finnydotca.bsky.social
Canadian. Former journalist, former writer and editor, former civil servant, former cat nurse.
664 posts
249 followers
1,752 following
Active Commenter
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God, and we thought the Harper Tories were bad. And they were!
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Smart ≠ effective, especially in politics. The energetic obtuse are often much more effective. It was said of the extremely intelligent British PM Arthur Balfour that he wasn’t really a very good PM because “he knew there’d been an ice age, and he knew there’d be an ice age again”.
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I know we shouldn’t judge on appearances, but I was a civil servant for a long time and there are, um, types that transcend borders. Hoo boy, do I know this guy.
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And like I say, I want to hear the quislings. I don’t think anyone will have the nerve to speak, but there is an election coming, and Poilievre is running away from his Trumpie past. Let’s hear his MAGA hat followers on the radio.
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Well, I agree with all your substantive points, but we’re actually talking about a radio call in show. I don’t think Ian Hanomansing is going to deliver Canada to the US. Saying we can’t talk about Trump’s threats on the radio is like saying Ukrainians shouldn’t discuss Putin.
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No, I’d trust Ian. I mean, what are you going to say? The quislings can’t have their chance? No, let them speak. Let’s see if anyone from the Tory territories has he guts to speak up for Fascism. We know who they are, let’s see if they speak.
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He must be one of those Nate Silver high IQ high agency guys.
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Like, the plot of The Producers would go just whoosh over their heads.
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I know it’s a bit inside baseball as it were, but there is a fairly vast gulf between Anglo Catholics and Anglican Catholics.
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Yeah yeah yeah, guy looking constipated in a cute little cape and a funny hat. Big whoop, republicans. Let’s see some REAL monarchy. Let’s see Trump issuing death warrants. Let’s see Trump cut someone’s throat in front of the press corps, like Gus Fring killing Victor in Breaking Bad.
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Trump: PUNY MORTALS, FEED YOUR CHILDREN TO THE RAGING FURNACE TO FEED MY INSATIABLE HUNGER
NYT: The President offers innovative ideas on heating, food security
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You can say they haven’t won the war, only this battle. But some battles can’t be recovered from. Once the allies had gained a foothold in Normandy, the war was essentially over. I’m not sure trust can be recovered.
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A problem for Canada has always been when America’s ill advised military adventures strained our extremely close alliance. So maybe just as well Trump appears to be preemptively ending the alliance. We won’t need to explain why we’d rather not invade Europe.
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And yet, when Canadian partisans start killing American soldiers in the snowstorms, this guy will be mad about it. Not really fair.
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Asked and answered, I’d say.
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Second the little Brother laser printer. I’ve had two over a couple of decades. They’re solid little workhorses. The first one eventually gave out, so I got another and it’s still plugging away.
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Lois McMaster Bujold’s World of the Five Gods series is excellent. Curse of Chalion is the first book.
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I honestly don’t know if there are reasonable grounds to hope for the survival of western liberal democracy. If there are, they are alarmingly slim. But the fascists are not, right now, as strong as they pretend, and there just might be US elections in 2026, because Trump wants to run again in 2028.
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I was going to say the Temeraire series but then I saw it was nominated for a Hugo and won the Locus. So I ‘m not sure it qualifies as pulpy enough.
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If the US is anything like Canada, you didn’t just need to know COBOL, you needed to be fairly expert, because the code for the older systems was complicated. Old, patched, rewritten and repatched. I imagine a lot has been cleaned up since my time, but still.
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True. But the bad thing is that in later life you get so used to it being nothing that you start to just assume it’s nothing. “Oh, I always think I’m dying. It’ll be nothing again.” One day, the hammer will fall.
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Sounds like it’s written by this guy:
youtu.be/aQiEf_GRAak?...
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Exactly. “Pick your battles” is often good advice, but not when you’re actually in the middle of a battle.
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Oh lord, I missed ‘seaside enclave’ when I scanned it the first time. Like a little villa near the beach in Antibes.
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Is there an internet term for that? There should be.
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Ya know, if what you want is to procreate heavily among fish-belly white people while wearing a bonnet, southern Manitoba is where you oughta be.
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Well, he’s right, got to give him that. He should call his senator.
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I worked with many highly intelligent coders. I once attended a seminar where we were put into a chaos exercise, that is, an exercise that was impossible to resolve given the instructions. The highly intelligent coders, they did not do so good with the situation. You can imagine it with AI added.
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Thatcher and the other neolibs ended conservatism with “No such thing as society”. The essence of genuine conservatism is “Hey, be careful! We got a society here!”.
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I doubt the average American has any idea of the anger and loathing these actions have created. If it’s not resolved by summer, coming up here fishing would be an extremely bad idea.
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Well, I think toiletries are a possible option for some real, meaningful cooperation. I know when I’m exhausted after a long travel day, the complimentary toiletries in the hotel can be a small but welcome lift. A small shampoo or hand lotion in the camp will say, “welcome to your indefinite stay!”
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I’d feel better if I believed the Democrats were urgently building spitfires behind the scenes, though.
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HE IS TOO!
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DAMN! I had my money on Freedom Enclosure since the Dubya era.
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Ah, Anglican Catholic. Not to be confused with Anglo-Catholic. Thirty years ago they were a decent bunch trying to hold on to a vision of orthodoxy that was well meaning but, I think, mistaken. They’re kicking Nazis out though, so good on ‘em.
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She talks to the media like a head cheerleader with an attitude problem giving her squad hell for the way they performed at last Friday’s game. It’ll be interesting to see if they ever summon the courage to rebel.
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But I guess I’m naive. If your goal is to destroy the effectiveness of government services, then it’s not unintended.
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Sure. Not to disparage the intelligence and expertise of the loyalists, but twenty thousand Trumpies might have, let’s say, a steep learning curve. Remember sending the Bush loyalists into Iraq? That went well.
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Speaking as a former civil service manager, this might have unintended consequences. Like, every worker over 55 clearing out. Federal workers LOOOOOVVVE those sweet sweet buyout packages.
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Say what you like about the Trump administration, you gotta admit he picked a press secretary with a voice like smooth water tinkling over a mountain stream. Puts one in mind of faerie music.
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And you won’t have running water. I’m not as sorry about that as one might hope.
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OMG they’re so lucky. I’m Canadian so running water is mostly just a fantasy unless you live under a waterfall, and then only in the summer.
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Actually he wrote the 39 Articles, which accounts for the zany humour in so many of them.
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I love them! I have a friend who was a fisher on Lake Winnipeg all his life who had one. Tough job and a hard life, but it made him moderately wealthy by late middle age. And man, could he fillet a pickerel (walleye).
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Not in Canada. Here, elk are wapiti. They are, however, great big deer, just not as big as moose.
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I figure 18 months to the lèse-majesté legislation. They’ll want it to be illegal to criticize Trump before the midterms.
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Sure, but if we gotta suffer through the rise of a global fascist movement, couldn’t they spare us the incestuous sodomy fantasies? It’s worse than the Dubya years when they celebrated the Iraq war with faux 18th century barroom bloviating.
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There is an “entire literature” that says the earth is hollow. There is an “entire literature” that says the earth is flat and that it is covered by a dome. Not all entire literatures are entirely sane.