Trump never uttered one word implying an aggressive act against the independence of Canada. He said that he thought the Canadians would do better as Americans after a voluntary federal union, and it was refreshing to hear him repeat this past week that if Canadians were Americans they would not only benefit from lower taxes but better health care, as well as being able to dispense with the defence budget altogether, since it has come so close to eliminating it anyway. Two whole generations of Canadians have been force-fed the fraud that Canada’s health-care system is superior to that of the United States; 80 per cent of Americans receive a level of health care beyond the dreams of any Canadian who does not go to the United States for medical treatment.

Conrad Black can go fuck himself with these misleading statistics.

My brother living in North Carolina needs to pay $1400 a month for health insurance coverage for his family, and that gets paid whether it’s needed or not; and we’ve all heard the horror stories of actually trying to claim health insurance; there’s a reason that Luigi is being seen as more of a folk hero than the “terrorist” that some paint him as.

And as for “Trump is just making a sales pitch for a united North America”, Black framing it as a friendly offer sharply contrasts with how Trump himself has been framing it; all vinegar and no honey. We’ll be “cherished”, huh? The same way he cherishes current states with budget cuts and reckless firings?

Conrad Black is disingenuous at least and a dishonest and unreliable narrator at best.

-4 dolls. All patriotic Americans are required to surrender 4 dolls immediately for processing and export to Central America

A CEO hyping their own company is not news

Never heard of it, and you provided no context either. :)

It has become an ongoing issue that my wife complains that she smells something, then gets angry at me if I am unable to smell that same smell, sometimes accusing me of gas lighting her or calling her a liar, when actually I just don’t smell the smell she’s smelling.

I’m not making implications or accusations, I’m not trying to mislead or confuse her, I just can’t smell whatever she’s smelling and that fact frustrates the heck out of her as though I’m personally letting her down. Then she gets a bit aggro and I have to change the garbages / kitchen compost in the hopes that perhaps those are the sources of the smells I can’t smell. Sometimes that helps. She will never change the garbage or take out the compost herself.

When she insisted that she smelled a gas leak from our furnace that I couldn’t smell, we called a professional who confirmed our furnace was working fine and there was no gas leak; but I was still the villain for denying the gas leak ahead of time. Three times in the last 6 months this has been a thing.

I remember this episode

I know the feeling, I have no idea how I made it through books 2 & 3. I recommend it to no one, but I do still recommend book 5 on its own

Bradley Cooper has held the rights for over a decade now. I always figured if you structure it a bit like Lost, that could work quite well narratively; each episode forwards the plot in the present while having a singular focus on one character in flashbacks

Can’t speak for every guy, but some of us will make sure to give extra room on the sidewalk to purposefully indicate that we’re not a threat. A bit of mud is a small price to pay to know that we have prevented even a modicum of fear from springing up in the hearts of a random passerby.

Many of us understand why women choose the Bear over the Man.

Steven Erikson’s “Malazan: Book of the Fallen” series is ten books long, and it’s an ambitious, chaotic mess that some readers utterly love. I didn’t really love reading them last year, and mostly slogged through it.

That being said however, book 5, “Midnight Tides” was utterly glorious, and I would have loved to have seen a good 2-season, maybe 20-26 episodes going through the whole arc. It’d be epic AF

It’s not bad. Weirdly I don’t have a perfect spoon even though I have a top 5 forks list

Doug Ford doesn’t like being held accountable.

Plus we may not have discovered them all yet. ;)

But those undiscovered moons exist nonetheless, if they do

Sprint up or sprint down? Cuz 5 stairs at a time up is mad talent

I appreciate the time and effort you spent on this, but it feels more like an argument against words than it does against concepts.

Colloquially, if I say “a volcano erupted” I’m not being inaccurate, even if it was the magma chamber that erupted; and if I say “Mt. St. Helens erupted”, everyone knows what I’m talking about even if the original name isn’t properly preserved or respected.

However, I find downvotes distressing so I’m abandoning this thread, and I shall not downvote you just because I disagree. I hope you have a lovely day. :)

Shared experiences with other people? Prove they exist.

See, this is where you lose me. When you’re out and about in the world, interacting with people, interfacing with reality, it’s not up to those individuals to prove to you that they exist prior to, during, or after your interactions with them. You don’t doubt the existence of your lunch before you eat your lunch; it is an objective fact that your lunch exists, hopefully, and if not, you are objectively hungry. Your body will suffer measurable physiological effects from your hunger. If you starve and die, it’s a fact that you are now dead.

Do you have evidence to back up the “brain in a jar” theory? Cuz we can talk about “could be’s” all day long, but what is measurable, consistent, and verifiable externally by everyone is what matters far more

Congrats! You have achieved poetry. :)

But I do have 100% certainty that Mt. St. Helens exists. It is a feature of the “is-ness”, with a specific location that can be shared; and you too can visit it, climb to its peak (not recommended) and validate for yourself that it is an existing feature of reality.

In practical terms, we experience predictable outcomes based on accepting certain things as being true.

But Mt. St. Helens literally exists, regardless of whether or not you accept it to be true. You can accept that its name isn’t “true” since that’s more of a shared label that we all agree upon and it hasn’t named itself; but to not accept the truth of its existence has no bearing on your predictable outcomes once you arrive there and start to climb it

I am certain of the fact that Mt. St. Helens is a volcano that exists. I am certain of the fact that it erupted prior to my existence upon this planet, and while I have never laid my own eyes upon this volcano, though not for lack of experience I remain certain of its existence based on the shared experiences and existences of millions of others, and the data they have accrued.

I get what you’re saying with the whole “objective” part of objective reality; but it’s not like you’re going to mount a defense against the existence of Mt. St. Helens, right?

Any dumbass can. :)