[Commenting instead of editing the post]

The only reason we know this is happening, is because Lyft fucked up once by sending her the transcript. Assume it’s happening in every vehicle.

The personal responsibility/choice narrative silicon valley loves so much when it comes to deregulation of labour standards and constant aggressive privacy violations is not useful irl. Any gig worker for lyft/uber/fuckworkers.com isn’t going to feel free to say no (if they have any choice at all) and putting the onus on riders doesn’t make sense here at all.

Canada has privacy laws that techbro companies from the USA simply ignore. Now is the best time to start enforcing them.

Already bad enough here in Ontario with Doug “I’m a big Republican” Ford’s Ministerial Zoning Order addiction, gutting environmental protection agencies, trying to sell off the Greenbelt, using covid recovery bills to get his dirt done, etc.

Any rein we’ve been able to keep on the timbit would dissolve into nada if we allowed the US govt to run their game here. I can’t even conceive of much worse they’d make the tar sands in Alberta. 90% of the fisheries would just be trawlers digging up seabeds. Plus the dizzying amount of toxic waste they’re already legally dumping here and in Mexico?

Elbows up.

March '23 Trump gave a soundbite for his billionaire bosses about building “Freedom Cities.” Clear-cutting national forests, then signing an order that makes the area exempt from regulation? Sounds about right.

If they’re coming for all federally governed land, indigenous reservations will be on the menu as well (always are).

I think trading your trombone lessons for puppet making is cool. I traded a giant turnip and a jar of pickled beets for some of my neighbour’s candied ginger last week.

Since you asked for ideas about organizing and what your fabulous ‘microscopic beans’ group might get up to:

Maybe talk to your community of regulars about being willing to mobilize in some way. Like, who wants basic disaster training. Maybe one of you knows first aid and can teach the rest. Those community meals you have could turn into bringing food to war refugees or families of stolen migrant workers out every Monday morning at the embassy (or wherever they protest regularly in your area). You can make one of your meetings about media literacy, and spotting propaganda, or if you’re all already savvy, you could create a fabulous Introduction to Propaganda Techniques performance and bring it to a mall or public square.

Poster/sticker campaigns telling people which media are Feeding them nazi shit are really helpful atm. No idea what your jam session might make out of an action like that, but artists jailbreak people’s programming in nifty ways no one expects. You could have everyone learn Jesse Welles’ War Isn’t Murder song and flash mob it somewhere.

Also, and this is where I know NOTHING about you, so apologies if it’s too personal or presumptuous.

I remember the G20 up here in Toronto really well. I remember them putting up those barricades all over downtown, telling locals not to go outside in our own neighbourhoods, them rounding up people the nights before protests, getting kettled and on. That shit is absolutely traumatizing, and you’re right: all bets are off when it comes to safety at protests where you are. Your safety is solely in the hands of the protester next to you, as theirs is in yours, just like always. My advice is to ask your group if anyone else feels traumatized by past protests in a similar way. Maybe the number is higher than you think. Maybe they want to talk about like, feelings and stuff. Maybe you can make something out of that (tactics, actions), or maybe it’s just a conversation. Either way, win-win.

“And liberal or mainstream media organizations and universities should be summarily closed… ‘You’d simply declare a state of emergency in your inaugural address. You’d actually have a mandate to do this. Where would that mandate come from? It would come from basically running on it, saying, Hey, this is what we’re going to do… you can’t continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times past since perhaps the start of April.’ - Yarvin, the fascist techbro guru that other fascist techbros wanna be like

Oh cool! https://www.globaldayofunplugging.org/

Thanks for the heads-up OP.

“Damn Harris running for President did this! Dems really need to get back to their working class roots!” - MAGA, 2026

It’s the groove. And it’s in the heart.

TIL - Elon’s maternal grandpappy (born Yankee, raised Canuk, moved to South Africa for the apartheid in 1940) was a chiropractor. He and Palmer were good pals, and he graduated from Palmer’s school in Iowa in the 1920s. Went on to create and put himself in charge of a bunch of chiropractic regulatory bodies.

All the racist and nation-destabilizing shit he tried to accomplish through political appointment (of himself, ofc) failed. Last thing he published afaik was an anti-vax, anti-fluoride “it’s an international conspiracy of teh jews” diatribe.

[edit for wiki link]

Spot on. Waiting for their favourite influencer, pastor, etc to tell them to believe something else.

