Consider the cost of inaction. A decade of lost economic growth, fewer jobs, and diminished competitiveness – all because we lacked the leverage to counter these blatantly unfair tariffs. Can we afford that?

Either those tariffs come down quick because we fight back, we massively expand our trading relationships with countries we don't get along with (China, Russia, India) Erdogan-style, or we experience what could amount to a Great Depression once Trump escalates further again knowing we're an easy target.

A lot of these comments are downright unreasonable.

It's important to evaluate your threat model critically. The average tourist (that isn't going to Western China) or student is not a target for surveillance or data extrication attempts, especially firmware level attacks that are very specific to devices and are expensive to research and implement.

Companies tend to require employees to carry burner devices for international travel because that's just good practice. You're far more likely to lose your device when traveling, border officials have broad discretion to search for and access your devices, and companies tend to have high value information available to their devices past the corporate gateway, like trade secrets, technical designs, accounting records or employee data. That applies to any country, even Western countries.

Take your privacy seriously, but the notion that anything that touches Chinese soil means your devices are instantly compromised is a bit of a fallacious claim. Critically evaluate your role, the information you carry and why you might be the target of anything.

Anyways, as far as VPNs go - technically not illegal. Companies, universities, etc. all have sanctioned MLP gateways in Hong Kong to bypass the firewall. Every expat in China uses a VPN. There's only one public case of anyone ever being arrested for using a VPN (and it was under a catch-all law), the others were all operators of ShadowSocks/V2Ray airports.

Tailscale and WireGuard is dicey in Mainland China. If you're just a short term visitor, just buy a 3HK roaming sim for China and call it a day. As a best practice, you don't really want to expose your self hosted services to the web anyways, so I would probably not even bother trying to VPN from a mainland connection directly.

I never got Plex or Jellyfin to work well on actual Mainland internet connections, simply because the Chinanet backbone that most people in China use is excruciatingly bottlenecked to the point that torrenting from other Chinese peers is just a much more pleasant experience.

My GPA is also like 2.3, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to apply for grants with that kind of a GPA.

Honestly dude, if you're doing this badly while living rent-free, you're going to do even worse with a part-time job and the fear of homelessness on top of it. I would seriously suggest taking a break for a year or two, and joining the workforce (ideally an IT Help Desk role or something related, but realistically, whatever you can get).

This is for 3 reasons:

• It's better to take a break from going to school (and they will have leave provisions to allow for this) and go on hiatus than fail out and be the black sheep that no other university will admit. It just doesn't sound like you're prepared for post-secondary education yet and would benefit from building some life skills.
• It doesn't sound like your financial situation is in order at all. You need to save up.
• Joining the workforce for 1 year will cause OSAP to consider you an independent student, so your parent's income won't be factored into grant and loan applications (you'll get more grants and loans).

I’ve also been hearing on the news that the job market in Canada is being flooded by immigrants, mortgage and rent prices are crazy, and food is also crazy expensive, which really worries me.

The people that bring this rhetoric up the most online are usually the ones that have given up and simply aren't competent or willing to compromise for something that matches their aptitude. While quality of life is declining overall in the developed world, immigration is only one part of a bigger problem and things are not that dire that you'll be on the streets if you are willing to do whatever work you qualify for. If you put in an effort, you'll figure it out for sure, and if you don't, you can always apply for Ontario Works/welfare and they will make you do employment training to get you there.

This narrative is clearly designed to deflect blame for price hikes onto the Canadian government, much like how Tim Hortons and restaurants point fingers at provincial governments whenever minimum wage goes up.

Yes, the Canadian government implemented retaliatory tariffs, but let's not forget that Loblaws consciously chose to stick with those specific suppliers. They have the power to decide what products line their shelves. As consumers, we should actively support stores that have made the effort to switch to non-American suppliers. It's disingenuous to suggest that there are no alternative countries exporting similar goods like canned soup, deli meat, and fruit juice. They made a conscious choice to buy American - let those clowns watch their inventory rot.

