It’s almost as if that old Puritan bullshit about pain and suffering leading to godliness is still around and causing serious problems.

If you got something incurable and terminal and which is only going to get abysmally worse, you should have the ability to go out on your own terms in a peaceful and well-structured manner.

It sure beats slitting your wrists in a tub, that’s for sure.

And for the record: my parents are planning on MAiD for their own EoL strategy. Because dementia and chronic pain are no laughing matter. It’s my duty of care to ensure everything goes off without a hitch, something that I deeply owe two fantastic parents. They walked with me for the first 20 or so of my own life, it behoves me to walk with them to the last of theirs. There is no higher honour I can give.

And the problem that old, ossified, hidebound systems have is their inertia. They are obsessed with old and even obsolete metrics.

The Ukraine war has demonstrated overwhelmingly that classical militaries are wildly obsolete. That the future lies in drone warfare and well-equipped units that have the ability to operate with minimal to no direction and levels of support that make America’s military seem like a country club.

This is also where our current F-35/Gripen argument fails utterly for the F-35. Sure, it is technologically sophisticated. It has “stealth”. It can do a few things that the Gripen cannot.

But where it fails dramatically is the ability to field many units for minimal cost. To field said units with just a handful of ground crew and maintenance crew. To field units across all sorts of harsh environments, even down to short lengths of Arctic highways. And most importantly: to field units that cannot be remotely disabled by the aggressor.

By any metric that has cropped up in the Ukraine, the F-35 is a costly and counterproductive albatross around the neck of any military that doesn’t have America’s level of military spending. It is dead weight that can and will drag down any capabilities that the military wants to achieve.

Canada needs to ensure we have the most possible numbers for the fewest dollars. Every war in history has made this abundantly clear - volume trumps quality and tech sophistication each and every time. Even in WWII, where the Tiger tank was easily the match of a half-dozen Sherman tanks, that tech superiority ceased to matter when 10, 20, or even more Shermans came trundling over the hill for every Tiger tank that was fielded.

And when you can get over 420 Gripens for the same up-front cost as the original 88 F-35 contract (which has since ballooned dramatically), the choice is a no-brainer: Gripen all the way.

Aaaaand it’s now airborne. Maybe not to any great effectiveness, but all it takes is a mutation or three.

And Hantavirus has a 20% fatality rate even with top-notch medical care. It’ll make COVID look like a bad case of hay fever.

Holy redpill incel batman.

If by that you are saying, “I am being faced with objective truths that make me upset and which I cannot handle”, then yes, absolutely.

(Nice ad hominem, BTW; it’s a great way of conceding that you have absolutely nothing of value to counter with.)

But that’s the beauty of facts - they don’t give a single shit about your feelings. They’re reality.

And personally, I tend to be rather obsessed with reality. It ends up being a far better framework than Ideological fantasies.

The Atlantic covered this issue a quarter century ago, and it seems that nothing has changed.

Plus, female teachers demonstrate a significant grades bias in favour of girls, and since the k-12 system has become overwhelmingly women, this makes said bias systemic and deeply misandric.

This massive over representation of women as educators also means that they frequently pathologize typical boy’s behaviour, and treat them like broken girls, further compounding the loss of confidence that boys have that leads to lower scholastic performance and higher dropout rates.

Finally, this problem becomes a wider societal issue when post-secondary enrollment becomes over two-thirds women.

First, this causes an equity crisis among the institutions as they must now deem men as being the disadvantaged gender that needs equity assistance. This puts these institutions squarely into the crosshairs of female supremacist organizations that deem any benefits for men as being “misogynistic”, deeply heretical, and a justification for social, economic, and political cancellation of whatever institution implements these programs.

And secondly, educated women now face a rapidly-shrinking pool of “economically attractive men” above them, as hypergamy prevents them from considering a massive oversupply of otherwise perfectly appropriate men who have black marks of socially unpopular careers or inadequate (lower) incomes.

The interior is facing one of the worst summers in decades. Hot, dry weather and water restrictions everywhere. Not entirely sure hyper-thirsty data centres are such a good idea unless their cooling systems are mostly closed.

