The baby absolutely didn’t deserve to die like that. The parents, on the other hand, are experiencing the natural consequences of their own choices, literally what their actions brought on and deserved. Nobody has to say, “I told you so”, but neither do they deserve anybody’s sympathy.

This is no different than parents refusing to get a car seat for their child because they think seatbelts take away freedom, getting in a car accident, and the child dying in the accident. The child’s preventable death is the parent’s fault. They created the environment that was unsafe for the child because they were arrogant enough to believe they knew better than decades of evidence. In this car seat scenario, parents might even be charged with endangerment or negligence.

Or the grandmother who didn’t believe her granddaughter’s coconut allergy was real, because she knew better than the baby’s doctors, and put coconut oil in the poor baby’s hair and killed her. That grandma doesn’t deserve sympathy for what she did.

The benefit is mostly in “Oh, this (show/movie I like) is Canadian? What else is Canadian?”

Let’s take Netflix for a negative example. People know it’s reputation for cancelling shows after the third season, so viewers choose not to get invested in Netflix shows, so they do poorly, and then Netflix cancels them. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point.

But what if the reputation around the world was “CBC (or Canada in general) produces great shows”? Then more people will look for them and it grows the international audience. It genuinely annoys me when people call great, original Canadian shows, like North of North, a Netflix show. No, it’s quality CBC, Canadian, Inuit content. But if people think North of North is Netflix, how many are expecting it to get cancelled after the third season, and therefore not bothering to get interested in it?

Also, it’s important to counter right-wing populism everywhere. Poilievre and the Conservatives (in its current incarnation) needs to be shut down and not taken seriously in Canada and internationally. He needs to be seen as a joke by foreign nationals, and for people to see right wing populists in their own countries as jokes. The more he calls CBC state media, the more everyone needs to say WTF are you on about, you dingus?

Canada, CBC in particular, produces quality content. I feel that these shows and Gem need to be better promoted in Canada, and outside Canada they need to be better promoted as Canadian.

One thing that needs to happen is the Conservative traitors to stop lying about and maligning the CBC. They directly undermine our productions and industry when they spew false and hateful garbage to frenzy up their base. Canada is already a relatively small market, and half the country is against the CBC because they believe the ridiculous lies that it’s a communist state media outlet. I wish there were consequences for slander and libel for defamation from politicians.

Canadian Tire is buying the intellectual property (essentially, the brand) for an absolute steal at $30m. https://globalnews.ca/news/11210165/hudsons-bay-court-canadian-tire-deal-approval/

CT has the money and manufacturing, and distribution to continue to make Hudson’s Bay products. I would expect to see things like blankets, socks, and outdoor wear begin to appear at Marks, housewares also in CT stores. Heck, the CT corporation is so big they could just open Bay and Zellers stores if they wanted (with adjusted business plans, of course).

Have you heard of drones being used to smuggle guns? No physical person even needs to cross a border now. Personally, I can’t think of a practical solution to this.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/drone-carrying-bag-of-handguns-from-united-states-to-canada-intercepted-by-tree-1.6438267

They didn’t learn their lesson, evidenced by attempting to destroy evidence after the fact, and they’re only sorry that they’re facing consequences, evidenced by their own we’ve had enough consequences-type statements.

Surely if not disbarred, they would brag about not being charged and advertise themselves as a lawyers for the anti-government types.

I tried out a bunch, including Babbel, Busuu, Language Transfer, Mango, and Memrise. I didn’t like them for one reason or another. I finally landed on Lingodeer. It’s similar to Duolingo, but it is a paid app. (You can try level 1 of any language for free.)

The regular subscription price is definitely not worth it. It’s okay (not great, but not awful) when they do their sales. But I felt okay about paying human workers.

This kind of learning is a great start, but will only get you so far. If your local library has access to Kanopy, look for the Great Courses series on Spanish. I thought that was an excellent series after a little bit of Duolingo.

I only got a nickel and quarter with King Charles on the last weekend, among a literal handful of change.

There are a lot of years of QEII coins out there, though. She’s going to still be in circulation for a many years, yet.

This is basically how we ended up with the burqa. A woman’s body is evil because it makes men unable to control their sexual urges, therefore women must be banned. Now, in Afghanistan, a woman’s voice must not even be heard.

How long until the USA reaches that point?

Heck, people are being arrested just for being in the US, even those who were there by legal means. Even citizens aren’t safe if they’re not even checking who they’re arresting before, during, and after the arrest.

We barely rejected the right wing nuts, and they could easily take the next election. While relief is warranted, we should not be smug or complacent about it, either. Lies more faster than the truth, it’s still an uphill battle for morality and decency.

Yes, this has absolutely been a thought for me. I am not removing accounts, etc. from my phone pre-emptively, but I will uninstall things like Lemmy and remove specific email accounts if we have to land. (I use multiple emails for different reasons, so it won’t be terribly suspicious.)

Just booked a flight to south of the US. Even the most direct flight had a layover. I could have saved hundreds of dollars if that layover was in the US. I opted to pay hundreds of dollars more to have the layover in Mexico.

It was partways about Elbows Up, but it was also I’d rather not get arrested and/or detained and/or deported possibly to an El Salvadorian prison. Avoiding the the non-zero chance of that is worth $500.

Did you not see the part directly after that said he started blaming everyone else?

Duolingo got me enough vocabulary in Spanish to put the simplest sentences together, and then follow more robust lessons. I still think it was a good starting point, but I won’t use it anymore on principle.

*Doug Ford. Rob Ford was his younger brother who was the mayor of Toronto, and who has since died.

I’m not convinced Doug would want the job, maybe in the future. Right now he’s got a majority in Ontario and can do whatever he wants within provincial preview. He can, and I believe he will, cooperate with Carney and caucus to do what’s best for Canada and Ontario in the face of Trump, because that will also be what’s best for him, too. Fair’s fair, he did a not-bad job during Covid and had a rare moment of cooperating with federal and municipal governments, and it truly made him look like good leader for a while. (He became his normal self after emergency measures were lifted and started blaming everyone else again.)

If he became federal leader now, he couldn’t do anything but blow hot air for a while. It’s a bigger stage, but lesser power, and it doesn’t really do anything to benefit him. Doug is after dollars, but I think he does not like the maple maga and has no interest in dealing with them. Cut them out of the CPC base, they’re not likely to win again anytime soon. Or he could just stay premier and have a lot of actual power.

So credit card issuers are bad now?

There’s too much to keep track of these days.

Bloodletting is therapeutic… for some very specific conditions. For example, hemochromatosis, where the body has too much iron, and there has been some preliminary study that blood donations are a way to reduce the amount of PFAS in blood.

But everyone has PFAS in their blood; not every male has (beyond normal) phimosis.

To be fair, I’ve gotten texts from/for both Liberals and Conservatives.

I feel badly for remote communities that were looking forward to these services, but Starlink is a security threat directly connected to a hostile nation that has been making overt threats to Canada. Moreover, we have already seen Musk will direct the company to turn off access to people he doesn’t like. There would have been nothing stopping Musk (his lackeys) from eavesdropping on communications and then cutting it off when he felt like it.

The only real way is to invest in other providers, preferably Canadian, preferably public, but most fundamentally anyone that’s not MAGA.