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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • I think I might have mistakenly sounded like a Conservative talking point. My point was supposed to be that I think many people who vote left of the Conservatives see Justin Trudeau as the lesser of two evils at best, someone who has not delivered on their promises, and someone who seems increasingly out of touch with the needs of working Canadians.

    I vote NDP and am fortunate to have almost always have lived in NDP ridings. I mean to lament how disappointing it is to have the most realistic alternative to PP be so unappealing, especially against the incredible showings of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz who’ve shown how momentous progressive politics can be.

    I, personally, don’t think Trudeau has a chance against PP but that any decent replacement candidate for the LPC would probably have a slight advantage against PP to begin.

    More than anything, my concern is the detrimental effects of a Conservative government. And JT staying on the ticket seems like most influential factor at this point



  • The Cons want to accelerate inequity among Canadians in health, wealth, and everything else. That’s a huge problem. I think it’s safe to say Canadians are sick of Justin Trudeau and his out of touch with everyday Canadians approach. His ego is going to keep him on the election ballot and the only question about the government that forms will be Conservative minority or majority. I feel like we’re all hostage to Justin Trudeau’s ego right now. Looking south of the border, Biden and camp waited until the decision was made for them. I don’t see the same forces converging in JT’s case. I think things are going to have to get very very loud for JT to wake up to do the right thing. I don’t know how helpful the mainstream media will be in acknowledging popular interest in left-of-centre politics yet staunch opposition to JT at this point



  • For the record, I think you contribute a lot to Lemmy, and I really appreciate it. OP’s being melodramatic because blocking a community chock full of content they’d rather not see on their personalized feed (and isn’t hateful, illegal, etc.) isn’t good enough for them. I guess they also need to troll and police different perspectives and how many posts they comprise on this great fedi platform. That’s good for Lemmy /s. Someone should post a PSA about blocking communities that don’t break rules but just aren’t one’s cup of tea. The behaviour helps Lemmy grow and stay diverse. For similar reasons, lemmynsfw (ie, the main porn/adult instance) removed downvotes: because minority communities (eg, rarer kinks) were being downvoted into oblivion - stifling growth and frustrating community members and mods - by people downvoting stuff they didn’t like on their feed versus blocking it




  • So long as we only compare ourselves to the US, we look great on many fronts, and that’s what most Canadian politicians and mainstream media do - which is absurd and serves an agenda. Compare us to all OECD countries (same as or similar to wealthy peers), and we look middling or abhorrent on many fronts. For example, I know we’re almost at the back of the pack of ~40 countries in terms of disability services. I realize the article is probably about economic indicators more so than health and quality of living. My comment is really “who we compare ourselves to matters a lot to the evaluation” and comparisons exclusively to the US are self-serving and of little value



  • Obligatory @#$% Doug Ford. There’s not too much to this, imo. Back when it was just the LCBO and Beer Store selling alcohol - a special product if you will - the price on the sales tag included HST and bottle deposit, which is unlike most products, like a bag of chips (price on sales tag doesn’t include HST). I think this price labeling thing is just a bit of house-keeping after Ford changed the alcohol sales framework in Ontario (which will definitely reduce provincial revenue and good jobs and probably contribute to a significant uptick in drunk driving–that’s the real story). If alcohol is now sold in convenience stores alongside chips, why should its price be advertised differently (eg, include HST). So, this is probably to make alcohol more consistent with other products (e.g., there’s a fee added to battery sales that aren’t on price tags) in terms of product price labelling.

    More important to me is how long the bottle deposit remains and how long the Beer Store continues to accept bottle and can returns now that they’re essentially another convenience or grocery store


  • International coffee chains moving away from their role as third places highlights the enduring value of libraries and their essential function in healthy communities. That’s what makes the library so special: they are there to serve the public. Whether you want to work on your laptop, use the computers to watch fight videos on TikTok, or conceivably even borrow a book, it is the one place that anyone can go for as long as they like, so long as they don’t cause trouble.

    Premier Doug Ford, when he was a Toronto city councillor, once notoriously said that he would close a library “in a heartbeat” within his Etobicoke North ward, which he inaccurately claimed had more libraries than Tim Hortons. The province of Ontario has 921 libraries and 1,824 Tim Hortons. The threat to those libraries remains: In 2019, the Southern Ontario Library Service budget was cut by 50 per cent. Following budget shortfalls this year, London is considering closing two libraries; it has already suspended Sunday service for the remainder of the year. We are witnessing the erosion of an irreplaceable resource that the private sector cannot and should not be expected to provide.










  • Because Doug Ford is trying to privatize healthcare, like Smith is in Alberta. They’re trying to break it up bit by bit. Ford is giving money that would have gone to publicly operated hospitals and employees to private ones instead. And patients are forced to use these often because the public option has already been eliminated or is underfunded, and they’re told it’s the only place their OHIP applies. These private companies are then going to bill both the province and patients and deliver worse service and worse jobs - because they are profiteers. And down the road, it’ll be hard to back out of privatization when we no longer have any public infrastructure (which is when the private clinics can start gouging the province even more ;)





  • Content warning: a little graphic re: farting and pooping

    I’ve only been vegetarian or vegan, and I generally don’t have issues with farting (or any GI issues). What I eat doesn’t affect farting, but there is another variable that is highly influential: time since last (full) bowel movement. On a healthy vegan diet, I tend to have daily BMs like clockwork (the body has metabolized everything and wants to empty once a day). If I eat a lot of (saturated) fat (which slows down transit time; ie, how long between eating and pooping), that is how I can miss a BM and be susceptible to excess flatulence for a while.

    With more exposure, I think your body will adapt to eating high-fibre foods with less flatulence. My recommendations would be to monitor which foods are easier or more difficult for you to handle right now (eg, maybe fewer farts on oats than beans), and to ‘work your way up the ladder’. My other suggestion is to consider the role of ‘time since last BM’ to the flatulence attributed to high-fibre foods. My guess would be you’re getting gassy several hours after eating high-fibre food but you may also have low-fibre food from yesterday or the day before still sticking around - and I think it’s probably the combination of the two that results in excess flatulence.

    I think the analogy to exercise that someone else gave is very apt.




  • I love your idea in theory. In practice, I think it’s far too easy to hide CEO compensation and too effortful (ie, costly) for the government to track that. The easiest solution would probably be a carbon tax - which I figure would be linked to more transparently documented corporate revenue. As important historical context: that is the pro-business solution to navigating the climate crisis that the Conservatives and the ownership class wanted: a market-based solution without direct government regulation. Years later, they’ve rejected the most pro-business solution that they themselves championed and have worked hard to turn average Canadian voters against it through propaganda that the carbon tax is taking money from average Canadians. Now the Conservatives and ownership class’s solution to navigating the climate crisis is: pretend it doesn’t exist, keep riding this blip of unsustainable profitability as long as possible, and prevent everyday Canadians from realizing what they’re doing. The carbon tax should have been able to fund good jobs in a new economy