Too many managers fail to understand that IT needs to be a revenue centre and not a cost centre.

They treat it like a cost centre, and they are going to carve it to the bone until something comes along and eviscerates the company for lunch - or worse, for lols. And then they are going to look stupid and wonder why IT failed to protect the company. Well, no duh - it was starved for resources and ability:

How “profitable” are our fire departments? Our wildfire services?

How much “revenue” does the RCMP bring in?

Are our road crews and highways divisions being sufficiently “economically viable”?

All this hand-wringing about Canada Post is an alt-right psi-op designed to be one of many wedges designed to facilitate trickle-up economics; to impoverish the working class in favour of the Parasite Class.

Canada Post has no business being privatized. It exists to serve Canadians independently of any profit margin, and I would eagerly argue in spite of any “losses”.

Dogs only exist in the moment. Any correction that isn’t delivered within 1-3 seconds is going to have greatly diminished effectiveness, and anything beyond 5-10 seconds (depending on breed) is going to not be connected with the behaviour that caused you to provide the correction.

There are many breeds where, in general, the drive is so high that “force-free” training will be the fastest path to the euthanasia table. German Shepherd, Belgian Malinois, and many other herding breeds in particular. Sure, you might get lucky and score a “low drive” dog, but that is relative to others in the same breed – by comparison it will still make any golden retriever look like a high-as-a-kite stoner slacker. But a high-drive dog can and will get itself into situations where treats, toys, and other positive incentives will be utterly ignored. Trust me when I say that under those conditions, there is nothing in the “force-free training” arsenal that can or will reach these dogs to break them out of their focus. And when that focus involves aggression against pets or people, balanced training is the only thing that will keep your dog from being euthanized by the authorities.

Start training at an early age. Even as young as 8 weeks. Sit, heel, recall and others are vitally important in being able to control your dog without a leash, or if they slip the leash. Try to find a MSRP-priced version of Successful Together, as it will do wonders in laying down a good foundation of training.

Look for the videographer MK9Plus (can’t tell if British or Australian), they have lots of excellent reels on how to understand your dog’s body language. Method k9 is another one.

Manhandle your dog, especially when they are young and easy to handle. Don’t hurt them, but do get them used to being strangely handled, especially in cases like when they are at the vet.

Do not take your dog out on extended runs for the first year of life, their joints will thank you for their entire life.

Do not spay or neuter your dog, their lifespan and overall health will thank you for their life. Instead, consider vasectomies and hysterectomies instead, as these leave the hormone-producing gonads in place, leading to longer and much healthier lives.

I hope this helps.

And that’s why we call them the Parasite Class.

Because no-one accumulates that much wealth without parasitizing off of the working class.

Imagine being dumb enough to invest into the military industrial complex of a country that’s actively threatening to invade you.

And to buy defensive weapons that can be summarily and remotely shut down by that invading country.

That would be the most moronic decision possible.

The Gripen may not be a 1:1 match with the F-35, but neither was the Sherman a 1:1 match with the Nazi Tiger tank. It took an average of 8 Shermans being KO’d to take out a single Tiger. But when 10, 20, or even more Shermans could be fielded for every Tiger that hit the field, victory came down to numbers, not technological superiority. As has been copiously demonstrated across nearly every conflict of the 20th and 21st centuries.

And instead of 88 F-35 aircraft, that exact same dollar value could buy us 420 Gripen aircraft, at even less on-going maintenance costs on an overall basis.

True, even with 420 Gripens we don’t stand any chance of defending ourselves. But effective defense is not the goal… the goal is to make any invasion as prohibitively expensive for America as possible. And 420 Gripens that cannot be remotely shut down is that answer.

Okay, so I was not specific enough. Let me rephrase:

“Name me any popular media that centres around a husband/wife or boyfriend/girlfriend dynamic, where the man isn’t a moron…”

There we go. Happy?

And notice the term “likely” in my prior comment. Don’t ask me to pick grains of sand off of a beach when you have the entire beach in the first place. I’ve got better things to do with my life than working through Brandolini’s Law; gesturing to that beach is as far as I am going to go.

