I wish we had a Canadian option. In the meantime, I’ll use Steam for reference, and buy on GOG.

Covid-19 causes permanent damage, and immune dysregulation in every person who is infected, each time they are infected, so it’s no surprise other viruses are now having larger impacts.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/beyond-long-covid-1.7485888

Nope, measles is up to six times more contagious (UNICEF measures it as only two times more infectious). It doesn’t help that the world in general has gotten really lax about how dangerous Covid is, particularly with the latest variants, so our baseline is off.

https://www.med.ubc.ca/news/5-things-you-didnt-but-should-know-about-measles/

https://www.unicef.org/uzbekistan/en/stories/how-dangerous-measles

Agreed; it’s not worth the rhetoric and actions. And while there’s definitely merit in assessing trans athletes to try and keep things as fair as possible (though they never stopped Phelps from competing, so “fair” is kind of a joke), it’s far more complex than a simple “there was testosterone so they have an advantage!”

For the “nonathletic” groups - think community-level sport - based on what data is available, there is effectively no statistical difference between cis and trans women’s physical performance after 2+ years on hormone therapy.

When it comes to elite athletes, trans women outperformed cis women in Fat-free mass index, Absolute hand grip strength, and Absolute Vo2Max, but under-performed in Relative VO2Max to mass, Ratio of expiratory volume to vital lung capacity, and Absolute countermovement jump (lower body power). The lower Relative VO2Max, and Expiratory volume can lead to disadvantages in terms of speed, recovery and endurance.

While hand grip strength is considered an indicator of overall muscle strength, to quote the first article linked:

The correlations between hand grip strength and individual sports are reviewed comprehensively in Cronin et al. Though maximum hand grip strength has a strong relationship with maximum upper or body strength in some movement patterns such as in powerlifting strength, there are weaker relationships with other movement patterns. There is evidence that hand grip strength is a poor correlate of knee flexion or extension strength and is far more reliable as a marker of physical function if used together with lower limb strength. Hand grip strength is more relevant for some physical performance activities such as rotational movements that transfer force and torque to the hand (ie, ball throwing), but shows poor correlation to movement patterns that require technical ability, physical capacity, aerobic fitness or tactical ability (ie, tennis stroke placement or cricket fielding performance)

It will require a lot more information before any athletics group would be able to make a truly informed decision, and it’s going to have to be sport by sport. Elite athletes are all outliers in their genetic makeup (Phelps, The average height of a WNBA player, etc). We know athletes have different hormone levels depending on the sport they play, but it’s chicken vs. egg on whether the hormones or elite performance came first. So trying to decide what is an acceptable advantage re: “pro athlete genetics”, vs. an unacceptable advantage re: “transgender genetics” is little more than opinions and politics at this point.

/info dump

Missed the sarcasm, I see.

Guess you’ll never know. If only you could check user post history to see.

OK, sure. Is part of this governmental treatment path going to address the systemic drivers behind a large portion of substance abuse? Things like poverty, inaccessible mental health supports, insufficient resources to remove oneself from abuse, the BS support for disabilities and chronic pain, lack of support in finding incarcerated/people with records meaningful employment, etc.etc?

If not, it’s just going to be a waste of money that doesn’t help anyone.

I’ll check them out, thank you!

I’m sure this plays some role. I’m also certain that the countries those same corporations offshore their labour to countries who do the same thing, and no one cares.

I also don’t think we can ignore that real estate is a big money maker for people with wealth, and WFH impacted their bottom line.

Or that many of the CEOs, boards, people at the top have a certain predisposition for wanting power and control, which is harder to flex if people might be able to also do laundry while working or, gasp, take a longer lunch and -still- get their work done.

Anyway, I’m sure it influences the decision, but I don’t think it’s the top driver.

Thanks for sharing!

I’m up to renew my domain, and want to get away from ClouDNS. Does anyone have any experience with Canadian DNS providers? Mine is purely used for email at this point.

No paywall for me, maybe try a different browser. Regardless, here’s the article in an aggregate, hopefully that will load for you.

Friendly reminder that Home Hardware is also a Canadian owned hardware & building supply chain. Not as prevalent as the American Home Depot, Rona/Lowes choices, but they take care of their employees, and your money doesn’t go into some MAGA Republican’s coffers.

