I just sat down to do my annual donations, so I’ve got the list ready to go:

• local food bank
• local safe injection site
• Signal
• KDE
• OpenMedia (closest thing to EFF in Canada)

A few places I couldn’t afford to donate to this year, in case anyone needs more ideas:

• archive.org
• EFF
• miscellaneous software projects I’m using (mostly Steam Deck plugins because I’m in that community a lot)
• Gnome

I also give a bit to Tor and The Beaverton monthly.

Another classic from NatPo!

While we are ashamed of our cultural traditions, retailers are certainly not ashamed of milking cash from the desiccated corpse of Santa Claus. And so, by being cynical of a traditional Christmas, we have fashioned Christmas into something we should indeed feel cynical about.

NatPo came so close to making a progressive statement, but held back at the last second and blamed regular people instead.

Perhaps we can sneak it back onto the calendar

I wonder who doesn’t know when the stat holiday for Christmas is. No need to put it back on the calendar when it’s still there…

Throughout the whole article there are only anecdotal reasons why it should be restored. So many of them boil down to “it used to be like this so it should still be like this” too, which is just a silly argument. Maybe come up with some good reasons for it to stay by using a bit of critical thinking, NatPo.

The article could’ve been a nice little nostalgia trip too, but instead it finished off by saying all of the far-right talking points as though they had some relevance to the rest of the article.

Honestly, I try not to think about them. It’s an inherently selfish and self-serving class and they’ve got enough money to pay people to think about them, so I’m not going to do it for free.

I like to divide my spending into two broad categories: needs and wants. For example, I need food and shelter to survive, but I only want that really cute blahaj (even though it feels like I need it). Things that I want I can skip, things that I need I cannot. You have to be very honest with yourself for that to work well though.

Of course life is not fun if you’re only surviving, so it’s OK to treat yourself occasionally with things you want. Just make sure you’re saving enough before spending on “wants”.

It’s also often possible to break down “needs” further, since you may need some functionality (e.g. something to eat, something to hit nails with, etc.) but the specific item is not a need. I will prefer the cheapest option if I don’t have any other requirements. I tend to like things that’ll last though (they’re usually cheaper in the long run), so I’m willing to not cheap out if that’s a factor.

I am a very pragmatic and minimalist person though, so I don’t think this advice will work for everyone.

If you (or anyone else) has any suggestions for emulators/tools to mirror, send them my way. I already have a few on my Forgejo server https://git.ngni.us/mirrors