If the U.S. doesn’t want to be a part of NATO anymore, than they can get their military bases off of NATO territory and European countries can (and should) up their spending to re-man and re-arm those bases under the flags of countries that aren’t dickheads.

I don’t think Trump understands just how much of America’s global exercise of power relies on the good will of having countries willing to have them in their territory.

Because -isms exist in a binary world (sexism, racism, etc…)

Any increase in visibility for whatever minority they happen to hate, is a decrease in visibility for them (in their feeble transactional little minds) and it drives them bonkers.

Spoken like a true 2.

Local is the key. Or at least, it’s the best first step.

I live in a small Canadian city. Frankly there aren’t always a lot of options for me to buy Canadian brands. I’m limited by what is available to me. My response has been to go even deeper than just “buy Canadian” to “buy Local”.

Go to your local independent grocer. Go to your local independent clothing store, coffee shop, mechanic, etc… Find your local farmers market where local gardeners and producers sell their vegetables, sausages and meats. Somewhere in your city, there’s a retired person who spends their spare time making bespoke wood work furniture. Support them instead of buying your next table from Ikea.

Are the items I buy all going to be 100% Canadian. No. It’s unrealistic for most people (including myself). But my response even before all of it went to hell has been to say that wherever possible, ensure that your money is staying in YOUR community instead of being shipped off to a corporate headquarters.

That’s my thought anyway. The more local the better. Your community becomes culturally and financially more robust when we stop letting corporations take our money out of them, regardless of nationality.

I think (my own personal opinion) is that Big Trouble in Little China did something so crazy and wacky that no one actually recognised it at the time.

If you look at the film from a certain perspective, Jack Burton was the sidekick, and Wang was the main character. And they just filmed it from the perspective of the sidekick who thinks he’s the main character, which is a conceit I’ve always adored.

There are no stupid questions.

But there are in fact, some very stupid ones.

Bought my last pair from them. Still going strong.

They do feel somewhat cheaply made if you (like me) are money tight and can’t afford the higher end ones. But they haven’t fallen apart on me at all and it’s been about three years now with the same frames.

So for the 120 I paid for them, I’d say I got my money’s worth.

I don’t think that’s gonna buff out.

Josie and the Pussycats.

Rated 5.7 by people who had no clue what it was saying at the time. I feel like if it was released in today’s pop culture environment it would fare far far better.

It’s far more satirical, clever and funny than an Archie adjacent bubblegum pop movie has any right to be.

That’s what I mean. We should give the individual a fast-tracked opportunity to prove that they can meet those standards instead of blanket rejection because they came from a school that did not.

For example, if I…at 48 years old…decided to return to University for a marketing degree, I have the opportunity to audit a number of my classes based on my own life experience. I can preemptively take the applicable tests to prove that I don’t need to take the class again. It’s a fast track based on the fact that I’ve spent the last 25 years of my life working at least tangentially in marketing, so that has to count for something.

There’s no reason that they can’t do a similar thing with skilled specialists who happen to come from so-called “sub-standard” schools. Test them and audit them on an individual basis rather than just telling them “too bad”.

I don’t disagree that we shouldn’t compromise our standards, but a school based accreditation process doesn’t allow for any sort of individual appeals process. (ie. Doctor “a”, who is really talented, gets universally shafted because he comes from a school that was deemed “unfit”, even though he himself could blow any of our accreditation tests out of the water)

Let the specialists come here and fast track an accreditation instead of saying “sorry…you school sucked, welcome to Tim Hortons.”

For authentic Canadian, you simply have to crack open a two-four of Labatts while watching the kids in the hall with The Tragically Hip playing softly on the stereo in the background. (we miss you Gordie)

Because when he says “Wealthy again”, he doesn’t mean you.

Tariffs essentially mean you’re paying more for everything that you buy, which then goes into the corporations coffers, and the billionaires/robber barons get richer. THAT is what Trump means by the country being “wealthy again”. He means the billionaires. He doesn’t care if it’s his own middle class paying for it.

MFW I get arrested mid-way through applying my Dr. Zaius cosplay makeup…

Writing: Specifically fiction writing in terms of structure, POV, plotting, etc…

History: Especially early societies and how much everything really stays the same, despite the advance of technology. No matter where or when you go, humans are gonna human.

Replace “Canada” with Sudetenland, and it’s almost literally the same quote used by Hitler…

Been to Winnipeg. That Windchill is pretty much correct if you’re hanging around Portage and Main.

Russia doesn’t want anything from the the U.S. except what it’s already doing. Fucking shit up on the international stage and thereby destabilizing NATO.

Any decrease is Western Hegemony is good for Russia. It doesn’t matter whether they achieve it by tossing some people out of windows, or by helping an orange toddler ascend to the highest office in the U.S.

Everything from wife-killers, toenail-eaters, to geniuses

Stop spying on me please.

I’ll preface this by admitting that I’m far far far from an expert, but if I recall correctly, the issue is that the oil that is left in Alberta (Tar Sands) is largely dirty, bitumen layers that require so much refining that it’s not cost effective to the point where no other province really wants to bother building the rather expensive refineries necessary to do it.

It’s more cost effective to ship it to places that already have such refineries and then buy it back.

Though my understanding on it is very very limited, so please if someone can explain it differently to me, please do. I’m always open to learning.