The post I was responding too was about steaming services, so I responded in-kind. Torrents have obviously always been an option, even in the heyday of streaming.

I avoided American products during the first Trump term, and started buying them again after Biden was elected.

This time, though, I am not going back, even if American voters somehow manage to put adults back in charge in the next 2-4 years. Trump has destroyed the USA’s relationship with Canada, and that can’t be repaired if there’s even a shred of a chance this could happen again.

May I introduce you to CBC Gem?

From what I understand, Republicans, especially in Florida, put out political ads targeted specifically at Cuban immigrants. They play off the inherent hatred of communism in this demographic to convince them to vote against the “radical Marxist Democrats.”

It seems outrageous, but either they really believe their own nonsense, or it’s one of the longest and most convincing trolling campaigns ever waged.

My vote is that it’s 100% sincere. One of Andrew Schlafly’s other misadventures involved harassing the head of a microbiology research team because they had shown evolution in bacteria in a laboratory. Sending formal emails to this one specific scientist seems well outside what someone who was just in it for the laughs would do.

Yah, chronicling the shenanigans at Conservapedia is one of RW’s strong points.

In an academic sense, no, revising the Bible is not heresy (though some branches of Christianity will call you a heretic for it anyhow). Every time one sect or another of Christianity wants to put out a new translation, they will also consider some revisions based on things like newly discovered manuscripts or breakthroughs in ancient linguistics.

That was not what Mr. Schlafly was doing, though. He was taking an already existing English translation of the Bible and rewording it to suit his politics. As such, yes, it would definitely be considered heresy by some people. In fact, his harshest critics were other conservative Christians, especially those with actual academic credentials in the field of Biblical Studies.

Conservapedia is absolutely wacky.

The curator, one Andrew Schlafly, once tried to write a new, improved, “more conservative” version of the Bible. But, Mr. Schlafly is neither a historian nor a linguistic scholar, and he couldn’t consult the source texts. So, his way of “correcting the liberal bias” found in modern translations of the Bible was just to change the words in a modern English translation (probably the 1611 KJV) to better fit his politics.

One of the changes I remember reading about was altering the words in The Beatitudes to be things like, “Blessed are the managers, for they provide for their employees,” and such. He also deleted parts he didn’t agree with, like removing one of Jesus’ utterances from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” According to Schlafly, Jesus’ executioners knew exactly what they were doing and thus shouldn’t have been forgiven.

I think so too. The doctors didn’t even mention the possibility when my son was born, and if we had wanted it we would have had to specifically ask.

I don’t want to get hopeful yet. I still think it’ll be an uphill battle to keep Poilievre out of the PM’s office. I’d want to see some consistent polling shifts across multiple sources before having any real hope.

That said, even if this as a vast overestimation of the Liberals’ reversing fortunes, it could still be enough to eke out a small victory. Given how dire the polling was before Christmas, just holding the Conservatives to the slimmest of majorities could be considered a win of sorts

It was very common in Canada too. My parents decided to break the cycle with me, but I was the only uncircumcised guy in the locker room growing up in the 90s.

I met my partner through a dating site. In the two years prior to that, I had used the site to meet over two dozen other women, which led to no long-term relationships but did result in a few short flings.

I can say that what helped me was expectation management. This was actually my second time using a dating site, and the first time around I was super picky, looking for “green flags.” Correspondingly, I messaged very few women, and met even fewer (four in two years). The second time, I realized that someone having a sparse profile didn’t mean they were a boring or lazy person. Sometimes it does, but other times it just means they aren’t very good at writing about themselves.

I’ll also say there’s only so much the metrics of dating sites can tell you about someone and your compatibility with them. There’s a level of response bias to the questionnaires on these sites, i.e. people answer the questions based on what they think a potential partner might like, not their genuine beliefs and preferences. You’ll never discover your actual compatibility with someone unless you talk to them, so I took the approach of, “unless there are explicit deal breakers in your profile, I’ll ask you on a date and we’ll see how things go.”

There’s also the expectation management for the frequency of matches, responses to messages, dates, and beyond. Dating apps aren’t magic machines that will get you hooked up in hours. They take work, and you’ll see a lot of rejection (most of it just utter silence). There can be long dry spells. Sometimes you’ll need to take a break because you’ve literally messaged everyone on the site and you need to wait for more members. And sometimes, they just won’t work for some people. That sounds harsh, but it’s true. Success for many of these sites and apps is highly dependent on one’s physical attractiveness, and some people simply did not win the genetic lottery.

Honestly, I always liked getting up early on weekends (at least before I had kids). Those hours been 7 and 10 were mine in a way that my other free time wasn’t. Because everyone else wanted to sleep in, I had no social obligations and thus could do whatever I wanted. There was a certain joy to having all my weekend chores done early. Or, if I didn’t want to do chores, I could just relax and not worry about trying to align with anyone else’s schedule.

I watched some of that original CGDQ stream live, and it’s amazing how far they’ve come.

I’ve seen the sort. When confronted with the real-world results of their moralizing, they retreat to quoting cherry-picked Bible verses and posting pictures of fetuses (“look how human she looks!”).

It’s stereotypical, but I want to continue getting fit.

After decades is putting it off, I finally felt inspired to start exercising regularly back in September. I’m going to try to keep that up, and I know it’s going to be hard because we’ll be welcoming a child into the world early in the new year.

I guess another resolution would be, “try not to lose my sanity dealing with a newborn and toddler at the same time.”

The glib answer is that Torontonians think their city is the centre of the world, and people from other cities find that attitude insufferable.

The serious answer is that the current premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, personally hates the Toronto city council for some stuff that happened when he was a councillor and his late brother Rob was mayor. Doug Ford has used his powers as premier to wage a vendetta against Toronto, and it’s all apparently legal because of the way the laws governing the relationship between the province and its cities work.

It’s not manufactured goods, but Canada imports a lot of produce from the US.

During the last Trump administration, I avoided buying American-grown fruit and vegetables whenever I could.

I fully appreciate that, and it’s the same in Canada for many people. I’ve witnessed it personally. I’m very fortunate to be in a position to handle that sort of thing.

The hospital just wrote it off instead, so the cost was passed to the Canadian taxpayer. Lucky for me, but frustrating all the same. I would have rather the insurance pay like the were supposed to.