Why do we need to burn billions of dollars a year, in funds that could be better allocated to health care, building hospitals, education, whatever else, fighting opioid addictions, crime, green infrastructure investment, I could go on and on.

Zero-sum arguments are the Overton window that the wealthy and powerful have permitted you to debate within. The premise you bring forth here is both ridiculous and intellectually insulting, not the least because it wouldn’t even be an issue if the wealthy just paid their fair share.

Do better.

Grandma is going to have to figure out how to get her bills electronically

With what? No computer, no clue how to use one, no real ability to learn, requiring dozens of hours of professional instruction to get the simplest workflows which are forgotten within a few days of non-use, constantly at risk of scams and phishing because she has absolutely no experience with the Internet, and absolutely no interest in learning when she’s already 95% done her lifespan and has difficulty even remembering what day of the week it is.

It’s like you being forced to spend outrageous amounts of money on an electric car simply because someone else decided to stop all gasoline production and distribution in Canada.

Fact is, everyone deserves to have access to all traditional communication, be it phones (you pay for that) or Internet (you also pay for that), or snail mail (also, paid for). We need a fundamental mode of communication that is not restricted to a privileged class simply because they can afford it, and whom everyone can make use of with almost zero resources.

That’s the written word, on paper, passed along via a public service that exists to enrich everyone, and not just those who are already fantastically wealthy.

there’s nothing the Administration could do. it’s all protected speech. they can’t jail someone for being Antifa.

Have you been conscious and actually aware of your surroundings over the last eight months?

Because there is a shitton of “protected” things that the current administration has been shattering with few to no consequences. Violation of due process rights, blatant kidnapping of naturalized citizens or permanent residents, military occupations of entire cities, deporting full American citizens, open corruption, the works.

At this point, the constitution is two incidents away from being wholly irrelevant and not worth the paper it is written upon.

All of the mainstream router manufacturers have critically insecure firmware. Nearly all routers ship with hundreds of vulnerabilities, and sometimes even zero-days, even when initially released.

It’s why it is so important to find and acquire routers that are capable of being re-flashed with third-party firmware such as DD-WRT or OpenWRT.

Check with the router database of each project to see if what you currently own is eligible. DD-WRT enjoys wider support but is more limited in functionality. OpenWRT is more powerful but needs more capable hardware to run on.

A postal service is a service. As in, it exists to benefit the citizenry, and for no other reason. A profit margin was never meant to be a part of that.

Bring Canada Post back into being 100% a crown corporation again. Make its mandate to be a service centre, and not a profit/revenue centre.

And that’s the beauty of these orders… with no definitions, ANONE can be “Antifa”.

Therefore, anyone can be jailed under these new orders with zero effort needed aside from publicly branding them as an “Antifa member”.

It’s a jail-whomever-you-want-for-any-reason card. It’s the perfect tool for the ambitious fascist.

Maybe you should move to Afghanistan?

I’m not responsible for the anti-male gender bigotries that others hold.

As an egalitarianist I’ll call it out when I have the opportunity to do so, but I’m staying right where I am, thanks.

My scotch-bonnet-munching brother took one look at this and nearly laughed his ring of fire clear off his seat.

I mean the commonly-repeated theory that there “won’t be an election” next year.

Oh, there WILL BE “elections”. They need the circus spectacle to justify their existence.

But with Trump’s cronies in control of ballot machines, where votes can be deleted or altered after the fact, future elections are likely to be entirely performative; a thin veneer of legitimacy papering over a massive edifice of fraud and rot.

Trump could legitimately get zero votes and the voting system will still show him with a landslide victory. That’s their objective, after all. It’s torn straight from the Chinese and North Korea and Nazi Germany playbooks.

Ah, an angry, argumentative pseudo-intellectual. I don’t think further conversation with you will add anything to my life, so I’m blocking you now. Goodbye.

Now THAT is a proper, intellectually bankrupt ad hominem.

You really have nothing anvailable, other than personal attacks, do you? Feelings before facts, I suppose – it fits the pattern.

Yeah, “white knight” is usually a dead giveaway.

How so? Especially since the term has been in common use since the 17th century. That’s a good 400+ years, now.

“Women get whatever they want”, “white knights”, “men can only help other men behind the scenes, otherwise people start avoiding them” - honestly, that sounds like toxic manosphere shit.

Direct observation of interpersonal interactions in the community at large can be one hell of a superpower for anyone dedicated to evidence and facts. It’s why I prefer it, myself.

And you can do better than strawman attacks and claiming things I never said. Or will you double down and let fly with a full-on ad hominem next? You already came close with that last bullshit line.

Where the fuck do you live, Afghanistan?

Nope. North America. It’s where this is most frequently seen.

In fact, men supporting men is a lot better in Islam than it is in western culture. You can hug other men and talk about insecurities with each other far more freely there. It’s homosexuality, specifically, that they have an issue with.

Maybe you need different friends.

Removing all women from my social sphere seems to be just a little bit extreme…

As a man, I have experienced the exact opposite.

When I have seen women unhappy, entire communities have come together to help them. White knights, in particular, fall all over themselves to help her.

When I have seen men unhappy, it’s invariably accompanied by women saying, “so fucking what? Man up, you baby.”

Sure, those men who understand how to help also reach out to assist unhappy men. But they do their best to avoid doing so in the presence of women, otherwise that “un-manliness” gets infected over to them as well like a miasma, and news of that percolates throughout the wider social group. It never ends well for any man who visibly assists, unless they’re wearing a uniform in an official capacity.

Cool theory.

Not a theory. (2) (3) There are now lawsuits in motion due to this.

Adorable that these people don’t think that this election won’t see even more voting fraud than the last one.

I mean, if the last one was stolen, why wouldn’t the next one be, as well? He’s going to have three more years to build systems that ensure a permanent Republican ascendency.

many small or medium-sized companies “will tell you they actually can’t find workers to do the job”.

Hahahahahahahaaa… BULLSHIT.

There are PLENTY of workers out there, there just aren’t many willing to work for sub-poverty wages.

If your business relies on H1B workers in order to exist, then you either have an abysmally shitty business plan, or you’re pulling too much out of the company for your own benefit.

Man you are wound up so tight

And too much of this world is painted with the same fucking brush, when that’s the worst possible thing that can be done.

Too many people taking too many cognitive shortcuts, refusing to dig deeper or acknowledge details and differences or even accept facts and evidence over their pet ideologies because it’s too hard for their pablum-fed goldfish brains to handle.

So I push back. Sometimes a slap in the face wakes people up when nothing else does.

personal insults

Oh, yes. Because criticizing someone’s lack of real-world experience - with context - is so very much like trying to shame a person into silence by attacking their character instead of their argument.

Like, apples and oranges are the same species, no?

Nuance, due. It exists. It’s a real thing.

This was all a calculated strategy to make independent farmers go bankrupt and into foreclosure, so that the big agritech companies could snag prime agricultural land for pennies on the dollar.

At some point, most food will be grown by corporations that can set whatever price they want for that food, and people will have to pay that price or starve to death. It’s the definition of “captured audience” that makes the Parasite Class extract so much wealth from the working class and become so fantastically wealthy.