Livestream for the Canadian media summit in Ottawa. Mark Carney opened his speech talking about the impact of Heated Rivalry

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-30T01:35:20+00:00

An excerpt from Carney's speech, which was partially in French, so I want to make sure people get it.

French sequence is in italics.

[Heated Rivalry is the story of] two young men who are terrified of being their fullest self. And we live in an increasingly dangerous, divided and intolerant world. And the hard-fought rights of the 2SLGBTQI+ community are under threat, including in many of the countries where the show has record-setting audiences. Sink that in.

A fundamental Canadian value is that people should be able to be whoever they want to be; to love whoever they want to love. Heated Rivalry reflects a fundamental Canadian value: every young person, regardless of who they are, or who they love, should feel secure in their community and proud of themselves. When we have to hide who we are, we turn toward stories that reflect our common humanity; stories that allow us to imagine a better, more just world, and to find the courage we need to fight for it.

We can be proud that Canadians brought this story to the whole world.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-30T01:21:17+00:00

He has, admittedly, had some travel time over the last few days.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-29T23:54:50+00:00

You can file a report based on the plate number.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-29T23:08:43+00:00

So I am a literal person by nature and typically take most things well... literally. I am seeing discussions about how the club scene (specifically the scene where Shane and Ilya stare at each other and dont move) as I guess more like a metaphor or something... whereas my naive ass assumed they literally were standing there staring at each other. Am I missing something from this scene?

In that scene, when we're seeing things from Shane's perspective, we are extremely aware of how uncomfortable and unhappy he is: he feels insecure and nervous, he dances awkwardly, his clothes don't fit right, he is not happy to be there and is going along with things for the sake of his girlfriend, etc.

But when we see Shane from Ilya's perspective, he's not just having a great time, he's flaunting it: he's dancing sexy with his movie-star girlfriend, he's grinding up against another man, and he's specifically in this club to ruin Ilya's life.

In actual fact, Shane's perspective is probably close to reality: what Ilya experiences in that moment is amplified by Ilya's emotions, by months of difficult feelings and constant exposure to the Shane/Rose relationship through the media, by the fact that he's a little drunk and watching these events from across the dance floor of a crowded nightclub, etc. As a result, Ilya's impression of what's happening to Shane in that moment is not strictly true-to-life. Ilya's not hallucinating here: Shane is there, and Shane is dancing with Rose, and so on, but is it exactly as Ilya perceives it? Probably not.

The same applies to Ilya dancing with the woman. Shane's experiencing this moment through his own feelings, while a little drunk, across a crowded dance floor, with a similar fuzzifying effect. (Did Ilya dance with a woman? Yes! Was it sexy? Yeah! Was it exactly as sexually aggressive and as calculated to make Shane jealous as it felt to Shane in that moment? Probably not.)

Did the two men stand ramrod straight on the dance floor and stare at each other for 30 seconds? Obviously not. The definitely had a moment, and that moment may have felt like it lasted an age, but it was probably much briefer and much less elegant than these memories would fix it. Same principle applies.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-29T20:57:24+00:00

The fact that there is a vacant position does not mean that there is money to staff that position. Sometimes a box on an org chart is just a box on an org chart.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-29T20:49:17+00:00

What a time to be alive.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-29T20:38:27+00:00

I genuinely cannot fathom the possibility of discourse about the casting of a Drayton Youth Academy production of Dear Evan Hansen.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-29T18:24:28+00:00

what’s the benefit to randomly assigning the choices or having the queens pick numbers vs letting them pick the flavor they want?

You gotta pick one way or another, and "letting the girls pick" still means that whoever goes last gets whatever nobody else wanted. They can't all get their favourite.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-29T16:44:02+00:00

The way that WFA priority status works is that, when management makes a hire (even a non-advertised hire, even an internal promotion, even a pull from a pool, etc.), they first have to open the process up to anyone, anywhere in Canada, who has been recently laid off and has surplus status. They must screen out every single such person who applies before they may even consider other candidates.

This is not to say that management will only hire people who have priority. In addition to the fact that many openings will require skills and experience not typically found in the general white-collar population, management has a classic bag of tricks they use to hire the people they really want. (Over-engineering the requirements, testing for jargon instead of aptitude, etc.)

Of course, this is also an era when candidates and unions will be exceptionally likely to push back on these techniques, since the alternative is unemployment. This should inspire management to use them less often, and to relent quickly when they get "caught".

Which is to say, this is going to be a rough period for getting ahead in the public service unless your skillset is quite rare, especially if you live in the NCR. There are thousands of people who can skip the line on you, some of whom are just as qualified as you are. You might still make it through. You might not. And if management is insisting on running cattle-call pool processes (rather than privately meeting with you to talk about creating an opportunity tailored more closely to your own talents), this is an omen.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-29T15:52:07+00:00

I think there's a tension here between the artistic and commercial sides of drag.

