Buy European

Since I’m a more of a tablet user, my daily devices are iPhone and iPad at the moment. I’m using Safari with AdGuard and private relay, but I was thinking of switching to Vivaldi. AFAIK the engine is practically the same and doing so I would also lose private relay and extensions support. I already ditched other Apple apps and switched to EU services on almost everything (also not Apple related) What do you think? What do you use on iOS?

Electric car buyers don’t like right-wing politics. This means Elon Musk’s position at Tesla is very vulnerable and susceptible to economic pressure.

Every since I decided to join the Buy European movement, I've been avoiding US tech as much as possible. I still have my personal accounts but I try to use fediverse and European alternatives. However I've also built my website to promote buying European products. (Non profit, I don't earn from it).

Now that got me thinking... Most people that use Fediverse are fairly in the loop on things like "buy European" and shop local etc. But who really need to hear the info is people who are not. To reach them I'd probably need to insert links to my website on "big tech" social media websites. It makes me feel like an imposterer though to do that (advice to buy European and then putting content on an American network).

Can you guys/girls/others please tell me how you would handle this situation and what you think is best?

I’m looking for a European designed and made aluminium suitcase. Seems Tumi are made is Asia…any others out there worth looking at?

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/23996234

The rallying call to put European tech first — backed by companies including Airbus, Element, OVHCloud, Murena, Nextcloud, and Proton, to name a few — follows the shock of the Munich security conference, where U.S. Vice President JD Vance tore into Europe like an attack dog, leaving delegates in no doubt that the post-War international order is in tatters and all bets are off when it comes to what the U.S. might do under President Donald Trump.

Key tech infrastructure that’s owned and operated by U.S. companies doesn’t look like such a solid buy, from a European perspective, if a presidential executive order can be issued forcing U.S. firms to switch off service provision or terminate a supply chain at a pen stroke.

“Imagine Europe without internet search, email, or office software. It would mean the complete breakdown of our society. Sounds unrealistic? Well, something similar just happened to Ukraine,” Wolfgang Oels, COO of the Berlin-based, tree-planting search engine Ecosia — one signatory to the letter that was already taking steps aimed at reducing its dependency on U.S. Big Tech suppliers — tells TechCrunch.

Hi guys,

Please remember of EU dependency on petroleum products. So best way to buy european is to reduce its use when possible :

The United States main EU supplier of oil and petroleum products, Norway of natural gas and Australia of solid fossil fuels in 2023 In 2023, 49% of the extra-EU imports of oil and petroleum products originated from 5 countries: the United States (15%), Norway (12%), Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan (both 8%) and the United Kingdom (7%). A similar analysis shows that 71% of the EU's imports of natural gas came from Norway (27%), the United States (19%), Algeria (14%) and Russia (11%), while the biggest solid fossil fuel (mostly coal) imports originated from Australia (24%), followed by the United States (23%), Colombia (17%) and South Africa (13%).

While not an artist, designer nor a marketer I believe that a bit of visual identification is important. So today I woke up and made this logo for the co-op initiative. The co-op is meant to help European companies and organizations migrate away from cloud platforms from USA. What do you think about this design?

Credits:

• Cloud shape is by Ionuț Neagu found at svgrepo.com.
• The font is Agave from the Nerd Fonts collection.
• I drawn it in Inkscape on NixOS.

Credits: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1jcr8ks/here_is_the_new_and_improved_guide_to_help_you/

Today I deleted my Amazon-account. I'm optimistic, that I can live without it, since there are alternatives in Germany.

Step by step I'm moving forward.

cross-posted from: https://europe.pub/post/7501

What European email services do you use?

Please recommend other interesting email services by your experience.

I have switched from Google's Gmail to ProtonMail and kMail. I really like both, kMail (by Infomaniak) have very similar app interface to Gmail so you will get used to it very fast and also have big storage for free and very good offers for paid plans 👍🏼

Originally posted on Reddit

Hello all,

Right now I'm looking at getting myself a Smartwatch which can GPS track my runs but at best also my sleep cycle (as I post this at 3 in the morning) and some vitals. As Strava is American, I would also ask that there is an app available for easy consolidation of data.

