Hah, you are correct

Ugh, all those electrons straight into the landfill :(

Ok, this is about the 10th headline i’ve seen that got the canadian perspective wrong. Let me just speak for myself, though i would venture that i am not alone in feeling this way: my near total boycott of american goods and services, not to mention my solemn promise to never set foot in the USA for the rest of my life, is 1% about the trade war and 99% about Trump’s threats to violate the sovereignty of Canada, Greenland, and Panama, not to mention the fact that i think trump, his administration, his enablers in the republican party and every single one of his supporters are EVIL. And, like, evil is the nicest word i can think of to describe them.

Most of the article is behind a paywalll, but the headline and first paragraph imply that Trump does care that people are dying. With a premise so ridiculous, it is hard to understand how this shit got published. The people who care about ukraine or human life in general lost the election.

Not forever, obviously. But a lot of very small portfolio investors have bought meme stocks in enough quantities to prop up the price for a while. Take DJT, the Trump media stock. The company made less than one well-paid lawyer last year and has no serious business prospects, yet the price goes up. It sure as heck isn’t berkshire hathaway or some big institutional investor buying THAT hot garbage. If someone who rolls coal owns stock in Tesla, it’s not because they believe in decarbonizing the economy; they liked Musk’s nazi salutes and nazi tweets and his proximity to trump. “Owning the libs” is not a tested investment strategy, but my personal opinion is that a whole lotta small-time investors will lose their (very modest) life savings when the stock price of these BS companies eventually collapses.

Whelp, movies just got added to my boycott of US crap.

To a Trump worshipper, this headline reads “buy, buy, BUY!”

It was nice to read your reply! Digital tools are fine but i find nothing beats paper for making art.

I was also pleasantly surprised to have a comfortable one-on-one with my minister. Her thinking is very sophisticated - even when it comes to her own faith - and she is completely sincere about recognizing and making amends for historic wrongs committed by the church.

So at my church, we just stream the sunday service on Youtube. I would rather use peertube or something but I am not sure how some people would react to the change. At least one of our viewers uses a screen reader to browse; i don’t want to complicate her life.

I want to second your comments about social media and algorithmic marketing. I completely stopped watching youtube unless a human recommended the video or i searched for the content myself. I don’t take recommendations from machine learning models - especially not ones designed and tuned to enrich billionaires at the expense of health, society, and democracy.

This probably sounds quaint, but i have returned to paper for my news/arts/culture stuff. I figure that if it is worth printing, it is more likely to be worth reading. Audio books can be nice, but I limit even them because they can intrude too much on my thinking time. I think part of the stress and fatigue i used to feel was related to a lack of reflection. It is good and healthy to just think. I am starting to wonder if daydreaming is a bit like daily exercise- not doing enough will really fuck you up.

One more thing i started doing that helped with my anomie was getting involved in helping people. I started volunteering at a church. Now, I am an atheist and very open about it (without, i hope, being a dick). But i found a church that is compatible with my beliefs and they do some nice community outreach. No one there has ever tried to convert me, so i extend them the same courtesy. The work is nothing heroic: i help stream the service so the elderly and disabled members (congregants?) can watch from home when they can’t make it, i help with the semi-annual food drive, and every now and then i make coffee for the old ladies while they have their meetings. It has made a huge difference in how i feel about my community. When i go out, i see friends and friendly people throughout the city. I feel like i am plugged into a mutual aid society and (try not to laugh) it makes me feel important in a way that work, school, and gym never did.

there are different definitions of intersex. the figure you cited is correct for only the narrowest definition: visibly ambiguous genitalia at birth. by other criteria (ambiguous internal anatomy, androgen insensitivity, etc.), it can be as high as 1.7% (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex)

Edit: i read the article more closely and i don’t stand by my figure. i retarct it because it seems that there may be good reasons to use the narrower definition. nevertheless, that is still 35k people that the government won’t acknowledge.

That is my understanding as well. I think that our insistence that every person needs to fit in one category or the other is almost the whole problem. I wonder how many people think to themselves “I don’t want to be trans, I just want to be me.”

setting aside trans people for a second - is the government going to build separate washrooms for the >1 million uk residents who were born intersex? why can’t we make policy that is grounded in reality? lawmakers shout be required to pass a basic science course

Renting is a good choice for people who can’t immediately absorb big expenses. If your furnace quits, it can be really nice to phone the landlord and ask them to fix it. Homeowners have to have ready access to cash, and not everyone is in that situation - especially when they are starting out.

The amazon reviewer is confusing chloroform (an inhalation anaesthetic that, in movies, is used to knock out people for kidnapping) and chlorophyll (a harmless substance used by plants for photosynthesis)

This was my exact thought! Prosecuted, yes. Convicted, no.

When my wife was in university, she went on an exchange with a dozen other students to a Chinese university. The program assigned her group a pair of local guides.

The first night, the guides offered to take them out for snake. Everyone refused.

The second night, the guides repeatedly offered everyone snake, saying that there were plenty of local places to get snake. Everyone refused.

The third night, her group had a discussion. They didn’t want to offend their gracious hosts. Snake had to be a popular local delicacy, because the guides repeated their offer daily.

They decided to be adventurous. One of them spoke up: “yes, we would like to try snake…”

The guide said, “what kind of snake do you want? chips? hot dog?”

The team is all assembled - time to take on the elites!!!

How evil does a person have to be before it is acceptable to celebrate his death? This man devoted his life to profiting from human suffering. The fact that the law was on his side does not excuse his actions; it simply means that he worked within an evil system.

I am sure the shareholders he enriched celebrated every earnings call. His leadership led to untold number of deaths for profits.