In theatre it’s called “suspension of disbelief.” You know what’s happening on stage isn’t really happening, but you agree to just go with it and exist in the show’s reality for an hour or so. Not meant to be a permanent state of consciousness.

Trusting your question isn’t rhetorical.

Jokes aside, the Christian Dominionists running the show want the world to burn. It’s their best case scenario, endgame or whatever. But before THAT happens, they’re meant to make God’s laws in heaven Man’s laws down here, carve their faces into a few mountains, take the last grain of profit from the earth. He with the most stuff wins because God thinks like Santa (if you have more stuff, you’re a very good boy). Don’t overthink these Good Folk. Hitler and his nazis were exactly the same flavour of Imperialist Expansionist genocidal nutbars.

They’re evil, is why.

Hence our current speedrun towards armegeddon. It’s why they’re all about endless expansion for the O&G and military industries. It’s why they have such a violent hate-on for that environmentalist kid, Thunberg. Hope and international co-operation for the common good are absolutely their enemy. Their World To Come requires war.

If you think like they do, of course you want to piss off anyone willing to work with their neighbour. People getting along is bad for business.

I can’t wrap my head around being against figuring out how to feed people while the world’s climate drastically changes.

And it’s all one project, north or south of the US-CA border.

td;dr of the link - 2013 Harper government in Canada passed an omnibus bill that muzzled scientists studying the tar sands, fish farms, climate change… there were thousands of very sudden job cuts to fisheries and oceans, thousands of cuts to unionized support staff, he eliminated the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission, etc…

As Maude Barlow and renowned freshwater scientist David Schindler wrote in The Star Phoenix, “The Harper government is systematically dismantling almost every law, regulation, program or research facility aimed at protecting freshwater in Canada and around the world.” Harper even killed the Global Environmental Monitoring System, an inexpensive project that monitored 3,000 freshwater sites around the world for a UN database.

“This government has abandoned evidence-based policy-making to pursue its own brand of policy-based evidence-making.” - Megan Leslie (NDP).

Zuckerberg is the same. Spoilt rotten, sooking over every little moment.

Justice for Ollie! That poor fucking bird…

I’m just trying to save his neutered business from my feminine energy.

ty for this post. Looks like a well-trod ground for most people here, but for newcomers like me the whole conversation was really enlightening and TIL.

You made me think of my buddy from the states visiting me in Toronto 2010-ish laughing at the Canadian flags they sometimes saw flying from people’s houses and other buildings. I asked her what struck her so funny about them and she blanked for a second. She said, “It’s just weird seeing so many flags that aren’t American… Like, this is a country too… um.” We had a brilliant talk about flag-waving patriots for a bit, but seeing that glitch was really interesting and I’ve never forgotten it.

That said, I had plenty of teachers growing up and know tonnes of educators now who’d totally be into forcing students to salute the Canadian flag and pledge allegiance to their God & Country every morning. The only thing stopping them is legislation preventing it, not national identity.

To expand on this.

Canadians are Americans. Mexicans are Americans. Peruvians are Americans. Yankees (or USofAvians) are Americans too. They’re just the only country with a self-appellation claiming to represent two whole continents worth of people (when most of them probably can’t name all the countries in America without a quick gander at google maps).

I hate that talking point so much (and hear it all the time from people complaining about immigrants turkin ur jerbs). The Fast-Food-Jobs-Are-Brutal-And-Pay-Shit-Wages-Because-They’re-Building-Teen-Character narrative is anti-worker bullshit that denies folk job security and a living wage.

Someone’s widowed nan needs this job. The single dad living next door needs this job. A diverse workforce - that includes young people looking for a summer gig - need this job.

I just read the article and you’re so right.

Mace has been using transphobia to build her political career since before she was elected to Congress. In her first campaign for Congress, she made up a law that she claimed required “transgender equality in the military,” said that her Democratic opponent was responsible for it, and said that it would result in a Marine Corps base in her district getting shut down. It was all a lie – there was no such law and the Marine base is still in operation today – but it helped her secure her seat in Congress.

In her second run for Congress, she accused her opponent of providing “SEX CHANGE SURGERY. PUBERTY BLOCKERS. GENDER CHANGING HORMONES. FOR CHILDREN?” in an ad, even though her opponent was a doctor who worked at a hospital that didn’t provide gender-affirming care for trans people at all. Her opponent was forced to resign from her job.

The word rotted comes to mind.