Right now I am flirting with Polar (Finnish) which seem to offer both watches and the app. XCOAST (German) seems to be another option for the watch but I don't know about their app.

Are there any other brands to consider? These were the only two available in my local tech store but am willing to shop online (on European website of course).

Thank you all in advance!

The topic everyone was impatiently waiting for, we can all agree.

Ballpoint pens and fountain pens

If you did not knew it already the Cristal Bic, the world most used ballpoint pen, is French and even though the brand is now global and have factories in many countries (including the US, among other brands they own the US Waterman), they still made part of their production in the EU, in France and Spain.

(For those like me who worries about plastic/throw away pens, you may not know that Bic has recently started selling an aluminum body that's shaped like the cristal Bic that you can insert a refill in. Also, and for much longer, they make it possible to buy refills for the cheap plastic cristal Bic by packs of 50—so, you can keep using the same single clear plastic body for much longer only replacing the ink. Alas, those refills are not as readily available as the Bic itself.)

If you're interested in Bic history, and want to know more about what they do, they have this PDF available for download.

I'm not affiliated with them, I just have been chewing on one or another of their Bic pens for well over 50 years now and I quite like them. And that is coming from a lifelong fountain pen user...

Fountain pens? One may want to consider the excellent German brand Lamy which offers both cheap and expensive models of fountain pens (and ballpoint pens too, but not as cheap as Bic). Their cheap ‘Lamy Safari’ pictured here was designed in the 80s/90s to help kids proper handwriting and is still, imho, one of the best cheap/beginner-friendly fountain pen one could buy here in Europe. Its also real sturdy while still being easy to fix if anythign was to happen to it ;)

Also, I think they look gorgeous with their bright flashy colors :p

(colored) Pencils

If you're more into pencils, may I suggest you check the German FaberCastell or the Swiss Caran d'Ache? They're very different kind of pencils but they're also both amazingly good, be it their 'cheaper' lines (say, for kids) as well as, obviously, their artist lines (much more expensive too).

Watercolors

For watercolors, I would suggest the Dutch Royal Talens. Their student-grade paint 'Van Gogh' is unbelievably good for its price, as well as their artist-grade 'Rembrandt'. Heck, even their cheapest 'ArtCreation' line is nice (and it also offers truly excellent and cheap sketchbooks)

Obviously, the English Winsor & Newton whose artist grade paints are now made in France if I'm not mistaken, as well as their Cotman student-grade—but if you go the student grade road, I would strongly suggest you give Royal Talens 'Van Gogh' a try, like really, as you may be surprised.

The French Sennelier, they have a honey-based artist-grade watercolors that are so bright <3. They also have a student grade called 'La Petite Aquarelle'.

Last but certainly not least, I would not want to forget the Ukrainian's Rosa. A recent discovery for me (a little over a year ago) which I quite like.

One should also talk about paint brushes for watercolors, and about inks for fountain pens as in both cases there are excellent EU brands, but this is already way too long ;)

Your turn! Do you know any other European brand of pens, pencils or watercolors?

Edit: updated the title from 'in the EU' to 'in Europe'

Saw this post on Reddit and thought it was interesting to see someone's experience.

I've been trying for a few months to get rid of any stuff made out of EU (even before it was mainstream lol), and here are my conclusions at the moment:

Groceries: It's pretty easy. I try to go to local stores, but if I need to go to a supermarket, I go to Carrefour, Mercadona or Froiz, all european, and I've reached to the point that EVERYTHING I buy is european (mostly spanish, portuguese, french or italian).

