indigo / april 2016 / Karolina Koryl
“High Living” by Toro Y Moi
Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality
Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway
Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups
Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay
Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward
Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient
Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative
Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!
Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community
DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!
Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?
Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.
Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability
Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough
Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing
Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work
Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market
Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question
Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them
Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area
Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...
Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable
Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact
Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive
Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people
by mollygrant http://ift.tt/1r8i9gU
How to Say, “No,” to Someone Who Does not Take “No” for an Answer!
When you’re feeling pop-cultural…
“I’ll set the building on fire.” — Office Space
“Cancel my subscription, I’m over your issues.” — Popular
“Yeah, that’s gonna be a no from me, dawg.” — Randy Jackson, American Idol
“I’d love to stay and chat, but I don’t wanna stay and chat.” — Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
“I’m not sure I’m interested in that. No, I am sure. I am not interested in that.” — Parks And Rec
When you’re feeling musical…
“Just one thing I ask of you / Just one thing for me / Please forget you knew my name.” — Grateful Dead, “Sugaree”
“Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on.” — Joni Mitchell, “River”
“I had a dream my life would be / So much better than this hell I’m living.” — Les Miserables, “I Dreamed A Dream”
“It ain’t me, babe / No, no, no, it sure ain’t me, babe / It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe.” — Bob Dylan, “It Ain’t Me, Babe”
When you’re feeling literary…
“I would prefer not to.” — Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”
“Can’t and won’t.” — Lydia Davis, Can’t and Won’t
“There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.” — Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1944–1947 *Pro tip: Say this while looking sadly out the window.*
“…Being in your presence for any length of time depresses the hell out of me and I don’t need this shit, who needs this shit, so I’m like out of here.” — Terry McMillan, How Stella Got Her Groove Back
When you’re feeling rude…
“I’d love to, but I have to wash my hair.”
“Thank you for reminding me of my deep need for personal space.”
“Just not sure that’s cost-effective, when you factor in the price of my time.”
“Thoreau supposedly said, ‘A man can suffocate on courtesy.’ And I am damn near dead.”
When you’re feeling desperate…
“Feel free to remove me from this email chain.”
“I’ve tried to be really clear with you and I’d hate to have to escalate this, but I can if that works better for you.”
When you’re feeling mysterious…
“Would that I could.”
“This isn’t a fit for me.”
“I can’t make that work.”
When you’re feeling interpersonal…
“So, I’ve already explained why I can’t do that and thanks in advance for acknowledging and respecting my boundaries.”
“I care about our relationship which is why I want to preserve it. And in order to do that, I’m gonna need you to hear me on this.”
When you’re feeling corporate…
“Wish I had the bandwidth to help you with that.”
“That’s not aligned with my priorities right now.”
“As I said, I will get back to you on X date. There’s no need to check in with me before then.”
“I’m not taking on any new projects right now.”
“I’m unavailable; have you talked to X?”
When you’re feeling like Oprah…
“‘No’ is a compete sentence.”
When you’re feeling direct…
“I’m going to pass on that.”
“Not today. Or any other, for that matter.”
“Yeah, no.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Goodbye forever.”
Frog.
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