Highly recommend it, especially between the edges of off-season and shoulder season. I went to Fukushima and was basically one of two tourists in town (the other being a Rwandan artist-in-residence). When I was in Sendai in January, the most touristed attraction (Sendai Castle ruins) couldn't have had more than 40 visitors, and I remember taking a $10 airport limo bus to the hotel meant for 55 travelers, and I was the only one on it. I've made it a goal to visit Akita and Aomori in the future.

That's a fair question. The Consumer Price Index only provides data in aggregate form from a basket of retailers. The Statistics Act protects against the disclosure of specific data points. The consumer price index is important to track inflation affecting Canadians at large, but it isn't very useful for analyzing specific pricing trends.

I believe the organizer of this effort is specifically looking to find instances in which grocers and players within the grocery sector increase prices for non branded goods at the same time, which implies collusion. Think for example, bread price fixing and when they break the promise of not raising prices for x number of months. They wrote down a few analysis ideas to that effect.

Thanks for posting this—it’s a really interesting read. It reminded me of discussions I had in university about sex work, where some would argue that their work was empowering because they were “exploiting” men rather than being exploited themselves. The idea was that by commodifying their sexual attraction, they were working within the system to empower themselves, rather than trying to dismantle the bigger structural issues.

The femosphere seems to follow a similar logic: working within existing power dynamics rather than fighting to change them. But as the article points out, these spaces often end up reinforcing the same patriarchal ideas they claim to resist. Like, framing traditional or conservative practices—like relying on men for financial support—as empowering doesn’t actually challenge the system; it just works around it.

What really struck me was the part about “anti-feminist feminism.” It’s wild how these spaces can seem feminist on the surface but actually double down on inequality by focusing on individual gain over collective progress. It’s the same vibe as “girlboss feminism” but with an even more cynical edge. It’s all about “winning” against men, which feels very manosphere but flipped.

I get why women might be drawn to this, though. Liberal feminism has been all about individual empowerment and hasn’t really delivered on the bigger promises of gender equality. But, like the article says, just because something criticizes liberal feminism doesn’t automatically mean it’s good for women. It feels like a trap—appealing because it’s a rejection of the status quo but ultimately just repackaging the same old problems.

The radicalisation part is also super concerning. Even if the femosphere isn’t leading to real-world violence like the manosphere, it’s still fostering this toxic, “us vs. them” mindset. It’s a reminder of how extreme and polarised these online spaces can get.

This article really made me think about what the alternative is. Like, how do we create a version of feminism that actually addresses the frustrations drawing people to these spaces, but without the toxicity or regressive ideas? That’s the real challenge here, I think.

This isn’t the major issue it’s being portrayed as.

Under Canada’s free trade agreements—including those with the WTO, CPTPP, and the European Union—Canada is obligated to allow foreign companies from these partner regions to compete for large government procurement contracts (typically valued at ~$230,000 CAD or more). These agreements ensure fair access without protectionist barriers and, in return, give Canadian companies access to similar opportunities in those markets.

Given this context, it's not surprising that a significant portion of federal procurement contracts go to companies headquartered in the world's largest free market economy, the United States. The fact that nearly 25% of federal government suppliers by total contract value being U.S.-based is not unexpected under these trade arrangements.

I had a old Acer SFF desktop machine (circa 2009) with an AMD Athlon II 435 X3 (equivalent to the Intel Core i3-560) with a 95W TDP, 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, and 2 1TB hard drives running in RAID 0 (both HDDs had over 30k hours by the time I put it in). The clunker consumed 50W at idle. I planned on running it into the ground so I could finally send it off to a computer recycler without guilt.

I thought it was nearing death anyways, since the power button only worked if the computer was flipped upside down. I have no idea why this was the case, the computer would keep running normally afterwards once turned right side up.

