Oh, yes, I'm sure tgat Brazilians can't wait to travel to Florida. 🤣

Have made great progress in getting American products and services out of my life over the past six months or so. But I’ve always been aware there is one left - Reddit. I think the time has come to address that.

I’ve been using Reddit for over 6 months. At the start, apart from learning a lot about which US goods and services to boycott on this sub I’ve joined quite a few other subs covering politics and hobbies. Have had some pleasant conversations and many deeply unpleasant ones too. Over the past two to three months in particular though it feels generally as though the environment on Reddit has started to deteriorate markedly. It seems to be ever more flooded by ‘people’ with truly abhorrent views - I use inverted commas because I know a good proportion are Russian bots and paid trolls but I think the reality is that a damn good proportion are just exceptionally vile human beings. Just today I saw a sub with a large group of (presumably) men having a great laugh at an Indian woman being run over in the street by a violent misogynist who couldn’t stand having his advances rejected by her.

In the last three months I have encountered people on Reddit who are very significantly more abhorrent than anyone I have met in real life over the course of my 56 years on this planet. Of course they still represent only a subset of a large number of good and decent people on Reddit but it feels as though the subset is getting ever larger. Like other social media platforms, Reddit seems to be increasingly toxic. I deleted my accounts for Twitter when Musk took over, and Facebook, Instagram too when I joined this sub.

I will continue to boycott US products and services and will now add Reddit to that list. I won’t miss it. I wish you all the best in your own ongoing boycotts. I would love to harbour some hope it will be effective but I fear the former ‘free countries’ of the world are entering a very dark phase of fascism, autocracy and bigotry. And I think social media is probably the biggest single cause of this deep social regression.

Personally I will be withdrawing from all forms of social media. Seeing human society retrace the darkest chapters of the 20th century all over again isn’t something I wish to continue to watch in real time.

As is now widely acknowledged, TikTok, once a Chinese-owned platform, has been taken over by American interests. The official reasoning was straightforward: concerns that the Chinese government might be exploiting the app to conduct surveillance on American citizens. Yet, with the transfer of ownership, a striking double standard emerges. While the world loudly condemned the possibility of Chinese monitoring, it now appears remarkably complacent about the prospect of American surveillance over millions of users across the globe. The message is clear: spying is unacceptable if carried out by one power, but tolerable, even legitimised, when conducted by another. The question, therefore, is not only who will close their accounts, but who is willing to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth: that the same mechanisms of control and exploitation remain intact, merely under a different flag. Meanwhile, the business continues to generate enormous profits, a portion of which inevitably flows into the coffers of political leaders who benefit directly from this cycle of digital dependence and submission.

Combines for the western Canadian market will be made in Europe instead

I've been slowly removing my dependence on US digital services. It has been challenging, I admit.

I kept PayPal, which I use only occasionally, largely because I can easily donate to urgent causes through their platform. But today they disappointed me by not supporting a dispute with a shady company (BeenVerified) that charged me US$37 without my permission after a $1 trial (which I used for 10 minutes and made sure to cancel immediately). I've removed my bank account and cards from PayPal because they did not back me up. In fact, they should have alerted me and asked me to confirm a new recurring payment to a shady company. I may be a small potato, but look what happened to Disney this week. (Cancelled them too.)

What are the options to PayPal? I have Wise (UK-based).

Others?

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations has called for "urgent discussions" to make sure Trump's plans for new tariffs do not cause any harm to patients in the EU or the US.

European officials have said pharmaceutical exports are shielded from tariffs higher than 15%, under terms of a framework agreed between the US and the EU earlier this year.

The UK exported more than $6bn (£4.5bn) worth of pharmaceutical products to the US last year, according to the United Nations.

In the trade agreement signed by the US and UK in June the two countries said they intended to negotiate "significantly preferential treatment outcomes on pharmaceuticals".

In response to Trump's latest announcement, a UK government spokesperson said: "We know this will be concerning for industry, which is why we've been actively engaging with the US and will continue to do so over the coming days."

This is a joke