Mouth.

Definitely Canadian, I thought it might be NZD, but the shape of the clear window on the $20 matches ours.

Buckwheat pillow. Nice and firm, cool, and malleable.

I punch out a divot for my head so it has kind of a neck roll when I sleep on my back, or if I’m reading on my side, I punch a divot for my ear so it’s not squished against my head.

Had it for like 15 years, I miss it whenever we visit my in-laws in another city.

I’m not gonna engage with you beyond this since you’re obviously uninterested in opinions other than your own, otherwise you might have looked at any of the studies I linked investigating weight-related stigma, which is related to others’ kindness or lack thereof.

You’re not fighting societal acceptance of obesity, you’re just lazily perpetuating harmful social stigmas to justify your own discomfort with fat people.

You say it’s not “normal” to be fat, but if a condition is considered epidemic, it’s not really abnormal anymore, is it.

You don’t know what that person eats. You don’t know if that person has a medical disorder. You don’t know if that person is disabled and unable to prepare healthy food for themselves. You don’t know if that person has an eating disorder that they can’t afford treatment for. You don’t know if that person is on medications that affect their weight. You don’t know if that’s even a real person or an AI-generated image.

But you’re real quick to diagnose the cause of their obesity as exclusively their personal failure for not eating the correct amount of the correct food.

It takes minutes to see what researchers are saying about this stuff.

Historically, the central dogma of the science of obesity has been that it is simply an energy balance disorder: calories in, calories out. If this energy-based model (EBM) of obesity, was true, then essentially exercising more and eating less should work for everyone. However, this is not the case. Many researchers believe that the pathophysiology of obesity is more complex.

While both social–environmental factors and genetic preposition have been recognized to play important roles in obesity epidemic, Gao et al. (2021) present evidence showing that epigenetic changes may be a key factor to explain interindividual differences in obesity.

Honestly there have been a few times recently where I’ve seen fat people doing or saying interesting things online, and half the fucking comments are vitriol about their weight and how it reflects on their character, as though that overshadows and invalidates anything they’re doing. And sometimes I see other commenters challenging these views, and sometimes the hate commenters will backpedal of they realize that the person they’re discussing has what the consider to be a valid medical excuse.

I’m autistic and ADHD, and to me, that kind of behaviour is a reflection of what goes on in places like fakedisordercringe, where they claim to respect people with official diagnoses but never bother to actually see which of their targets has an official diagnosis, or consider that the absence of a formal diagnosis doesn’t mean the absence of the condition. And that’s because it’s not actually about the underlying reasons for the behavior they’re mocking, because they don’t care about those reasons. They’d rather not know if there’s a diagnosis that would exclude their target from mockery because how their target is acting makes them uncomfortable.

It’s a way of enforcing conformity through cruelty, just like bullying fat people.

And I’ve read stuff like this piece, with the line “I wish I didn’t have to justify myself, or base my worth on proving that I’m trying.”, and I see myself in that. I’ve burned myself out multiple times and seriously damaged my physical and mental health as a result of trying to act like I’m neurotypical.

I’m fucking tired of seeing anybody get judged as moral deficients online by people who know nothing about them or their histories.

I mean, that’s nice for you, but the difference is that that teasing was coming from the friends, and not internet randos who neither know nor care about you.

Next to nobody who sees that screenshot knows the person in the photo, or whether they’re even able to lose weight by “putting in the work”.

Also, there’s a preponderance of evidence that your case is an outlier, and “teasing” does not improve the lives of its targets.

You never know what somebody is going through, and it costs nothing to be kind.

That’s not all it eats, either.

Seems like it would definitely not have a 0 in red?

But it was a great read and I’m glad you posted it.

Edit: lol I dumb

Yessss.

My first year of university, I lived in residence and the cafeteria had a nugget ice machine. Every day before class I’d swing through and fill my water bottle to the brim with ice and top if off with water. I’d have enough ice to crunch until my classes were done (not in class, I’m not a monster).

I miss it so much.

Also, a post-mix bar gun. Mostly just for carbonated water, because I’m also a fizz addict and those things are just fun.

