This is basically Mark Carney, the current Prime Minister of Canada. He ran and won as a Liberal, but he would have been a Conservative two decades ago. He’s been working against the interests of every day Canadians, but the thing is that if the alternative is Pierre Poilievre and his Conservatives, I’d still vote for Carney 10/10 times, because at least Carney isn’t a homophobic, transphobic racist. He’ll defend your human rights while robbing you.

Carney looks great on the world stage because he’s juxtaposed against Trump. And yes, we’re definitely better off with Carney at the helm than with Poillievre who was trying so hard to emulate Trump, but the entire world had been taking a pretty hard shift to the right.

I think it’s safe to say the people in charge appreciated the idea of diversity but had no actual clue. Harry Kim was supposedly Chinese, till Garret Wang told them Kim is Korean surname.

… Is Canada getting the Brexit that was promised but never materialized?

She was a US PR who had been willingly living in the US for 14 years. Her Canadian citizenship is only an incidental fact that has no relation to the story; she could have been from anywhere. This was not a political move against Canada the way Spavor and Kovrig were. It was very unfortunate, and we should be sad about her death, and sad about the state of the US, but this is not the doing of any party, government, policy, or law in Canada. This was done solely by the US. They created this situation, they pushed her to her death. If you can’t see that, you’re either incredibly disingenuous or stupid.

I don’t see why LPC feds should care? I mean, beyond basic human decency. This is US policies and actions applied to US PRs. It had nothing to do with Canada or Canadian laws. Why don’t you leave the blame where it rightly lies, with the US and its unconstitutional gulag?

You’re right that interactions are not hugs, but they create friendships with people with whom it is both socially acceptable and emotionally healthy to hug. If you don’t hug your friends, you’re missing out in life.

Well, some of them do. Shingles was the most painful shot I’ve ever had in my life. It hurt the rest of the day and then some. Measles was the second most painful, but only for the duration of the shot itself and a short time after.

But I imagine the shingles shot to still be far less painful than actual shingles, from what people have told me of it, so I’d still choose the shot every time.

Well, as I said, I’m not actually interested in getting the worker in trouble. The employer, however, is taking advantage of multiple refugee and immigrant “employees” in various ways, this the most provable. I put employee in quotes because the others are being (under) paid by irregular means; meanwhile, the employer siphons money for their own self.

Yes, but sometimes it’s worth it to pay more dollars to do/support the right thing. Not choosing that is what leads us to a lot of societal problems we have, including, in extremity but not in exaggeration, slavery in both its traditional and modern forms.

You know what actually could help with prices of groceries and everything else? The unimaginably rich people making just a little less profit. A few hundred million is negligible chump change to a hundred billionaire, but pooh on an entire country that’s been dragged into an unprovoked war for the years just trying to end it. Those people who’ve been killed, people displaced, homes and livelihoods lost, don’t matter compared to the profits of wealthy.

This happened to a young man I knew who was trying to get into HVAC. He had to start all over again and find someone new who would actually sign his hours. He eventually did, but I could just add easily imagine if it didn’t happen.

Essentially what you said, but I’d like to phrase it the way a counselor said it to me when I was under a lot of stress at work. Stress is the gap between our expectation and reality. Say you expect to be/produce/achieve/whatever 100%, but you are only capable of achieving 80%. The stress you experience is that 20% gap. Change your expectations to meet your reality and that stress will be resolved.

Now, it may still be that others might still want or expect that 20% from you, but that’s their problem and their stress. If you cannot produce it anyway (which created your stress in the first place), existing in the stress-gap clearly won’t make you able to do it anyway.

I have an American friend who is terminally ill, and it’s possible I may never see them again 😞

My father exactly. He’s Asian, so I think he feels more removed from the situation, but he worked in the US for over a decade before retiring back here. He’s still 100% pro-Trump, even though we are feeling the negative effects of his tariffs (“He has to put tariffs, he had no choice, look at their economy”), and he even admits things like Good thing I retired before Trump became president otherwise I probably couldn’t get a work visa now. My dad would vote Trump if he could vote.

I’m sorry to tell you the sets have already been dismantled and set pieces already sold off. It’s one thing to renew a show that still had its physical pieces, another thing to have to rebuild everything again.

Not medical advice, but a suggestion of easy things to ask your doctor to check for if you have insomnia, and inexpensive to address if they are the culprit: taking taking B12 and D supplements gave me (back?) my ability to sleep. I’ve never slept better in my life.

Check out this new wee little reader from Boox: https://shop.boox.com/products/picco
I think the idea of mounting it to the back of your phone is interesting, but I’m not totally sold on the idea. I’m amused by it, but not quite sold. I definitely wouldn’t want it as my every day reader, and I feel like someone who would read while standing in line… would be enough of a reader to want an every day reader.

Anywhats, what I really wish for is a Boox phone. The Palma 2 pro is close, but I still actually need my phone number for professional purposes.

Boox has 10.3" and 13.3" models: https://shop.boox.com/collections/all-products/13-3 The 13.3 would be closest to A4 (assuming that’s what you meant, A4 or 8.5x11). They run Android, you can install other reader apps like Kindle, Kobo, Libby. You can load PDFs by USB (which I do). There was a browser interface which I’d tried and it worked, but I just don’t use it. No idea if it’s still available. The built-in reading app can mark up epubs the same as PDFs. I purchased a Wacom stylus that has a side button for the eraser function because the original it comes with has the eraser on the top. I didn’t like having to flip the stylus over.

I have a predecessor 13.3" model, the Max Lumi, which is no longer available, but I am still fairly pleased with it. I’d gotten mine for the purpose of splitscreening a document on one side and notebook on the other side, to take notes for school. If I were to buy again now, I would go for the slightly smaller 10.3 size to be more portable, but unlikely to use spiltscreen. I would also opt for colour (which was not yet an option when I bought mine.)

Hmm, I see what you’re putting down. I may have to revise my thoughts on the matter. Thanks.

While I agree those ladies were a bunch of loonies, I don’t think the test is supposed to be predictive (this is how you will be), rather descriptive (this is how you are).

Although I’ve had this same argument with people over the function of dictionaries being descriptive (this is how words are used) rather than prescriptive (this is how you should use words).

A tenet of Taoism is that nothing is constant and everything changes. We can have peace and be clear-minded by moving with, around, even redirecting the changes, rather than directly resisting them.

I’m not a taoist, but I think that’s pretty damn wise.