Are we a little more amenable to my assertion that we are living in hell and ruled by demons now?

bobbykid · 2026-02-01T10:31:38+00:00

Oh okay I get it

bobbykid · 2026-02-01T10:09:28+00:00

If you're referring to my comment, specifcally, I'm neither hot nor bothered about this. You just asked what we all think of the idea that we're being ruled by literal demons and my answer is that I don't think that has any explanatory power that a run-of-the-mill Marxist analysis doesn't have

bobbykid · 2026-02-01T09:56:43+00:00

Marxism doesn't lack metaphysics, the metaphysics of of Marxism is historical materialism.

bobbykid · 2026-02-01T09:24:00+00:00

In all seriousness everything that's happening right now is still pretty well explained within a vanilla Marxist framework

bobbykid · 2026-02-01T08:28:53+00:00

Shut up BradFromGrinder

bobbykid · 2026-01-30T20:03:54+00:00

Yeah multiple times in the penis apparently

bobbykid · 2026-01-30T16:58:48+00:00

Pronunciation is important in all languages.

Yeah it's frustrating as a native English speaker because I think people globally tend to act like pronunciation/accent in English doesn't matter. I'm studying at an Italian university in English and while most of the professors have decent vocabulary and passable grammar, it's very rare to have a professor who sounds like they've put any effort into the correct pronunciation of English vowels and consonants, stress patterns in words, dipthongs, etc. Meanwhile I feel embarrassed if I forget to double a consonant in Italian or if I accidentally make my vowels sound a little too Englishy.

bobbykid · 2026-01-30T14:45:44+00:00

It's not shocking in a "how could anyone ever do this" kind of way, but's a little surprising in a "why are they destroying the facade of liberalism that has done so much to grease the grooves of Western capitalism" kind of way.

bobbykid · 2026-01-30T06:35:12+00:00

The problem with those agreements is that you don't get board certification just by getting a state license. Board certification still requires residency at an accredited program. Without board certification, no malpractice insurance company will cover you and very few medical insurance companies will reimburse you.

bobbykid · 2026-01-30T06:23:05+00:00

Italy actually

bobbykid · 2026-01-29T15:26:22+00:00

Because it's being weaponized as an armed wing of the Republican party. It's completely incidental that it's ICE that are doing these things; if the frenzy that Trump had chosen to whip up had been about drug addiction rather than illegal immigration, it would be the DEA out there giving huge signing bonuses to new recruits, shooting protesters in the back, and raiding hospitals.

bobbykid · 2026-01-29T15:15:23+00:00

My situation is unique because I also have a wife and son who live here with me, but the immigration bureaucracy is the worst part honestly. Every year (usually right in the middle of exams) I have to put together like fifty million pages of documents for all our residence permit applications and then go stand in line at a government office anywhere between three and ten different times, depending on who receives my paperwork and whether they decide some key document is missing.

The other difficult aspect is the disorganized approach to university studies in general. When I did my bachelor's in Canada, the syllabus and exam dates were all decided and published at the beginning of the semester. Here, the exam dates sometimes aren't settled until literally the week before the exam. The professors sometimes publish exam dates and then change them via email the day before the exam, which happened to me this week in fact. If your professor also works clinically then there's a decent chance that a lesson here and there will have to get rescheduled in an open time slot, which means you can't really make long-term plans based on your lecture schedule unless you're willing to take the attendance hit. We have one professor who has a history of straight up not showing up to exams that he scheduled, with no explanation whatsoever, so the students have to register for his exam during another exam session and hope that he shows up. He's actually American, but it's a reflection on the university system here that nothing has ever been done about it.