…how are trains obsolete to anybody?

Hundred of billions of tonnes of freight are moved by rail each year globally, and people travel hundreds of billions of kilometers by rail.

When he was first chosen as LPC leader, I hadn’t even realized that he was a party member. I suspect he was chosen for the name recognition, and while I don’t like the idea or existence of political dynasties, I didn’t care because I wanted Harper out.

The Proportional Representation Bait-and-Switch

One of the LPC’s central campaign promises in 2015 was the end of First-Past-the-Post. He reneged on that promise as soon as the committee he’d empanelled recommended a referendum between FPTP and PR, but did not include his preference (ranked ballot). He took his ball and went home. This was deeply impactful on me. I had no great trust in politicians as a rule, but this was the final nail in the coffin for my faith in my country’s electoral system.

A few months ago he went on MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s podcast, and this was one of the topics they discussed. As one of the “FairVote” people the party was all but explicitly trying to bait into voting Liberal, I find his arguments to be insulting and patrician, though unsurprising. Even in my most generous interpretation of what he says there is that he and I have a values mismatch when it comes to what we think democracy can and should be.

Strike Breaking

Early on in his PMship in 2016, the Trudeau government threatened to follow Harper’s 2011 precedent and table back-to-work legislation against legally striking Canada Post workers. In December 2024, after saying they wouldn’t force striking postal workers back to work, they did. By my count, this marks the third time in 15 years that our Posties have been prevented from improving their pay and working conditions, twice by Trudeau’s government.

“Affordable” Housing

About a year ago, his deputy PM came under fire for touting an “affordable housing” development for low- and middle-income people where the rents started at $1700/month for 330sqft, and $3315/month for 816sqft.

Again, deeply personal for me, as I live in the metro area with the worst rents in the country and have suffered 7 years of housing instability as a result.

This was a completely headassed publicity stunt from a woman who is not low- or middle-income, and definitely does not struggle to afford rent; it is archetypical of the “arrogant and out-of-touch” Liberal, from a woman who had previously been lionized by legacy media (most of which, incidentally, are majority US-owned - see PostMedia).

I have not seen any indications from the party that it sees the financialization of our housing market to be a concern for them, which I don’t find surprising for any liberal party, but is nonetheless concerning to me as a renter who would like not to have to spend the rest of my life at the whim of a landlord for my use of what my country officially considers to be a human right, my housing.

Truth and Reconciliation Weaselry

His government’s stated commitment to truth and reconciliation has repeatedly been shown to be all hat, no cattle. The have repeatedly fought court battles to get out of making any actual material reparations, most recently to mind was this absolutely galling stance from government lawyers that Canada has no legal obligation to provide First Nations with clean water. They’ve also wasted millions fighting residential school survivors in court.

Influence Peddling for a Criminal Business Conglomerate

SNC-Lavalin. The PMO tried to influence the Attorney General/Minister of Justice to decline to prosecute SNC-Lavalin on charges of bribery. The initial story by the Globe & Mail (which I cannot find, sorry) claimed that she objected, and was then “shuffled” from Minister of Justice to Minister of Veterans’ Affairs. The ethics commission report did find that the Trudeau had contravened the Conflict of Interest Act, and found that Trudeau had “continued to engage both with SNC-Lavalin’s legal counsel and, separately, with [then-AG and Justice Minister] Ms. Wilson-Raybould and her ministerial staff to influence her decision”, after she met with him and expressed her concerns that the PMO was inappropriately trying to interfere politically with the AG in a criminal matter.

Means-Tested Pandemic Relief

The Liberal government tried to claw back CERB, the emergency benefit they rolled out for COVID-19. They also demanded that claimants deemed to be invalid recipients pay back the disbursements, but were (unsurprisingly) overzealous, and $246M worth of outstanding CERB “debt” has been canceled because the claims were found to be justified. I wasn’t eligible for this, but someone in my family was, and got extremely stressed when the initial talk of clawbacks started, because their work venue had no plans to reopen at that time. Stuff like that leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths.

