BrightFadedDog

I've started making a few non-financial changes to put me in a better position. I'm organising to move my work to a lower cost of living area, which will put me in a position that buying a property should be within reach. I've also upgraded my vehicle to a newer model (old car was 2006, just purchased a 2019 model). It's a small van instead of a car, with the potential to be made into a micro-camper which will give me some cheaper holiday options in the future.

I had good timing selling some ETFs to get cash for the car (and because the move means my timeframe for wanting a house deposit have been moved forward). It wasn't at the peak of prices, but was before most of the drop.

I absolutely agree with everyone who recommends an older machine and a good service centre. But I've gone against that advice for myself and have a newer computerised machine for myself, simply because it has a needle threader and my eyesight is not great these days - I was starting to struggle to thread the needle on the older machine.

Anything that's not the cheapest machine will generally be ok. Most of the fancy options that make machines expensive are not really necessary, as long as the machine can sew straight and zig-zag you have nearly everything covered.

I think just being more intentional about what you are engaging with is a really big thing, especially focusing on deeper engagement rather than the shallow skimming of repetitive content that most platforms encourage.

I've been disentangling myself from Google as much as I can recently and one of the things I've noticed is that their AI suggestions for everything were taking up more of my attention than I realised - every text message or email I replied to used to pop up with "suggestions" about what I should reply and I really like not having that any more.

The bit I find myself very conflicted about is Facebook. I hate their algorithms, I hate the constant stream of AI generated and adverstising rubbish, I hate their AI "questions" on every post. But there are a few niche groups on there that don't exist anywhere else, and that do allow me to have deeper discussions on specific topics and connect with local people. I'd love to get rid of Facebook entirely, but doing so would also mean I have to lose that deeper content that is valuable to me.

I'd mostly like to keep them to a few posts so the actual discussion posts won't get lost. At the moment the idea is people can post that sort of thing in the pinned introduction post, but I am thinking of something along the lines of themed picture posts in the future.

There are plenty of groups which have primarily photos, you are free to join those if that is what you are after. This group is for discussions, if that is not what you are after feel free not to join.

I did that when I moved to Lemmy last year. The more recent account I just deleted was mostly comments "inciting violence" and encouraging people to move to Lemmy, so they are welcome to keep those.

I'm working on getting rid of Google, but it is linked into so many things it's going to take a lot of time to do it completely.

I've moved away from Chrome as a browser and Google as a search engine. I'm starting to disconnect other accounts I've logged into using Google as well.

I'm setting up new email accounts - I'm using my own domain name so I can move in future instead of feeling so tied to one provider.

At some point I need to look at Google drive/photos - I think there are a couple of things that synchronize through there still. The find my phone service is tied into Google. All my apps are downloaded from the Play store, and there are a few things tied into Google Wallet.

I can get rid of the main bits, but I think it's going to take years to get rid of it all.

Someone else posted that they wanted to fire Bezos off in a rocket never to return. I replied that it would be more appropriate to float him down the Amazon. My comment (and only mine) was banned for "inciting violence".

Oh, of course. Poor people just need to get enough money to own property and build everything required to create an autonomous society.

You have a wildly different definition of poverty to me.

What you are proposing is that "poor people" should all band together and create a new separate society, which is basically communist. Like some sort of left-wing Sovereign Citizen movement.

One big problem with this concept is that you cannot create a new separate economics whilst living in wider society. You still need to live somewhere, and you will need to pay the landlord with money. You will need to pay the electricity bill with money. You will still need to use joint facilities like roads, and the State is not going to happily provide all that to you for free, they will be looking at your new little economy and working out exactly how to value it to send you a tax bill.

While you are dealing with all of these issues, you also have to deal with the people within the group. How are you running it and making sure it is fair? It takes a massive amount of work to manage something like this on even a small scale. So you will need some sort of tax on transactions so that the people putting the time in to running it can be covered. Who is actually going to join if everyone's time is valued equally - it will be a great deal for people whose skills are not valued on wider society, but a bad one for anyone with more valuable skills. So you won't end up with a wide skill set involved, and can't cover the requirements to do everything needed. So for example if you found a farmer who wanted to provide all their produce through this scheme, you could not provide the resources they need to produce and transport the produce. There is a massive difference between "making food" (ie, working at McDonalds) and actually creating food.

Plus what happens when things go wrong? When the person you arranged to come over to help you with something falls and hurts themselves, or they do substandard work that damages your property? Is your mutual aid group providing some sort of insurance coverage? Do you have some sort of dispute resolution process to mediate problems?

Having a strong community that supports members and shares resources can definitely be a good thing, and help to improve the lives of everyone involved. But "quit your shitty job and create a mutual aid network" is not at all a viable path to prosperity (or even to survival).

It is less important that our hobbies are something that we are "not obliged to do" than that we are actively engaged in them.

Many people spend their free time in activities of passive consumption - watching TV, shopping and doing packaged, purchased "activities". The only active component is searching for the next thing to consume.

An actively engaging hobby is very different, it involves growth and learning. Many hobbies can be engaged in either passively or actively - think of the difference between a photographer who goes out every weekend to take photos and improve their technique, compared to one who spends hours researching and purchasing equipment but rarely "finds" the time to actually take photos.

The real difference between them is the mindset, and that can be applied to things you are obliged to do as well. My hobbies tend to be extensions of things that are necessary - cooking, gardening, sewing. All can be approached as necessary chores, but an approach of active engagement turns them into hobbies. Even scrolling the internet can be turned into a hobby - although I'm not sure if moderating a group and trying to learn enough javascript to automate things will make me a better person or lead to madness at this point!

I guess my argument is that it is not doing things outside of what we are obliged to that is important, it is doing more than we are obliged to do. It does not matter whether that "more" is different things, or things we need to do done in a different way.

I think there is a good chance at the moment that people will find you. Without much map of where to go I have been searching for community names that include my interests, and I suspect other people are doing the same given the community I started has been getting subscribers and I haven't told anyone about it!