I am supportive of people’s right to live with dignity and respect, and I agree that asking in front of a waiting room is undesirable (I have had that same thought in other waiting rooms, too), but I feel like a medical analysis setting is one in which biology (sex) actually does take precedence over identity (gender), because that has implications what and how things are analyzed.

That said, transgender persons taking hormones will have much greater variance in ranges of everything. I think it’s sensible to have additional gender markers in addition to sex.

Yes, I am in Ontario. Hmm, I should just go somewhere else to get the Covid shot. Thanks.

I went to my local pharmacy and asked for both, but the pharmacist would only give me the flu shot. He said I was too young to need the Covid shot… Which he gave me last year.

I genuinely snort-laughed at this 😂

Well, I mean, can you do better than Justin Trudeau?

Yepper, my dad is now long retired, but he was an old school programmer that kept legacy banking systems in the US alive, running in parallel with newer ones (in case the shit hit the fan on the new ones). Though not American, he’s a big Trump fan and definitely would have voted for him if he could have, even though he himself admits its a good things he retired and returned home before Trump became president, because he would not have gotten his US work visas under Trump.

This is basically Mark Carney, the current Prime Minister of Canada. He ran and won as a Liberal, but he would have been a Conservative two decades ago. He’s been working against the interests of every day Canadians, but the thing is that if the alternative is Pierre Poilievre and his Conservatives, I’d still vote for Carney 10/10 times, because at least Carney isn’t a homophobic, transphobic racist. He’ll defend your human rights while robbing you.

Carney looks great on the world stage because he’s juxtaposed against Trump. And yes, we’re definitely better off with Carney at the helm than with Poillievre who was trying so hard to emulate Trump, but the entire world had been taking a pretty hard shift to the right.

I think it’s safe to say the people in charge appreciated the idea of diversity but had no actual clue. Harry Kim was supposedly Chinese, till Garret Wang told them Kim is Korean surname.

Okay, I know you said not touristy stuff, but I have to say I absolutely love Pocket Planet (formerly known as Little Canada). I suspect it’s more fun if you’ve done at least some travel around the country’s larger cities, so you can feel nostalgic about your past travels, but it’s just super cool to see how the model makers have made things run/work. Trains and cars, of course, but things like the tide going in and out, the Skydome opening and closing. And maybe you’d love it if you want to travel across Canada and havent had the opportunity to yet.

… Is Canada getting the Brexit that was promised but never materialized?

She was a US PR who had been willingly living in the US for 14 years. Her Canadian citizenship is only an incidental fact that has no relation to the story; she could have been from anywhere. This was not a political move against Canada the way Spavor and Kovrig were. It was very unfortunate, and we should be sad about her death, and sad about the state of the US, but this is not the doing of any party, government, policy, or law in Canada. This was done solely by the US. They created this situation, they pushed her to her death. If you can’t see that, you’re either incredibly disingenuous or stupid.

I don’t see why LPC feds should care? I mean, beyond basic human decency. This is US policies and actions applied to US PRs. It had nothing to do with Canada or Canadian laws. Why don’t you leave the blame where it rightly lies, with the US and its unconstitutional gulag?

You’re right that interactions are not hugs, but they create friendships with people with whom it is both socially acceptable and emotionally healthy to hug. If you don’t hug your friends, you’re missing out in life.

Well, some of them do. Shingles was the most painful shot I’ve ever had in my life. It hurt the rest of the day and then some. Measles was the second most painful, but only for the duration of the shot itself and a short time after.

But I imagine the shingles shot to still be far less painful than actual shingles, from what people have told me of it, so I’d still choose the shot every time.

How we got here is the world kinda sucks right now, and people want to blame the most convenient person, even if a lot of things are not municipal issues. It’s like the idiots who went to protest provincial health care measures at Parliament.

Well, as I said, I’m not actually interested in getting the worker in trouble. The employer, however, is taking advantage of multiple refugee and immigrant “employees” in various ways, this the most provable. I put employee in quotes because the others are being (under) paid by irregular means; meanwhile, the employer siphons money for their own self.

Yes, but sometimes it’s worth it to pay more dollars to do/support the right thing. Not choosing that is what leads us to a lot of societal problems we have, including, in extremity but not in exaggeration, slavery in both its traditional and modern forms.

You know what actually could help with prices of groceries and everything else? The unimaginably rich people making just a little less profit. A few hundred million is negligible chump change to a hundred billionaire, but pooh on an entire country that’s been dragged into an unprovoked war for the years just trying to end it. Those people who’ve been killed, people displaced, homes and livelihoods lost, don’t matter compared to the profits of wealthy.

This happened to a young man I knew who was trying to get into HVAC. He had to start all over again and find someone new who would actually sign his hours. He eventually did, but I could just add easily imagine if it didn’t happen.

Essentially what you said, but I’d like to phrase it the way a counselor said it to me when I was under a lot of stress at work. Stress is the gap between our expectation and reality. Say you expect to be/produce/achieve/whatever 100%, but you are only capable of achieving 80%. The stress you experience is that 20% gap. Change your expectations to meet your reality and that stress will be resolved.

Now, it may still be that others might still want or expect that 20% from you, but that’s their problem and their stress. If you cannot produce it anyway (which created your stress in the first place), existing in the stress-gap clearly won’t make you able to do it anyway.

I have an American friend who is terminally ill, and it’s possible I may never see them again 😞