Failure to Shore Up Healthcare

And lastly, the doctor shortage. I’m honestly (mercifully) pretty out of gas, but uh… family doctor shortages everywhere, private for-profits making incursions (more than the ~30% they already have) into our system, fucking… telecoms?! somehow also doing this (although I’d have pretty much no problem with this if we nationalized them.)

Hi, hello, I’m a Canadian who agrees with the idea that Trudeau is arrogant and out of touch. (*I also think this applies to almost all politicians)

tl;dr I suspect people think Trudeau is arrogant and out-of-touch because he was born into privilege, but more importantly, has been a politician in the highest office for the past 10 years during a time of worsening prospects for the electorate (regardless of his own impact on the situation, although that is not “no impact”). Literally nothing he could say could put a shine on that.

Trudeau is a figurehead as party leader, and as PM. I mean, not only that – the PM does have significant political power as well – but it means he’s a representative of all the actions that his government takes, and not without reason. People assume that the PMO exerts its influence on party members because it does. Above-board and otherwise (see the SNC-Lavalin scandal).

In my purely vibes-based view, that’s just how Canadian federal politics be. PM stays in power for long enough, lots of little grievances build up, eventually people get fed up and want change.

This isn’t really a shocking shakeup to me - the last Liberal regime lost power amid scandal and turmoil and it seemed much messier than this (although not as messy as the UK Tories’ clown car procession).

It’s more like Liberals doing internal realpolitik. They knew they were falling out of favour with the public, and they chose to pile as much culpability on Trudeau and torch him. I’d like to say it was because the stakes are higher and this is some high-minded bid to avert our being pulled into the US’s fascist death spiral, but honestly, I think it’s more likely just an attempt retain as much power as possible.

And boy did it pay off.

The Liberals were absolutely on an express flight out of power before Trump started a trade war. And because we still have FPTP ಠ_ಠ and the NDP are toothless cupbearers to the LPC, that meant that, with an election due soon, we were locked in for a conservative government. Not just that, polls were indicating a majority.

But the cons have been playing the right-populist game, riding Trump’s coattails. Their ‘platform’ relied on the continuation of friendly relations.

The tariffs were absolute manna from heaven for the LPC, but wouldn’t have been if Trudeau had remained at the helm because his approval ratings were dropping and our (largely US-owned and right-wing-biased) legacy media have been making hay with it. Fwiw, I’m pretty sure severalmany outgoing PMs have had worse approval ratings (lookin at you, BM the PM), but their party usually loses the subsequent election.

Which is probably why Freeland knifed Trudeau – to try to distance herself from his dropping approval rating and reclaim her mantle of “PM in-waiting”.

JT’s tenure as PM lasted 10 years. During that time, housing and healthcare problems have become crises, and while no single level of government could fix these, it’s clear to me that the LPC has not done enough to address the situation. Looming particularly large are the housing and healthcare crises. Increasing numbers of Canadians cannot afford to buy a home, rent has ballooned unchecked in major metropols, and increasing numbers of Canadians do not have access to a family doctor.

And there’s also rising xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment, which is extremely worrying, and the Liberals are pro-immigration and have historically kept immigration levels high because this country depends on immigrant labour.

But when too many people can’t afford housing or find a doctor, the first thing a lot of people think isn’t that these are systemic failings that could have been prevented and remediated by good and timely policy interventions, it’s “there are too many people and they’re taking all the [house] [doctor] [jerb]!” And immigrants make a very convenient scapegoat, especially when it’s being modelled to such great political success by our neighbours.

I will also say that since you either aren’t Canadian, or are (as you admitted) unfamiliar with Canadian politics, I can see how you’d be confused by what seems like a sudden animus towards Trudeau if your opinion is based on his international relations and foreign policy. I have very little to say about either of those things. I agree, it’s largely been fine.

What I do have problems with has been his domestic policy, and there’s a (non-exhaustive) laundry list, so if you want as much granularity as I can try to give in a frankly prodigious act of procrastination, I put it in a different post because this hit the character limit.

I was just playing Powder a few weeks ago! My friend and I used to play on a work laptop during slow periods, and I got nostalgic for it.

Had some good fun with unidentified ring of polymorph, don’t remember that from 2010.