I broke up with Duolingo this week. After visiting the site almost daily for several years to take both Korean and Italian lessons, a story about their prioritising AI over human employees led me to break off a 3-year relationship. After several days of inactivity I get an email with the subject line "Nobody ignores me for long" with an increasingly desperate looking green owl jumping up and down repeatedly and pointing with his little wing at the graphic that says "Start a Lesson".  This follows me leaving Twitter, switching from Home Depot to Lowe's, avoiding Goya food products (after seeing their CEO pose next to Trump with his product line at the White House grinning like a couple of regional grocery managers) and trying to wean myself off Amazon Prime. How much effect any of this has on the companies themselves is debatable. A boycott of Target over its DEI backtracking seems to be causing them some harm. But who this actually damages is another question. If sales go down will it just be low-level employees who are laid off? I realize that many people don't live this way. They shop and buy and consume without worrying about the implications. Presumably some people vote this way as well. I saw in the news that the family of Ashley Babbitt who was shot by Capitol police during the January 6th riot will be receiving a large settlement arranged by Trump's DOJ. Had I not read the news that day I would have avoided that particular bit of seethe-inducing information. Maybe in this case ignorance really is bliss.

Consolidation of power into fewer and fewer ethically dubious hands means that taking a clear principled stand against anything is nearly impossible. I've tried to avoid Amazon on a few occasions only to see that the equivalent product is either missing from the shelves of my local shop or much more expensive. I've started ordering from Walmart without any real confidence that they're better. (I don't dare google them.) Oh yeah, Google is another one I've deleted from my browsers (for either cow towing to Trump or the AI thing? I can't remember.) Facebook is tainted and so is Instagram. But often they are the only places I'm in contact with most friends and family. Have we ever been so morally compromised as consumers? I even had to escape the clutches of Amazon at my doctor's this week when I discovered that NYU Langone had partnered with Amazon One, whatever that is. When I couldn't get the handprint machine to work the woman behind the desk asked. "so you're refusing Amazon?" "Yes", I said "I'm refusing." And I felt ever so slightly empowered for the briefest of moments. Later that night after attending a lecture about the encroaching reach of autocracy I picked up some food from one of my favorite Szechuan restaurants. My heart sank a little to see that their TV was tuned to FOX news. I briefly consider whether this is a dealbreaker. But no, their spicy fish and silken tofu is just too good to give up. There are limits.