The thing would not die. I used it as a dummy machine to run one-off scripts I wrote, a seedbox that would seed new Linux ISOs as it was released (genuinely, it was RAID0 and I wouldn't have downloaded anything useful), a Tor Relay and at one point, a script to just endlessly download Linux ISOs overnight to measure bandwidth over the Chinanet backbone.

It was a terrible machine by 2023, but I found I used it the most because it was my playground for all the dumb things that I wouldn't subject my regular home production environments to. Finally recycled it last year, after 5 years of use, when it became apparent it wasn't going to die and far better USFF 1L Tiny PC machines (i5-6500T CPUs) were going on eBay for $60. The power usage and wasted heat of an ancient 95W TDP CPU just couldn't justify its continued operation.

The pension is a red herring tossed around by morons. If he didn't get the pension, he'd get a return of his contributions and just invest it in index funds. People make it sound like a $40k/year pension will make or break his retirement plans lmao.

Parliament doesn't sit until Jan 26. You still have to get input from NDP HQ and the caucus before you go around voting non-confidence. Freeland resigned a day before parliament was about to adjourn and y'all make it sound like it needed to be a gut reaction.

I remember a period of time where I was being prescribed three medications (all pretty minor) and they insisted I do a medication review. They get to bill the province $70 for those and they have a quota to hit.

I learned later on that medication reviews aren't just checking boxes off the list, but intended to ensure that patients are using their prescriptions safely and effectively, helping to identify any potential drug interactions/side effects, and consider alternative drug regimens. This never happened in my medication reviews, they were just 2 minute checkbox exercises.

This has been the playbook from day one—Trump throws out an outrageous statement, his lackeys rush to ‘clarify’, 'negotiate' or downplay it, and then, surprise, he meant exactly what he said.

The real problem is the constant gaslighting: pretending he’s just posturing when, in reality, he’s dead set on pushing his reckless, authoritarian agenda. At this point, anyone still treating him like a rational actor is either delusional or complicit. No rational actor would casually equate ethnic cleansing to a real estate transaction, or try and take over a sovereign state as though it was a ruthless corporate takeover.

There is no future in negotiating with the US - the only way out of this mess is to do what we should've been doing for the past 30 years - diversify our supply chains, build resilient trading relationships and establish the infrastructure to insulate ourselves from the whims of volatile US policymakers - even if that means cozying up to global partners with historical animosity.

The Conservatives will win either way. There's nothing in the next 10 months that would prevent the Conservatives from winning short of PP beating up children.

Voting no confidence now allows the NDP to viably compete for seats like Ottawa Centre where the liberals are weak and rebuild their influence and standing in the house. I don't see why it's the duty of every left-leaning party to prop up the Liberals as the natural governing party. Waiting 10 months isn't going to cause the NDP to sweep into government, it might at best just delay the inevitable if they're lucky, but more likely delaying will catastrophically wipe out their party by making them look like Liberal stage props.

These are for new flight bookings. International arrivals have already dropped by 11% as of February: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/250310/dq250310d-eng.htm

Loblaw/Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacists work on quotas, and the pressure to dispense as quickly as possible causes them to miss obvious and serious drug interactions. The quota system for prescriptions is an actual pressing threat to patient safety.

In BC, if you take more than 3 prescription drugs, pharmacists can bill the province for a medication review (around $80 last time I checked). The medication review is supposed to be a minimum of 30 minutes, improve the patient's treatment plan, etc. SDM would literally turn this into a pure box-checking exercise to claim the $80 in 3 minutes or less.

Oh, and they charge for injecting a vaccine into you (a 3 minute activity and for most vaccines, something you could train a monkey to do). In comparison, independent pharmacists tend not to charge injection fees because they'd rather you come back as a repeat customer than treat you as a cash pig.

Why is it the responsibility of a third party like the NDP to keep up the Liberals in power?

If the NDP can steal and win former Liberal seats, it seems really dumb not to capitalize on that opportunity. It's not like the NDP will form government, nor will the Conservatives lose traction in the next 10 months. There's a Conservative government coming in regardless of how you feel.