I dont agree with calling a quarter of our population “dead weight”. Quebec has the highest provincial taxes in Canada, and weren’t so fortunate as to have their lines on the map surround a fuck tonne of O&G. One of the political topics most QC premieres have had in their platform since at least 2017, arguably earlier, has been to eliminate their reliance on equalization. They’re not just sitting there doing nothing. Their real GDP has been in line with the rest of Canada with a 2.2% growth year-on-year, and were ahead of the national average by 0.1% at the beginning of 2025.

Alberta’s in a deficit because their provincial taxes are way below the national average. They whine about not getting hand outs when they have the ability to be self-sufficient right in front of them. They refuse to invest in diversifying their economy, so everything hinges on pipelines that require billions of federal dollars (hand out?) across multiple parliaments because it won’t be completed in ~4 years, coordinating across multiple provinces, and multiple premieres in those provinces; who can’t cooperate with each other if their lives depended on it, working with indigenous communities to ensure they are heard and respected with regards to their land (spoiler, they generally aren’t by the O&G industry). In the end, that crude would not be going to Europe. It would be going to California and Asia. So we’re back to Trump’s BS for a good portion of any of that actually benefiting. If this is so important to AB and BC, maybe those gov’ts need to put on their big person pants, increase their provincial taxes, and take some initiative on their own instead of waiting for daddy Carney to do it for them. Federal gov’t is much more likely to help if the provinces can present the project proposal showing they won’t be throwing billions into the void.

Well, we could look at it in the sense of CPP, Where all of the provinces signed on with the understanding of a mutual benefit, and also an understanding of not knowing the future, or whether the payout would be evenly spread across provinces. Unfortunately, Ms. “I get mine first” Smith wants to pull Alberta out of the CPP, so I’m not sure now would be the time to try for a new mutual benefit project. The provinces have become much more adversarial than they were 100 years ago, minus QC, who’s always had a certain “we do what we want, dégage, maudit anglophones!” attitude (said lovingly with a stepmother from QC, and family still there).

That said, when Ms. Marlaina Smith and her UCP flunkies tried to pull financial coverage for people on insulin pumps, enough people became outraged so quickly that the UCP changed directions almost immediately. So if we can get it into people’s hands, and make it worthwhile for them, people might self-regulate.

My larger concern for me, is the article mentions the big 3 undermining, then buying out India’s insulin manufacturing company. India has a notably larger economy, and population, than Canada. I’m skeptical we’d be able to manufacture insulin at a scale where it would be enough to compete – not in a profit sense, but in the sense of it being financialy wise for the average person to switch and thereby sustain the manufacturing costs. I know the big 3 are focusing on drugs with larger profit potential, and I also know those CEOs have a narcissistic drive to not let anyone take any of “their” money until they’ve completely discarded that endeavour. I don’t know how we’d be able to protect from their shenanigans.

The Canada Elections Act does not regulate signs outside an election, so any “rules” about removal would be covered by regional legislation. It’s your call; if you feel like hunting down the local legislation in hopes of making trouble for that candidate, all the power to you. If not, I’d say the signs are fair game to remove.

Hitler marched his armies in to Austria less than 24 hours before the referendum and annexed the country.

Based on your account, annexing Austria before the referendum indicates Hitler didn’t need an excuse. Not marching would have saved resources, but clearly he was going to take it regardless. I doubt Trump will need an excuse either - if that’s what he intends to do.

Bringing your voter information card with a driver’s license or any other Canadian Gov’t issued card with photo, name and address is like having a FastPass for voting.

Alberta has a thriving film industry, too. Nearly any Western, or show that’s written for Texas and vicinity will have scenes shot in Alberta. The Last of Us was shot in Calgary, Edmonton, and Canmore along with various “wilderness” locations. The giraffes in the series are Calgary Zoo residents.

The last time I looked into it in 2021, Ecobee used google cloud for telemetry and analytics.

I’ve found this site to be a helpful breakdown of the different quality levels of CO2, along with an overview of what those contaminants can be. I personally prefer to keep the purity at food or beverage level, but your risk profile is unique to you.

https://www.co2meter.com/en-ca/blogs/news/co2-purity-grade-charts