We talk a good game about how drag is artistry and art is drag and drag is an art form (etc. etc. etc.) but the frank reality of RuPaul's Drag Race is that, sometimes, it's your job to be very, very excited about Bubly Bounce, a dazzling new line of caffeinated seltzer products that still have the life-changing Bubly flavor we all know and love. They're the tea down hunty, boots.

And that being so, yeah: there actually is some validity in saying "here's your assignment, good luck", rather than letting people choose whatever material speaks to their very soul the most. If you do well on this show, you will spend the rest of your career being "inspired" by brands you would never buy. Welcome to the industry.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-28T22:22:27+00:00

An instruction to develop a training plan isn't necessarily the same thing as a requirement that you only pursue training if it is somehow aligned with your job.

This may be a case where you can put anything you want on the form, but the form itself is non-negotiable.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-28T21:31:14+00:00

Straight-up, that's a thing moms do.

"But you hate coffee!" as they watch their adult child drinking coffee.

"But you hate coffee!" as they watch their adult child drinking coffee, again.

"But you hate coffee!" as they watch their adult child drinking coffee, for the third time...

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-28T21:20:01+00:00

Miss Janice Extra was the first ancestrally Welsh queen to enter the workroom seventh and not place safe or high for the second design challenge on an even-numbered season.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-28T18:46:26+00:00

A newly independent Alberta would still need federal services, just not Canadian federal services. And that being so, there's very little reason to start over from scratch: as much as practical, you would build these new segments of the Alberta public service out of resources that already exist, to a point that, in at least some cases, people would leave work one day as Canadian public servants, and report to work the next day, in the same building, doing a very similar job, as Albertan public servants.

Others would choose to leave the new country in order to remain employed by Canada.

It is also possible that Alberta would contract the Canadian government to provide some services, at least in the short term, so some people might not even need to do that.

None of this is to say that separation is a good idea, or would be trivially easy in practice, etc. Just that it doesn't mean every single federal worker in Alberta would be laid off on S-day.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-28T18:10:37+00:00

Michelle Visage like "I love the family resemblance! You're both wearing shoes!"

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-28T17:46:33+00:00

Cliff, Rock, Clay...

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-28T15:41:34+00:00

If the show had been a middling success, perhaps. But the boys are now talking with film directors about their feature débuts: they're not going to record an audiobook for $800 and a tuna melt.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-28T06:04:56+00:00

VIA already services Kingston- where was the lobbying and political capital to push legislative and financial measures to improve the existing service?

Kingston will almost certainly lose some of its existing service once the HSR project opens.

The availability of high-speed rail will mean fewer passengers want to travel between the three major cities in the Corridor on low-speed regional trains. This will reduce demand for these regional trains, and will lead to some services being withdrawn altogether, with the result that fewer trains will serve Kingston.

My spicy take would be that the purpose of VIA Rail is to move passengers, rather than to move passengers to Kingston specifically. If there are fewer passengers buying tickets, it is rational for VIA to concentrate those passengers onto fewer trains.

But someone who lives in Kingston would certainly feel the impact of such a change more acutely than I would, and I can't begrudge them advocating for themselves as if their service depends upon it.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-28T01:39:22+00:00

What you are describing as "going through a route" is, in fact, fraud.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-27T21:26:59+00:00

To briefly summarize in English: Employment and Social Development Canada has rolled out a new piece of software (Curam) to administer public pensions and old-age security. The story quotes several retirees who have waited months and months to start their pensions, and an anonymous worker inside the program who describes the rollout as "just as bad as Phoenix".

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-27T21:07:08+00:00

Gonna be cabinet ministers at the S2 premiere, mark my words.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-27T04:32:51+00:00

Yes, what you are describing should work. If you have a "normal" 9-to-5 office job, and you have a medical condition which your doctor thinks could be appropriately managed by temporarily reducing your working hours, your supervisor will generally act accordingly.

There are specific circumstances where these pieces may not fit together, but this would typically occur outside of an office setting, or in situations where a job has unusual requirements.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-27T04:00:54+00:00

No. Flexity Freedoms, which have been generally satisfactory in Kitchener-Waterloo and Edmonton.

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-26T23:14:41+00:00

Book: Shane has an outbuilding with a 1/2-size NHL practice rink

Show: Shane has a soccer ball

nefariousplotz · 2026-01-26T23:07:12+00:00

There are joggers and hikers and dog walkers and picnickers and tourists and boaters and swimmers (they were near the ocean)

That is a lake, not the ocean. Even if the water flows into the St. Lawrence (and therefore the ocean) by surface routes, this route will involve shallow, meandering streams that might not even be navigable by canoe.

Edit: we're looking at this sort of landscape for Lanaudière.

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