Clothes: This has been tricky. To buy sneakers has been more dificult than I thought it would be. There are a lot of european brands that actually make it's products in China, Bangladesh, etc., so I had to look very close. Finally, I buyed Victoria sneakers and I'm very happy with them. For shoes and boots, Pikolinos is a very good brand also. Miguel Bellido shirts are very good as well.

Furniture: Well, Ikea is the obvious choice, but I do preffer to buy on spanish and portuguese stores that also have prety good quality for a good price, like Lufe.

Sports: Only sport that I play is climbing, and my last pair of climbing shoes are Tenaya Ra, and I couldn't be happier with them. La Sportiva has amazing products also, being italian and as far as I know, still manufacture in Italy.

Technology: Oh man, this is a pain... I don't want to throw away my iPhone 13 mini until it's done, but when the time comes, I don't know if there are going to be any alternatives. Fairphone, probably, but the components are also from China, right? And anyway, I will struggle with a big phone, which I hate. In PC I can move from Windows to Linux, but the mayority of the PC parts would be made in USA.

Good news is that the only USA page that I actually visit is Reddit, as I don't have Instagram, facebook or any other social media. Bad news is that it will be virtually impossible to leave Whatsapp.

Well, this is it, I guess that all of you are struggling with the same, being the technology the real issue, cause the rest is pretty easy to find alternatives even better.

My faith in Europe has risen since few months back, and I hope it's not too late for us to being able to compete in this new world that is emerging, where if you depend on any way on USA or China, you're lost.

A hug from Spain to all of you, european brothers. And sorry for my poor english.

Hi! I just wanted to share my progress and struggles hoping to lighten some moods.

So, i started with switching Form Dropbox to Tresorit, which was actually very easy to do and i am very happy with the change.

Next i cancelled my LinkedIn subscription. That was a bit harder because it took me quite some bravery to send out all those invites and i also lost connection to some former colleagues i really liked. But LinkedIn is bullshit and it became worst lately. Now i don't miss it at all.

At the same time i tried to convince the people arround me to switch from whatsapp to either element or session. Most oft them ignored me and i am kind of scared that noone will ever contact me again and that i will be very lonly in the future. I guess that is part of this journey. I eventually deleted my whatsapp account but not without fear.

Also very hard was cancelling spotify because of all my nice playlists. It had to be done because i used facebook to log-in. I cancelled that as well by now. That was not hard because it is unusable for some years now. I still have to get used to Qobuz but so far i like it.

I also got me one of those degoogled Fairphones which i am using now to write this post. So i will soon be able to close my Google account. Finally! One Problem about that is that it only has one physical slot for sim-cards and my other sim-card hat to become an e-sim. So i also had to switch mobile contract providers because my old one doesn't offer e-sims. That was a hassle and i still hope it will work out fine because i have had this phonenumber since probably 10+ something years and have an emotional connection to it (as it turned out).

Anyway. It is quite some effort but it helps to look back on what is already done. And in case you are also scared that noone will follow you. You are not alone :)

It should have at least a web and an android app, and sync between devices

Bonus point if it's opensource and it's integrated inside a calendar

I've tried Business Calendar but I couldn't sync between devices without relying on Google calendar

Tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day! And lo and behold it is my lucky day, as I found some charming Irish companies which all make their products in Europe, two of them exclusively in Ireland! Of course I wrote a blog post on them.

Do you know any other Irish products that are great?

Macron, who has been calling for years to direct defense spending toward EU products, said he wants to convince other European countries that are currently “buying American” to shift to local options.

Red Bull - European but Far right

Buy European but ... Also with ethical considerations.

Red Bull might sound cool, but they have their own TV station in Austria. (servus TV) And that station js beyond far right. Spreading disinformation, and Russian propaganda, Corona Bullshi, Ivermectint, cleaning stuff with chlorid, climate change deniers, ... If there is a conspiracy they support it ...

(And it's also not very healthy,....)

Title!

Any good alternatives? Replaced our Heinz ketchup with the far superior Werder ketchup. Maybe something similar is possible for Tabasco?