The Winter Up There Must Give People Brain Freeze

[Mongrel]

Okay this is FUCKIN' COOL, EH.

[Mongrel]

Canada's longest (in fact one of the world's longest unbroken streets), and probably most iconic street - Yonge Street - which also serves at the dividing axis between east and west Toronto, is named after possibly the most mediocre white man in British colonial history. That's damned impressive given British colonial history is pretty much a 500-year saga about the bulletproof arrogance of mediocre white men.

Being curious about street names, I knew who he was, but I never, y'know, knew who he was.

[Brantly B.]

What it says about our global watermark that somebody who was both a slave trader and a tax thief is considered "mediocre".

[Mongrel]

What it says about our global watermark that somebody who was both a slave trader and a tax thief is considered "mediocre".

Well, bribed by slave traders. Dude doesn't sound like he was all that much into, y'know, actual work.

More serious reply: "mediocre white man" is basically used as a stand-in to talk about the fact the heaviest application of both the Peter Principle and the insulating walls of inherited privilege is, and has been, most pronounced among white folks. You'd be correct that most of the actual examples people bring up are objectively incompetent, rather than merely mediocre in a conventional sense. But I suspect you know this?

EDIT: I wonder if the expression started as a riff off the Fury Road meme.

[Büge]

Just a reminder that Canada isn't the bastion of free healthcare that so many sources would have you believe.

[Mongrel]

Fuck our neighbours (This is like, three major streets away from us*). Fucking whitebread mayonnaise motherfucking twerps.



"This parking lot is the hub of the community" pffffahahaha, holy shit.

EDIT: THERE'S THREE OTHER PARKING LOTS WITHIN THE SAME SQUARE KILOMETRE.

*(... man what do you even call that "unit" of city grid size? A neighbourhood? A "Big" city block?)

[Friday]

Oh man. I know Mongrel already pointed it out, but holy shit "this parking lot is a hub, it's the heart of a community" is just the most fucking insane thing I think I have ever heard.

[Mongrel]

Almost forgot to mention this bit of comedy: The federal Conservative party just had a vote to decide if they would finally officially recognize that climate change was real. Guess which way that vote went?

Hint: :V

[Grath]

Almost forgot to mention this bit of comedy: The federal Conservative party just had a vote to decide if they would finally officially recognize that climate change was real. Guess which way that vote went?

Hint: :V

In a Discord server I'm in where that was posted: "I was going to say (54% voting against recognizing climate change) still seems low but then I realized it was Canada"

[Mongrel]

[Thad]

[Büge]

Here's a piece of good news: Superior Court Justice Phillip Sutherland ruled Wednesday that a set of criminal offences introduced by the federal Conservatives in 2014, related to advertising, procurement and material benefit from sex work, are immediately of no force and effect.

[Thad]

Cable-chewing beavers take out town’s Internet in “uniquely Canadian” outage

[Mongrel]

In less-amusing news, a strange, rapidly degenerative brain disease of (so far) completely unknown origin is attacking people in North-East New Brunswick

Uh, yikes?

[hngkong]

In less-amusing news, a strange, rapidly degenerative brain disease of (so far) completely unknown origin is attacking people in North-East New Brunswick

Uh, yikes?

I have family not far from there, so not exactly something I'm excited to read about.

[mharr]

Shit. The Irving group helped test Agent Orange, Purple and White in that area back in the sixties, which is about the right incubation period for a CJD-like. If it's fallout from anything like that the families are in for a multi-generational fight.

[Büge]

This is pretty big: Greyhound Canada is shutting down all bus service permanently. Like, tonight.

[Mongrel]

Yep. It's objectively bad because intercity bus service is still an important low-cost travel option. I'm pretty sure this isn't a last-minute bluff either. They're legit gone. Covid killed 95% of their traffic - there's no subsidizing your way out of that even once pandemic measures are lifted.

But on a personal level it's really sad to see. My granddad spent his whole career with them, so even though it's a corporation, that's another reminder of him that's going to go.

I wouldn't have that positive association if they were a terrible company either - they did one thing and they did it well and without any fuss. I never once had a problem with a Greyhound trip. In fact the only time I even remember something going awry was the one time they stopped in a blizzard on the way to Baltimore, but that was actually the sensible and safe thing thing to do... so I wouldn't call that a problem.

I never felt like a Greyhound ride was subsidizing something evil or irresponsible the way I felt when I say, bought something on Amazon or ordered with Doordash. A low bar, sure, but sadly too uncommon for companies to meet even that these days.

[Friday]

lol the green party is worse than the rest what the fuck

[Mongrel]

"Climate Change has not been proven" is the funniest one to me because its like, what... so you're saying you believe climate never changes in any significant way?