Spring cleaning ... in more ways than one

 How to do business with the USA if you're trans. 

This week the weather has improved a lot and there's a new smell in the air here, of warm beach. I sensed it as I walked along the promenade in the sunshine today. It's time to open the windows and get the garden furniture out. I've been able to eat my lunch outdoors every day since Sunday, at last. Normally here you can do that quite a few times over the winter but not this year, as I have already lamented.

 

We have a bumper crop of oranges outside the front door this year. Sadly, they're the bitter ornamental variety and no good for eating. But they look jolly.

So yes, it's time for spring cleaning, planting herbs and generally getting busy. First, though, I've decided that my working time over the next week will be dedicated to completing the saving of this blog in an alternative format in case it needs to migrate. So far Blogger has been run by Google and I use Apple products and these companies are still, as far as I can judge, the more hippy, less Trumpy ends of the US IT industry, so I don't expect an immediate problem. But it's clear that the USA is going to pot fast so I'd like to be sure of my continued existence in electronic media. Frankly, the sooner the rest of the world can dump its reliance on US products and services, the better. There's a huge potential for European and South Asian development in the IT and other sectors now; an unexpected windfall. 

I'm no longer bothered about having lost my Facebook account to hackers six months ago. Given that Facebook's focus was increasingly on adverts or clips that might be of interest rather than what my friends were up to, and given the Zuckster's increasing cuddling up to Trump, and given the harvesting of personal information that's always been FB's policy, I think it's time to dump it and US-based social media sites like it. They're not very safe. As one alternative with a trans focus, I'm thinking of getting more active again on TV Chix, a UK-based trans forum that I didn't use to like much as it was quite sleazy once but seems less so now. There have been some good suggestions for other sites and platforms from other trans bloggers recently, like Izzy here and Lynn here.

I'm sorry for American readers of this blog, who are pretty well adjusted and humane to judge by their comments and other reading preferences, and who probably share my disgust. But the reality is that US tech lords' current bullying, spying on, threatening customers or encouraging threatening situations are actually bad business moves. As American businessmen of Trump's generation are so fond of saying with a shrug when they ruin a community by shutting down its main source of employment or terminating a useful service: "it's just business". Or even "it is what it is, cupcake", a phrase beloved of The Donald, which he cheerfully uses with a shrug on occasions such as his brother dying or the pandemic killing over a million US citizens. People are quitting US businesses and markets fast right now. But if a country elects a failed businessman to run a government of dysfunctional psychopaths, what can you expect? And if cold approval of suffering is how the US administration approaches business these days, then we shrug at the shrinking US economy and state simply that it is what it is, cupcake. 

Sue x