wampus

Yeah, the semantics are already on display in what they're saying here. "a deal that will be in the best interest of Canadians" can be spun really easily.

"Yes, we bent over and spread our cheeks by removing a ton of protections in various industries, selling out those interests to Trump's whims... but securing lower tariffs on all other trade was in the best interest of Canadians in general"

"Yes, we capitulated on every point you mention, but a trade deal with the US is still better than no trade deal with the US, for the interests of Canada"

"Sure, we brought in legislation that lets us suppress Canadian's rights, so that we can allow US companies to ignore things like environmental concerns while they extract Canada's resources and sell them for US profit... but doing that's in Canada's best interest, compared to getting invaded/annexed".

It's just like how they scream elbows up! Let's avoid American control in our gov procurement! Except for Microsoft, or other tech giants, even though they're heavily implicated in the authoritarian shift down south... cause that'd be hard to change, and all our stuff is in their cloud already...

Gen Z stopped havin house parties, cause fewer of them live on their own / with a small group of roomies -- a lot more stick around with the parents, and parents aren't as keen to have a bunch of youth doing drugs and lightly misbehaving all night ;p

I participate, have voted green / left wing for decades. It does nothing.

My riding is staunchly NDP. Jenny Kwan at present, Libby Davies before that. The riding gets practically no federal investment because we've had a junky minority party person for decades. Nothing changes at the federal level. Writing to Jenny about any issue is utterly pointless, based on experience writing her multiple times over the years. And it makes sense she ignores her constituents, because her re-election is practically assured since the riding always goes NDP.

Politics at this point is like what Religion is, in many ways. Religion teaches people to just follow the rules, and they'll eventually get into heaven -- no need to rise up against your evil masters / oppression, because they'll get punished by god in the end, so you just gotta endure it. Democracies have been engineered to serve the same purpose, while relentlessly prioritizing the interests of an elite few -- it doesn't matter who we vote for, ultimately. Same thing with recycling/climate change -- distract the poors with separating yogurt cups, making them 'feel' like there's action being taken, while letting rich people throw gas on the fire. As long as we have that placebo, we'll keep doing the little piddly shit and ignoring the big problems caused by a small minority of people, even as we literally watch the world burn around us. The illusion that our votes matter is just the evolution of the mechanism used by the wealthy to placate the masses.

The country elected a person to try and stand up to Trump, and we got a guy that bent over to kill the DST on a Sunday based on the Orange Fascists whims, and who's busy putting in the sort of rights-suppressing legislation that Trump and American interests want. I'm convinced that any "deal" he works out, will ultimately be selling out large swaths of the Canadian population -- he'll justify it by saying it's a net-positive, or better than the alternative, type of language, and the cbc/media will spin it as needed.

I'll keep "doing my part" by throwing my vote away every election for a green / left party. But I can't be fucked to try and do more in between. Part of democracy is needing to accept that the majority of people just don't give a shit.

I disagree with it. Nothing wrong with having friends of whatever shape or size. But to act like you need those sorts of friends in order to learn basic human traits is utterly false.

Also, in terms of role models and gender stuff, it's just weird to think how that'd come in to play for a younger person. You can look up to role models for any reason -- typically for excelling in a field or pursuit that you're also interested in pursuing. But it's a personal relation imagined in your head between you and them. When gender enters into that relation, in terms of who you're modelling your behaviour after, a straight guy modelling himself off a gay man doesn't make sense. If you have an interest in the gender of your role model, as a guy, it'd be mostly in seeing the reaction they get from women, and wanting to emulate their success by dressing / behaving similarly. Like kids who saw rock stars gettin bras thrown at them, pursuing becoming a rock star because they wanted the same gender-oriented treatment.

Hell, you could argue that's one reason the incel's are so keen to model themselves after psuedo "alphas", and shitheads like Trump -- Trump's a disgusting pile of yuck, but he's rich, has a hot younger wife, a large family all living pretty well, and has tons of extra-marital affairs without any seeming repercussions (he's likely to dodge even that Epstein stuff). It's hard to argue that he hasn't 'succeeded' at life. Same goes for all the tech bro fascists who're fathering, literally, hundreds of kids. Meanwhile, Mr Too Much Empathy is going to internalize all the negativity about men from feminist sources, won't be able to ask a woman out because of that internalized trauma, and will disappear from the gene pool.

Its even better than just that though. Letting Thiel, Luckey and crowd open up a crypto bank, and pretending like its real currency, means that all the bank deposit insurance pools / regulatory safe guards are inching open to the Billionaire shit-heads who intentionally crashed SVB specifically to get to this position. Standard tech practice of breaking things, obfuscating why things broke and then claiming to be the only ones smart enough to fix it, while stealing everything in reach and destroying otherwise stable industries. SVB? No, no, it wasn't because Thiel encouraged all his tech bro buddies to pull money at once from SVB to trigger a liquidity crisis, noooo... it couldn't've been income inequality and an aggressively destructive group of power mad tech bros acting without accountability... it was because the bank wasn't using crypto! Trust us, we're rich and contributing to your campaign!

So it's not just the people who fuck around with crypto who are gonna find out. It's anyone with savings, as the tech fascists are being given a path to steal all the money from any safety net that exists. Those crypto rug pulls are moving into position to drain things like the FDIC in the states, and things like CDIC/CUDIC in Canada.... and similar funds in most jurisdictions that are following suit on this stupid approach.

I disagree with the defunding, as many of the programs supported by NPR and PBS are pretty interesting / educational -- but to claim its just a 'modicum' of liberalism in regular media channels is a bit odd, especially if you look outside 'just' the 'news' (news sources are slanted towards right wing, definitely).

But if you look at things like netflix/most streaming services, or hollywood movies, or 'leisure' type shows in general, there's far more than a 'modicum' of liberalism.

Yup. Lack of game support is a big roadblock -- having just one or two friends on linux makes finding games your group can play together a real headache.

Another weird-ish hiccup, is the lack of good/cheap/trustworthy tax software. Installing windows once a year to do taxes is bonkers. Some solve it by having a VM that runs windows that they only use for taxes, but that isn't really a fix. You'd still be a microremoved.

Shipping by rail is generally quicker, at a relatively low price point, and with far less ecological impact.

Shipping things like produce via sea to/from Mexico would likely result in a lot of spoiled food. Larger non-perishables it 'might' work, but you wouldn't bother if you have a cheap, less damaging and quicker option available.

Canada's economy has never been about using our resources, it's been about trying to find ways to sell resources to others, so that they can make products and sell those products back to us.

And us applying tariffs on China is almost entirely about US interests, not Canadian. Just look at EVs, and how we block Chinese EVs to protect US auto makers, under the guise of a "Canadian industry" that doesn't exist. Doug managed to screw the entire country out of cheap, high quality EVs by trotting out an "Arrow" vapourware car that was only ever intended to be used to prove to US/international auto makers that Canada can make the various components that go in to an EV -- ie. a fancy brochure / proof of concept to try and suck up to US car makers.

There are agreements in place to facilitate the transit of goods via rail/truck through the USA, without onerous tariffs involved. Just like there are agreements in place to allow for transit of goods through Canada up to Alaska.

Could the fascists in the USA impact those trade routes? Sure. But they haven't yet, and there's been no explicit talk of it as far as I've seen at least. The most 'noise' on this front was caused, briefly, by the premier of BC saying they were going to tax trucks going to Alaska -- a threat they backed down from almost immediately, as they realised what it'd likely open the doors for in terms of Canada / Mexico trade routes.