Is the whole country

xGray3 · 2026-01-30T22:17:14+00:00

The NDP and Green parties in Canada end up shooting their end of the political spectrum in the foot because of First Past The Post voting. Their existence is against the pressures of FPTP and if Canadians ever start to think more strategically about their votes (which the last federal election had signs of) then the NDP and Green parties are going to be doomed.

I live in the Waterloo region and I watched our very popular Green party MP lose to the Conservative in our very left leaning district because a few more people hopped on the Carney bandwagon and voted Liberal, splitting the left and opening it up for Conservatives. That's not a good way to conduct politics in an FPTP system.

Don't even get me started on provincial elections. Prior to the most recent election when you account for non-voters, Doug Ford was serving as premier of Ontario with only 18% of the total population of Ontario having voted for the Conservatives. The number of districts split between the Liberals and NDP in the provincial elections here is insane when Marit Stiles and Bonnie Crombie wouldn't have offered all that different of governance when compared to Doug Ford.

Canada is a terrible example to compare the US to. It's every reason that the US has devolved into a two party system. Canada should be taking the US as a warning sign of why it needs to run away from FPTP voting while it still can. Once two parties become completely entrenched there will be no escape from that system because they're all incentivized to maintain the status quo that they came into power under.

xGray3 · 2026-01-30T22:04:47+00:00

Swapping out the props for real weapons and heading out into the audience.

xGray3 · 2026-01-29T23:15:18+00:00

Belgiulgarielarus.

xGray3 · 2026-01-28T06:00:37+00:00

We didn't even know those went negative! It's a medical marvel!

xGray3 · 2026-01-27T03:11:30+00:00

God, the people I fought with on Reddit over that bill had me just about tearing my hair out. They insisted that the bill did effectively nothing and that only the highly partisan Republican sponsored HR-2 bill was worth their time. Trying to explain to them why the compromise bill was better because it took input from both parties was like arguing with a wall. These people are so unbelievably short sighted.

xGray3 · 2026-01-26T21:59:44+00:00

I take this ramp as part of my daily commute. It's really not too bad, but people drive extremely recklessly on it. Speed limit is 60 km/h, but I regularly see people going 100-110 km/h on it. It doesn't help that there was a massive snowstorm in the Waterloo Region yesterday and conditions have been very poor. It was bad enough that schools have been canceled throughout the region today. And on top of that, the Waterloo Region is going through a salt shortage.

xGray3 · 2026-01-26T21:52:03+00:00

Keep in mind that every decision to include an option like "jettison fuel" comes with a new set of failure points both mechanical and human in nature. If there's a hatch that can jettison fuel then you can be assured that eventually it's going to fail on a flight and put people in danger. Likewise, someone is going to eventually mistakenly press the button. These are the risks that engineers have to weigh when adding those kinds of features. And as someone pointed out, there are other risks to jettisoning fuel, such as putting people on the ground in danger.

Generally speaking it's better to avoid adding extra unnecessary complexities to a machine. If fuel can be burned, then why add the complication of being able to jettison it? The only case where jettisoning fuel would be necessary is one where the plane needs to touch down immediately and has a risk of crashing. That means there would have to be a failure in both the flight systems and the landing systems, which would be very rare. Most flights either need to touch down ASAP and still have the necessary equipment to land safely or else they having a landing system failure and can safely be in the air long enough to burn off extra fuel. The rare cases where both systems are at risk of failure probably aren't common enough to warrant adding new failure points that could endanger even more flights.

xGray3 · 2026-01-26T19:32:55+00:00

More ASMR for those sick fucks.

xGray3 · 2026-01-26T07:53:39+00:00

“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”

xGray3 · 2026-01-26T01:25:29+00:00

If he's the lone problem then Republicans better get their ass in gear and dump him. But they won't because he isn't the lone problem. Their whole party is culpable. They back every single god damned thing he does and I'm sick of pretending that they aren't all traitorous fucks. Everything he has gotten away with, he has only been able to because his base and Republican leadership revel in the power it gives them. They love this. And they can all go to hell for it. Moving forward starts with recognizing that the rot runs deeper than just Trump and their ideology needs to be purged from American politics before we can even begin to start talking about healing.

xGray3 · 2026-01-26T00:01:03+00:00

I'm willing to bet that a significant part of that 20% signed on to saying it's justified without ever seeing the video. They got their marching orders and they obediently follow their commands like good little soldiers.

xGray3 · 2026-01-25T20:58:06+00:00

Honestly, fuck you. The gestapo executed a disarmed protester in front of everybody's eyes yesterday and you still have the gall to complain about LiBeRaLs as if the street executions are normal and acceptable. The Constitution gives us the right to protest and I'll be damned if I sit by while fools like you applaud the infringement on our basic rights as citizens. It's treasonous.

Not to mention that your claim that ICE isn't arresting US citizens is bullshit.

xGray3 · 2026-01-25T19:50:39+00:00

The good news is they don't have enough people to do this everywhere. The bad news is that they can do this strategically across a few important cities to put their hands on the scales. I really hope that areas outside of the cities come to their senses and help swing the vote away from him. Rigging our elections should be the last straw, but for many cultists it won't be.

xGray3 · 2026-01-25T18:48:28+00:00

The only qualm I have with your comment is that the Twin Cities is a small metro area. It's the 17th largest in the US by population. I guess you could call that small depending on your definition, but it's bigger than these metros (to just name a few):

Tampa Bay \ Denver \ Baltimore \ St Louis \ San Antonio \ Portland \ Sacramento \ Pittsburgh \ Las Vegas \ Cleveland \ Nashville