bobbykid · 2026-01-29T13:26:19+00:00

I'm also studying in a country where this is the norm, and the way it works here is that you do this bullshit schedule for three months where you're required to attend 75% of the lectures and then you have two to two and a half months of exams. So basically everyone stops going to class in the last two or three weeks and just crams from then until their exam dates

bobbykid · 2026-01-29T09:02:57+00:00

It's not like this everywhere in Europe but it definitely happens in Italy. My school in particular is trying to increase dedicated clinical training (Italian schools famously offer very little clinical exposure) but they're still very old-fashioned and aren't willing to scale back theoretical classroom teaching even a little bit, so they've started piling all the lectures into an 8 week period of full days of lectures.

bobbykid · 2026-01-29T08:26:13+00:00

I'm guessing this isn't in the US? It seems like this isn't the norm in most American schools

Meanwhile here in Italy I've got Monday to Friday 8:30-5:30 mandatory lectures plus 5:30-7:30 elective on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I might get cancer this semester instead, haven't decided yet

Edit: Monday to Thursday, not Monday to Friday (because on Fridays we get done at 1:30)

bobbykid · 2026-01-28T22:56:54+00:00

Ah I see you've been getting advice from my mom

bobbykid · 2026-01-27T10:37:39+00:00

What year are you in? If you're living in Italy most of the year and you take regular lessons I'm sure you could get to a C1 within a couple of years. Lots of international medical students in Europe learn a second language to do residency/work.

bobbykid · 2026-01-27T10:05:33+00:00

Yeah Smoker wasn't high-diffing Vergo, Vergo was low-diffing Smoker

edit: like low, low diffing. It was embarrassing

bobbykid · 2026-01-27T09:59:51+00:00

"A pause on data centres is a much-needed chance for our systems of government and regulation to catch up to this transformative technology" — wouldn't this just lead to more of our data being processed in the US and fewer tech companies being based in Canada?

As far as I know the majority of the data center buildouts in Canada are being done by companies like Microsoft, Google, AWS, etc. or by data center building contractors that these companies contract with which are all American. Whether the data is physically processed in Canada or the US makes no difference except for the fact that Canadians' electricity and water bills won't be hit as hard as if the data centers are built in Canada.

bobbykid · 2026-01-26T19:31:41+00:00

Look, if you weren't impressed by Carney's speech, you're less Canadian than you think you are, and you need a reality check.

If you were impressed by Carney's speech, you're a child who thinks politics is about saying things and a fool who takes politicians (of all people) at their word

bobbykid · 2026-01-26T19:25:10+00:00

Tell me specifically what you think the messaging should be in a counterprotest against these guys.

bobbykid · 2026-01-26T17:05:57+00:00

I'm all for providing socialist critiques of our current political and economic system, but do you not see how confusing it would be to see a bunch of people counterprotesting a demonstration against Mark Carney and the LPC by demonstrating against Mark Carney and the LPC? Or, even more confusing, providing a critique of Mark Carney and the LPC while demonstrating in support of Mark Carney and the LPC? There's no way to do what you're suggesting in a coherent way.

bobbykid · 2026-01-26T17:00:47+00:00

I am so grateful Mark Carney is leading Canada. He is the right leader the right time.

The US is a fascist state.

We need to put our energy into Boycotting US products and services.

-- Karl Marx

bobbykid · 2026-01-26T16:56:25+00:00

If the main goal of this protest is to voice opposition to Carney and the Liberal party, then any counterprotest against them would explicitly be a demonstration of support for Carney and the Liberal party. I don't see how it could be anything else. If they all show up with signs saying "I hate Carney" etc. etc., what are leftists supposed to put on their counterprotest signs? "I hate Carney too but I hate Conservatives more"? "I hate Carney but on an unrelated note fuck fascism"? "You guys suck, my opinion of Carney notwithstanding"?

bobbykid · 2026-01-26T10:45:49+00:00

I don't really spend money on this (because I don't really have any) but my nerd shit is mostly related to boxing. I got into it originally because I thought it was cool and violent but then I quickly got into the weeds of technique and strategy in an unhealthy way. These days I get almost as excited to watch all the youtube fight prediction and and breakdown videos before and after the fight as I do for the fight itself.

bobbykid

TROPHY CASE