At some point you gotta take a stand. People from the US always ready to make excuses why they can’t do something. It’s gotten so bad there, and here in Canada, too, honestly, and it’s like, what the fuck will get people to get off their asses at this point?

Honestly? Don’t care. If you’re agreeing to go there and get photos taken with him I am going to laugh at you when you get the expected treatment.

As someone who rough-houses with their cat: No, dude. No. This is just playtime, a lot of cats love that shit and know that playtime and claws don’t mix, so they don’t do it because even stupid cats aren’t often that dumb. You can also trim their claws normally, like you should be doing anyway.

My cat is fully obsessed with me, is currently asleep on my lap, and when playtime comes around will be basically asking me to do this. He will easily switch back to chill mode after, even if it’s me who decides we’re done, and will be back to normal for bedtime.

You’ve either got no experience with cats or have only interacted with cats you’ve thoroughly pissed off because you can’t read their very clear body language.

“Cars are bigger here!” Is definitely one of the worst ones. Especially when we largely have the same cars and the truly big ones won’t work.

I had a really weird dream lastnight where I almost got a Challenger Hellcat for basically free but I’d have to trade my BRZ for it. I don’t drive much as it is, because I live in a city with transit, but I’m very proud that dream me refused the trade in the end because it would have been a nightmare to find parking. Also they’re automatic, but that is unrelated.

A lot of people in North America see that and have a laundry list of complaints based entirely on their feelings and their inability to think for even a moment.

I dunno, seems kinda like something to pay attention to. Do you guys do anything? Or is sitting on your hands making up reasons to ignore shit like this just more fun than I thought it to be?

Dude, they couldn’t even keep Trump’s second term out of the way. The good ol’ centrist Democrats were even energizing people for a couple months and shut it all down in favour of supporting Israel and having Harris spend more time with Liz Cheney than her own running mate.

You’re spot-on that folks outside the US think the country is an embarrassing failure, though. Just a bunch of toddlers, cowards, and sychohants.

Boris Johnson’s look is/was apparently designed to make him seem likeable to stupid people. They see someone who has a decent fitting suit and think “fuck that elitist bastard” because that’s the level we’re operating on.

To be honest, I get how it has an effect but this is just insanity. The level of fuckery we permit based on the dumbest shit is just insane.

You mean that thing they’ve done for decades that their base wants? Look at how they acted with Good and Pretti, they’re not even trying to make white people comfortable anymore*; the gloves are off. They know that anyone who hates them will hate them and anyone who loves them will let them get away with pretty much anything.

*In the past they’d at least try to make white people comfortable so that said group could ignore major issues. Now they’re shooting them, too.

They can make the robots do the expensive jobs and throw the human meat at labour tasks. And we just let it happen.

Right now, billionaires are generally a bunch of human losers propper up by other human losers. And we’re letting them run away with it to where, in a few decades or less, they’ll have a more genuine capacity for violence by controlling machines to the enforcement for them. It seems like no amount of media showing how this always goes will be enough to get people to stop powering up their own demise.

What I’m driving at is that he might wear suits that fit but it’s important to still see that he still supports 90% of the things Trump does. Things like his Davos speech or what he eventually says in response to things like the US’s attacks are not worth defending because their purpose is entirely to make people feel as if there’s just enough stability to go back to ignoring politics again.

Carney is still a conservative’s wet dream, it’s just that people are so attached to their tribalism that voters aren’t paying attention. The MPs are, though, since we’re seeing so many cross over to be Liberals.

Oh, I’m still telling Carney to go fuck himself right to hell. He’s softer on trump than 10-ply toilet paper and most of the things he says correctly come a few days after his gut reaction to be a shit-heel. He’s slightly better about the US and Israel’s attacks but when they first started he promised to “unconditionally support” the US. Anything he says can’t really be agreed with because none of it is coming from a true moral highground. It’s hard agree with his words they carry no weight and are mostly lies.

Ok you’re missing the part where all the previous comments are the other guy desperately trying to act like there are no people involved. Please read the context and consider that when reading my responses.

Who runs the institutions, banks, and funds? Yes, they are stupid and short-sighted and greedy but ultimately that does not mean they get to hide behind a company. You talk about them having a pretty singular interest and then say it’s all averaged out, but the average between a pool of nearly the exact same opinions isn’t particularly important or nuanced.

Companies do not get opinions. If the people who run them want to share their voice they can vote like everyone else, and if they don’t like democracy they can drown themselves in their pools.

Shareholders are people, you dolt.

Companies are led by people, and those people can have opinions. After that, fuck right the hell off. You’re delusional if you think company should be able to have opinions.

Still, there’s a certain level of authoritarianism that is not propaganda. In Canada the CCP has offices with the purpose of essentially kidnapping citizens that tried to leave. They still can’t talk about a certain event. Their treatment Uyghurs is awful. They can’t just leave Taiwan the fuck alone, nor Hong Kong.

“You’ll be amazed…by what we show foreigners” is not convincing me of fuck-all. I am not trading one authoritarian government for another just because they have some cool toys.

But that’s the thing, I’d rather do that be the guy that pressed the big red button on a bunch of kids. And it would set an example, which hopefully others could follow, but even if it doesn’t that’s fine with me.

An example that is oddly close is Montréal’s rent increase refusal process. We have a system where we can refuse the rent increase and then the landlord has to justify it. The power dynamics are totally fucked, though, and a lot of people are scared to do it, especially if they don’t know anyone else who has. Even still, many people have done it and overloading the system has brought real change. Like the military example, there are huge consequences(in this case it’s related to having shelter) but you still gotta do it. There are tired poor people at serious risk of losing their homes who are braver than these soldiers.

But that’s just it, the US had this strong pro-labour stance, so much momentum, and then they threw it all away and now it’s about what your boss “lets” you do.

But they won’t even have those discussions outside of work. I have a theory that it’s because if they’re progressive outside of an exploitative power dynamic then it’s much harder to handle if when it’s happening. It’s like their lives are in constant justification of why being taken advantage of is “actually normal” and why they say shit like “that’s life” or “in an ideal world…”. Easier to submit than fight*.

*Clarification: “fight” here could literally even just be voting progressive since that’s a completely secret thing. I’m not saying we gotta be raging at our bosses or trying to imply that everyone is in a place they can even speak honestly, safely.

To put it more directly, anyone with a political ideology based on having a position relative to two or more other positions seems constantly so desperate to appear like an enlightened, balanced thinker while also having a political that’s nearly entirely worthless. They’re great at voting against stuff but their spines are jelly and it’s so fucking hard to get them to commit to fuckin’ anything.

And it carries over in their lives! Trying to get a hard opinion out of them on anything is so hard! They’re so scared of being “wrong” that they constantly half-ass everything they do and I’m so tired of it. Just commit to something, please!

(Maybe we need to start running actual super far left parties in the world to centralize regular leftist parties to get these people to finally behave lol)