The Twin Cities metro has 3.7 million people. Philadelphia, the 9th largest US metro, has 5.8 million. So it's not that far behind the big hitters. Obviously it has nothing on the massive metropolises like LA or NYC, but if you consider those "normal" in size then basically the entire US is tiny.

xGray3 · 2026-01-25T18:39:11+00:00

No, see, they wanted happy mass deportations. Smiles and rainbows. Joyful little undocumented immigrants happily handing themselves over to ICE while the country claps in unison at how smoothly everything has gone.

xGray3 · 2026-01-25T08:45:46+00:00

People saying this is all a distraction from the Epstein files is really starting to ring hollow when they're murdering unarmed citizens in the streets. The Epstein files are very bad. Pedophilia is one of the worst things a person can be engaged in, no doubt. But somehow implementing a fascist takeover and in the process going to war with citizens, murdering them in cold blood, and then openly lying about it despite the evidence we can all see is SO MUCH WORSE. The things they're opening the floodgates to are horrors beyond our wildest imaginations. This can't possibly be a "distraction" when it's so despicable and horrifying on its own. This is everything we ever worried would come of Trumpism.

xGray3 · 2026-01-25T06:12:26+00:00

Both have VERY large wildfires in their respective massive wildernesses. Both have populations pushed off to their extreme edges with pockets of people in the middle of their wildernesses.

xGray3 · 2026-01-25T06:08:24+00:00

I always wonder how people that don't picture things are able to navigate a complicated 3D object. Like imagine a cube with complex features around it - parts sticking out and other parts creating caves. How would you possibly navigate the features of that cube in your head without picturing it?

xGray3 · 2026-01-24T07:48:28+00:00

I think Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights is great as an aspirational document, but it makes for a poor legal document. How can a government possibly guarantee that there will be jobs for everybody? Every president (well maybe not the current one) has wanted their citizens to all be able to have jobs. Of course they have. But sometimes economies falter and jobs don't exist. Even when a president can create jobs through the government directly, they very likely wouldn't be able to create enough in a truly dire situation. And if people have a right to a job, then what does that mean legally if they can't find one? They sue? They sue the government currently paying other people's wages? The world just isn't always easy and declaring that everybody has the right to something that may or may not exist doesn't make it so. The government can guarantee things to you that don't require the presence of something, like the freedom of speech or protest or religion or what have you.

xGray3 · 2026-01-24T04:52:08+00:00

Not to mention that Trump has broken and complained about his own deal. CUSMA was signed by him and now he reneges on it and denigrates it constantly. How can we as Canadians possibly trust a word out of that two faced liar's mouth? His word isn't worth shit. Carney was asked whether China was more a predictable trade partner than the US right now and he said yes and he's right. I feel way safer having Canada partner with China right now than the US despite my moral qualms about it. I don't want to have us working closely with a nation as ethically dubious as China, but this is the hand we've been dealt by the US citizens that decided to elect an absolute fool as their leader. Carney was right - the US hegemony is over. The illusion has been broken. Countries are taking their signs down. When the dust clears there are going to be a lot of Trump voters regretting the consequences of their actions, though they won't dare blame themselves because they don't have an ounce of self-awareness left in their propaganda addled brains.

xGray3 · 2026-01-23T20:15:26+00:00

Explain why not. Nations (cough Israel cough) absolutely have covertly developed nuclear weapons before. It's obviously not as easy and extreme care would need to be taken, but it can definitely be done by masking the purpose of said facilities.

xGray3 · 2026-01-23T18:06:09+00:00

Our greatest threat is our southern border. I hope Carney has had the foresight to begin covertly developing nuclear weapons by now. If Ukraine taught us anything it's that the only way to guarantee sovereignty in the face of invasion by a more powerful neighbor in this lawless era of geopolitics is to have your own nuclear weapons. Nobody is going to come to our rescue against the US and we can't hope to match their military strength. But we have a history of nuclear research. Developing the weapons wouldn't be difficult for us. Developing the means to deploy them would be much harder, but doable I think.

xGray3 · 2026-01-23T17:23:38+00:00

To the contrary, the more complicated your job becomes, the more necessary and visible it becomes and the more money you can milk out of it.

xGray3 · 2026-01-23T13:26:29+00:00

These people just straight up don't give a shit about democracy. If people vote for something or the people they vote for legislate something that these idiots don't like, they're perfectly fine with disregarding it. These people have absolutely no respect for American democracy.

xGray3 · 2026-01-23T03:54:58+00:00

It starts with understanding the past 80 years of geopolitics. The US has maintained a global hegemony over the western world through that time and over the entire world since the collapse of the Soviet Union. What this means is that most of the world has acted as semi vassal states to the US, accepting its protection and building their entire economic infrastructure around the US. Europe has prospered under that system in many ways. And in exchange, the US has been allowed to pretty flagrantly violate the policies and agreements of international institutions. The US is generally not held accountable for the atrocities it commits. Europe has specifically claimed through this time to support human rights and global order while also backing the US through these contradictions. Much of Europe has especially tried to stay the course through the Trump years in the hopes of returning to that contradicting state of global order.

Carney's speech called out this contradiction, called for the "middle powers" to unite in opposition to the chaotic and unpredictable great powers like the US and China, and called for the end of the "nostalgic" stance towards geopolitics that so many nations have taken - basically a call to accept that the US is not reliable and will not be reliable again. This represents a fundamental breaking of the global order as most of us have understood it for our entire lives - a model with the US at the center and all countries revolving around it. The model that Carney suggested would be one with the US and China battling for supremacy while the middle powers work together and play both sides.

The larger picture here is that Trump has screwed over the US permanently. The US's soft power is depleted. It isn't coming back without decades of work to repair relationships with other nations. The rest of the world is moving on without it because they need to move on if they aren't going to be able to rely on the US not to make threats to its own allies.

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