Sure, some infection is inevitable even when squeezing out the splinter, but chances are good that it won’t develop beyond anything superficial if we provide an appropriate immune response and treatment afterwards.

I’ll still call him The Orange Man, would do it to his face. I get the feeling it’s one of those insults which he plays off like a cool guy because he can’t afford an honest reaction, but is eating him up deep inside. I can’t miss out on that possibility.

Merkel was a plant. I get the feeling most of Merkel’s phone is spam, ads, and poorly focused photos. Fitting sacrifice to keep the spies thinking they were winning.

Exactly, we need to act with the future in mind, we gotta reinforce the barricades, as it were. At the very least, and at most for the time being. And we really gotta agree upon a system. Like, any humane and empathy-driven system, it doesn’t all have to be perfect in the first try. It has to be at least functional enough to buy ourselves more time for the detailing.

And we’ll also have to keep in mind to pull double-duty on handling the almost literal dumpster fire heading our way, although a saner climate may be aligned with a generally sane direction from the start.

That’s such a middling long game, though… My personal fear is that any potential long game just gives them the space to solidify their grip on the population, I think everyone needs to do/see something pretty much soon-ish to make them want to believe in the rational alternative.

We’re entering tumultuous times in terms of emotional load, everyone is nearing desperation at an alarming rate. That’s a dangerous playground to reach.

Edit: not that I have the faintest about what could be done, I’ve been wracking my brain with this question for a while.

Well, now they’re just subverting expectations left ant right, aren’t they!