The original source: https://www.oag.com/blog/canada-us-airline-capacity-aviation-market

Using forward booking data from a major GDS supplier, we've compared the total bookings held at this point last year with those recorded this week for the upcoming summer season. The decline is striking — bookings are down by over 70% in every month through to the end of September. This sharp drop suggests that travellers are holding off on making reservations, likely due to ongoing uncertainty surrounding the broader trade dispute.

It's also important to note that this is more than just leisure travel between Canada and the US itself.

I don't necessarily think these are the main driving factors, but you could attribute some part of this to:

1. economic recession, because firms oftentimes cut back on travel in their budgets as the first line items to be cut (prior to layoffs), and businesses may be more reluctant to hold conferences and large meetings in-person during periods of economic stress, and fewer business negotiations/meetings are happening due to tariff anxieties.
2. declining air traffic to the US overall because of visa worries, the proposed travel bans or spite - Air Canada + airline alliances competes with US airlines for passenger bookings (i.e. itineraries like London -> Toronto -> Kansas compete with equivalent US itineraries of London -> New York -> Kansas ), and visa policies like the China Transit Program exists to help Air Canada and the Star Alliance leverage Canadian airports as transit hubs to the US. Remember: if privileged Canadians are scared about being allowed entry to the US without being detained in an ICE holding facility, you imagine how citizens of developing countries must feel about traveling to the US right now.

The trend only holds true until September according to the source, so general uncertainty definitely seems to be a key driver here.

Just to remind everyone: Layton pulled this same stunt, toppling Martin’s government.

Refusing to support a sitting government mired in scandal isn’t a stunt—it’s taking a stand. Calling an election wasn’t just the right thing to do; it was unavoidable after the Office of the Auditor General laid bare the extent of corruption. This wasn’t a minor misstep—it was a government blatantly diverting public funds to secure its own re-election. Propping up such a government would have been a betrayal of public trust.

Pinning the blame on Layton because the only viable alternative brokerage party to form government was the Conservative Party is absurd. That’s not on him; it’s on the corrupt Liberal party establishment of the time for destroying their own credibility. A lot of voters are only used to the reformed Liberal Party under Trudeau, but there was a point in time where the Liberal party apparatus was very different.

Let’s be clear: the fault lies with those who abused their power, not with those who refused to stand by and enable it. Misrepresenting this as opportunism is a deliberate distortion of the facts, designed to deflect attention from the real issue—a government that deserved to fall. Just admit you're pro-corruption and move on.

I remember visiting a youth summit here in Canada, and the Indonesian ambassador to Canada was present. I remember he got pretty exasperated that the only thing people in attendance knew about Indonesia was Bali (and thought it was Indonesia's capital), despite being the world's fourth largest country in population. He gave us all Indomie and ginger chews though - nice guy, but he got me hooked on Indomie for much of university.

I sometimes wonder why we don't just establish a foreign legion like France, or at least permit foreigners to join as enlisted (not officer ranks) like other countries as a pathway to Canadian citizenship. The risk in active service is a far greater display of commitment to Canada than the average study permit holder, and expanding our recruitment pool to Francophone nations in Africa, and states in the Caribbean would at least help greatly in finding non-specialized enlisted.

I don't see the security risk considering that the vast majority of CF recruits are never assessed for loyalty in their background checks, so long as they don't serve in their countries of origin. I've completed the reference check for CF recruit background checks - I really don't think they're that rigorous if they're essentially being outsourced to third party companies.

The fact that having any kind of university degree automatically puts you into the officer cadre, in a country with an extremely high post-secondary education rate like Canada and low tuition fees/generous student funding (versus the US where the opposite is true and the Army is a pathway to post-secondary education), is only furthering a ridiculous ratio of officers to the enlisted. I see more value in starting to recruit from countries where pathways to move up on the social ladder are deeply stifled, and building a base of those who are willing to make meaningful sacrifices to become Canadians (versus yet another MBA student from University Canada West that's only in it for themselves).