Aside from distressingly rare well-written examples of healthy relationships such as Babylon 5, the “foolish husband, responsible wife” trope is almost everywhere. It even figures prominently in a majority of advertising that features couples interacting with each other.

• https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FoolishHusbandResponsibleWife
• https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ParentingTheHusband
• https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HenpeckedHusband

And this is far from an exhaustive list. But it’s telling that this is a widely-known and ubiquitous trope, whereas its flip-side opposite is pretty much nonexistent.

In fact, the only references I could find were on the “foolish husband” tropes:

• https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210615-why-tvs-most-toxic-stereotype-endures
• https://www.huffpost.com/entry/retire-the-bumbling-husband_b_5602054
• https://feministing.com/2012/08/24/the-doofy-husband-trope/

And Star Trek should not be on your list:

• OS did not include explicit relationships between main characters
• TNG series had only two historical relationships, neither of which were “active”.
• DS9 had Rom (last season), O’Bryan, and (in the early seasons as a bumbling romantic) Bashir. To a certain extent the trope even existed between Quark and his mother, in terms of her being financially successful and smart in ways Quark never was, although this was shown in just a handful of episodes and so doesn’t really count.
• Voyager had Paris, Neelix, and - to a painfully awkward extent - Kim. Plus, poor dude spent the entire voyage home as a f**king ensign.
• Technically Enterprise had Trip, who as a human was very emotionally foolish next to T’Pol.

Plus, the argument can be made that a few of your other choices don’t have a husband/wife relationship as a central/recurring feature between main characters, and as such are also ineligible.

The only solid mark that I see in your favour is Babylon 5, with Sheraton’s relationship with Delenne and Ivanova’s tragic relationship with Cole being exemplary examples that are shockingly rare in media.

Racists gonna be racist. All they need is the colour of a person’s skin.

Finland facepalms furiously in the corner, gesturing vehemently at the homeless solutions it has proven as being wildly successful and undeniably effective

What a great way of identifying racists and other societal undesirables.

Nationalize healthcare. Build a web of regulations that set regional funding on population metrics, prevent government interference, and lock in funding in ways that are impossible to politically interfere with. Use efficiencies of scale to trim the fat at the top even more.

Also make it illegal for any healthcare org to charge the consumer for any essential service, and make it illegal to discriminate where consumers come from. They can only triage based on medically-basedl rules.

Affordability is inverse to employability.

Places are affordable because they generally don’t have well paying jobs or good careers.

Conversely, places where it is easy to pick up a good career or earn a lot without much experience tend to be quite unaffordable.

The best flex is to have a job that allows you to work from anywhere. This allows you to pick and choose that environment that gives the best affordability level for you, personally, while earning as much as possible from a location-independent job.

Unfortunately, middle manglement desperate to justify their paycheques, and upper manglement who are over-invested in business real estate, seem hell-bent on rescinding the WFH opportunities that made employees so much happier and productive. They would rather have miserable, underperforming employees than change the way they do things.

Society is even worse.

Name me a single TV show where the man isn’t a moron, and where the woman is not the only functional adult in the relationship, and I could likely show you 100 shows where the man is portrayed as a moron and where the woman is the only functional adult.

Colour me naïve, but this narrative has got to be seriously f**king with gender relations, and how women are now overwhelmingly disrespecting men and what they bring to the table.

And this brainwashing starts in childhood, with shows like Peppa Pig laying the foundation for that life-long disrespect.

It also shows men how little they are actually valued long before they can bring anything of value to the table. It’s certainly been a factor of why other men around me have been disengaging from society and going their own way. Why bother if you are the pre-ordained baddie, and have zero ability to counter that messaging without being called a misogynist?

Back in the mid-80s: CHUD. Cannibalistic Underground Humanoid Dwellers.

Being on the spectrum, this really messed me up, even though the special effects were cheesy even for that era. And I mean heck, I was also 15 at the time, and had never seen any kind of a horror movie before…

Just learned a short while ago that the term has been co-opted to describe conservatives in general, and white conservative men specifically. I now find myself in awe at how well-applied that term is.

Honourable mention to The Last Unicorn completely tearing me up with its ending, and throwing me into a two-month existential crisis bender that I don’t think I ever fully recovered from.